"Why We Don't Provoke Government" Ecclesiastes 8:1-3 Sunday Evening Worship Service

In my backyard, we have a creek that goes through it.

And we also have a pond in our backyard that is filled up by the creek.

When the creek overflows, there's an opening there, and it's a pond.

And when we moved in, we had a a three-year-old and a one-year-old in our house, and we had grandparents who were helping us move in, and they were quite confident that our children were one day going to fall into the pond.

And so it became a task of mine and my father-in-law to set to work at draining this pond.

And for the first few weeks we navigated its opening, and we saw that basically the problem is there's a bunch of water in it, and the entrance to it is closed by dirt and mud, and it goes down to the creek.

And so we had to dig a channel out.

And so we started digging the channel out, and that was just wasn't getting the job done.

And so then we figured, you know what, water's got to be coming in from above it.

And there's actually a series of ponds that go back up all the way along the creek.

And so my father-in-law and I started a like Lewis and Clark style expedition up our creek looking for the source of all this water.

And we found no shortage of little tinier ponds and lesser streams feeding into it.

And so we worked on draining all those.

And we had quite the operation.

It could have created the Panama Canal.

We came across this massive tree that has fallen that had shifted the path of the creek.

And so we made it our task to move this fallen tree and to redirect it, and in so doing, redirect and reshape the water that was flowing through our creek.

And uh eventually, I think the tree ended up taking almost a year or two to finally move.

At some point, we had a friend who's a contractor who said, you know, I can bring a pump over and I can drain that thing for you in about 20 minutes.

But no, no, no, no, no, no.

At this point, we're committed to the integrity of the operation.

It had stopped being about child safety and it had started being about working in the backyard and figuring out how we were going to drain this pond.

And to this very day, by the way, our kids have never fallen in it.

They have ice skated on it, um, but that have never fallen in.

Well, we felt really good one time when we dropped like five feet off of this pond.

We had such a great channel, and we had entirely drained all the ponds that were upstream from us, entirely drained, not an ounce of water, just minnows flopping around, nothing else.

It was mission accomplished.

And then the worst case scenario, it rained.

And then watching what happened when it rained from our porch was incredible.

Um, first of all, we saw how the pond was filled.

It was not filled from upstream, as we had thought all along.

It was filled from downstream.

Our creek grew so much that and rose, the water level rose so much that we didn't anticipate it, that the water level began flowing backwards down the hill and into our creek, and we had actually, by digging this massive channel, had made it easier for the creek to fill up our ponds.

All of our work had the opposite effect.

It just filled the pond up faster.

And at that point, we realized that there was no victory over the pond.

By the way, our neighbor who has lived in that house, his his house his entire life.

He grew up there as a kid, bought the house as he was older.

He came over sometimes to watch us working on this creek and just he laughed, especially the tree part.

He's like, you know, there's fallen trees all up and down this creek.

I mean, they fall every year.

Like, no, this is the tree right here.

This is the one.

But uh yeah, he had his definite, his best I told you so look on his face when the rains came, and all of our work was proved to be pointless.

This, I think, illustrates the point of the book of Ecclesiastes so well.

We often efface life and approach life entirely backwards.

We confuse cause and effect altogether.

We think that we understand the direction the streams and the creeks in our life are flowing, only to find out later, not only did we not understand, but we had everything entirely backwards.

It was as if we were looking into an upside-down mirror.

And then on top of that, everything that we do that we think will turn out to help us ends up hurting us.

The things we think that will make life better, that we put so much effort and energy into, not only don't make life better, but then when the rains do come, they end up laying the groundwork for our own harm.

This is the nature of life in a fallen world.

That people can't rightly see up from down.

They can't tell which way the water flows.

And the book of Ecclesiastes is written to people to help them grasp that basic point.

You know, Proverbs is very different than Ecclesiastes.

Proverbs is often what we think of, when we think of wisdom literature, Proverbs is written to help you learn to navigate life in a straight way.

Proverbs is designed for when you understand Proverbs, you understand how to apply wisdom to life situations and live in a God-honoring way.

That's the point of Proverbs.

Ecclesiastes is written to kind of help you understand.

Listen, real wisdom is knowing that it doesn't it doesn't matter.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter.

Proverbs 4, verse 7 says, The beginning of wisdom is acquire wisdom.

Proverbs 4:7

And with all your acquiring, get understanding.

That's just such a great word.

The beginning of wisdom is this get wisdom.

And also, secondly, use it.

Ecclesiastes helps you know, listen, it's good to get wisdom.

Wisdom is good because it makes your life better.

But it doesn't make your life longer, and ultimately it does not change the world.

That's good to keep in mind when you start contemplating how Christians should interact with government, how Christians should relate to government.

Proverbs eight, verse, I mean Ecclesiastes eight, verse one, begins with kind of an echo of Proverbs 4, verse 7.

Proverbs 4:7

Who is like the wise?

And who knows the interpretation of a thing?

A man's wisdom makes his face shine, and the hardness of his face is changed.

Wisdom can make your life easier.

Wisdom can make things less difficult on you.

The way of the fool is hard, Solomon writes in Proverbs.

The way of the fool is filled with treachery and deception, and things don't go well for him in this world.

And so it is good to pursue wisdom.

It is good to try to learn up from down, and it is good to try to apply God's principles to life and to this world.

However, it is folly to think that through that pursuit of wisdom you will end up turning the world upside down.

Let's go through this chapter together.

And as we do so, I want to give you an outline about how Christians relate to government and specifically to injustice, because that's what's in the background of Ecclesiastes chapter 8, is how Christians should relate to government and specifically to injustice.

Ecclesiastes 8 · chapter mention

And I preface it with this because much of Ecclesiastes 8 and Ecclesiastes 5 and Ecclesiastes 3 is about the prev prevalence of injustice in the world.

And we'll talk more about that later on this evening.

