Dennis Tuuri

My apologies to Angie. I decided to change the sermon text at the last minute, just the middle of this past week. I will be looking at Ecclesiastes 3 here, and we’ll read the sermon text in just a minute. But I wanted to explain why the cover looks different than the handout that you have. Hopefully you have that. And as we read the sermon text, you can simply read along in that as well. You’ll notice that at the bottom of the handout, there are no questions for discussion, which I’ve placed at the bottom of the outlines the last couple of weeks.

I do have some printed copies of five questions for discussion, which I’ll have maybe some young men hand out after the sermon is over. So hopefully you all have your handouts. Yes. Good, because it sort of lays out the text that I’ll be dealing with and the way I’ll deal with it, and so it’ll be useful for you to be able to have that in front of you. Really, this is a followup to the last three sermons on the importance of community.

And so rather than move directly on to back to the Acts speeches and then go back to Advent next week, I decided to postpone the rest of the Acts speeches till after the first of the year, and then we’ll get back to that apologetic. Although the next section in Acts is Paul’s defense in Acts 22, and it is the turning point for him being essentially then taken into protective custody by the Romans, and the religious authorities are trying to actually kill him at that point.

So today’s text, which begins and has a hinge point at the middle about injustice where justice should be and unrighteousness where righteousness should be, is certainly to the point. And today’s text will show us the normal way to deal with this kind of problem. Okay. So today’s sermon text is in Ecclesiastes 3:16 through 4:16, and I think this is essentially a unit. So please stand if you can for the reading of the sermon text.

Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same. As one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beast, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth. So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?

Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought, the dead who are already dead are more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. Again I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice, for he went from prison to the throne, though in his own kingdom he had been born poor. I saw all the living who move about under the sun, along with that youth who was to stand in the king’s place. There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you for the fact that they are always sure, they are a sure word from you, Lord God, that we can trust, and they’re always relevant to our lives. Help us to understand the relevance of this text to our life. Encourage us, Lord God, in the faith of our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to roll back the curse. Thank you, Father, for your Holy Spirit who indwells us. And we pray that spirit might open our understanding of this text and that we might be transformed by the text as your spirit does his work. Bless us, Lord God, as we seek to be conformed more and more to the image of our savior. In his name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated. Also wanted to mention before we get going that this is the first of three Sundays where we’re going to direct the benevolence offerings. For the next two Sundays along with today, the benevolence funds will be specifically so that the deacons can administer benevolence gifts to those in our congregation who are particularly needy at this Christmas season that we’re entering into now. So please remember to do that. And that’s a direct and very practical way to put into effect what we’ve been talking about for the last three weeks, and we’ll continue today: the significance of communion and the way living together in communion we can gift each other.

Now, normally that means in all kinds of ways who we are, our delights can become other people’s delights. Our gifts at particular things that they don’t have giftedness at. There is that paracoretic—that mutual indwelling of each other—that produces increasing life. But in this case, you can very directly—those of you that have more money can very directly gift those with less money through the benevolence offering. And that’s an appropriate application of today’s text.

The way I’ve laid it out, I think the basic text is about suffering and the proper response in community. And so again, we’re going to stress the significance of community. And in fact, part of this text was in last week’s outline and we didn’t really get to talk about much. So I wanted to return to it.

One other thing before we actually look at the text: I taught this text last week in the wisdom literature Sunday school class that Matt Dao and I were supposed to co-teach this year. Because of my leg, he’s done all the teaching, but I subbed in for him last week. It was so significant for my life—and I think for the lives of some folks that I know of directly here in the congregation—that I thought it might be good to preach on this text, preach to myself, preach to you, and find encouragement in this text. And in Matt’s class on Ecclesiastes, he’s using Jeff Meyers’ book called The Table in the Mist, which we highly recommend. And some of my observations today will come from reading Jeff’s book.

Okay. So the text. Let’s try to move fairly quickly through the text verse by verse, and then I’ll have three basic points—small but three points—at the end of the text that will hopefully prepare you for the use of the discussion questions and for applying this text in your life. As I said, I think it’s very significant for a variety of reasons.

