May 17, 2026 | That's Not Fair!
That's Not Fair! | Ecclesiastes 3:16–4:3
Ecclesiastes 3:16–4:3
Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?
Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. (ESV)
In “That’s Not Fair!,” Jed Gillis teaches from Ecclesiastes 3:16–4:3 on the painful realities of injustice, hypocrisy, death, and oppression in a fallen world. Solomon does not pretend these things are small. He shows us that life “under the sun” often feels wrong because it is wrong. Yet God sees every injustice, and none of it escapes His judgment. The sermon calls us to grieve evil honestly, admit that we are not God, and rest in the good rule of the One who is. Since God will make all things right, we can trust Him with what we cannot control and still receive today as a gift from our Father.
Transcript of That's Not Fair! | Ecclesiastes 3:16–4:3
Jed Gillis: This morning we'll be in Ecclesiastes chapter three if you wanna go ahead and turn there.
As we're getting ready for that, I wanna ask you to think about when you see all of those young people on stage, what do you see? I'll tell you some of what I see. I see members of the body. Not future members of the body, by the way. Not future members, but, but members of the body now, many of whom have the Holy Spirit within them. I don't know all their hearts, but many of them have the Spirit gifting them for the good of the body around them, including each other and including all of us. I see possibly, Lord willing, we would hope, I see future elders and deacons and Sunday school teachers and Awana workers and VBS leaders, and future godly businessmen and businesswomen, and future dads and moms and grandfathers and granddads.
Like, that's the future group that in 50 years they'll be sitting out there, Lord willing, sitting out there saying, "I remember what it was like to be on stage as a teenager." That's the future group that wherever you are now, however immature or mature you think you are, however old you are, however many, however many decades of good memories you have, or decades of bad memories, that's the group that'll be there.
Because one of the points, and this really fits with what Solomon is doing in Ecclesiastes, is to remind you that time doesn't stop. Some of you may look up there and say, "It feels like it wasn't that long ago that I was that age." And they'll do the same thing in a few years, and their kids will be up on a stage somewhere.
That's the reality of our world as humans. So I hope when you see young people, and I love to see our young people here during services and around all kinds of different opportunities. I hope when you see them, you don't see future Christians, but members of the body now that God's gonna grow and take to be who knows what. He's gonna mature them, and we look forward to seeing as much of that as we can see here.
It's Not Fair
Jed Gillis: So this morning, Ecclesiastes chapter three.
And the first thing that I want you to think about when you think about Ecclesiastes chapter three is the phrase, "It's not fair."
How many times have you heard that? If you're a parent, I know you've heard it a few times. But maybe it's not even if you're a parent Maybe it's simply the fact that you, within your own soul, feel over and over and over again, "It's not fair."
And maybe as you've followed along in the Book of Ecclesiastes, maybe you think, "I agree with some of Solomon's conclusions, but he leaves some unanswered questions."
Like, for example, you, you might think, "Well, I can easily agree if someone is greedily trying to control life for their own gain. Sure, that will be fleeting and frustrating." Maybe you agree with him and you can say, "Yeah, if they try to know enough to control life for their own gain, of course, that's not going to always work. If they try to have enough fun, to have enough pleasure to control their lives," you go, "No, that, that doesn't seem to work out either. I've seen too many people." You can easily agree with those kinds of conclusions.
Maybe you can get to the beginning of chapter three and say, "Life really is full of some good things and some bad things, of seasons of give and take, of seasons of building up and seasons of tearing down." And you say, "Okay, I can get all that. I can agree, Solomon, that God, in theory, can work all of these seasons together, and he can work them all together for good."
Okay, maybe you can get that far, but then maybe it leaves you with this question: What about when life's really, really, really bad? Like, it's one thing to say there's seasons where it's a little difficult and the seasons where, where it's really good. What about when you say, "Solomon, there's some harder questions you haven't really answered"? And we want him to, we want him to put pressure on his conclusions.
By the way, parents, grandparents, teachers, when you're working with young people, you don't want them to have good conclusions that are never tested by pressure. Because if you want something to be strong, you have to test it. If you want strong muscles, what do you do? You, you lift weights. That's hard, right, but it makes it stronger. You have to put pressure on good conclusions if you want them to be strong enough to withstand the difficulties in life.
