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Ecclesiastes 8:2–9:12
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Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Ecclesiastes 8:2–9:12
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Ecclesiastes is not like a neat, orderly boutique. It's more like TK Maxx—random, messy, and confusing. I've tried to squeeze it into three neat points beginning with the letter P, but it won't work. The book of Ecclesiastes shows you the real world, and the real world won't fit into a nice little packet.
Ecclesiastes reveals a world that is both beautiful and spoiled. It was created by God, yet it has been marred by human sin and God's curse. It's like an old vinyl record with beautiful music but with a great scratch wrenched through it. You can still hear the beauty, but you cannot avoid the scratch. Life is messy, complicated, and confusing—and that's the point.
The writer of Ecclesiastes looks at our world and asks: Does luck seem to be in charge? It sure looks that way. Tiny coincidences change everything. Some people get lucky; others don't. Whether or not you philosophically believe in luck, you definitely feel it.
The race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise, or wealth to the brilliant, or favor to the learned, but time and chance happen to them all. (Ecclesiastes 9:11)
It all seems so random. The life you live, the country you're born in, your genes, your financial position, the people you meet, the chance encounters that transform your life—it's all luck. And luck seems to be in charge.
Historically, people have responded to luck in three ways.
First, some seek luck. We try to win the favor of fortune. We offer sacrifices, build temples, and engage in superstitions. Don't we do something similar? When we have a bad run, we think, I'm owed some good luck now. We wish luck on one another. We manipulate things, hoping luck will smile upon us. We're still trying to appease Fortuna, the ancient goddess of luck.
The classical composition "O Fortuna" captures this perfectly:
Oh fortune like the moon, you are changeable. Ever waxing, ever waning. Hateful first, then hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it. Poverty, power, it melts them like ice. Fate monstrous and empty. You whirling wheel. You are malevolent.
It's always been the case that we sense a malevolent force bestowing luck upon us, and we hope to make it smile on us.
Second, some resist luck through stoicism. This is the philosophy that says: I will disassociate myself from my circumstances so completely that luck won't affect me. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, "If you can meet tragedy and triumph and disaster and treat those imposters just the same, then you will be a man, my son." But that's not how we're supposed to live. We shouldn't numb ourselves from everything around us.
Third, some deny luck entirely. The winners are best at this. Serena Williams said: "Luck has nothing to do with it because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours on the court working for my one moment. Nothing to do with luck. All to do with skill. All to do with hard work and dedication."
But where do you find yourself? Are you someone who seeks luck, resists it, or denies it? The danger is that when things go wrong, we have no framework to cope.
The writer of Ecclesiastes looks at the world and sees that luck seems to be in control. Let me show you several examples from Ecclesiastes 8 and 9.
Obey the king's command. Do not be in a hurry to leave the king's presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. Since a king's word is supreme, who can say to him, "What are you doing?" (Ecclesiastes 8:2-4)
You don't get to choose who rules over you. Ungodly leaders impact your life in ways you have no control over. How many people created in God's image have had their lives completely destroyed because of an ungodly leader who said, "My word is supreme"? We're just lucky to live in a stable democracy where we have some measure of peace. We could have been born into a harsh regime.
When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people's hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong. (Ecclesiastes 8:11)
When something wrong happens and there's no justice, people take matters into their own hands. And look at this powerful verse:
There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. (Ecclesiastes 9:2)
How often do you see it? People who don't deserve misery having a miserable life, and people who deserve misery getting a wonderful life. We think good people deserve lady luck to shine on them. But the writer of Ecclesiastes looks at this world and says, "It just doesn't work like that. There is injustice all over the place. It's a mess. It's not fair." And surely you feel this.
As no one has power over the wind to contain it, so no one has power over the time of their death. (Ecclesiastes 8:8)
You don't know when death will arrive. You don't get to set that appointment. You can reschedule every other appointment in your life, but not this one. It's just luck.
All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean. Those who offer sacrifices and those who do not... All share a common destiny. (Ecclesiastes 9:2-3)
What's the point of being righteous if the righteous and the unrighteous all get the same thing anyway? They all die. Some of the really good ones die young; some who don't even care live ages. It's all so random.
Even a live dog is better off than a dead lion. At least the dog can breathe. But here is the randomness, and it's unsettling.