Okay, so let’s look at the text. And the way I’ve lined it out is there’s like a first major statement about oppression. You can see that. Then at the middle, the same statement is repeated. So that forms little bookends, right? And there are several points in between those bookends. And I think those can be thought of as a response to the first situation. He observes oppression and injustice. How do we respond to that observation?

And there are three responses I think given. And then again he observes it, but he adds the isolation of the oppressed to his second statement of oppression. And that then becomes a hinge verse, a chain, right? So the chain above is about oppression and the proper response. The chain below—the set of verses below—is about community, and the link in the middle there, with the little chain images around it, that’s a link that links the first and second sections of the text. Understand?

And this is a common thing in scripture. In your own personal Bible reading and note-taking and doing study and such, you’ll see this occasionally where there are these links that tie together what seem to be different topics. So while at first glance you read the last half of chapter 3 and then the next day you read chapter 4 and they don’t seem related, they are related, and the link verse ties it together as one unit. And so that’s why I think it’s important to see it as one unit based on that.

So we’ve got oppression, responses, oppression that is suffered in isolation, and then more responses. And really the culmination of those responses to the whole thing is community—a threefold cord, which is a picture of extended community. And then there’s a little story at the end, and this is common in wisdom literature: kind of a little story about a young man and a king. And maybe it’s the same person and maybe he was poor and became a king. But the significance of that conclusion is that this king no longer takes advice.

So what does it mean? What is it? If we’re meditating upon oppression in high places and the relationship to community, then when we get down to that final concluding little story or vignette, what we see is a king who’s probably not going to exercise justice because he’s not existing in community. Oh, he’s got thousands of people, you know, that he’s leading in a sense of community, but he’s no longer receiving advice and counsel. He’s isolated. And in that isolation, he’s not going to do good things and he’s not going to be remembered. He won’t have a heritage afterwards. And a heritage is one of the significant responses to suffering.

So that’s kind of the flow of the thing overall. And let’s now just walk our way through it with some degree of explanation.

So if you look at the first verse: “Moreover, I saw under the sun.” So I tried to emphasize that when I read the text—so this is an observation, okay? And it’s an observation that as Solomon gives them to us in Ecclesiastes, those of us that are older, right, we know what he’s talking about. Younger people may see it too, but you don’t see it as much as we do. And older folks can say, “Yeah, we’ve seen injustice in high places frequently in life. It’s a common condition.”

So Solomon’s observation under the sun is that in the place of justice even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness even there was wickedness. So, you know, he’s beginning by talking about wickedness, right? And it’s going to become a demonstration that since they’re in a position of power, then this is going to be injustice that brings oppression with it. And, you know, just watch the news tomorrow night and you’ll see some degrees of oppression or injustice in high places, right? And what his point is: the worst of it is—I mean, it’s okay so we see injustice, but even worse, he says, even there, in the place where justice is supposed to be seen, even there is injustice.

So we think immediately of civil courts, right? Even there we have injustice. And in America throughout the lifetime of most everybody here—not all of us, but for most of the last, you know, lifetime, our lifetime—we’ve had injustice in the courts refusing to defend unborn children, right? And additionally, for most of our lifetimes, we’ve had injustice in the court system that refuses to hold one party or another at fault for divorces. Two examples of how the very fabric of a culture—marriage and children—are being torn apart, and they can’t get justice in the higher courts. And in fact, the higher courts are inducements to abortion by their rulings and by their promulgation of them. So we have radical injustice.

So whether or not—our common experience is just like Solomon’s. And the point is that’s sort of the way it works in life. More often than not, we’re going to see a lot of injustice. Now, some people see, at least by way of application, that the doubling isn’t just a simple two-statement of it. When he says “a place of justice, even there’s wickedness,” “the place of righteousness, there is wickedness,” some people think that what he’s talking about is church and state. So justice is the state, righteousness is the church. I don’t know that’s true, but it’s certainly a good idea to look a little broader for injustice than just in the civil court.