So what if the seasons of life aren't just like stubbed toes? That's a really bad thing, right? But not really, in the grand scheme of life. What if the seasons of life aren't just imperfect people? Say, well, they tried, they wanted to do something good, and they just didn't do it the best way. Sure, fine. What if it's not even just like natural disasters, tsunamis and earthquakes? What if it's evil people? What if it's people who really did intend to do the wrong thing?
What if life includes, in other words, not just, "Oh, I can try to greedily get my gain," but what if that's just, "I wanna control my life so that I can be safe in a dangerous world"?
See, that motive feels really different, right? If I were to say it something like this. We know that profit-seeking control is fleeting and frustrating. Solomon's already established that in the book. But what if we talked about another category and said, what about safety-seeking control?
So Solomon gets to this section, and it's as if he says, "You really think I'm going to hide from the hard questions?" Instead, he lays out four different under-the-sun, so life of not considering eternity, four different under-the-sun dilemmas, things that are hard when you look at the world we live in. And by the way, these are dilemmas for everybody, not just for Christians. Everybody has to deal with these same kinds of questions.
Reading Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:3
Jed Gillis: I'm gonna read beginning in verse 16. "Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, 'God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.'
I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beast is the same. As one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.
All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw that, that there's nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?
Again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold, the tears of the oppressed. And they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive.
But better than both is he who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun."
Dealing With Hard Questions
Jed Gillis: So this is Solomon's hard questions. Probably the hardest ones he's asked in the book so far, though maybe not the hardest ones he will in the entire book. And obviously we can read and we can say, "Solomon, this is kind of a downer." Like, not the most encouraging sounding section, sure. But it's more encouraging to face reality than to hide.
It's more encouraging to deal with hard questions than to pretend like they don't exist.
Dilemma 1: Injustice Exists Where There Should Be Justice
Jed Gillis: And so he starts dilemma number one: Injustice exists where there should be justice. You've all experienced that. You've experienced it because when I said, "It's not fair," you probably, your mind could jump to a kid arguing over dessert, and you say, "Well, that's not a big deal."
But if you stop and think about your life and say, where were the moments when your life, your heart really wanted to cry out, "That's not fair."
And it's almost impossible for us to even talk about something like this because when we think of justice, we, we tend to think of, like, huge systemic issues. We tend to go, like, go to the court system. And we all know there are cases where innocent people are convicted, and there are cases where guilty people walk free.
We know that's true on a, on a large scale, and I think if you're like me, you probably prefer to just not even think about it.
But when we think on such a large scale, it's hard because we can acknowledge that's true, but you and I, most of us, don't have any direct involvement in it. We don't really know what happens other than what we read on news sites, which sometimes is really reliable and sometimes isn't. So it's hard for us to really think through this sense of justice.
But I want you to, instead of living only in that world in your mind, instead of thinking, yes, there's injustice which could happen in a legal context, take it to your life. Take it to the thing, the places where you expect there to be justice and fairness, and maybe there wasn't.
So maybe it's more like when you, you go and talk to the boss expecting them to solve your problem, and instead you end up with more work afterwards. You say, "It wasn't... The amount of work I had before wasn't fair." It feels like you go to your boss expecting there should be justice here. That's his job. And you walk away feeling like, well, that's even less fair than it was to start with. Or the lazy jokester gets the promotion while the hardworking behind-the-scene guys They get nothing. Or the hardworking guy who's a Christian, maybe it's even worse than just getting nothing. Maybe they get intentionally passed over because of their faith, which happens. You may know people that it happened to.
Or think of when you work hard to build a relationship with someone. You put effort in, you try to show love to them, you try to show care to them, and it seems like at the end of the day, they aren't even grateful for it, much less return the same things. And you say, "There should be justice here." There's something we feel this is wrong, but we ache because it's not fair.
Or when a student cheats, maybe some of you students would get this world, when a student cheats and they don't get caught but they get a better grade than you, which happens. Solomon's point is let's not pretend like that never happens. It absolutely does.
Or kids, maybe where you feel it is you expect justice from your parents, and it seems like your siblings get away with everything. I got some quick nods.