You might think that after all this, the writer would say, "Just give up. Be miserable. Despair." But he doesn't. Instead, he says:
Go eat your food with gladness and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 9:7-9)
You feel the whiplash. You've just been told life is meaningless, and now you're told to enjoy it and be dressed in white? Yes. That's what life feels like. We're being thrown around.
But here's the problem: Ecclesiastes doesn't resolve. The book is crying out for something more. Ecclesiastes is supposed to make you mad. It's supposed to make you lament that the world is not the way it should be. The world should not be this way. God created a beautiful world of justice and peace. We shouldn't shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh, well, I guess that's it."
Ecclesiastes leaves you crying out: Is there something better?
And the rest of the Bible screams the answer: Yes, there is something better.
From the perspective of Ecclesiastes, as he looks at the world, he can say luck seems to be in charge. But from the rest of the Bible and the story from beginning to end, there is a bigger message: God has a greater story.
The way the world seems to be is not the way the world actually is. The way we experience randomness and chance in day-to-day life is not the greatest reality. There is something more.
God is weaving together a story that takes all of the randomness, chance, chaos, and luck that we see, and all of it is woven together into God's great story. God rules everything. God is working out his purpose and his plan.
Even in Ecclesiastes, you get hints that there's something more. Ecclesiastes cries out for a godly leader, a godly king—a leader who will not lord it over others but who will humble themselves for others.
Ecclesiastes points forward to Jesus, the greater king. He is the king you can trust with all power. When Jesus gets power, he uses it to serve everyone around him. No human being can be trusted with power; every human will abuse it. But Jesus can be trusted with all power. God the Father gave his Son all power, and what did he do? He washed his disciples' feet. That's the kind of king I want to follow.
But there's something even more staggering. In the middle of Ecclesiastes, there is a verse that sums up the gospel so perfectly that it is remarkable:
There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. (Ecclesiastes 9:2)
In our world, when a wicked person gets what the righteous person deserves and a righteous person gets what the wicked deserve, we say, "That's unfair! That's unjust! That's wrong!" We hate that. We don't want that.
But God took this idea and made it the most beautiful sentence in the world.
When Jesus died on the cross, this verse is what was happening. Jesus was the righteous one—perfect. And he got what the wicked deserve. He was crucified, and he'd done nothing wrong. Nails driven through his hands and feet. The innocent one was punished.
We might look at that and say, "Oh, that's more bad luck." But no. God was weaving a greater story. Because what looks to us like human foolishness and bad luck, God wove into the most beautiful story.
Why did Jesus, the righteous, get what the wicked deserve? So that he could give you, the wicked, what the righteous deserve.
When Jesus died on the cross, he took all of my unrighteousness, all of my sin. He got what I deserved so that I would get what he deserves. That's the gospel.
The gospel is that Jesus swapped places with me, took my place, substituted for me, and took my sin so I get what I don't deserve. What at first sight seems awful and bad luck, in God's hands becomes the very gospel that saves the world.
And the third thing Ecclesiastes pointed to was the day of death—we don't know when it will come. But what happened at the cross is that Jesus didn't just die. Jesus rose from death. He reversed death. He defeated death.
It's as if he said to death, "Thanks for the appointment. I'm done now. I'm off." Jesus met his appointment with death and then he walked out of the tomb.
Everything in Ecclesiastes that the writer points to as meaningless and lucky and bad luck—Jesus takes, twists, and says, "That's the gospel." Even death. For the Christian, death becomes your doorway to life, becomes the means by which you experience life in all its fullness.
So what do we do with all this? Many of us sitting here have that underlying sense: I'm unlucky. Life is rubbish. I wish I had that. I wish I had that. I desperately want to show you from Ecclesiastes that God has a greater story for your life. God does know what he's doing.
We may not understand. Just as when I watch Jesus die on the cross, I may not understand what he's doing. It's only when I see the result that I can understand it. So it is in our lives.
God oversees every detail of your life, even the painful things. This is hard, I understand. But this is where hope is found. Not in the blind, pitiless indifference of fate, but in the loving, beautiful plan of your Father.
He loves you. He's for you. He's not out to destroy you. He wants to take you and form you and make you his beautiful bride. This is the doctrine called providence—God is providentially ruling over all items and aspects of our lives because he loves us.