What he’s saying is: in positions of authority where justice is supposed to be meted out—no matter if it’s in the family, the church, the state, wherever—it’s the workplace, right, a boss. Wherever you have these systems of people who are representing God and should try to bring justice to the particular setting they’re in, what we frequently see is injustice. Every child has this experience, right? You know, growing up at some point or another, and in some cases more frequently than in others, your parents act unjustly, right?

And so, you know, parents try to do their best, but they’re not omnipotent. And they’re not omniscient. They don’t know everything, and they’re not all powerful. They’re going to get it wrong sometimes, and sometimes they’re going to sin. You know, it’s that old Bill Cosby comedy routine: parents aren’t interested in justice. They want quiet, right? “Let your sister have your toy.” Anyway, so this is the common experience.

And so I think if we all recognize this, I need you to be with me on this part of it: you don’t really care about the proper response if you don’t see this as a common element in human life. And you know, unfortunately, all too often in Christian circles, we whistle past this graveyard, right? We sort of ignore it or close our eyes. We don’t want to think about it. “Oh, it’s all okay. God’s in control. Everything’s great.” No, Solomon is saying everything is not great. And in fact, everything is pretty bad. Not everything, but frequently things are pretty bad.

Where the very people who are supposed to be imaging God’s justice instead are involved in corruption, crony capitalism, forcing you to, you know, pay another $6,000 next year for your health—whatever it is, injustice is common. Okay? It’s common.

So, if you understand that, what’s our proper response? What’s our proper response to this? And Solomon gives us three here. First, he says, “I said in my heart”—so he sees with his eyes, he observes the world. And then he interprets the world by his belief system. What’s in his heart, right? “I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.” He’s just told us that earlier in this book: time for everything, you know, time for this, time for that.

But so his first response—and our first response if we’re going to take this text seriously—is to believe something, and it’s to believe what the scriptures assert about God. So we don’t go by our experience in deciding how to evaluate things. We go with our confession of faith. Okay? We sang about this. Interestingly, the songs are really chosen for having courage and witnessing. But the song “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” fits these verses perfectly, doesn’t it? We sang, “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence he hides a shining face.”

Well, that’s what this is saying. You know, if you try to point you to the evidences of God’s goodness, I’m incorrectly solving your problem. Now, there are evidences of God’s goodness, and it is encouraging to know it. But the first response that Solomon takes is not evidence in terms of sense perception at all. It’s a belief given to us by God through his word and the indwelling Holy Spirit that things will be made right.

So the proper response to any kind of suffering we enter through—and oppression is one form of suffering—is, first of all, to trust God for the long term, to know that he is working things out in his particular providence. Every wrong will be righted. Okay? Injustice will be dealt with. And you know, in a very real way, God dealt with it by sending Jesus, right? Jesus came to bring justice to victory. Now, we still see 2,000 years, and there’s still a lot of radical injustice—and there is in our day and age. It’s a long, slow process by which Jesus brings justice to victory in a day-by-day experiential way. But that is what’s happening.

So Solomon’s first response—and our response to difficulties, troubles, travails, injustice, suffering—is our belief system. We believe, we know, based on the word of God. I think what he’s saying is, and this is an important point: knowledge. You know, how do we know what’s real? How do we know what’s true? And what Solomon is saying is my senses tell me one thing and the word of God tells me another. And I’m going with this. At the end of the day, the things that the scriptures assert—and we can clearly see in the scriptures—these things that God asserts, these are more true than the observations of sense perception.

Now, that’s one of the huge problems of our day and age: that maybe three, four, five hundred years ago, sense perception became dominant in the world. Well, Solomon says it’s just the reverse. The things we know most are things that are revealed in the word of God.

There’s a second response. He says, “I said in my heart with regard to the children of men that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.” So he draws a comparison to animals. Now this also is a belief. There’s nothing in the external order that shows us that God is testing people or evaluating them. But Solomon knows the word of God, and he knows that God asserts that he’s testing and trying and evaluating men.