See, it doesn't matter. In, in courtrooms, in classrooms, in boardrooms, and in living rooms, and probably every other room, there are times we look at something and say, "There should be justice here," and there's not. These places ought to be full of seeking wisdom and good conclusions and doing right. And we live in a fallen world where they're not always full of that.
Even in a nation that from the beginning was intended to be built on Judeo-Christian principles, a place where we would think we'd hope to find justice, what do we actually find? Our history doesn't always display justice. Sometimes we find racism. Sometimes we find attacks on marriage and family. Sometimes we find unborn children who are not defended, and our souls should say, "That's not right." Sometimes we have literally places where evil people get away with murder in hospitals.
That's the reaction Solomon's saying. He says, "Look where it ought to be justice. It's not always there." That feels hard And that feels heavy.
Now, here's the structure that we're gonna do this morning. We're gonna go through the dilemmas first, and we're gonna go back and look at all of Solomon's answers second. So hang on with me and, you know, breathe in the hard stuff, 'cause Solomon does have answers. But I also wanna notice here at the beginning, Solomon is not giving you a list of commands for how to deal with injustice. That's just not his point here.
Scripture has things like that. It says, "Do justice and love mercy." Scripture has things like, "Let justice flow like waters." Scripture says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Scripture says, "Have compassion on others." Like, there are all kinds of things we can look at and say, God has some things for you to do about injustice and the other dilemmas we're gonna list here.
Let's just notice, though, Solomon's point is not, here's how you go deal with it. Solomon's point is, when you look around and see the reality of the world around you, it's dangerous, and sometimes it's full of these things like injustice. When you look at the world around you, you should not go thinking, "I can just go through life and I will never face injustice."
'Cause, no, you live in a fallen world. Under the sun, you do not have perfect justice that you can control or that anybody else in this world can control under the sun. So that's dilemma one.
Dilemma 2: Hypocrisy Exists Where There Should BE Truth
Jed Gillis: Dilemma two, hypocrisy exists where there should be truth. This is really the statement in the second half of verse 16.
It's almost like he's saying the same thing, but notice the place is different. He says, "In the place of justice." So we could think, like, a courtroom, we could think a boardroom, we could think those kinds of things. Then he says, "In the place of righteousness." That's partly a religious term.
So take it out of a courtroom scene or an employment scene and look in a church. You expect there to be truth, of all places, in a church, right? That's what we would hope. And yet we all know sometimes you see hypocrisy.
Just a quick Google search of the situations that I know are accurate or mostly accurately reported would say in the last three years, numerous famous pastors were removed from their position because of inappropriate relationships, abuse of power, public slander, one who secretly tried to sell the church building out from under the church. I'm not sure how that works. Toxic leadership, lying, and the list goes on and on and on.
And sometimes there's good accountability and good consequences, and there's good steps. And sometimes there's not. Sometimes it's covered up with lies- And more injustice.
Again, Solomon isn't telling you what to do about all of those things. Those are all real issues that Christians should care about. Solomon isn't telling you what to do about it. He is saying, in a fallen world, you're going to see it.
So instead, how are you to think about that when you see it and live wisely? That's what Solomon is pushing us toward. There are people, you probably know them, who won't set foot in church because of what they've seen in the church. Some of them not even because they say, "Oh, I don't, I don't like God." But they've been deeply hurt, or they've seen stuff which was really bad in the church.
Now, we all know there's also people sometimes who don't set foot in church because of all kinds of other reasons. They don't wanna be corrected. They don't want accountability. They're not sure they want God to rule their life. All of those things, sure, sure. But there are plenty of terrible situations where hypocrisy has been seen over and over and over again in a place that's labeled a church.
And I would say to you, Knoxville is full of people who have been hurt in churches. And I'd also say this: the truth is, this room is full of people who have been hurt in churches, because if you hang around in a fallen world around people, you end up getting hurt. The difference isn't so much that some people have been hurt and some people haven't, it's how you deal with being hurt. Both how the individual does and how the church deals with it.
I would encourage you, we live here in southeast United States, you run into so many people who have seen the ugly side of church. Make it one of your goals to say, "I wanna compassionately reach out to those people in my life." God wasn't the problem. So shine your light to those people.