Luck is not what is governing your life. God is.
Time and chance that appear to be in charge are not a loving heavenly Father. You can trust him when things don't go the way you want. You can trust him when you don't get the thing you desired. I don't say that lightly, but I do say it because it's what the Bible says and because it's what you need to know.
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. (Romans 8:28)
There is no luck. There is no randomness. There is no chance. There is a God who is constantly working for your good.
Now, that doesn't mean things don't hurt. That doesn't mean we don't get disappointed. Meet triumph with joy. Meet disaster with tears. But don't panic. Instead, cry out to God and say, "Help me to see your plan. Help me to see your purpose. Help me to keep walking in step with you."
Where is it right now that you feel like your life is going wrong? Where do you feel like you've been unlucky? Where do you wish you'd gotten something this afternoon? Would you come to God with humility and just say, "Help me to understand. Help me to walk in faith."
You are not unlucky. You are deeply loved. So loved that the Father would give his Son to die for you.
Do you think God is playing a game? Do you think he says, "Oh, I love you and I'll give my Son for you, and then I'm going to be really mean and roll the dice and see what you get"? Absolutely not. He loves you. He is for you. He will walk through the hard times with you, and he will form you.
That random little bit where the writer says, "Go eat, drink, always be dressed in white, live with your wife"—it's like a wedding, right? It's like a wedding banquet. Because the great promise of the Bible is that's your eternity.
If you know Jesus, if you've been welcomed by Jesus, if you're loved by Jesus, then you will be part of his great wedding party. Always dressed in white, enjoying the banquet, the feast that he's laid out for you.
We need to get our eyes on that future feast. We need to get our eyes off the pathetic little tables of this world. We need to see the future that he's won for us.
He loves you. He's for you. He's taking you home. And he will feed you forever at his table. And every tear that you cried here will be wiped away. And you will say, "It was never luck. It was always love."
When things go well, don't get proud. When things go wrong, don't despair. Look to him.
If you're sitting here and you don't know Jesus, can I say: Without God, all you are left with is luck. It's a devastating way to live your life. But there is a Father in heaven who loves you. He says, "Come. Come, and I will love you and I will welcome you."
Ecclesiastes is not like a neat, orderly boutique. It's more like TK Maxx—random, messy, and confusing. I've tried to squeeze it into three neat points beginning with the letter P, but it won't work. The book of Ecclesiastes shows you the real world, and the real world won't fit into a nice little packet.
Ecclesiastes reveals a world that is both beautiful and spoiled. It was created by God, yet it has been marred by human sin and God's curse. It's like an old vinyl record with beautiful music but with a great scratch wrenched through it. You can still hear the beauty, but you cannot avoid the scratch. Life is messy, complicated, and confusing—and that's the point.
The writer of Ecclesiastes looks at our world and asks: Does luck seem to be in charge? It sure looks that way. Tiny coincidences change everything. Some people get lucky; others don't. Whether or not you philosophically believe in luck, you definitely feel it.
The race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise, or wealth to the brilliant, or favor to the learned, but time and chance happen to them all. (Ecclesiastes 9:11)
It all seems so random. The life you live, the country you're born in, your genes, your financial position, the people you meet, the chance encounters that transform your life—it's all luck. And luck seems to be in charge.
Historically, people have responded to luck in three ways.
First, some seek luck. We try to win the favor of fortune. We offer sacrifices, build temples, and engage in superstitions. Don't we do something similar? When we have a bad run, we think, I'm owed some good luck now. We wish luck on one another. We manipulate things, hoping luck will smile upon us. We're still trying to appease Fortuna, the ancient goddess of luck.
The classical composition "O Fortuna" captures this perfectly:
Oh fortune like the moon, you are changeable. Ever waxing, ever waning. Hateful first, then hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it. Poverty, power, it melts them like ice. Fate monstrous and empty. You whirling wheel. You are malevolent.
It's always been the case that we sense a malevolent force bestowing luck upon us, and we hope to make it smile on us.
Second, some resist luck through stoicism. This is the philosophy that says: I will disassociate myself from my circumstances so completely that luck won't affect me. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, "If you can meet tragedy and triumph and disaster and treat those imposters just the same, then you will be a man, my son." But that's not how we're supposed to live. We shouldn't numb ourselves from everything around us.