So again, this is a response of faith to a circumstance. And not only can he accept it because eventually it will be changed, he knows its particular ongoing difficulty is actually being used by God to test men in various ways to help bring men to self-evaluation. Now, this tells us that when we have problems and difficulties—you know, we always pray that they’d stop, right? I mean, we have a problem, some injustice, some suffering. “Please stop it.” But this tells us that our first response is not to try to change the circumstances. It’s to try to learn what God is telling us about us, right?

We want the test to stop. But Solomon says it is a test. And he’s revealing something. And he gives one of the big things that God is revealing: and that is that we’re going to die. We’re not getting out of this alive. Everybody’s going to die. Just like the beasts, we came from the dirt. We breathe like they breathe—we respirate. And we’re going to die. We’re going to return to the dust.

So he brings to bear the curse—by implication, the returning to dust—and he says that, you know, one of the reasons, and he gives a particular evaluation: this idea that you know, the test is to show to us our frailty and our humanity, and that has various implications in how we go about running our lives then. That’s one of the things. But the point is these are tests and evaluations.

I know some of you—I know Doug really likes Bruce Cockburn. He had this song “Tried and Tested.” And I first heard it as I was recovering from a surgery ten or fifteen years ago on my bed, and I was pretty grumpy. And I listened to the radio, and “Tried and Tested,” you know, and obviously failed. It was the point of the song. And he just goes through a whole bunch of particular trials and tests in the song—by this, by that, by the other thing. And I realized, as I was laying there on my sick bed, kind of the basic thing that Solomon is saying here.

Well, one reason, Dennis, why you had this operation and now you have to recover for the next week or two is that God is trying and testing you. And you’re found wanting. You grumbled, you disputed, you got angry at your wife, whatever it is. And I did it again this morning going around my knee scooter. You know, my leg is almost totally better, but I still probably have to use the knee scooter for another three or four weeks while the skin gets strong, and I just get grumpy, you know.

So the proper thing I don’t want to ask you is that I’d be off the knee scooter this week. I wanted to ask you to pray for me that the next time I come to the evaluation point at the end of a day of being on the knee scooter, I would have done better than I did today. That I’d recognize that God is in control. He brings the difficulties, the sufferings along as tests and evaluation. Cockburn’s song “Tried and Tested”—the chorus is “Tried and Tested, tried and tested.” By the cries of birds, by the lies I’ve heard, by my own loose talk, by the way I walk, by the claws of beasts, by the laws of priests, by the glutton’s feast, by the word police, and it goes on and on and on. Excellent song. I’d highly encourage you—you young people who like the music stuff, look it up on YouTube later on: “Tried and Tested,” and think about it in terms of Solomon’s second response to suffering and difficulty—that God is trying and testing us and wanting to show us that our problem is primarily our fallenness, even the sinfulness of other people. God is using for that purpose. And “by the laws of priests,” right? You know, again, we’re going to talk about Acts 22 after the first of the year and Paul’s witness, his testimony, which is interesting because he gives it to a group that are trying to kill him. A little different idea of testimony. But the point is the religious leaders of Jerusalem in that place that’s supposed to have righteousness, there’s wickedness. So that text again is an example where frequently the laws of priests are the things that are unjust and are testing us. And God wants to know how we’re going to respond. And more than that, he wants us to know.

So, first response: confession of faith. God’s working it out. He is going to bring justice. Second response: there’s an evaluation going on. And one of the points of evaluation is to remind us of the shortness of our own death. Third response—the culmination response, right?—”So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for this is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?”

Now, it’s interesting. He goes back to “seeing” here now. And so this is actually a doctrine in scripture. This is the idea of vocation or calling. But it’s also observable that people do good when they go about doing their work. Very significant verse. Sometime next year, I want to preach some sermons on vocation in the sense of employment, that kind of work. And these verses in Ecclesiastes along with other ones are quite significant for that.

What does he say? He says there’s nothing better. So the proper response to injustice in high places is rejoicing in your work, for that is your lot. Rejoicing in your work, which is your lot. And in the Hebrew it’s a little ambiguous what that means. But the point is whatever calling you have to do, and by work it’s broader than just the thing you go to for a job you get paid for. Whatever your vocation, your calling, is for a particular day—that’s your lot or inheritance from God.