You can't do that if you say, "Oh no, there's never hypocrisy in churches." They aren't listening to you past then. You have to do like Solomon says and say, like, the reality is sometimes there's injustice where there should be justice, and there's hypocrisy where there should be truth. That's the world we live in right now. Trying to pretend like that's not true won't get anybody anywhere.
And like I said, God does say strong things about that. Isaiah 5 says, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil." I know sometimes the bi- biblical statements of woe to those that, like we don't even know what that means, but it's an expression of condemnation and judgment.
For the people that I talked about a minute ago, you say here were these famous hypocritical situations in church, and they were doing something that was actually evil, and they're trying to call it good. Woe to those people is what he's saying. He's saying the strongest kind of condemnation. Scripture is not saying, "Well, this is all fine, just pretend like we don't have to worry about it."
No, it's real, but Solomon is saying, when you live in a world that includes these things, what are you supposed to do with it? How do you live that way knowing that it will never be completely fixed until Jesus returns?
Dilemma 3: Death Exists Where There Should Be Life.
Jed Gillis: Here's dilemma number three: death exists where there really should be life. You think about we live in a world God created. He created humans, and he didn't create them to die. Human death came as a result of sin. So death is really a reminder of something.
Notice the way Solomon talks about it. I know th- this language gets weird to us 'cause we're like, "Are you saying humans and animals are exactly the same? What's the point? I, w- I don't know what you're saying, Solomon."
W- when he says in verse 18, notice, "I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are but beasts." This language of test could be translated purifying them, could be, uh... It, it's almost like, hey, I'm pushing you towards a certain conclusion, not testing like here's a test, let's see if you pass or fail, but I'm allowing you to try some of these things that you see this doesn't work.
Think like a, a scientist has an hyp- a hypothesis and then an experiment, and so you try something and you go, "Oh, that doesn't work." You try something and that doesn't work.
So in other words, when it says God is testing them, death is in this world in part so that you look at it, and if we go through our life, "Well, I think I can run my life. I can control my life and make sure everything happens," God's saying, "Why don't you test that hypothesis out?" 'Cause as it turns out, even if you manage to organize everything in your life, it's still probably only 70 years, 80 years, 90, whatever, but it's going to end. Your physical life will not keep going.
He says, "Test that hypothesis that says I can guarantee my safety. I can control everything about me." Really, that is the desire to think I get to be God in my life.
There was a commentator who said this, "For all that humans like to think of themselves as gods," small G, "human beings are mortal just like the animals." That's what verse 18 really is saying. Humans like to think, "Oh, I am, I can control my life. I can be the superhero." And he says, "You know, not to be morbid, but an animal can die and, and so can we physically." That's what Solomon's doing. He says there are certain similarities between humans and animals.
Nobody experiences what happens afterwards until you die. And we know that just like an animal, if it dies, and then it's buried, and its body decomposes, that human bodies do the same. He says, "Just as one returns to dust, so the other does." He says, "You think about death."
We don't like to think about death. It feels uncomfortable. I start talking about it here, and we all feel a little bit uneasy.
But why does God want you to think about it? Because it's the most obvious reminder that you aren't God. The most obvious reminder that you're not infinite, you're in fact limited, and that you don't have life in yourself.
You can do all the things, and we've heard people who've done this. You can say, "I'm gonna spend all the money I can spend to stop aging," and it doesn't work.
Sometimes we joke. I've heard, uh, people in, in this church have talked about, you know, their, their grandma who never made absolutely any healthy choices that we can know and lived to be 97 or something like that, and then somebody else who makes all the healthy choices and they die at 50.
And you say, "How does that..." What do, what do we say? We say, "That's not fair." See, it ties into exactly the same thing that Solomon is doing here. He's saying, "Look, you live in a world that is fallen, and under the sun, without considering eternity, these things just remind us we're not God." So Solomon says God is testing humans that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.
That doesn't mean you're supposed to go away going, "I guess I'm just like a worm." That's not the point. But he is saying two things. Your physical life will end one day, and when you do, your physical body will not continue, and in that way, you're like an animal.
Solomon has plenty of things. He just said just a couple verses earlier, he talks about he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. He has very good view of what a human is. But what he's doing is telling you for all the wonderful things humans are, they are not God, and they can never be God. The line between the creator and the creature cannot be crossed. Nobody is going to, through technology and health, they're never gonna become God. They're always gonna be closer to an animal than God. That's Solomon's point.