But there is no denying that there is injustice in the world.

Solomon understands that.

The book of Ecclesiastes makes that clear.

People often turn to government as a solution for injustice in the world, which makes sense because often government is the source of injustice in the world.

When you see government as the source of injustice, it draws your attention to government to remedy the injustice.

And that's what Ecclesiastes 8 is about.

The first principle you have to understand as you are thinking through how Christians relate to injustice is simply this that there is power in the world.

And power is a lowercase speeder.

By that I mean there is government in the world, there are kings in the world, there are those in authority in the world.

This is obvious to us, but this is where Solomon begins in chapter 8, just to remind you that this really axiomatic truth is just that.

There are those in authority.

This is why verse 2 says, I say, keep the king's commands because of God's oath to him.

Listen to what the king says, Solomon says.

Because specifically, if God's oath to him, this is a uh uh kind of a reciprocal phrase in the Hebrew.

It's hard to tell if it's God's oath to the king or your oath to the king or your oath to God.

They're all interwoven here.

The person who leads a righteous life in this world has those all connected.

God has established government in the world to check evil.

We looked at this a few weeks ago.

This is where we began our study on government.

God is the one who established government in the world.

Government's job, if you recall, is to uh protect our food source, to protect our family structure, to protect the most vulnerable in society, to protect life and keep people from murdering each other.

Those are the kind of the basic functions of human government.

God established those things.

To guard religion was the fourth one, to guard the freedom of worship.

That's how you see it described at the end of Genesis 8 and the start of Genesis 9.

Those are things that were put into the world at the beginning.

People were called to cultivate the earth and get their food from it.

People were called to be fruitful and multiply.

They were called to worship God, and they were forbidden from killing each other.

Nevertheless, people did kill each other.

Murder did proliferate.

There was no structure to check it.

And so the world became basically unlivable to the point where God destroyed it.

Started over with the same commands be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth, get your food from it, worship him, and don't kill each other.

This time there's a structure in place, though.

This time in Genesis 9, God appoints people to bear the sword and check evil.

This is the nature of government.

So government has its very foundational edict, the charge to bear the sword against evildoers.

The government is the one institution on this earth that God has armed and told them to use it.

This is what Paul means in Romans 13 when he says, listen, you submit yourself to government because they carry guns.

It's not a very profound moral argument.

You can make arguments involving nuance about whether or not a particular law violates the First Amendment or whether it violates court precedent or whether it's the governor of, if Herod is the governor or the king of Israel, and what authority goes with which office.

You can make a complicated or nuanced argument about those things, but at the end of the day, the government is the ones with the guns, and they're not afraid to use them.

And Paul reminds you in Romans 13, God is the one who gave them to them, going all the way back to Genesis 9.

And notice here, Solomon is saying the same thing that Paul does in Romans 13, only from a slightly different angle.

He says, hey, listen to the king's commands.

Because it's God who established him there.

This is not Solomon saying that every edict from every king is just.

He's going to show you the opposite in a few verses.

He's not saying that God singularly approves of every rule or every law or every executive order a king or president signs into action.

That's not what he's saying.

But he is saying that God is the one who invented government, God is the one who armed government, God is the one who's sovereign over government, and so you should probably listen to them.

Otherwise, things won't go well for you.

Now you would think that if government is in charge, that those in charge know what they're doing.

Wouldn't that be a good assumption?

One would think that if they are the ones with power and authority, that they would also be the ones with wisdom.

And yet that's not true.

And we understand that in a fallen world, wisdom is scarce.

Wisdom is scarce.

That doesn't mean people in government don't have integrity.

It just means that as far as biblical wisdom goes, the capacity to apply God's moral precepts to life, that is a very scarce commodity in the world, and it is not more abundant in the corridors of power.

It is as equally absent from the corridors of power as it is from the corridors of Home Depot.

In fact, it might be more prevalent at Home Depot because there's a practical element to problem solving that you need some sort of wisdom to, which is missing often in the case of government.

And I don't say this lightly or to poke fun at government or anything like that.

A complex bureaucracy has complex bureaucracy tendencies, which lend itself to institutionalization and all of this.

And so, but even without the bureaucracy of American government, you recognize this through scripture.

When you find in the Bible a wise person in the presence of a king, be it an Egyptian Pharaoh, an Israelite king, even Solomon had advisors, or a Persian emperor, or a Babylonian king.

When you find a wise person with biblical wisdom in their presence, that person is immediately identified as having what is a very scarce commodity.

Have you noticed that?

Pharaoh was not surrounded by wisdom in Egypt.

So that when Joseph was in his midst, Pharaoh suddenly realized, here is someone who is wise.

It helped that Joseph had supernatural revelation going.

Nevertheless, his wisdom made him step, stand out.

Even Absalom, when he overthrew David, took David's counselors.

Some of his counselors were very wise.

Absalom did not listen to the wisest of David's counselor and banished him at Hithoel, and then it led to Absalom's ruin and David's rebounds.

It wasn't like there was a line of wise counselors in David's own court.

Solomon had wise counselors around him.

He was the wisest king Israel had.

He surrounded himself with wise people.

So when his son Rehboam took the throne, Rehaboam could have wisdom.

But Rehaboam chose not to listen to those counselors and started a civil war.

You see Daniel rising through the corridors of power in Babylon, such that when Persia conquers Babylon, the new Persian emperor sees Daniel and recognizes that he must be kept.

Normally you would discard the previous leadership.

No, Daniel's wisdom was unique and was held on to.

Wisdom in the corridors of power is a rare thing.

And so that's why verse 3 says, Be not hasty to go from his presence.

Be not hasty to go from if you find yourself in the presence of the king or one in authority, don't hurry out of there.

Elsewhere the scripture says that when you're at the king's table, Proverbs says when you're at the king's table, if you find your eyes going towards the food, put a knife to your throat.