Third, some deny luck entirely. The winners are best at this. Serena Williams said: "Luck has nothing to do with it because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours on the court working for my one moment. Nothing to do with luck. All to do with skill. All to do with hard work and dedication."
But where do you find yourself? Are you someone who seeks luck, resists it, or denies it? The danger is that when things go wrong, we have no framework to cope.
The writer of Ecclesiastes looks at the world and sees that luck seems to be in control. Let me show you several examples from Ecclesiastes 8 and 9.
Obey the king's command. Do not be in a hurry to leave the king's presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. Since a king's word is supreme, who can say to him, "What are you doing?" (Ecclesiastes 8:2-4)
You don't get to choose who rules over you. Ungodly leaders impact your life in ways you have no control over. How many people created in God's image have had their lives completely destroyed because of an ungodly leader who said, "My word is supreme"? We're just lucky to live in a stable democracy where we have some measure of peace. We could have been born into a harsh regime.
When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people's hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong. (Ecclesiastes 8:11)
When something wrong happens and there's no justice, people take matters into their own hands. And look at this powerful verse:
There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. (Ecclesiastes 9:2)
How often do you see it? People who don't deserve misery having a miserable life, and people who deserve misery getting a wonderful life. We think good people deserve lady luck to shine on them. But the writer of Ecclesiastes looks at this world and says, "It just doesn't work like that. There is injustice all over the place. It's a mess. It's not fair." And surely you feel this.
As no one has power over the wind to contain it, so no one has power over the time of their death. (Ecclesiastes 8:8)
You don't know when death will arrive. You don't get to set that appointment. You can reschedule every other appointment in your life, but not this one. It's just luck.
All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean. Those who offer sacrifices and those who do not... All share a common destiny. (Ecclesiastes 9:2-3)
What's the point of being righteous if the righteous and the unrighteous all get the same thing anyway? They all die. Some of the really good ones die young; some who don't even care live ages. It's all so random.
Even a live dog is better off than a dead lion. At least the dog can breathe. But here is the randomness, and it's unsettling.
You might think that after all this, the writer would say, "Just give up. Be miserable. Despair." But he doesn't. Instead, he says:
Go eat your food with gladness and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 9:7-9)
You feel the whiplash. You've just been told life is meaningless, and now you're told to enjoy it and be dressed in white? Yes. That's what life feels like. We're being thrown around.
But here's the problem: Ecclesiastes doesn't resolve. The book is crying out for something more. Ecclesiastes is supposed to make you mad. It's supposed to make you lament that the world is not the way it should be. The world should not be this way. God created a beautiful world of justice and peace. We shouldn't shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh, well, I guess that's it."
Ecclesiastes leaves you crying out: Is there something better?
And the rest of the Bible screams the answer: Yes, there is something better.
From the perspective of Ecclesiastes, as he looks at the world, he can say luck seems to be in charge. But from the rest of the Bible and the story from beginning to end, there is a bigger message: God has a greater story.
The way the world seems to be is not the way the world actually is. The way we experience randomness and chance in day-to-day life is not the greatest reality. There is something more.
God is weaving together a story that takes all of the randomness, chance, chaos, and luck that we see, and all of it is woven together into God's great story. God rules everything. God is working out his purpose and his plan.
Even in Ecclesiastes, you get hints that there's something more. Ecclesiastes cries out for a godly leader, a godly king—a leader who will not lord it over others but who will humble themselves for others.
Ecclesiastes points forward to Jesus, the greater king. He is the king you can trust with all power. When Jesus gets power, he uses it to serve everyone around him. No human being can be trusted with power; every human will abuse it. But Jesus can be trusted with all power. God the Father gave his Son all power, and what did he do? He washed his disciples' feet. That's the kind of king I want to follow.
But there's something even more staggering. In the middle of Ecclesiastes, there is a verse that sums up the gospel so perfectly that it is remarkable:
There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. (Ecclesiastes 9:2)
In our world, when a wicked person gets what the righteous person deserves and a righteous person gets what the wicked deserve, we say, "That's unfair! That's unjust! That's wrong!" We hate that. We don't want that.
But God took this idea and made it the most beautiful sentence in the world.