And so death makes our attempts at control frustratingly fleeting. Solomon's gonna say that over and over in this. He's like, "You do all of these wise things to try and invest, to try to build up your legacy. You do all these things and, and then you die and you leave it to somebody, and who knows if he's wise or if he's a fool." So I got this great big plan, and I can't control who comes after me.
Death reminds us that it's fleeting. Death reminds us that the best you can do, if you control everything in your life, you can only do it as long as you are, in fact, alive. That's what Solomon keeps coming back to.
That means, ultimately, your attempts to guarantee your safety remember we talked about at the beginning, I said two different forms of control. There's, like, profit-seeking control, and we all go, "Ooh, that sounds greedy. I'm not sure I like that." And then there's safety-seeking control. And if we're honest, probably most of us are like, "Oh, yeah, I really wanna make sure I stay safe."
His point in driving you, remember we're getting to harder questions. He's saying, let's take that harder question. You think you just wanna control in order to be safe. Well, guess what? Your safety only lasts as long as your life does, as far as what you can control.
Now, there's a whole biblical concept of eternity, of the way that God works, and gives us safety and eternal life. Sure, that's all there. Solomon's point is, under the sun in this life, you can try to guarantee that you're safe from day to day to day, but death eventually says you won't stay safe.
Dilemma 4: Oppression Where There Should Be Comfort
Jed Gillis: So three dilemmas: injustice where there's supposed to be justice, hypocrisy where there's supposed to be truth, death where there should've been life, and then oppression where there should be comfort.
That's what we read in chapter 4. "I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them."
In a fallen world, people who are powerful often, though not always, often abuse their power. That's the reality he points to. That doesn't shock any of us if we're really honest and we've looked around. But people who are powerful often abuse that power.
And notice he repeats twice, "There was no one to comfort the oppressed." So we could take another side of this. People who are powerful often abuse power, and people who could comfort are often indifferent.
That's part of the evil that he sees. When he looks all around this world and says, "You wanna be honest about the difficulties and the challenges in living in a fallen world? You wanna be honest about the, the dangers, both physical and emotional dangers that happen in a fallen world?" That's what happens.
This word for oppression is the idea of, of seeking ... Y- you're trying to seek your own without regard to the nature or needs or rights of others. I'm going to get what I want, and I don't care what it costs that person. That's the idea of oppression.
Now, I wanna point out, 'cause we live in a world where these words get used all kinds of weird ways, the biblical idea of authority and power is not like our modern world often is. Often, our modern world says, at least on the street level, that authority and power is, like, automatically bad. That, in fact, if you have power and authority, you are automatically oppressing others.
That's not the way scripture teaches it. It doesn't teach that power is always abused. In fact, it teaches that power and authority can be very good things because God ultimately has them. So scripture teaches very good things about power and authority.
However, it also teaches that in a fallen world, those same things like power and authority that can be used for good can also be used for evil, and are often used for evil.
So Solomon looks at this and says, "Sometimes people, especially in positions of power, try to squeeze, gain, or profit from someone else. They treat people like they're objects to be gained from instead of like they're both humans made in the image of the same God."
We don't have to look far in history to find examples. Not only history, we don't have to look far on the news to find examples.
And this is part of the problem. When you desperately try to control your life, whether it's profit-seeking control or safety-seeking control, when you desperately try to control your life for your benefit with you at the center, you hurt other people. We know this. When you have someone around you who is self-centered, they're selfish, you know eventually they hurt the people around them
It doesn't matter how you try to control it. If you try to say, "Life is difficult and dangerous, so I'm going to make sure I stay safe by either knowing all the right things, manipulating the people around me through relationships, being productive enough that nobody can accuse me of having any problems." Doesn't matter what you do, all of them are just ways to say, "I'm gonna do this so that I guarantee that I stay safe."
But the problem is, if you're gonna love somebody, you have to risk something. You don't love somebody by staying completely safe in your control. Think of how Jesus loved us. He could have stayed in heaven. It wasn't robbery for Him to be equal with God. He could have stayed in heaven, and instead He said, "No, I'm gonna come. I'm gonna walk this path all the way to the cross." And then He c- cries in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Father, I don't want this, really. I don't want the pain."
