The Life of Faith
Ecclesiastes 2: 24-26
The life of faith DIG: Who are you working for and why? Is our labor cursed because of Adam or Eve? Why? What does God have to do with the good results from your work? Who is the sinner? Why does God favor one over the other? Why is this portion of Ecclesiastes vital?
REFLECT: Do you see your work as drudgery, as a gift from God, or both? Does that make you grateful, even for the drudgery, or hateful? Why? Has ADONAI been part of the solution or part of the problem in your life up to now? Does that need to change? How so?
We were working for the Lord rather than for people.
Nothing prepares us for what comes next, because suddenly Ecclesiastes takes a surprising turn. Without any warning Solomon says the first truly positive thing in the entire book. Up to this point he has sounded like a workaholic who hates his work and has nothing to show for it. We might even be tempted to think that he was a bitter skeptic, suspended over the abyss of despair. But suddenly the Teacher says: There is nothing better for a man to do than eat, drink and let himself enjoy the good that results from his work. I also realized that this is from God’s hand. For who will eat and who will enjoy except me (Ecc 2:24-25)? These verses are an oasis of optimism in a wilderness of despair. Thus, they mark a turning point in Ecclesiastes – not just on the subject of work, but for the entire argument of the book. Martin Luther called the end of Ecclesiastes 2 “a remarkable passage, one that explains everything preceding and following it.” It is “the principle conclusion,” Luther said, “ in fact the point of the whole book.”
Here, Solomon is not giving in to despair, but beginning to see the difference it makes to live with ADONAI at the center of life, above the sun. He is not seizing something for himself, but receiving it from God. As a result, his message is not simply pointlessness under the sun, cutting God out of the picture, but also, joy from the hand of YHVH. It is important not to make one of these claims the only message of the book and dismiss the other. The teacher insists on both, and often in the same passage. There is a bittersweet balance between the two. We live in a world that is cursed by sin, but it is also a world that God created good, that He has visited in the flesh and that He is working to redeem through a cross-bearing crucifixion and a life-giving resurrection. Thus, we experience both the agony and the ecstasy.
Notice carefully what brings joy. In verse 24, the Teacher embraces some of the very activities that he has already rejected for their failure to bring meaning to life. Earlier he concluded that work was a total drag. Not even the pleasures of food and drink could satisfy his soul. But now he eats and drinks and finds enjoyment in his toil.
What makes the difference? God makes the difference! Up to this point in Ecclesiastes, ADONAI has hardly been mentioned, and when He was, He has seemed to be part of the problem. Indeed, this was one of the Teacher’s greatest struggles. Inevitably Ha’Shem seemed to be responsible for his troubles. Solomon never gave up his faith in the power and sovereignty of God, but rather than making him feel better about things, the truth of the LORD’s existence sometimes made him feel worse. If our frustrations with life are also frustrations with the God who gave it to us in the first place, then what hope do we have that life will ever make sense? But here the presence of ADONAI makes all the difference! No one can ever find any true joy in anything apart from Him. So, if we are having trouble finding enjoyment in life, God must not be at the center of things for us. If we are deeply dissatisfied, this could be the reason: we have been taking good things and making them the ultimate things, when in fact they are God-given things.
By contrast, the eating and drinking that the Teacher enjoys in verse 24 come directly from the hand of God. Solomon had stopped trying to seize pleasure for himself and had started to savor it as a gracious gift. Here is a basic biblical principle that we can apply to many situations in life: For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because the Word of God and prayer make it holy (First Timothy 4:4-5).
Earthly pleasures are a gift from God. They have their limits, of course, so they will never give us eternal satisfaction. But the joy they bring encourages us in the worship of God. It is strange, but when we receive the good things in life as a gift rather than taking them as an entitlement, we experience genuine joy and true thanksgiving. So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (First Cor 10:31).
Dear Heavenly Father, You are a joy to have as a wonderful, loving father! Even when things are going good, life sometimes does not measure up to what we had hoped or expected. Your love, wisdom and tender care are always more than we can comprehend! Trials will soon be over but Your love is now and lasts eternally! But in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Messiah Yeshua our Lord (Romans 8:37-39).
We can have joy as we think of the future for we know for sure that those who love You (Romans 10:9-10) will go to heaven to live with You forever. But if Messiah is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Ruach of the One who raised Yeshua from the dead dwells in you, the One who raised Messiah Yeshua from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Ruach who dwells in you (Romans 8:10-11). Loving You brings joy, peace and meaning to life! In Yeshua’s holy name and power of His resurrection. Amen
Even work is a gift from YHVH when we receive it from His hand. This has been true since the very beginning. Sometimes we imagine that Adam and Eve had nothing to do in the Garden of Eden, when in fact Ha’Shem gave them good hard work to do (Genesis 1:28 and 2:15). Unfortunately, because of Adam’s sin our work is cursed (see the commentary on Romans, to see link click Bm – The Consequences of Adam), which turns our labor into toil and trouble. But there is still a basic goodness about work that comes from our Creator. We were made in the image of a working God, and when we work for Him, we feel His pleasure.
For the believer in Yeshua, our true Boss and ultimate Master is the Savior who gave His life for our sins. Whatever our job happens to be – whether we work as a teacher or a student, an office worker or a construction worker, in food services or financial services, we are working for Messiah and His Kingdom. To say it another way, we are working under the Son, not simply working under the sun. For we should work willingly at whatever we do, as though we were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give us an inheritance as our reward, and that the Master we are serving is Messiah (Colossians 3:23-24).264
The inheritance of a reward takes us back to an issue we considered previously: What does the worker gain from all his toil? The Teacher has started to wonder whether he would ever get anything at all under the sun. But when he brought God back into the picture, he found his reward: For to the man who is good from God’s viewpoint he gives wisdom, knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the task of collecting and accumulating things to leave to him who is good from God’s viewpoint. This too is pointless, like chasing the wind (2:26).
It is the sinner, especially, who finds work to be a total frustration. He refuses to receive the blessings of life as gifts from God. His only business is gathering and collecting. His motto of life is “whoever has the most toys wins.” In other words, his life is dominated by the acquisition and accumulation of consumer goods. But eventually, he will have to leave it all behind and this is pointless indeed. So, whatever you are involved in right now, and whatever you are planning to do with the rest of your life . . . are you busy with the great work of Yeshua Messiah? Each of us works in a different way, but it is all part of the same work, to the glory of God. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (First Cor 15:58).265
Two points need to be noted. First, Solomon stated that God’s disposition of wealth and the enjoyment of one’s labors and its fruits are based on whether a person is pleasing to God or is a sinner. As is clear from the words the man who is good from God’s viewpoint and the sinner elsewhere in Ecclesiastes 7:26 and 8:12, this implies that a person will be judged on the basis of their ethical behavior and faith in ADONAI or lack of it. Second, Solomon wrote that this judgment would take place in this life (not in a life after death) and would involve temporal, not eternal, rewards. These two points (enjoyment of life and judgment), which are brought together only here, are crucial in the development of the book. The enjoyment theme, mentioned at crucial times (3:12-13 and 22, 5:18-20, 8:15 and 9:7-10), is here specifically related to the theme of judgment (11:9 and 12:14), and to the advice of God to keep His commandments (12:13).266
Leave A Comment