Ecclesiastes: The Struggles of Oppression and Loneliness

So we are going through the book of Ecclesiastes.

This book is about King Solomon.

If you've been with us for the past three weeks or so, we're not quite sure if Solomon wrote it or somebody wrote it about Solomon in his voice, but it's Solomon's life.

And here's this wealthy, powerful guy toward the end of his life, and he is a little disillusioned.

He's not always making moral comments.

A lot of times he's just saying what life is like.

He's just philosophically letting stuff go.

At times it feels like he's ranting, very raw feelings.

And so this morning we're going to see two different struggles in this text.

We'll see two different struggles you might associate with one more than the other.

So the first struggle we see in verses one through three, Ecclesiastes 4, 1 through 3, Sam read it.

I'll reread it to keep it fresh in our mind.

Again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun.

So remember, this is the powerful, wealthy king making these comments.

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 more fortunate than the living who are still alive, but better than both is he who has not yet been born and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

So he's saying, I'm seeing this over and over and over again.

I'm seeing there are powerful people, and I'm seeing there are weak people, and I'm seeing that the weak are oppressed.

So oppression is the unjust treatment of a particular people by another set of people.

Now the irony here is that Solomon was an oppressor.

He was a part of a slave system.

He had slaves.

He built so much of his empire and his own homes based on slaves.

He kept them up with slaves.

And so there's some irony here.

And we don't get all the details, but on some level here, we wonder, did he regret some of this?

He's seeing it, he's seeing it's unjust, and yet at the same time, it's not like he's Lincoln or Martin Luther King.

He's not doing anything about it.

He's just saying he's seeing this.

Maybe you're here, you've known oppression.

Maybe you've known some oppression because of the color of your skin, or because of your gender, or because of your faith.

I've known almost no oppression in my life.

I cannot remember.

This week I just tried to spend some time.

I cannot remember a single time in my life when I was oppressed because of the color of my skin or my gender or my faith.

I've never felt it.

I've never received it.

I've never walked into a convenience store and been watched because of the color of my skin.

I've never had that happen.

I've never been doubted for a job because of my gender.

Never had that happen.

I grew up in a southern Bible belt, small town, never felt an oppression because of faith.

I mean, if anything I can say about this subject, I can say probably I've been more a part of oppressive systems than the recipient of them.

I grew up now, I can look back and I can see I grew up in a passively racist community.

Now we would have never called it that, right?

We would have said, this is the way it is.

And the sad part is that it's not the way it is, and it doesn't have to be the way it is, and it is oppression on people.

And the gospel changes things.

Galatians 3.28, Paul writing to this church is struggling with these issues.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Here's what Paul is saying: there is neither white nor Arab.

There is neither black nor white.

There is neither male nor female.

We are all made of the same material and we are saved by the same God.

See, there comes a time.

There comes a time when we as Christians, not northerners and southerners or conservatives or moderates or liberals, there comes a time when we as Christians, we call hate hate.

We call evil evil.

And when there's oppression, we call it oppression.

And the gospel, this radical idea that you're the broken one, you're the one that needs help.

It puts you in the grouping of the disenfranchised.

That's who we should associate ourselves with.

The gospel erases the lines that have been drawn inside of our hearts to draw a line and sort people to make ourselves feel more important or to keep ourselves feeling powerful.

And the biblical truth of the idea, the beautiful idea that all of humanity is created in the image of God, what this does is it totally erases the idea that we would judge value or worth or beauty or intellect based on the color of somebody's skin or where they're from in the world or what gender they are.

I mean, listen just to a few verses of God's care for the oppressed.

I just picked a few.

Leviticus 23, 22, so back way back in the Old Testament.

And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap the field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest.

You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner.

That's the foreigner, that's the refugee.

Leave some, he's saying, Leave leave some, leave it for them.

I, the Lord your God.

Proverbs 31, 8 and 9, open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute.

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

Luke 4, 18 and 19, this is Jesus speaking, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

So that's the first struggle we see in this text, verses one through three, God's heart beats for the oppressed.

Alright, so that's the first struggle, chapter four.

And then we see the author, we see Solomon's imagination.

In some way, he's writing this, he's seeing this oppression, and maybe on some level, I'm just trying to track with it with his thinking, on some level he's going, okay, um, I'm seeing this oppression, but maybe he's going, I don't really know much about it.

I haven't felt this, I haven't been on that side of oppression, although I see it.

And he goes, yet there's this other struggle that I do know about.