He tells us He could have been perfectly safe. He could have called down 10,000 angels and solved the problem. But instead He said, "No, I'm not going to seek my own safety. I'm going to love."
So Solomon looks at it and says, "The people in this world sometimes they oppress others. They abuse power, injustice, hypocrisy, death, oppression, all of these reminders that, in fact, we live in a fallen world. And we are not God, and we can't control it all."
Solomon's Answers
Jed Gillis: So here's Solomon's answers, which are scattered throughout here, or throughout, throughout this text.
No Injustice Gets Past God
Jed Gillis: Look back at verse 17. "I said in my heart, 'God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.'"
First thing he says is, "No injustice gets past God." Do you believe that? When it doesn't look like it under the sun? No injustice gets past God.
His reasoning, he uses this same idea w- um, that he used at the beginning of the chapter. Remember, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up. So we get down to verse 17, "There is a time for every matter and for every work."
Part of it is he's just reasoning, right now it seems that there's all this injustice. Seems like it's a season of injustice and hypocrisy and oppression and all this in a fallen world. And his reasoning is, if there's a time of injustice- In God's perfect plan, there must also be a time of justice. That's part of his reasoning.
And so he pushes us to trust, to look at real evil in this world, to grieve it, to do what we can to stop it, but also to say, "I am not God, and I cannot make all of this right, but one day Jesus will." Injustice does not get past him.
And we have a great example in Revelation 6. You remember the martyrs cry out to Jesus? They cry out and they say, "How long, O Lord?" Like, these are people who were killed for their testimony about Christ, and we know that's always horrible. Sometimes it's done in horrendous ways. They're crying out to Jesus, "How long, O Lord, before you bring justice, before you avenge us?"
And they're told, "Wait a little longer."
Now, our tendency is to be like, "No, don't make me wait for justice." And we have small things in comparison to martyrdom. Jesus says, "Wait a little longer." There, in this context, there's real injustice, like stuff that was really terrible. There's real grief. There's real prayer, "How long, O Lord?" And then there's real waiting, "Wait a little bit longer."
But as we go through the rest of that book, we see that, in fact, no injustice gets past God. God calls us many times to do the same kind of things, to say, "There's injustice. There's hypocrisy. There's oppression. It's really bad, and I can't seem to do anything about it." And we cry out to him with real prayer and real grief, and we're called to trust that God knows, that God sees, and that God will not let any injustice get past him. He will judge.
And if we see the injustice that we see, how much more does God see? We only know a fraction of those things that happen. God knows all of it.
And so the logic as he works through this is to say, I wanna point out the question in verse 21, "Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?" Solomon says, "Look, under the sun when I'm sitting here, I don't know what happens. When I stand next to a horse that dies, I see an animal and the body stops." And maybe you've stood around the bedside of someone who passed away, and you say, "From the outside, from where I'm standing, from what I can see with my eyes, it looks kinda the same."
So Solomon says, like, "Who knows? How do you know what happens?" Well, the answer is, first of all, he says, "Well, no human can see it." But the implication is also, but God does know. God does ultimately know what, in fact, happens to the human soul. So we're told to trust that no injustice goes past Him, and that God knows what happens after death.
So if you say, "Oh, this person died. That was unjust. How can anybody make it right?" Well, you don't really know, 'cause you don't know what happens after death. But we're told to trust God. I say you don't know. You know 'cause Scripture teaches you, but you don't know from your experience. So we're called instead to trust God, to pursue trust in Him more than we pursue our own control and our own justice. No injustice gets past God.
You're Not God, And That's a Good Thing
Jed Gillis: A second answer, which we looked at a little in verse 18, is that God is pushing us to see that we are... he says that we are but beasts, that we are not God, is the point. He's pushing us to see that when it comes to your safety, you're not God, and that's a good thing.
See, we can all accept I'm not God, but we think, "Well, I'd really like to be the one in charge of my safety." But what Ecclesiastes does is keep pushing you to say, "You really aren't God, and that's good." Because He is better than we are in His character. He's better than we are in His skills, in His knowledge, in all of these things. It is good that we are not, in fact, control.