Now, a lot or an inheritance, in its original sense, is a piece of ground. Now you’ve got this piece of ground. I’ve got a particular piece of ground, and I don’t have the next piece of ground next to me. I don’t have that thing over there. I don’t have that lot with oil on it, or the one with gold on it, or the one that can grow vegetables real good. I got this piece of land. That’s my heritage. That’s what the God who loves me more than I will ever be able to understand has given me. Okay? That’s the place I have to work.

Now, you can try to, you know, improve what the actual piece of land you’re on is, but the land is a representation of everything in your life. God has provided you a particular set of parents, a particular place you’re born, a particular set of genes that give you the particular health problems you’ve got. Now, all of that is your inheritance from God. Can we change some of it? Sure, that’s okay to try to improve the lot. That’s what Adam was supposed to do: take the garden, make it more beautiful, take it out to other places. But the point is, if that’s who we are, the limitations of our lives are God-given. And we’re not responsible to work somebody else’s lot or to act like we’re somebody else with a different background and a different set of circumstances, a different bank account.

We’re responsible for this life. And not only are we responsible to work with those limitations. We’re to rejoice in it—to rejoice in his work, which is his lot. I was talking to one of you this last week or two, and he had read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and realized the significance of background, parents, how you’re raised to who ends up succeeding or not succeeding in life. But I shouldn’t say that—not succeeding, but being spectacular. You know, read about in the papers, those people the outliers, have a particular set of things that have happened in their lives. And it’s not what you have. So don’t compare yourself to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama. Don’t do that. You don’t have that inheritance. You don’t have that lot. God didn’t provide the same things for you.

I’m not trying to have you make excuses for yourself. But you know, to know your limitations? You know, that’s what Clint Eastwood would say: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” If you can’t shoot the gun, don’t pull it out of the holster. You got to know your limitations. And not only know them, you have to rejoice in them.

I was listening to one of Ken Meyers’ Mars Hill Audio talks, and he said—I don’t remember who said this, but somebody said, you know, gravity is a limitation, and without that limitation, you couldn’t dance. Okay? There are all kinds of limitations. We talk more about this next week in terms of gratitude and all that stuff. There are all kinds of limitations that we kick against, but which are very much to be rejoiced in. And Solomon says that’s a proper response to injustice. Work your lot. Do what you’re supposed to do. You got your space, right? Do a good job in that space and do it with joy. It’s that simple.

Now, it isn’t quite that simple. He’s going to change it just a little bit here in a couple of minutes. He’s going to talk about vocation, and he’s going to talk about the importance and the significance of community and vocation. But the point is, you know, you got to rejoice. And that’s the proper response to tyranny. Okay.

Then we get to that link verse at the middle, and he says, “Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. So it’s not just those in high places—all oppressions—and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them.”

So I think that what he’s saying here is: now we’ve talked about oppression and the proper response. But we need to layer in—Solomon is saying—the significance of what we’ve been talking about the last three weeks: community. Community, because when you suffer and you suffer in complete isolation, well, that’s, you know, he goes on to say, well, probably better you hadn’t been born. Or no, he doesn’t actually say that. He says probably better are those who have not yet been born to have suffered this kind of thing.

And the point is, you know, the point of that is that it’s a really bad ideal to suffer oppression in isolation. So he’s saying, you know, now the worst thing you can do is to try to go through something like the oppressions that always go through life—the sufferings, the afflictions, the trials, whatever they are—and to do it alone, absolutely alone.

So he’s saying that’s particularly bad. And so what he does is he ties the first section into the second section where he’ll address community. And he’ll, as a result of that, tie his summary conclusion to the first section—work, what God has given to you, and the way, God, with the tools God has given to you, your inheritance—he’ll tie that into the fact that your work should be done in community. Okay? So that’s what he’s going to do. And the link there is that verse that says it’s really bad if you suffer in isolation.

“And I thought the dead who are already dead are more fortunate than the living who are still alive. So you know, that’s a pretty radical statement. And I don’t want to spend a lot—you know, we don’t need to think about the deep philosophical or theological implications of that. All we need to know is he says that situation—to suffer in isolation—is really bad. It’s quite bad. It’s significantly very, very bad. Okay? And that’s one way of saying it.