When Jesus died on the cross, this verse is what was happening. Jesus was the righteous one—perfect. And he got what the wicked deserve. He was crucified, and he'd done nothing wrong. Nails driven through his hands and feet. The innocent one was punished.
We might look at that and say, "Oh, that's more bad luck." But no. God was weaving a greater story. Because what looks to us like human foolishness and bad luck, God wove into the most beautiful story.
Why did Jesus, the righteous, get what the wicked deserve? So that he could give you, the wicked, what the righteous deserve.
When Jesus died on the cross, he took all of my unrighteousness, all of my sin. He got what I deserved so that I would get what he deserves. That's the gospel.
The gospel is that Jesus swapped places with me, took my place, substituted for me, and took my sin so I get what I don't deserve. What at first sight seems awful and bad luck, in God's hands becomes the very gospel that saves the world.
And the third thing Ecclesiastes pointed to was the day of death—we don't know when it will come. But what happened at the cross is that Jesus didn't just die. Jesus rose from death. He reversed death. He defeated death.
It's as if he said to death, "Thanks for the appointment. I'm done now. I'm off." Jesus met his appointment with death and then he walked out of the tomb.
Everything in Ecclesiastes that the writer points to as meaningless and lucky and bad luck—Jesus takes, twists, and says, "That's the gospel." Even death. For the Christian, death becomes your doorway to life, becomes the means by which you experience life in all its fullness.
So what do we do with all this? Many of us sitting here have that underlying sense: I'm unlucky. Life is rubbish. I wish I had that. I wish I had that. I desperately want to show you from Ecclesiastes that God has a greater story for your life. God does know what he's doing.
We may not understand. Just as when I watch Jesus die on the cross, I may not understand what he's doing. It's only when I see the result that I can understand it. So it is in our lives.
God oversees every detail of your life, even the painful things. This is hard, I understand. But this is where hope is found. Not in the blind, pitiless indifference of fate, but in the loving, beautiful plan of your Father.
He loves you. He's for you. He's not out to destroy you. He wants to take you and form you and make you his beautiful bride. This is the doctrine called providence—God is providentially ruling over all items and aspects of our lives because he loves us.
Luck is not what is governing your life. God is.
Time and chance that appear to be in charge are not a loving heavenly Father. You can trust him when things don't go the way you want. You can trust him when you don't get the thing you desired. I don't say that lightly, but I do say it because it's what the Bible says and because it's what you need to know.
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. (Romans 8:28)
There is no luck. There is no randomness. There is no chance. There is a God who is constantly working for your good.
Now, that doesn't mean things don't hurt. That doesn't mean we don't get disappointed. Meet triumph with joy. Meet disaster with tears. But don't panic. Instead, cry out to God and say, "Help me to see your plan. Help me to see your purpose. Help me to keep walking in step with you."
Where is it right now that you feel like your life is going wrong? Where do you feel like you've been unlucky? Where do you wish you'd gotten something this afternoon? Would you come to God with humility and just say, "Help me to understand. Help me to walk in faith."
You are not unlucky. You are deeply loved. So loved that the Father would give his Son to die for you.
Do you think God is playing a game? Do you think he says, "Oh, I love you and I'll give my Son for you, and then I'm going to be really mean and roll the dice and see what you get"? Absolutely not. He loves you. He is for you. He will walk through the hard times with you, and he will form you.
That random little bit where the writer says, "Go eat, drink, always be dressed in white, live with your wife"—it's like a wedding, right? It's like a wedding banquet. Because the great promise of the Bible is that's your eternity.
If you know Jesus, if you've been welcomed by Jesus, if you're loved by Jesus, then you will be part of his great wedding party. Always dressed in white, enjoying the banquet, the feast that he's laid out for you.
We need to get our eyes on that future feast. We need to get our eyes off the pathetic little tables of this world. We need to see the future that he's won for us.
He loves you. He's for you. He's taking you home. And he will feed you forever at his table. And every tear that you cried here will be wiped away. And you will say, "It was never luck. It was always love."
When things go well, don't get proud. When things go wrong, don't despair. Look to him.
If you're sitting here and you don't know Jesus, can I say: Without God, all you are left with is luck. It's a devastating way to live your life. But there is a Father in heaven who loves you. He says, "Come. Come, and I will love you and I will welcome you."