You're there for wisdom, not for food.

Here Solomon says basically the same thing.

Don't run out of his presence.

Size things up.

Be slow in the king's presence.

Take it in.

See what's happening there.

Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for the king does whatever he pleases.

And you could render this.

Don't dig in about injustice because the king is going to do what he's going to do.

You calculate your move in front of a king.

You calculate your move in front of royalty or in front of those in power.

You calibrate what the right play is here.

You don't become entrenched in an evil cause for or against it.

The Hebrew is intentionally ambiguous here.

The way it's written, you could very easily in some translations do this, you very easily can translate it, don't take your stand against an evil cause.

Here the Esphegis says, Don't take your stand in an evil cause.

In other words, you're very you're being very cautious about how you stand in front of the king.

Because Solomon says he's going to do whatever he wants to do.

This doesn't say you stay silent in front of the king.

It doesn't say you pass up your opportunity to speak about righteousness or justice.

It just means you're careful about how you stand.

You're calculating here.

This is Solomon's wisdom, because the king will do whatever he wants to do.

He's the one with the authority.

Verse 4, the word of the king is supreme.

So who can say to him, What are you doing?

And at some points, this analogy breaks down in our American system of government because you are allowed to stand in front of the president and say, Are you out of your mind?

And he's not going to send you to the gulag or wherever.

He lacks that authority.

We have something that protects us, some constitution or court system that protects us, so you're allowed to yell at the president through his fence and not go to prison.

But I think the principle here still stands.

You should think very carefully about how you interact with those in power, because at the end of the day, they are the ones with authority, and they're going to do what they're going to do.

And your words are not going to restrain them.

Whoever keeps the commands will know no evil thing.

The wise heart will know the proper time and the just way.

Do you see the careful way Psalm is telling you to navigate this?

If you listen to the king's commands, whatever the king command is, you're not going to encounter his punishment.

The king's not going to punish you for obeying his commands.

Again, this doesn't mean that you're always silent in the face of injustice.

We'll get to that in a second.

It just means as a general principle, you want to do what the king says.

Now the king doesn't have unlimited authority.

We see that even hinted at in verse 2.

His authority derives from God's oath to him.

We talked about this last week in Romans 13.

One of the fundamental limits of the government's authority is they can't tell you how to worship, they can't tell you how to act in accordance with your relationship with the Lord.

That's outside of their domain.

Their domain was established by God, and that's outside of it.

And this is reminding you that of here, God is the one who has established the king there.

But when the king is acting in how God has established him, don't cross him.

Don't cross him, because otherwise something evil will happen to you.

Something bad will happen to you.

The punishment will come to you.

Again, he doesn't say you're always quiet in the face of injustice because he notes.

The wise person at the time will know what to do.

This is the basic nature of wisdom.

There's no instruction manual for wisdom here.

There's no, if you're in front of the king for more than 15 minutes, then you bring up your cause.

That's not Proverbs 32.

Ask him three nice questions, give him two compliments, and then challenge him in one area.

Proverbs 32 does not say that.

You're left here to fill your heart with wisdom and then to act in the way your heart leads at that moment, knowing that if you're filled with wisdom, you will know the proper time and the just way.

This is not as simply an Old Testament principle.

Jesus says the same thing.

When you're brought before kings and those in authority, do not worry about what you're supposed to say, Jesus says.

For he will reveal what he wants you to say at that moment.

That doesn't mean you'll get supernatural revelation.

It means that if you're leading a faithful enough life to get hauled in front of a king for being a Christian, when you're called to give an answer for the reason for the hope that lies within you, you have enough of the Holy Spirit who will give you the things to say at the right time.

That's all that means.

Solomon is alluding to that here.

If you are wise enough to find yourself in a position to influence a king or someone in authority, lean on wisdom.

Don't be obstinate, don't be disobedient, but rely on wisdom, and you will know the right thing to say at the right time, because there is power in the world and you are not it.

Verse 6.

There is a time and a way for everything.

Although a man's trouble lies heavy on him, Solomon says, listen, there is a time, there is an opportunity for you to act in a way that will give God glory.

There is that time.

God is at work in your situation.

He is at work.

You have to believe that.

You have to believe that.

And so recognize that even when the trouble of man is laying heavy on your shoulders, when you feel like the difficulty and the trials in the world are so profound there is evil in the world, and it you feel compelled to act out against the evil and oppose the evil, especially when that evil is government.

Remember, it may lay heavy on you for now, but there is a time and there is a way for everything under the sun.

So have some patience.

Don't cross the king yet.

Wait until it's an appropriate time.

He doesn't say never cross the king, he doesn't say never rebel.

He does give you lots of verses, though, about being quiet, slowly watching, and interacting with wisdom, choosing the right opportunity to say what you want to say without digging in against the king.

Because if you don't do this, verse 7, he does not know what is to be.

The king doesn't know what's going to be, for who can tell him how it will be?

If you try to speak about the future to him or you speak dogmatically to him, a king or a person in authority knows enough to know he doesn't know the future.

But he does know you're not on his side.

No man has the power to retain the spirit or power over the day of death.

There's no discharge from war, there's no wickedness.

To deliver those who are given to it.

This is all what Solomon observed.

He says in verse 9.

Nobody has the power to reign in the king's spirit.

Nobody has the power over the day he dies or the day the king dies.

There is no discharge from war.

Everybody, every nation is going to be at war.

Every nation is going to go off and fight.

You think you have a big evil in your mind, you're opposed to this war or that war.

Understand the wars are going to happen.

The kings are going to order them, and the armies are going to fight.

So think very carefully about how much you want to cross that king.

This is the first point.

There is authority in the world.

There is structure in the world.

There are layers of authority in the world.

You are an authority in your family and over your children's life.

You have a boss over your work life.

The government is in charge of your boss's life.

It goes all the way up to the president or to the king or to the emperor.