“Better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.” So he says he’s going to go through a set of, you know, what’s better: 0, 1, 2, 3? Which number is better, right? And he’s going to say zero is almost better than a one if one is isolation and suffering in isolation. Almost better to be a zero. So again, the point of that is to show us how much sympathy and empathy we should have for people suffering alone. And we should not let it happen in this congregation, period. It’s a horrible thing. Okay.

So, if you’re suffering alone, understand that your suffering is made a lot worse by your isolation. Okay?

And then, again, though, he makes the statement, and then he’s going to give us a set of responses to it. “Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.”

Now, so what he’s saying is he’s given us another element of our theology of work. What he’s saying is in the curse, apart from doing something different, your work has a connection to envy or jealousy. And now some verses translate this as: a man’s work causes envy or jealousy by others. I think the best translation is the one I read, where your work is actually motivated by envy or jealousy. And this, of course, in relationship to community, is the opposite of community, right?

I mean, community is defined by the Trinitarian God existing in mutual indwelling, loving, becoming closer. This is driving people apart. And it’s so it’s like anti-community. So if one is really bad under certain circumstances, and it’s better to be a zero—this now says: boy, do you know how horrible life can be in the fallen world without the redemption of God to your vocation. Much vocation is a negative number. It’s a negative number. It’s anti-community.

So he’s going to tie—he’s tying work now to community. And he says it’s really horrible that the existing situation in the world is that a lot of work is actually driven by anti-community. Very significant to think about this stuff with work, you know. So the big question is: socialism or capitalism good or bad? Well, I think that capitalism without the redemption of the gospel is pretty bad because if it’s based on this jealousy and anti-community and trying to get yourself up by putting the other guy down, that’s bad.

Now, capitalism, as we’ve come to know it in America, is based, I think, on a desire to serve and exist in community. So what he’s giving us here is a theology of work that just because somebody, you know, wants to do better and work harder may not be a good thing, because he could be motivated by the opposite of community. He could be tearing community down. Jealousy and envy are acids that eat away at a social structure.

And so Solomon is telling us: a negative is what actually exists.

“The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.” So he’s kind of back to the individual now. And in one, the one guy who is alone, he eats his own flesh. It’s not a good picture. So oneness is not good.

“Verse 7: Again I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, ‘For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?’ This also is vanity and an unhappy business.”

Unhappy business, you know, Scrooge McDuck. But it isn’t quite Scrooge McDuck because he did have relationships and friends. Although he was primarily given to isolation. Okay, this verse again is significant in several different directions. It tells us that what Solomon had said earlier is the proper response to oppression—to rejoice in your work. The rejoicing means in community. He said it’s not good if you don’t have someone to share your benefits of your labor with. It’s an unhappy business to think that joy in your labor and in the fruit of your labor is okay in isolation. It’s not.

Now, you can sort of end up setting that as a value for yourself, but it doesn’t comport with the image of God, who is Triune and in community. And because of that, it ultimately is a very unhappy business, as Solomon says. But I think the verse means more than that. That’s certainly true. It’s certainly true that at the end of your workday, you can come home to someone and rejoice together, or you can have friends over, or as Job did, you can have poor people over, the orphan over, whatever it is—to rejoice with the fruit of your labor.

But I think it means more than that, because I think when this guy says, “For whom am I laboring?” I don’t think we should restrict that to the fruit of his labor, but for his labor itself. I think a theology of work based on these verses would say that our laboring should be for someone else. When you go to work tomorrow morning, learning—what you do at work should be motivated by service to others, right?

And now there’s a whole host of other people that you can think of: service to your boss, yes. Service to your company by serving your boss, yes. Service to your customers, yes. Serving them by making their life more productive, by transforming the world, by taking—by going down the stream to where the gold is good and digging it up and making shiny things. Absolutely. That’s serving other people. And so I think there was a book called The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. I didn’t read it, but Bobo has told me that this is a good book that makes the point that this sort of capitalism—a capitalism in a productive labor working that has as its goal the serving of other people. This is what capitalism used to be in this country. And so we’re in real trouble today if you turn on your radio—you’re liable to hear, you know, a socialist communist mentality, or you’re going to hear a radical supposed libertarian mentality that’s all about selfishness.