And we jump in in verse 7.

Again, I saw vanity under the sun.

One person 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 who am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?

This is also vanity and an unhappy business.

And so we have a few points along our way.

Point number one, we have all felt lonely.

We've all felt lonely.

Like if you've ever asked that, you know you're not in a good situation.

Like you are you are in the lonely place.

You've been what what party?

Where what I'm not I'm not sure what happened.

I just know I wasn't there, right?

I felt it, you felt it.

I mean, even people that I think are always busy and always invited and always there, they felt it by somebody else.

Loneliness, loneliness is this feeling.

It's this feeling of being unknown and unwanted.

And it can be lonely at the bottom and the middle at the top.

It can be lonely at any point of socioeconomics, it can be lonely in marriages, it can be lonely in families, it can be lonely as a single person.

I wonder how lonely Solomon was.

So I got all these boxes up here.

I wonder how lonely Solomon was, because what I wonder is I wonder while he was around people a lot, if he's writing about this loneliness.

So he has power, he has wealth, but he's writing about the struggle.

I wonder if while he had been around people, if in fact the entire time, on some level, he had been building walls around his heart.

Right?

Like you exist around people, but you just keep building walls around your heart.

And so so you're around people, but they never really know you, and you never really know them.

And we do this.

I mean we can end up in places like this because family never happened.

We thought it was gonna happen, or family happened and it wasn't what you thought it was gonna be.

Or marriage never happened, or marriage did happen, and or the marriage fell apart, and now you're single again, or you know what, you're on the empty nester side of things, and the kids have left, and you're looking back at the marriage, and this is not as great as you thought it was because the kids were such a focus, and now you're lonely, and now you go, Oh my gosh, I have all these walls up.

We can end up in lonely places for so many reasons, and it's so easy in those places to build walls to guard ourselves, to self-protect.

And so much of that self-protection is it's us pretending, like just pretending, just performing.

I mean, it's just easier sometimes to live behind a wall, to put those walls up over our hearts, and so we're connected, right?

We're connected.

Like you're connected here, you you can come into crowds, you you're connected online, but what Solomon's talking about is he's saying, are you woven?

Like, are you woven with somebody?

We're not talking just marriage here.

We're just talking about are there people who know you and are there people that you are pursuing to know?

Are you woven together?

And this is where this text takes us.

Jump back in in verse nine.

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.

So, point number two, point number one, we all feel lonely.

We in agreement on that one at some point.

Yeah, at some point we're all feeling this.

Point number two, walking through life with one or two others is good.

Is good.

Marriage, not married, single, you're older in life, you're younger in life, walking through life with one or two others, this idea of being woven, of being known, this is good.

And that the point is to come out from behind those walls that we keep building.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, he says this people who are not in groups, so this is based on his research, people who are not in groups, so call it a small group in a church, call it a bowling league, maybe gardening club, I don't know.

It doesn't matter.

I don't think it matters.

People who are not in groups, twice as likely to die in the next year.

And you'll like this one, this is the other one.

I really like this one.

People who have strong social connections but are poor in health habits, strong social connections, but poor health habits are just as healthy as people who have poor social connections and strong health habits.

Okay, you get that?

Because what it means is if you're in a small group in a community dinner group at our church, you can eat all the little Debis you want during the week.

And just whatever you want.

It's just what it means.

Research shows this is what you can do.

So now the New Testament organizes uh it organizes Christians, followers of Jesus, into groups, organizes us into churches, and it talks about us meeting together, knowing each other, praying together, worshiping together, encouraging each other.

So to encourage somebody that got to know them, to encourage to speak into somebody's life, this is about knowing somebody at the core of who they are.

And this takes risk, right?

Because what's not risky is back here.

This isn't risky.

What's risky is to come out from behind this wall and to let somebody know you.

So I want you to do that.

And at the same time, I sort of don't want to do that, right?

Like I want you to do it.

You should do this, right?

Like you go do this.

And at the same time, I'm going like, ah, really like that spot behind the wall because I'm like you, and you're doing the same thing I'm doing.

You're thinking the same thing.

You're like, yeah, this is what people should do.

I'm pretty sure everybody, and I can list the people that should do this, and at the same time, I'll sort of remain behind the wall I have constructed because I'm not quite sure if I want people to know me.

I've been married for 12 years.

12 years, and I feel like I'm just just learning, maybe just getting at the just at the beginning of learning how to reveal myself to Christy, to my wife.

Am I really gonna be accepted?

Am I really gonna be accepted?