There's always somebody in charge of somebody else.

And when you get up to the emperor or the king, you have nations opposed nations.

There are layers of authority that check each other.

So recognize your place in those layers and act accordingly.

That's the first principle.

There is power structure in the world.

The second principle, there is also injustice in the world.

There is injustice in the world.

All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun.

When man had power over man to his hurt, do you see him say that?

People harm each other.

Of course they do.

There is serious injustice in the world.

Solomon is saying, you guard your words in front of the king, not because everything the king does is right.

No, there is injustice in the world.

Of course there is.

I saw a press conference recently in Los Angeles where a convict, a guy named Reuben Martinez, had been sentenced to 47 years in prison.

This was back in 2008.

He was sentenced to 47 years in prison.

I was a chaplain with the Sheriff's Department.

I remember I had no interaction with his case at the time, but I remember this when it happened.

It was kind of a big deal in the in the Los Angeles News.

He had been arrested in a string of armed robberies.

He actually was the same auto parts store over and over and over again.

It was in a part of Los Angeles that wasn't overseen by the LAPD but by the Sheriff's Department, and it was kind of a big deal to track down the person who kept robbing the same store.

They finally made an arrest, Ruby Martinez.

He was tried, convicted, sentenced to 47 years in prison.

He maintained his innocence the entire time.

And just last year, a new district attorney in Los Angeles re-looked at his case, found video evidence of him not being at the crime scene at the same time where he said he was at work, and the government had found evidence that he was at work.

They had not turned it over to the defense.

His defense attorney didn't seem that interested in the case.

He appealed.

His appeals were unheard.

He was at the end of the justice system and sentenced to 47 years in prison.

Eleven years into that, a new DA looks at the case, releases the video evidence, and he gets released.

I remember this because he gave a very powerful press conference about how he had become a Christian behind bars.

He'd come to faith in Christ, how his wife had become a believer.

She'd been praying for him the whole time in jail.

He's not angry at the government, he's not angry at God.

He recognizes this was used by God for God's glory.

It's an incredible little press conference.

Reuben Martinez is his name, if you want to look it up on your own, sometime not right now while I'm preaching.

The district attorney, uh Jackie Lacey, is the new district attorney in Los Angeles.

She said this although the vac quote, although the vast majority of convictions are correctly upheld, I know that at times the pursuit of justice is not perfect.

And Mr.

Martinez's case serves as a stark reminder to all of us.

Despite our best efforts, we don't always get it right.

Is she speaking the truth there?

I mean, in this case, it didn't seem like it was their best efforts to get it right.

It seemed like their best efforts were put into not getting it right.

And Reuben Martinez is hardly isolated, although the district attorney, of course, would say that it's an isolated case.

Of course, if that's your job, you would say it's isolated.

Is it that isolated?

How many innocent people do get sentenced to jail?

How many innocent people do get executed, even in our own country?

Certainly a few.

Maybe if you go back, you know, a hundred years or so, go back to the era of lynchings, a lot more than a few.

Innocent people were executed quite frequently in our own country.

That's the reality.

Solomon is aware of that reality at the end of verse 9.

Man has power over men, and man uses it to harm them.

What would provoke a prosecuting attorney to cover up evidence of somebody's innocence and then watch that person to get sentenced to jail for 48 years?

What would make him do that?

Just the idea to clear the case, the political pressure on the police department to track down the person responsible for a string of armed robberies?

I mean, that's got to be huge.

The point is, man has power over man and they use it often to harm each other.

That's the reality of this fallen world.

Verse 10, Solomon says, I saw the wicked buried.

They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done these things.

The very people who bring these injustices into the world keep getting praised for their injustices.

That's the most remarkable thing about this.

Politicians in our own country are, I'm not going to name names right now, but can be very infamous for this.

It's like every major foreign policy decision or prediction they make, they get wrong over the decades, and they stay in power over the decades.

It's a phenomenal thing to watch.

To go back to Home Depot, if you recommended the wrong tool to every single person who asked, how much longer do you think you'd keep your job?

And it's actually a great question.

I don't know the answer.

But it's not that way in power.

Solomon looks at those in power.

It doesn't matter how wrong often they're wrong, it doesn't matter how much injustice they dispense, they keep their power.

They keep their position.

This all is vanity, he says.

This is vanity.

And you know what happens to them?

They die, he says in verse 10.

The whole thing is vanity, it's ephemeral, it just bursts, it's gone.

They were praised.

There were big celebrations of their life.

When they died, they're buried, and parades turn out to celebrate how powerful and influential they were.

The flag will be flown at half-staff and all that.

And it's meaningless.

They harmed each other.

Because the sentence, verse 11, against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of children of man is fully set to do evil.

Do you remember I said this last time?

That in back in Genesis 9, the government has one main obligation.

Like the protecting your food source is nice.

Protecting your family, that's even nicer, but their main obligation is to bear the sword against evildoers.

You murder someone, you should be put to death.

That's the main function government's been given.

In our own country, of course, the death penalty is basically dysfunctional.

Somebody was executed recently after it was six years from the time he was sentenced to the time he was executed, and it was noted how just incredibly fast that was, unheard of for it to take six years.

Most executions take twenty or more years in our own country.

It's the one thing they're supposed to do.

And look at verse 11.

This is not a new American phenomenon.

Back in Solomon's day, because the sentence against an evil deed isn't executed speedily, people set their hearts to do evil.

They will do evil.

They'll keep acting on evil because they don't get punished for it.

They don't see others get punished for it.

And so they think they too can get away with it.

It was a while ago.

I know I keep using California examples, but that's what I'm most familiar with.

It was a while ago there were two different ballot initiatives in California.

One to end the death penalty, and the other to cap the amount of time that somebody could have to appeal their death sentence before they were automatically executed.

So you would think logically that those two ballot initiatives would be contradictory.

