(A) Introduction

There are, perhaps, at the end of chapter 2 and in chapter 3v12to13 and v22 hints of a more positive outlook. The Teacher states that we can enjoy our work, eat, drink and be happy and do good. If we do good God will give us wisdom, knowledge and happiness.

This view of life is probably shared by the greater part of the population of the UK. I know a very old man who has subscribed to this view since boyhood. He will say to me, "I'm not religious but I have tried to live a good life." In many respects he has. He was a good neighbour and a kind-hearted friend. He has enjoyed his work, his food and his friends. He has been a happy man. If God exists then my former neighbour expects to benefit from future rewards.

This is an inadequate view of life. I think the Teacher recognised this when he says at the end of the passage, Eccles2v24to26: This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. It is not obvious why he comes to this conclusion after saying: A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too I see is from the hand of God for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? Perhaps it is because the Teacher is aware he has no real control over his life. What happens to him is beyond his control. I certainly believe that is the point of the passage: Eccles3v1to8. The Teacher remains disillusioned. In chapter 3 there are four further reasons for retaining a negative view of life.

(B) Life is beyond our control.

What is the point of the Teacher making a list of the obvious. We all know that there is a time for everything ....under heaven.ch3v1 It does suggest that we are never fully in control of our lives because there is no:

(a) Permanency.
Nothing lasts forever. Everything comes to an end. No experience can be held on to. I realise that in some respects this is a good thing. One of the most wonderful events in my lifetime, and one I did not anticipate, was the collapse of communism in Europe. All those Eastern European countries were liberated without bloodshed. It happened so quickly and so quietly. It was a miracle. However, the lack of permanency in human affairs in also cause for pessimism. There is a time to plant and a time to uproot.v2 In the 19th century God planted numerous Grace Baptist churches in Suffolk. Gradually, one by one, they are being uprooted. I never expected when, full of confidence, I returned home from university and rejoined my father's church in Brockley that forty years later I would see the end in sight. Although I am not a Grace Baptist by conviction I grieve deeply the demise of the little village congregations.

There is a time to keep and a time to throw away.v6. During my last five years in teaching I typed out all my lesson plans and worksheets. They filled 10 ring files. I was proud of this complete corpus of my work. It was a distillation of my experience and insights. When I retired it was time to throw it all away.

You see how easy it is to be disillusioned with life!

(b) Certainty.
I used to like to go and see Dorothy and Harry. They were a thoroughly devoted couple who lived for one another. They always made me very welcome and plied me with whiskey. It wasn't long before we were all laughing uproariously as we discussed the ups and downs of our teaching careers. There were more downs than ups! Then one day I learned that Harry had died suddenly and unexpectedly in hospital. After the funeral I went to see Dorothy. It was a very different visit to what I had been used to - many tears. There are no certainties in life. Harry's death devastated Dorothy and blighted her retirement. There is a time to weep and a time to laugh. v4

Human relationships do not stay the same. Year after year I attended a Christian camp with a friend. We shared the same tent and had warm fellowship. We also spent many hours laughing together. Eventually my friend married a wife and shared a tent with her and not with me! There is ... a time to embrace and a time to refrain. In my early years of teaching I played Bridge every lunch time with an elderly, humorous, colleague. We were a good team and I loved being his partner. My old colleague retired. I tried to keep in touch but he rather rejected my advances. We never played Bridge together again. I still feel sad about it. There is ..... a time to love and a time to hate.

The lack of certainty in life means that our happiness is never secure. Life is unpredictable and often changes for the worse.

(c) Direction.
There are so many changes in life that we are easily distracted and it is difficult to have a settled goal. How do we know when to search and when to give up; when to keep and when to throw away; when to tear and when to mend; when to be silent and when to speak? Perhaps, we have been striving to achieve a goal that is unattainable and it is time to give up. Maybe we have been struggling to preserve something we consider is valuable and it is time to throw away.

I attend a larger Baptist Union church in the winter months when my own struggling cause discontinues its evening service. I sit on the left hand side. It seems to me that the left wing of the congregation is largely made up of spiritual misfits: people whose churches have closed or are in terminal decline and folk who have grown dissatisfied with their former churches. We have lost our way. We are displaced Christians! Christians who fail to achieve their goal or preserve what they hold dear are never quite the same again.

The Christian will be saved from disillusionment by following the advice of Jesus who said, "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." If we concentrate on doing what God wants we shall have a goal that circumstances cannot affect. If we forget about personal gratification, recognition and earthly reward and, instead, make it our chief desire to please Jesus we shall be under his control. Submission to Jesus is the way to a life rich in all that matters.

No one described the great unchanging purpose of the Christian life better than Paul in his letter to the Philippians. He writes, What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ... Phil3v8. Paul was convinced that whatever happened in life he knew Christ. This was his great certainty. The relationship he had with Jesus was permanent and could not be shaken. He also had a goal: I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me..... But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.

It is so easy to be disillusioned by the ever-changing scenes of life. I am often cast down and discouraged. It is easy for me to identify with the Teacher of Ecclesiastes. But I am also a Christian and I find the best remedy for despair is to look to Jesus. In the pungent medieval verse of the peasant Martin Luther we are encouraged to do just that:

Thus spoke the Son, "Hold thou to me,
From now on thou wilt make it.
I gave my very life for thee
And for thee I will stake it.
For I am thine and thou art mine,
And where I am our lives entwine,
The Old Fiend cannot shake it."