Or should I just keep performing?

It's just, oh man, sometimes it just feels easier behind that wall.

I've been thinking about the creation story in Genesis this week.

Because I've been thinking how God creates man, creates woman.

The two are there, they're naked, right?

They're naked, they're vulnerable.

There's nothing between them.

This is the beautiful imagery of the story.

There's nothing between them and each other, man and woman.

There's nothing between man and God, woman and God, man and woman, woman and man.

I mean, this is everybody is seeing it all.

Everybody's seeing it all.

It's what's going on here.

There's nothing between them.

And then they decide that God's not enough, right?

We want knowledge, we want control, we want our way, not just to trust in God, but we will control our joy, we will control our lives rather than trusting that God's enough for these things.

It doesn't work, never does.

And so they feel some shame out of this rebellion, out of this sin.

And so what do they do?

You remember they go and they start making some clothes and they cover up, right?

They start building some walls.

And then the Lord God shows back up into the garden and he walks into the garden and they're nowhere to be seen.

And this was obviously different than what had been going on before.

And they're hiding.

So now they're hiding from each other with these little clothes, and now they're hiding behind bushes as they're hiding from God.

Walls.

Walls began to be built.

And the beautiful thing here in this story is the whole narrative of the scriptures is that God doesn't turn away.

Right?

He pursues them.

He says, Where are you?

Where are y'all at?

What happened?

Where are you at?

But he keeps moving toward them.

Romans 5, 6, in the New Testament, we we see this verse, get this verse, for while we were still weak.

Another word, maybe in your translation of your Bible, sinners.

At the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

So this means God knows you like to build walls, you like to hide behind walls.

We like to then behind the walls use all sorts of really bad things for self-deliverance, or even use things that should be good, like spirituality, and just make it moralistic and try to make it about performance and self-deliver on our own, which is just us building more walls between us and him.

And he says, I will keep coming toward you.

See, God incarnated himself into creation for him, for us to know that he loves us and he rescues us and that our redemption and our security is in him.

And this is what helps us.

Because, okay, so you're called to community.

We're called into community.

We're called to know each other, we're called to encourage each other.

And what do we all do?

We all get behind a wall and build a wall, right?

So the thing that we're told to do that God has asked of us, the thing that's good for us individually and communally, is also the thing we resist.

This is sin.

This is what sin is.

That's sin.

Our tendency to be inward and to rebel against what God has asked, and that is sin.

This is what makes us ungodly.

And the scriptures say he comes into our ungodliness and he takes on our ungodliness on the cross and he gives to us his righteousness.

This is the thing that helps us.

Here's what I mean.

Point number three.

You can begin to be known by another person.

You can begin to be known by another person as you know you are fully known and loved by God.

That's the thing that will help you.

It won't be for you to have three more tips of how to break down your wall.

The only thing that's gonna help you, that's gonna create new life in you to begin to break down the walls is to understand that God has loved you behind the wall.

We will try, right?

Like we're gonna try, but we will not perfectly break down all of our self-protection walls.

We won't do it.

We won't perfectly let go of all of our idols of escape.

We'll often sit in our loneliness, even our depression, for days and weeks and months.

And we have to know that God loves us on both sides of this wall.

So I build walls out of fear, then I vainly try to self-deliver myself out of these by escapism and performance and achievement.

And all of that is me denying God's sufficiency to find me and redeem me and deliver me in the very thing I'm trying to deliver myself out of, which is my isolation and my loneliness.

Only when I understand He is sufficient to come even into all of my sin and the present state that I am in, then will I begin, begin, begin to be willing to be known.

So, my brothers and sisters, may you know this gospel that erases lines of sorting people in regard to your fellow man.

And may you know this redeeming love that finds you wherever you are.

In Jesus' name.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you that you come and find us exactly where we are.

In our sinful state, for we have no other state.

You call us into community, you call us to be lovers of all people.

And inside of us, we have views of the people you love that we we are ashamed to speak to.

We resist to love people as you've called us to, and we resist love from other people.

This is both the ways that we oppress people, and it is the way in which we continue in our loneliness.

And we thank you that even though we are weak and sinners, Christ died for us, and that we are secured and redeemed by your full, sufficient work on the cross, not our work for you.

May that create great glory for you.

May it create great transformation in our hearts.

And may you help us, help us to trust in you, that we are known and loved and secure in you, and that our relationships friendships marriages and family might feel more like a woven cord than just existing in a crowd.

In Jesus' name in the crowd.