One to say, hurry up and execute them already, and the other says, no more executions.

They both passed with flying colors.

Because most people look at the structure of a death penalty in our country right now and say, well, that doesn't work.

Either shut it down or make it faster.

Do one of the two.

Which I think is an appropriate response to the way our own country has it set up.

I mean, it's not functional now.

Either close it or make it better.

That's what Solomon says in verse 11.

Because what you're doing right now does not work.

In fact, it has the re opposite effect.

It entrenches you into evil.

There's thousands of murders and a handful of executions a year.

It entrenches people's hearts against evil.

It has the opposite effect and makes you think that you too can get away with it.

There is certainly wickedness in the world.

Flip over a few verses to chapter five real quick.

I want to look at a few verses in chapter five before we keep pressing on.

Ecclesiastes five, verse eight.

If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, don't be amazed at the matter.

Psalm says you're looking around and you see government officials oppressing other people.

Don't be stunned.

Don't look like there's oppression.

Are you kidding me?

Here.

Don't be stunned.

For the high official is watched by a higher one, and there's higher ones over them.

You may think it's oppression, but you don't know who's in charge of that guy.

You may think it's the police officer who's doing the oppression.

No, it could be the sergeant who's oppressing those officers who act out on the guy.

It could be the lieutenant who's after the sergeant unjustly.

It could be the chief of police who's after the lieutenant.

It could be the politicians who are after the chief of police.

It could be something outside of our own American system.

It could be something in another world where the king has said, I want those people beaten.

There, go do it.

And it trickles all the way down.

You happen to pass by on the street and you see injustice, and Solomon says, first of all, don't be shocked at it.

And secondly, you don't know who's oppressing whom.

That can go all the way to the top.

But also notice that there's a check in there.

By layers of authority, people will check each other.

If it is the sergeant who's out of line, maybe the lieutenant will deal with it.

If it is the lieutenant out of line, maybe it's the chief who will deal with it.

Maybe it's the mayor who will deal with it.

Maybe they're all out of line.

That's the point.

Verse 9, this is gain for land in every way.

If a king is committed to cultivated fields, if the king is committed to, in other words, to protecting the food source, this will be for people's benefits.

Nevertheless, people go on abusing and oppressing each other.

I mean, flip back over to chapter eight again.

There is injustice in the world, and you are not supposed to be surprised about it.

It's everywhere.

Thirdly, only God can judge between government and injustice.

Only God can judge between those two parties.

Because only God knows what's going on behind the scenes.

Verse 12.

Yet I know that it will end that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him.

It will not be well with the wicked, Solomon says.

Neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear God.

Notice that verse 11, or verse 12 and 13 seem contradictory.

Verse 12, the wicked person has his days multiplied.

Verse 13, it says he won't prolong his days.

So I don't think Solomon forgot what verse 12 said when he wrote verse 13.

I think he's switching from present tense to the resurrection, to the afterlife.

A sinner can do evil a hundred times, and yet he stretches out his physical life, yet he will not prolong his afterlife.

He will not go to heaven, he will not have ultimate spiritual rest and worship before God because he does not fear God.

God will call him to account for all of his wickedness.

That's the point.

Only God will judge between wicked deeds.

Do you understand what Solomon is picking at here?

And I want to just idle the car.

I don't want to pull it over and park.

I want to idle it here for a second.

If God is sovereign over government and government acts in an unjust way, does that not mean that God is acting in an unjust way?

That's Solomon's question.

Because that's what Solomon's saying.

That's what it looks like.

Here I am on the outside, and I know God is in charge and God put the king there, but the king is doing wicked things.

And I know that this mid-level government official, he's doing wicked things, but okay, I get it.

He might be being pressured into it from those above him.

I don't know who's ultimately responsible, but certainly the king is at some point, and certainly God is who put the king on the throne.

That's in the background of all of this.

So isn't God guilty of injustice?

And you have to answer that with no.

God is not guilty of injustice.

May it never be.

May you never accuse God of that.

Because God will judge every wrong.

God will judge every wrong.

Every mid-level government official that abuses his authority and takes a bribe will be judged by God.

Even if they're not abusing Christians, even if they're abusing just random people in a non-Christian nation that are being, I know they're all non-Christian, but you know what I mean.

In a pagan nation that's abusing their citizens, God will judge every wicked act.

He will.

Every single one.

He will remember every innocent person who was sentenced to prison.

He will remember every innocent person that was executed.

And he will remember who is responsible for all of those acts of injustice, and he will judge them.

That's what holds this all together.

This is why I started with the illustration about the creek in my backyard.

Oftentimes we approach the question of injustice in society entirely backwards.

We're starting at the wrong end.

We think the creek is flowing this way.

You have to start in order to understand our relationship to injustice and why government can be corrupt, you have to start with the end of the story, which is that God will judge sinners.

And every act of sin will be judged.

That God will judge those who abuse their authority.

He will.

And now you work backwards from there.

Why does God allow them to keep increasing their evil?

Why do they sin a hundred times and get a hundred promotions?

Why?

Because they're getting a hundred times stricter judgment.

Every act of their sin is walking towards the judgment that they get, where God's justice will be unveiled, God's wrath will be poured out, and God's holiness will be vindicated by the severity of their judgment.

So, yes, they get to sin right now, and yes, they get promoted for it.

But God will judge them.

And the more severe their sin, the more swift and severe their judgment will be.

Meanwhile, those who fear God will be spared that judgment.

Because, of course, our sin is poured out on Christ.

And he bears the judgment in our place.

So why does God allow evil to prosper?

Because he's doing other things in the world.

Not because he's too busy to pay attention to it, don't hear me say that.

But because he's using the evil in the world for his own purposes.

Like Joseph, who was betrayed by his brothers.

Why did God allow Joseph to be betrayed and sold into slavery?

Because God was doing something different with Joseph.

