The Guarantee of God

 October 17 2021

Ecclesiastes 9

         So, there you are all comfy on the couch, your eyes are heavy and you feel yourself slowly drifting off into the state of an afternoon nap when just as you are almost asleep you are jarred awake by the ringing of your phone. You do your best to jump from the couch, your heart is racing, you go in search of where you last laid the phone and you answer it only to hear, “We want to talk to you about your extended warranty…” Isn’t that infuriating! I always want to ask them if that extended warranty will cover my 2001 Buick just to see if that warranty can be extended for twenty years. These extended warranty phone calls have become a cultural phenomenon with memes about it showing up everywhere. Since we are getting close to Halloween there’s a meme warning parents to check the Halloween candy because as the parent opens up the candy bar they find a slip of paper tucked inside with the message, “We have been trying to reach you concerning your extended warranty.”

         Now, as much as these extended warranty phone calls drive us crazy, there is certain case to be made that somebody somewhere just might be interested in extending their warranty. I mean, sometimes a warranty is a good thing if it will cover the cost of repairs for when your car suddenly decides today is a good day to die. A warranty is much like a guarantee that gives us hope that if something goes wrong in a certain amount of days we are assured we can get our money back. We could also say that warranties and guarantees are also like insurance where we pay in month after month so that somewhere down the road we’re covered when something goes wrong. What warranties, guarantees and insurance all help us do then is deal with an uncertain future where are car might suddenly decide to not work or where a tree might decide to one day fall over on your house. We all try to look for ways that we can cushion the blow of unforeseen events that are waiting for us in some, not so distant, future.

         The future, then, is something that people have always tried to deal with, always trying to find ways of dealing with the unexpected happenings that are sure to make us respond, “I didn’t see that coming”. In the ninth chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, the writer is giving us a critique of a prominent way the people of God tried to handle the vast unknown of their future and he states what should be an obvious flaw. He begins by telling us that the deeds of the righteous and the wise are in the hand of God. We need to hold on to these two descriptions of people, the righteous and the wise, because as we will discover it is these two kinds of people whose view of life is going to be found wanting. This the writer begins to unfold as he continues to tell us that it is the same for all, the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and to the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and to him who does not sacrifice. So, here what the writer is elaborating on is the fact that no ones future is determined by what they are doing in the present. The person who believes themselves to be righteous, a good person who keeps their nose clean and is faithful to offer God all the required sacrifices  has no more certainty about their future than the person who everyone knows is just a wicked evil person, who cares nothing about a pure heart nor about giving what is rightfully God’s. This goes against the commonly held view which is called karma where people get what’s coming to them. In the United States, over thirty percent of the population believes that if you do something wrong today then watch out, tomorrow that wrong will catch up with you. The writer of Ecclesiastes, who spent much time watching people concluded that there is no such thing as karma as much as we would like to believe that such a thing exists. The reason we want to hang on to such a belief, I suppose, is that for us who are trying to do good today we hope that that good will find us out tomorrow. It just seems fair and right but in all actuality such a system just doesn’t exist. As the writer of Ecclesiastes continues in the ninth chapter, as it happens to the good person so it happens to the sinner, To the writer this seems like a great evil and if we had to be honest we would agree with him that what we do today really has no bearing whatsoever on what will happen to us tomorrow. We have to consider what affect this uncertainty has on people to grasp what the writer means when he states the hearts of the children of men are full of evil. This fact of life that no matter the good or evil people might do today they both still face the same future tomorrow, this causes people to lose faith in the goodness of God. It wears on people to see bad things happen to good people and even worse it troubles people to see evil people living the high life. In the end, we begin to wonder about God and why life seems to be so unfair. This is the root of evil, this doubt in the goodness of God because if God is not good then just what is there that we can call good?