And you know, we want to be careful we don’t get sucked into that stuff, right? And what God is doing is he’s causing a lot of disruptions in the culture because the culture’s moved away from Jesus. And we no longer have labor being done as a means of service primarily, right? You’re just getting your money. You’re just getting your entertainment time in the evening. And the less work you can do, the better off you think yourself, the better off you think you are. But that’s not true. You’re supposed to work six days a week, not because life is a drudgery, but because it’s a great delight to serve other people.

You’re supposed to be thinking of other people for that six days a week of the eight, ten, or twelve hours, whatever it is your work week looks like. And I’m not talking about just outside the home—can be inside the home, it can be volunteer work. But your labor for those six days is supposed to be driven by not thinking of yourself, but by being like the God you’re supposed to be an image bearer of—by serving other people and delighting in sacrificing yourself for the other.

The way the Father delights to give to the Son and the Spirit, and the Son delights to give himself to the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit does the will of the Father and takes the Father’s word out. I mean, he’s, you know, that kind of indwelling service to one another is who you’re made to be. And so when God commands you to work six days a week, it’s not because he doesn’t like you. It’s not because he didn’t know about the industrial revolution. You know, it’s because your time is primarily to be occupied serving other people.

And even though one day out of the week you don’t do that, when you rest, you also get together and celebrate what Jesus has accomplished. And what Jesus has accomplished is this bread here. It’s the restoration of community. You don’t go into isolation that day either, right? It’s not good for man to be alone. Okay?

So this verse, you know, kind of brings together these themes now of your lot, your work you’ve been called to do, your limitations. You’re to rejoice in that. That’s the proper response to tyranny. Yeah, political action’s good, and I’m going to talk a lot about that next year on our PAC list and try to encourage people to, you know, throw the bums out again and all that sort of stuff. But, but, you know, the proper response is not political action first and foremost. It’s just doing what God’s called you to do with your particular set of inherited possessions and to do it in community.

So your work is to be done serving others in community, and your labors from work that you rejoice in as well are to be rejoiced in community as well. So that’s the significance of that response to the idea that isolation and oppression is really bad.

Then he says, “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil.” So now he’s going to give the benefits of community—simple community, two people. And you know, Eric and Emilyn are going to get married this Saturday. You’re all invited, of course. And you know, we can—these verses are frequently talked about at weddings. And that’s proper, right? That’s good. I mean, the probably the best person who holds you up and gives you sustenance and comfort and whatever in your life is your spouse, if you’re married. But that’s not really, I don’t think, the first set of categories here.

He’s talking about friends. Any form of community is what he’s talking about. We’re two people, partners or partners together, friends, whatever it is. So this is for you single people too. This is for you young people too. And he’s saying two is better than one. It’s pretty good when they’re working in community. But two is better when you got really a partner who is going to be committed to you. And you’ll have good reward, it says, right?

And so he goes on to articulate what this reward will look like. Okay. So he says, “For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.” You know, after thirty-eight years, I don’t know about your marriage, my marriage—it’s just like this. You know, we’re kind of like the piston engine where when one of us goes down, the other one, for whatever reason in the providence of God, tends to be up. And we help each other get righted, right?

And so that’s the picture. Whether it’s in marriage or friendship or in community, you’re supposed to be someone who encourages other people, you know, when they go down. When they go down, you can help another up. And that doesn’t mean just literally. There’s a literal application, of course, but it’s meant to be metaphorical across the board. You can buoy another person’s spirits. You can do that today. You know, if you observe somebody today who seems to be in isolation, you know, might be suffering in their life, go buoy them up. You know, exercise this truth. You know, Solomon says this is a great thing. Two people are great because one could help the other one up.