(C) The incomplete life.

The passage from verse9 to 15 is not easy to interpret. Most commentators are desperate for the Teacher to adopt a more positive view. They find some evidence for it in this passage. I am not so sure. I believe that the Teacher is still expressing disillusionment with life.

Man is made in the image of God. He appreciates the beautiful things God has created and also has a sense of history. I think the expression: He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, means that men have an understanding of the past and an interest in the future. Yet notwithstanding man's appreciation of God working through time to achieve what is altogether admirable he cannot grasp God's purpose. Men cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. The best thing to do is to live in the present and to eat, drink and find satisfaction in work. God has his plan and there is nothing we can do to influence it. We just have walk on parts in the great drama God has written. We enter and leave and the drama goes on from its beginning to its end. Man did not write the drama and neither does he know why it was written in the first place. There is a yearning to be told more; to know God better; to assume significance.

Christians are in a much better position than the Teacher. A man did make a very great difference. Jesus was a member of Adam's sinful race. He was born to show us what God was like. Jesus said, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." John14v9. "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."
Jesus came to show all men that God loves them. There is a plan of salvation and the prospect of eternal life. This is the grace of God. However men are not powerless to influence their eternal destiny. They are not bit players in God's unfolding drama. We have to believe to inherit eternal life. We have to actively participate in God's plan and our active participation does affect its outcome.

Paul captures the essential nature of the ongoing drama when he writes to the Corinthians:
For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

So we make it our goal to please him (Christ) ..... . For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due to him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. 2Cor5v4,9and10.

We do know the purpose of God: when what is mortal is swallowed up by life Jesus will make God fully known. Eternal life is to know God and the one he sent to earth to be our Saviour.

Augustine said of God, 'You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you.' The Teacher knew all about the restlessness. He was dissatisfied with life. The Christian has a better hope. A day is coming when we shall be presented faultless to God in glory. Until that day comes we make it our goal to please Jesus because all must appear before his judgment seat. What we do is not immaterial because salvation is not only a gift but also a prize. We are not helpless pawns in the hand of a Sovereign God.

O that my soul could love and praise Him more,
His beauties trace, His majesty adore:
Live near His heart, upon His bosom lean;
Obey his voice, and all his will esteem.

(D) The unfair life.

The Teacher was not happy with the quality of justice in his society. Those who administered justice were themselves corrupt. He hoped that eventually God would judge both the righteous and the wicked. However he could not tell when that time would be.

In Britain we do not have a corrupt judiciary yet. Unfairness exists because Parliament passes unjust laws. It wasn't fair to outlaw pistol shooting in gun clubs because one man went berserk in Scotland and shot several children. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens were prohibited from enjoying a quite innocent form of recreation to atone for the crime of one individual. The Children's Charter has meant that many schoolteachers have been suspended and had their lives ruined as a result of the malicious and untrue accusations of their pupils. There is no punishment for those who make the scurrilous accusation. I do not think some men are treated fairly in divorce proceedings - losing their children, home and, perhaps, having to sell their business.

It is easy to become embittered and disillusioned with life if treated unfairly. I am especially prone to bitterness and rancour. I need to counsel myself from time to time. There are three considerations that help to dispel bitterness:

(a) We sometimes expect more than we deserve. We are not the best judges of our own worth.
(b) Peter calls us to tough discipline. He writes to slaves: For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. .... When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 1Pet2v19to23.
(c)Paul writing to the Thessalonians assures us: God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 2Thes1v6to9. It is wrong of us to want to pay unbelievers back in this life for their impiety and opposition to the gospel. A day is coming when those who do not obey the gospel of Jesus will be punished with everlasting destruction. There is no need for us to anticipate that day!

(E) A life lacking assurance.

The hardest thing for the Teacher to bear was his uncertainty about life beyond the grave. See Eccles3v18to23 Lack of assurance of a future life is very debilitating and profoundly depressing. I have heard people say that they think of death every day. There is an obsession with living for as long as possible. People try to extend their lives by dieting and exercising. The prevailing philosophy in the UK is: you only live once so make the most of it. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die. There is a mad rush to cram as many experiences in as money and time allows. I talked to an old colleague recently and he said, "There are loads of things I still want to do before I die." What is the point of cramming all these experiences into this fleeting life if in the end you lose it. You do not get much benefit from them then.

The Christian is absolutely certain of receiving a new and better life following death. Jesus said, "For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day. John7v40.

Christians know that Jesus is to be trusted. He is God's Son - the miracles that he did, the life that he lived, the words that he spoke and his resurrection from the dead proclaim it. He will keep his promise and reward his own.

Paul tells the Thessalonians: For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up.. 1Thes5v9and10.

Even I, so like the Teacher in some ways, have no doubts about being raised up by Jesus on the day of his return.

On that bright and golden morning, when the Son of Man shall come,
And the radiance of His glory we shall see;
When from every clime and nation He shall call His people home-
What a gath'ring of the ransomed that will be!