Solomon says the more you try to pursue your control, the more you find fleeting, frustrating vanity. The more you recognize God is in control and you pursue Him, the more you find joy. That's the book.
So I wanna ask you, where in your life are you most afraid of losing control? Is it the way people think of you? Is it your financial future? Is it your health? Where are you most afraid of losing control, and what are you doing to try to prevent losing control? 'Cause I'll tell you the way it works for me, the harder I try to make sure I don't lose control, the more I hurt people around me.
Is your safety-seeking control actually doubting God's goodness? Like, think about it. If God gave you control over everything for the rest of your physical life, let's just say He did, and let's say you could actually handle that. I couldn't. But if you did, if he gave you control over all of it, do you think your world would be better? Do you think it'd be better for you than if God's in control? See, we seek our own safety and our own control, and it sounds all good, but actually I'm just doubting God's good enough to do it.
So Solomon says, "No injustice is gonna get past God," and it's actually a really good thing, even in a dangerous world, even in things that hurt, it's a really good thing that you're not in control, God is.
You Should Genuinely Grieve Injustice and Oppression
Jed Gillis: Third thing, wanna point out the way he talks about this says, "You should genuinely grieve injustice and oppression."
Notice in chapter four, he gets down, he says, "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 and has not seen the evil deeds done under the sun."
Solomon's answer isn't, "Oh, it looks like there's all kinds of bad things, but they're really not bad. Don't worry about them at all. Don't be sad about them at all." No, he's like, "Yeah, it's terrible. Really stinks." Genuinely grieve injustice.
I think as, as believers, sometimes because we have a great eternal hope, we don't actually feel the weight of difficulty. We don't actually feel the grief when there is injustice, when there is oppression, when there is someone who is, is hypocritical. No wonder we talk to people in the world around us who've been hurt by church. They think we just kinda glibly like, "Oh, it's all fine. I know that's a really terrible situation, but let's not talk about that."
No, Solomon's like, "Yeah, it's terrible." Grieve it. Have compassion. It's good and right to genuinely grieve some things that you can't do anything about.
When you look and you see a story of some tragedy and it's really terrible, but it's all the way around the world, and you're like, "I can't do anything about that," what I tend to do is emotionally, "Well, it's not me. I'm out." No, no, no. Grieve that, but grieve it because it's a fallen world and say, "But Jesus will make this right."
Rejoice and Take Pleasure in God's Gifts Today
Jed Gillis: And then the last thing Solomon says, he hints at here, it actually points back to right before this section, verse 22, when he says, "There's nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work." If we went back earlier in the chapter at verse 12, "I perceive there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and do good as long as they live, also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil because this is God's gift to man."
So, so yes, you're not God. But God is good, and he gives you all these things. So enjoy the gift that God has given. Enjoy the life he has. You say, "But if this world is such a terrible place, why should I enjoy any of it?" Solomon doesn't let you go there. He says, "No, God has given you wonderful, good gifts. Since you are not in control of the future, enjoy his good gifts today."
I wanna read a paragraph, a quote from a commentator talking about these sections that I think summarizes the difference between the way a world might say, "Well, just enjoy whatever's here," and the way a Christian says, "I wanna enjoy God's good gifts."
This commentator wrote, "Solomon's seize the day," so enjoy what's here, "is an expression of faith, not self-fulfillment. It is not greedily consuming experiences and pleasures before death consumes us. Rather, it's the patient and joyful embrace of daily life as it comes to us as a gift from God. It is not a life centered on the self, but a life that is turned outward towards the neighbor, asking, 'How do I do good?' The biblical seize the day, then, is not a self-centered response to uncertainty surrounding life after death, but a worshipful response to the God of creation, who is also the God of new creation and resurrection."
So Solomon really is telling you, feel how absolutely terrible some of this stuff in a fallen world is. Feel the that's not fair. And yet genuinely enjoy the day given to you by the God who cares for your soul more than you could.
When you're desperate to control your life so that you stay safe, do you enjoy every moment of those days? I doubt it.
Instead, you think about a child who goes to play at the park. They're not worried about bills. They're not worried about keeping themselves safe. Half the time they don't even notice they're in danger. They don't know if they'll ever come to the park again. They don't know when they'll have to leave. They don't know any of it. But they look at the little creek running through the park, and they go wade in this much water and have the time of their lives.