Again, he says, “If two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?” Right? So, I mean, you know, in cold cultures where there wasn’t heat all the time and this stuff is very practical observation. Couple of friends are out camping. You know, I know it’s weird for us because we’ve got great sleeping bags or little hand warmers and all this stuff. But you know, if you didn’t have all that, you might sleep together because your body heat is going to keep each other warm. But again, it’s metaphorical. We can comfort each other. So we can help each other up when we fall down.

And then, in terms of, again, the basic idea here being oppression, we can come alongside and comfort one another.

“Though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him.” So defense against tyranny oppression—whether it’s from on high or whatever—is more successfully resisted in community.

And then finally he says, “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Now, you know, some people have seen in that a reference to the Trinity. It’s certainly not an overt reference to the Trinity, but it certainly should be thought of in some relationship to the God who exists in a community of three persons, right? We can at least make that application: that what he’s saying here is that the culmination of the whole line of reasoning here in response to oppression from on high or just the normal sort of difficulties is to rejoice in our inherited lot and to have in the context of that lot a community that reflects the Triune community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this is really what he’s talking about, certainly in reference to labor, but in reference to a life lived together as well.

And then, as I said, he ends with this illustration of the king who no longer takes advice. Who no longer takes advice. So a nice little story at the end. You might start well listening to advice, but then you get successful. And what does success tend to do? It tends to isolate you. It tends to isolate you, as does power. So that’s kind of the point. Okay.

I mentioned three quick points here at the end. And they’ll be very quick, just to sort of sum up what we’ve learned from this text.

First: admit it. Life is tough. Again, you know, don’t paper, you know, sugarcoat it over with some pious sayings. “God’s in control. It’s all okay. Don’t worry about it.” You know, now you are going to worry about it because it hurts. It’s difficult. You’re suffering. And what you need in your suffering is comfort and solace. You don’t need easy answers. And you don’t need to paper over easy answers to the real difficulties of life. You’ll miss the whole testing and evaluation thing if you do that, right?

So life is very hard. Psalm 73:1-12. Read it this afternoon in your home. Psalm 73. And it repeats this observation: that life is tough. Bad people seem to have great lives. And you know what? They may go to their beds having great lives. There’s no guarantee how God is going to move to treat unjust people until after their death. We don’t know. We just simply don’t know how the thing is going to work out. And that’s a reality that we have to come face to face with. It is Solomon’s common experience. It’s my experience. You talk to Don, you talk to older people here, they’re going to tell you, “Yeah, that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is in life.”

But that doesn’t mean, you know, there’s no proper response. The proper response, of course, is to believe what the scriptures assert—to believe the gospel—that God is in control of all of these things and will bring justice to victory. Our normal life is to trust God, to rejoice in the work and the heritage that God has provided for us. That’s normal life. Trust God and rejoice in the work and heritage that God has provided for us.

And then third, the major point is that this rejoicing and this work is to be accomplished in the context of community. All these things are meant to drive you into increasing, closer relationships with other people. Our work is to be done in and rejoiced over in community.

Now, if I could have somebody—these are discussion questions to follow up. Could somebody pass them out, please? Thank you. I know it’s unusual. Thank you very much. Some of our community groups use these. Some families use them. Some individuals use them. So just go down the aisle and put two or three on every place. And that would be good.

“How central to your theology of work is serving others? And how can this truth that work is serving others add meaning, purpose, and joy to your labors?” That’s the first one. So I’ve got five of them on there. Sort of like that. And you know, there’s a significant turning point in history that Solomon looked forward to, but that we look back on. And that I’ll talk about more here at the table.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this piece of very applicable and encouraging wisdom from your word. We thank you, Father, that you give us proper responses to injustice and suffering, and that you call us once more to acknowledge and to highly value personal relationships and community together. Bless, Lord God, marriages—that husband and wives in this congregation would truly be partners with each other and have community. Bless friendships in this community, Lord God, at RCC. Bless particularly those who have gone through difficulties and trials in relationship, divorces, breakdowns, family members being mean or hurtful to them, people that have died in their immediate family. These elements of isolation in our lives. Help us, Lord God, to be particularly attentive to those sorts of sufferings and be the community that brings these truths to bear on others’ lives, that we might indeed bring solace, comfort, and encouragement. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.