God's ultimate priority, and listen to me carefully, God's ultimate priority in every situation is not justice as we see it.

Or he would have kept Joseph from slavery.

God had a different priority, namely getting Israel established in Egypt to set up the Exodus.

Or even more narrowly, letting Joseph get into Pharaoh's court and be recognized, and he got to Pharaoh's court by being thrown in Pharaoh's prison.

God was at work.

Joseph didn't know how God was at work.

Joseph is grasping at strings here.

He's looking at the backside of the tapestry of his life.

He just see threads everywhere.

He has no idea how God is bringing them together.

Flip over to Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

Over a few pages.

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die.

I mean, you have you can't read this like a nihilist or read this like an atheist.

You have to recognize that as Solomon is describing this, he's declaring that God is sovereign over these things, that God is the one who decrees the day of your birth and the day of your death.

It's appointed for man once to die, the scripture says.

To plant and to pluck up what is planted.

God is sovereign over the seasons and the harvest.

This is the point of the flood narrative in chapter 9, the rainbow covenant, that God is establishing the seasons.

It's God who does this.

There is a time to kill and a time to heal, to break down and to build up, to weep and to mourn, and so on and so forth, all the way through the whole section there.

Verse 10.

I've seen the business that God has given the children of man to be busy with.

He's made everything beautiful in its time.

He's put eternity into man's heart, yet man cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Do you understand this?

This is the principle right here.

You don't get to know what God is doing with that injustice.

You don't get to know.

He's doing something.

You have to believe that as a Christian, that he's doing something.

But you are not allowed to know what that is yet.

We want to understand, don't we?

We see people that are wronged with injustice, and we want to know what God is doing.

We don't get to know.

When I was coaching soccer in Albuquerque, there was a group of high school students that were uh um connected with the the school that I was coaching at.

They were players in the soccer team that weren't on my particular team, but a different team of the school I was coaching at.

They were at a party up in the East Mountains of New Mexico.

They were murdered in their car, shot and killed outside this party.

Three high school seniors uh in May, a few weeks before graduation.

Um I got a call that night.

I had to bring my team together the next morning, Saturday morning.

We had a team meeting.

It wasn't in the news yet.

I had to break it to my team that these three of their friends, their teammates had been killed, murdered.

Police investigated this shooting for years.

For years.

There was all kinds of rumors about who did it.

The police didn't make an arrest.

The Sheriff's Department in Mexico, Bernalilla County, hired their own full-time detective, a new position.

This guy's full-time job was to track down the killer of these three kids.

He had that job for years.

Eventually he got transferred out.

Seven years later, no arrests.

Ten years later, they finally arrest somebody, they put him on trial.

Everybody says this is a guy that did it, they put him on trial, he's acquitted, not enough evidence to convict him.

Jailhouse confessions, and he'd been in jail for other things and bragging about that.

And, you know, that's not convincing to a jury that other criminals say you're a criminal.

And I paid attention to that trial pretty closely, and it was sad because, you know, the district attorney, that was his argument, is what kind of evidence do you want against a murderer?

It's going to come from other murderers.

That's who he brags to.

But the guy was acquitted, and I'm not saying I know he did it.

I don't know who did it.

I have no idea who did it.

Maybe he should have been acquitted.

So now it remains and the police aren't even investigating anymore because they're so confident that was the guy that did it.

It's unsolved.

The parents of those high school kids will go to their grave without ever knowing her murder their kids.

Why does God allow that kind of injustice in the world?

I want to know what God is doing.

Especially when I'm talking to those kids.

I want to know what God is doing.

But I don't know what God is doing.

I have no idea what he's doing.

I want to be able to tell something to the parents who've lost a child.

I want to.

But I don't know what to tell them because I don't know what God is doing.

So I can tell them God's doing something.

Right?

He's doing something.

You have to believe that.

That's the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is we believe that God is doing something.

But we don't know what.

When I was a chaplain with the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles, I often had to do next of kin notifications.

An inmate who killed himself or a traffic accident victim or a crime victim, somebody who was murdered, a very common question in those scenarios is why.

Asking theologically, not why would God allow this to happen, just why did it happen on a human level?

Why did it happen?

Who killed him?

We don't know.

It happened four hours ago.

We don't know.

They're working on it.

We don't know.

Some parents want to show you the pictures of the person who died.

Sometimes in a crime scene, we want the parents to bring out the picture.

We want to make sure it's the right person.

Look at the picture.

And they want to know why.

Why do you need a picture of my child?

Well, we need to see it first and then we'll tell you.

And they know what's going on.

And they want to know why.

If you had the capacity to know the end from the beginning, I mean, that's really the definition of being God right there.

You would be God.

We want to know, but we don't get to know.

We don't get to know.

God alone knows.

And so you have chapter 3, verse 17 in here.

Well, look at verse 16.

I saw that under the sun in the place of justice, even there was wickedness in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.

Solomon goes looking for justice and he finds wickedness.

He goes, looking for righteousness, and there's wickedness.

And so you have to end in verse 17.

I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and he will judge the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.

God will judge.

You have to see the end before you can understand the present.

This is the hallmark of faith, and the hallmark of wisdom is to trust that God will bring these things to judgment.

Fourthly, nothing we can do can change this dynamic.

Verses 14 through 16 teach this there's nothing we can do that can change this.

There is a vanity that takes place on the earth.

So now we're back to talking.

Vanity is Solomon's word for something that doesn't matter.

All through this book, the word vanity is used repeatedly.

I'm sure you've heard every sermon on Ecclesiastes connects vanity to soap bubbles.

It's pretty, it pops, it's gone.

There's something even more complex than that in the book of Ecclesiastes.

It's not just that it's pretty and it pops, it's gone, but it's something that we ascribe value to wrongly over and over and over again.

Wealth is called a vanity, prestige is a vanity, finances is a vanity, the size of your palace in chapter two is a vanity.

