These last three chapters can seem fatalistic. Life leads to death. That's it. (9:3) Sooner or later, bad luck hits us all. (9:11) Peterson describes the purpose of Ecclesiastes much better than this simplistic explanation.
"...to call a halt to our various and futile attempts to make something of our lives, so that we can give our full attention to God - who God is and what he does to make something of us...to expose our total incapacity to find the meaning and completion of our lives on our own....
"...it is cleansing. It is repentance. It is purging. We read Ecclesiastes to get scrubbed clean from illusions and sentiment, from ideas that are idolatrous and feelings that cloy. It is an expose and rejection of every arrogant and ignorant expectation that we can live our lives by ourselves on our own terms." (Intro. to Ecclesiastes)I don't know. I don't know all that God is up to, I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be when I grow up, the future of my children is unknown. The list of what is beyond my understanding and knowing goes on and on. So does God.
The good, the wise, and all that they do are in God's hands - but, day by day, whether it's love or hate they're dealing with, they don't know. (9:1)
...you'll never understand the mystery at work in all that God does. (11:5)What am I to do with this mystery? How do I live in so much unknown? How do I rest in what I don't understand?
...but if I go to Jesus, he's not under my control either. He lets things happen that I don't understand. He doesn't do things according to my plan, or in a way that makes sense to me. But if Jesus is God, then he's got to be great enough to have some reasons to let you go through things you can't understand. His power is unbounded, but so are his wisdom and his love...Jesus is filled with untamable love for you....He can love somebody and still let bad things happens to them, because he is God - because he knows better than they do.
If you have a God great enough and powerful enough to be mad at because he doesn't stop your suffering, you also have a God who's great enough and powerful enough to have reasons that you can't understand. You can't have it both ways.... Elisabeth Elliot puts it beautifully in two brief sentences: 'God is God, and since he is God, he is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere else but in his will, and that will is necessarily infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.' If you're at the mercy of the storm, its power is unmanageable and it doesn't love you. The only place you're safe is in the will of God. But because he's God and you're not, the will of God is necessarily, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond your largest notions of what he is up to. Is he safe? 'Of course he's not safe. Who said anything about being safe? But he's good. He's the King.' (C.S. Lewis)" [Timothy Keller, King's Cross]Solomon's "last and final word" tells me the same thing: be in the will of God.
Fear God. Do what he tells you. (12:13)And I can be sure that it will be beyond my understanding and it won't be safe.
1 comment:
Eccl 12:13 Be in the Will of God. Fear God. Do what He tells you. Reminds me of Acts 21:14 when the people knew Paul must face terrible suffering. Paul didn't flinch. "So the church all in one voice said in Acts 21:14: "Let the Will of the LORD be done!" There is no other remedy. HE doeth all things well.
"When troubles come, This must allay our grief, that the Will of the LORD is done.
When we see it coming, this must silence our fears, that the Will of the LORD is done" Matthew Henry.
Loved what you wrote about Ecclesiastes!
Matthew Henry
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