God's a good God who gives you all kinds of gifts, and he doesn't say, "You have to go control them and protect yourself." He says, "I'm your Father. I've got this. So enjoy my gifts." Grieve when it's sad. And in the middle of grieving the difficulty, enjoy the river. Enjoy the relationships God's given. Enjoy everything that God puts into our lives.
So I would ask you to think about your life, say what ordinary gift do you fail to enjoy because you're too busy trying to control something? What ordinary good do you not really enjoy like a child because you're too busy trying to make sure you manipulate your life to stay safe?
This Is the Day the Lord Has Made
Jed Gillis: And that's really where we're going to end our time, because the point of the Christian faith is not to suppress life now in order to gain life in the future. Instead, the point of the Christian faith is to say, "I'm not the center of my world now, and I won't be the center of my world in the future, but the God who loves me has given me this day."
That's why we can say, "This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it." You're like, "Wait, but didn't you know there's oppression and injustice in the world?" Yes, he did, but he still said, "This is the day the Lord has made, and we'll rejoice and be glad in it," because he knows no injustice gets past God. He's not God, so he doesn't have to solve all of those problems, and he can enjoy the good that his Father gives him today.
So I wanna invite you to spend a moment. We're gonna close our service a little bit differently. We're gonna spend a moment in prayer. I invite you just to have some silent prayer, and then I will close with a prayer.
And then what I'd like to do is to leave this room as an option if somebody wants to stay and continue in prayer, because we talked about a lot of heavy things that may well have brought up some pretty heavy stuff within your soul. So after I close in prayer, if you'd like to just sit and pray a little bit more, please do. If you would say, "I don't wanna sit and pray right now," that's okay. Nobody's judging you for that. But I just ask you to go ahead and step out the back door so that people in here can have a, a little more quiet, somber reflection time if you'd like to continue in prayer.
So I invite you to respond, then I'll close in prayer, and then we'll-- it will allow others to continue if they'd like to pray.
Closing Prayer
Jed Gillis: Father, this is your world. And sometimes the wrong and the evil seems so powerful. Help us to remember that you are still the ruler.
Father, it stretches us. It stretches our trust when we look at some of the evil that goes on in this world, whether it's the courtrooms, politics, families, businesses, so many different places, Lord, in churches. When we see that evil and our hearts grieve and our souls are bothered, disturbed to the core because of that evil, help our minds to be drawn over and over to the fact that you are the ruler still.
I pray for our country, our city, our state. For all of these different levels, I pray that truth and justice would fill our world like the waters flow down from the mountains.
I pray that there would be comfort for those who have tears. I pray that we, as your people, would spread your love, would not seek our own, would not be centered on ourselves, but would have compassion. And not only that we would say words of compassion, but that we would truly love those people around us.
I pray that you would fill our church with hearts that love you above everything else, with hearts that when we have committed sin, when we have committed injustice, when we've been hypocritical, when we've hurt others, with hearts that would quickly, eagerly confess these sins, turn from these sins, and genuinely love.
Lord, you know inside each of us we have fears. We long to keep ourselves safe, and I pray that you would instead fill us with the kind of trust that says, "Though you slay me, yet will I trust you." With the kind of trust that can say we count everything that we could possibly do for ourselves as loss compared to the worth and value of knowing Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And we say, Jesus, we see all of these things in a fallen world, and we look forward to the day when you judge and there will be no more injustice, when you transform your people completely, and there will be nothing but truth. There'll be no hypocrisy. To the day when death will be no more,
and there'll be no oppression, because the Lamb who is worthy will have all power and all authority. Lord, we rejoice to look forward to that. Give us souls that trust in all of the beautiful truth of your Word, that trust you as our King.
And Lord, we pray your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Bring justice. We know it won't be completely solved until you return, but bring justice. Bring truth now. Bring sins to light. May there be real accountability and real restoration.
And we thank you that in the middle of a fallen world, we are not left without hope. And we entrust our souls to you as the faithful Creator, knowing that you are the one who can keep us safe. Help us to entrust our souls to you while doing good, and may you receive all the glory and honor now and forevermore. In Jesus' name, amen.