Your pets are considered a vanity in chapter two.

You love them, you like them, it's a dog, okay?

It's going to die before you do, and you will be the only person that cries.

That's a vanity.

Now that's life.

Do you get that?

You're not different than the dog in that scenario.

There are seven billion people in the world right now, and they're all going to die.

And they will be replaced by 10 billion more people, zero of whom will know your name.

That's the reality.

Much less your dog's name.

You want to talk about vanity?

Your own image of yourself is vanity.

You're the soap bubble here.

You're here for a second and you are gone.

And 10 billion people will walk where you are right now, and they won't even take the time to remember who you were.

That's the world we live in.

In light of that, there are righteous people, verse 14 says.

And it happens to them according to the deeds of the wicked.

The seven billion people on the earth right now, some of them are righteous, and they will die like the wicked.

They will be mistreated as if they were wicked.

And there are wicked people, Solomon says, and it will happen to them according to the deeds of the righteous.

The wicked people will continue to prosper.

This also is vanity.

Do you want to go to war against that?

Do you want to spend your life trying to right the wrongs in this world?

Will you win?

You have to zoom out here a little bit.

You won't win.

There will be unrighteousness in the world.

That will happen.

You can spend your life.

The tree that my father-in-law and I spent a year trying to push out of the creek.

Oh, we pushed it out of the creek.

And you know what happened about two years later?

A bigger tree fell right across the creek in just about the same place.

Was it wasted energy on the first tree?

Yeah, no.

We enjoyed each other's company.

And that is about where your work in this world leads you.

Are you wasting your effort at work?

Do you enjoy those you're with?

Do you have some measure of joyment as you provide for your family?

Great.

That's the most you can hope for out of it.

Enjoy your life.

Verse 16.

When I applied my heart to know this.

Oh, sorry, verse, verse 15, very critical.

I commend joy for man.

This is where Solomon goes.

You think this is out of place, don't you?

The righteous are gonna suffer like the wicked, and the wicked will be promoted to be in charge.

How should you respond?

Joy, he says.

I'm sorry, Solomon, did you forget what you just wrote?

Joy.

That's how you respond.

You need to have joy.

How is that possible?

Well, he says, you have to have joy.

You have nothing good under the sun but to eat, drink, and be joyful.

For this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.

Here's the way that Calvin described it.

And I love this illustration.

You are an actor on the stage of a play.

You are not the lead on the stage.

Okay?

You're not the star of this play.

You're not.

You are at best a supporting actor somewhere in the back of the stage, mostly obscured by the curtain.

The audience can barely see you.

That's where you are.

What you do on the stage is not going to determine the outcome of the play.

The author of the play did not ask you what should happen next in the play.

What matters is if you have a little bit of joy while you're on the stage.

Do those around you, do you bring a little bit of joy into the lives around you?

If you're a parent, do you bring a little bit of joy into your kids' lives?

If you're a husband, do you bring a little bit of joy into your wife's life?

If you're a wife, do you bring a little bit of joy into your husband's life?

That's what you got.

At the end of the day, that's what's there.

You're both gonna die, you're both gonna be buried, you're both gonna be judged by God.

On the way, can you have a little bit of joy in your life?

Yes, you can.

That's what God gave you.

If you find joy by righting the wrongs in this world, you will be frustrated.

If you find joy by loving the person you're living this life with, you'll have joy.

There will be injustice either way.

Listen, the Bible commends those that speak up for the abused.

Proverbs 31, verse 8, open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all those who are destitute.

Proverbs 31:8

Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the poor and the needy.

I'm not excusing silence in the face of oppression.

If you find yourself confronted with an injustice that you can rectify, rectify it.

That's one of the things that brings joy to life.

If you see someone being abused, speak up.

Stop their abuse.

That's what you're called to.

That's wisdom in this world is knowing when you can act to actually affect an outcome.

But folly in this world is taking on the weight of this world on your shoulders.

The way of this world is an expression that Solomon used earlier in chapter 8.

Taking on the weight, it's back from verse 6.

You take the weight of the world on your shoulders as you try to right every wrong, it will make you a miserable person.

I have a friend who, whenever something wicked or evil in this world happens, he attacks me and just tells me how sad he is.

How heavy this is on him.

I think that's a sign of spiritual maturity in some points.

It is good to be sad when you're confronted with something sad.

But over the years with him, I've noticed that his net of sadness has grown and grown and grown and has swept up people that he doesn't know.

Has swept up news stories that he has no connection to.

He's sad about things that don't affect him or intersect with his life.

Are those things worth being sad over?

But yeah, if you know those people, I'm sure every one of them is a terrible situation.

Are you in a position to affect change on them?

No.

No.

You're not.

But you've become over the course of years a sad person with them.

Is that any of you?

Are you that friend?

Are you so wrapped up in the things of this world that it makes you so sad?

There are things in this world to be very sad about.

Solomon does not say otherwise.

In fact, you get the impression the more he studies them, the sadder he gets.

Do you know what is really making us sad?

It's the cold, hard fact that our lives are insignificant.

It's the cold, hard fact that this world plows on like a steel locomotive.

It is trucking ahead and it is running over everybody in its way, and you don't feel like you can affect it at all.

And you work and you labor and you give your life in the service of your country, you give your life in the service of your church, you give your life in the service of your work or your occupation, and the wickedness just keeps going, and that makes you sad because shouldn't your life have a bigger impact than that?

Listen, the heart of the human condition, the human sinful condition, the heart of our human sinful condition is an unwillingness to accept things the way they are in this world.

And so we apply that to government and we strive to make a government better, which if you work for the government, I'm sure is a noble cause.

If you watch it as a spectator, it leads you to despondency.

You long for permanence, you long to make a lasting change.

It's echoed, it's etched in the walls, literally in DC.

