"The Divine Aristocracy"
An examination of Ecclesiastes 9 & 10 and how it applies to the contemporary church..
Download or email this sermon God's Philosophy
With this background in view, please turn to Ecclesiastes 9. You may have heard me point out that just as Proverbs is God's psychology book, so Ecclesiastes is God's philosophy text. The Greeks had Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates; the Germans had the 19th-century rationalists like Nietzsche and Hegel; the English had Hobbes and Beetham. In Hebrew Ecclesiastes is called “Kohelet”, the Preacher. God's philosophy is simply this: This world is fallen and it is futile to put trust in it; it is all vanity. If you trust it, you'll be very disappointed. Fear God and keep His commandments, trusting Him for something much better. This place is fallen.
God's philosophy stated in brief actually says, “Make the best of a bad thing”. It tells people to make the most of their youth, to make the most of their marriage, because these things are fleeting; it tells us to fear God and keep His commandments rather than put any trust in the things that are temporal. If trust is placed in this world, it leads to bitter disappointment at the very least. That is God's philosophy.
Ecclesiastes 9:1:
"For I have taken all this into my heart to explain it, that righteous men and wise men and their deeds are in God's hand. Man does not know whether it will be love or hatred; anything awaits him. It is the same for all: There is one fate for the righteous and one for the wicked, for the good and for the clean, and for the unclean, for the man who offers a sacrifice and for the one who does not offer a sacrifice. As the good man is, so is the sinner. As the swearer is, so is the one who is afraid to swear."
In the New Testament, James tells us in his epistle not to boast about tomorrow, but to say “if the Lord wills”. (James 4:13-15) This is particularly or acutely true of salvation – “now is the appointed time, today is the day of salvation”. (2 Co. 6:2) You do not know what is on the agenda; nobody knows but the Lord Himself. Yet we do know that because the world is fallen, something has happened: good people and bad people both die. The rich and the poor go to the same grave. The good people – that is, those who are justified by faith in Christ – will have the hope of the Resurrection.
However, the fact is that the rich man cannot take his wealth with him; it ends with his death. It makes no difference how high and mighty a person is: once he dies, it's all over. Once Princess Diana cashed in her chips, she was in exactly the same situation as the next person who may have been totally unknown in his lifetime here.
Our office in England is near the castle of George Harrison of the Beatles – we tried to witness to him a few times and gave him the book Death of a Guru, but it was difficult to even get him to hear us because he was so steeped in Hinduism. He died chanting Hare Krishna in Los Angeles, the newspapers tell us. Well, his castle is no longer his; he did not take it with him to Nirvana. As far as we can know, he took nothing with him into hell. It is the same for all mankind in the end.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.