There are monuments everywhere, there are plaques, they are engraved to those who work their hardest to make this country better, and I'm thankful for their work because I'm thankful I have a good country to raise my kids in.

But ultimately, they too will be forgotten.

There's only one nation that will live forever, and that is the nation that Jesus reigns over in the millennial kingdom for a thousand years and ushers them into eternity.

And nothing we do changes the fact that we labor and we die and the earth stays the same until then.

Jeffrey Myers, in a book called A Table in the Midst, which is a book about Ecclesiastes, and I just like the phrase, a table in the midst.

It's a play on words about a table in front of you and a table that you can't see.

Don't be surprised to find yourself in a frustrating situation from which you cannot escape by means of controlling it.

Not everything can be fixed, not everything is a problem to be solved.

Some things are meant to be born, some things are meant to be endured.

What is God doing through them?

God is teaching you that there are injustices in the world that you do not control because you do not control this world.

Solomon here recognizes the day of his death.

He says in verse 17, I saw all the work of God.

Let me get to the fourth point here.

We are left to simply trust God and enjoy life.

Verse 17, I saw all the work of God.

Man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun.

However much he may toil in seeking, he will not find it out.

Even though a wise man claims to know.

This first makes me smile.

There's a wise guy who claims to know it.

He's lying.

He doesn't know it.

All you can do is prepare to die well.

That's chapter 9 is how to die well.

All you can do is prepare to die well.

What does it mean to die well?

To realize you're going to die and you'll be judged unless Christ bore your sin.

You're going to be judged for every act of wickedness you did.

So if you're not a Christian, do less wickedness so you get less judgment, okay?

If you are a Christian, look forward to that resurrection, the day where God will bring evildoers a penalty for their sin.

You cannot control life in a fallen world.

It just rolls from the living to dead.

The living people die and are replaced by more living people who also die, and you cannot control them.

You cannot change it.

We are just this little tiny segment of living people who will be dead people soon enough.

And so we ought not rebel against God.

Chapter 9, verse 7, he says the same thing.

Go eat your bread with joy, drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be white.

In other words, get dressed.

Put on clean clothes.

Let not oil be lacking on your head.

Put on the expensive perfume.

Let's go on a date.

That's what he's talking about here.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love.

All the days of your vain little life that he's given you.

So put on a nice shirt.

Ladies, put on a nice dress.

Go to a nice restaurant.

Have a nice meal.

Spend time together.

Enjoy your short, insignificant life with each other.

Have a little bit of happiness.

You're not going to fix the world.

It's very easy to be sad while trying.

It's much harder and it requires much more wisdom to be happy and rejoice with your family.

This is not an excuse to be quiet and just.

Please don't hear me saying it's okay that there's injustice in the world.

It's okay that abortion kills however many million people a year.

It's okay that there's all this horrific injustice in the world.

It's okay because you're going to die anyway.

I'm not saying it's okay.

It's certainly not okay.

It is the way the world is.

And God will judge it.

Part of being wise is to accept that we can't see what God is doing with it.

God's not being unkind to us by not sharing what he's doing.

It's just that we live in time and he doesn't.

We can't understand how a million joys in the here and now can shift to a million sorrows, and how a million sorrows God can judge and make right again.

And God will make them all right.

He will recall every act of sin and punish it.

Every single deed that has broken his holy law and damage his image bearers will be answerable to God.

That will happen.

The innocent, in the meantime, will suffer.

And yet you can have joy and life and happiness in this life.

Don't rebel against your government.

Don't provoke your government.

Don't fight your government.

Just live a quiet life.

Speak up for the oppressed.

Correct whatever injustice is in your little purview.

Make your little life a bastion for people to have joy.

Strive so hard, knowing that even your striving, sin will enter in and sin will corrupt, and injustice will come home, and you will be wronged.

That will all happen also.

But in the midst of it, never let go of joy.

Job 19, verse 25, I know my Redeemer lives.

Job 19:25

And in the end he will stand upon the earth.

After my skin has been destroyed, in my flesh I will see God.

This is Job 19, well before God ever answers Job.

Job has lost everything, everything.

And he says, It's okay, I haven't lost my Redeemer.

He lives.

I will see him for myself.

My eyes will behold him and not another God.

My heart faints within me.

If you say, How will we pursue God?

And the root of the matter is found in God, be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there's judgment.

Even Job connects the two.

I'm going to die, and God is going to reign in mercy, and God is going to resurrect me, and I'm going to see him.

And if you say, Well, then nothing matters because of the resurrection, oh, you better be very afraid, because God has a sword and he'll use it on you.

That sums up Ecclesiastes chapter 8.

Ecclesiastes 8 · chapter mention

There is power in the world.

There is injustice in the world.

Only God will sort that out.

Nothing we can do will change this.

So it is best to enjoy your life.

Lord, we're thankful that Jesus Christ provides the best picture of this.

He was stricken, smitten, and afflicted by you.

In addition, he was betrayed by a close friend.

He was the victim of actual injustice.

The court that tried him cared not about the truth.

The charges admitted against him were lies and fabricated.

The witnesses were bribed by the judges.

Execution was carried out by an executioner who knew he was innocent.

Again, Lord, we rest in knowing that we can't understand the end from the beginning.

You have said eternity in our hearts.

We want to know what you're doing, but we cannot know until we look at the resurrection.

And so we long for that day.

We long when we are raised from the grave, where we will worship with you forever and ever.

Cause that hope to drive us to glory.

Give us wisdom to know when to speak, when to be silent.

We want to model our lives off the wise and calculating person in the King's presence.

We want to know when to speak and how to speak and what to say.

We want to be used for good in this world, we do.

We're not cowards.

We're not afraid of death.

We're not afraid of the sword.

We're not afraid of any king.

We only fear you.

Because we fear you, we want to worship you, and we want to be obedient to your word.

So help us do that.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.