         You see, what may not be obvious to us is what the writer of Ecclesiastes is doing is sizing up a common belief of God’s people that runs throughout scripture. It is this belief that those who are righteous or the wise will be rewarded with a blessed future where God will keep them from suffering. Suffering is reserved for the wicked, for those who have not done what God requires.  The beginnings of such thinking is found with the story of Cain in the fourth chapter of Genesis where Cain desired that God guarantee a good harvest and he was willing to give a portion of his grain to seal the deal. You see, the problem with this thinking is found out here, right at the beginning because what Cain wanted to give for this God guarantee was the bare minimum necessary to convince God to ensure a good future filled with an abundant harvest. You see, such an understanding that our righteousness today can determine our future tomorrow will always end in let’s make a deal. Just how much is the God guarantee going to cost me? God doesn’t want to make deals with us, that’s why he rejected Cain’s offering. No, what he wanted was a sincere relationship with those who loved him.

         This thinking that the righteous will have a great future and the wicked will suffer is also found in the book of Deuteronomy where in the twentieth chapter there is listed the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience. Yet in spite of what is written here, when we read the seventy-third Psalm we hear the writer of this Psalm state that he was envious of the arrogant when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. The wicked had no hunger pangs, their bodies were fat and sleek. These wicked had no concerns and they were not stricken like the rest of mankind. Their pride they wore like a necklace; their violence covered them like their clothes. They spoke with malice and they threatened people with oppression. Their mouths were set against the heavens and yet in spite of this they continually increased in riches. So, what about this idea that God was going to bless the righteous and bring curses upon those who were disobedient? Despite of what people observed concerning the prospering of the wicked they still clung to this idea that if they did what God required he would still hold up his end of the bargain and ensure a great future for the obedient. What you ended up with is people who went through the motions, doing what was required to get God to guarantee their future but living in the present as if being the people of God meant you could do as you please. This is the situation found in the seventh chapter of Jeremiah where the people thought that since they were faithful to worship correctly as God told them then their future was going to be great and glorious yet as God pointed out what were they going to do about the oppression that was happening to the visitors to their land, to those without husbands and fathers, to the innocent bystanders, the oppression that was happening in the here and now, The people of Israel were so caught up in wanting a future without suffering that they paid no attention to those who were suffering right before them in the present. They could ignore this suffering because according to their mindset their suffering must have been theirs to bear because of some wickedness in their past that they now had to pay for in the present. Are you beginning to see how warped such thinking can make people?

         So, as you follow this thinking through the Bible we can understand why Jesus was such a threat to the establishment who still believed that if they were good righteous people following the Law to perfection then it just figured that their future would be blessed by God. Their righteousness was the key to a future victory over their enemies the Romans. What they didn’t need was some Rabbi wannabe mucking up the works hanging out with sinners and stating that the ones who were blessed by God were not the rich but the poor, not the people of pleasure but the sad and mournful people, not those who gave the orders but those willing to follow, not for those satisfied with their righteousness but blessedness was for those who hungered and thirsted for life to be right, these were the real blessed people of God. Can you see how this thinking threatened those who were living under the assumption that it was the righteous who were guaranteed a great and glorious future? They clung to this idea even though there in their own scriptures was written in the book of Ecclesiastes that such an idea had no merit whatsoever. And the reason why this idea would not die was again just as the writer of Ecclesiastes understood it so well, that if the future was the same for everyone, for the righteous and the wicked, then what does this say about God? As the writer describes it in the seventh chapter of his writings, there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in evil doing. So, if this is the way things are what can we conclude we should do with our life? The answer the writer gives is that perhaps we shouldn’t be overly righteous nor should we be overly wise. I mean, why should one try so hard to be good when being good does not seem to have any real benefit? The writer then goes on to tell us that he tested this idea by wisdom but such thinking he concluded was that these ideas were far from being wise.

         So, how did the writer make sense of what he had observed? The answer he always comes back to is that we are to eat our bread with joy and drink with a merry heart for God approves of us. This seems a little simplistic doesn’t it? Yet, if we stop to consider what the writer is implying it begins to be clear that his point is this: stop being concerned with the future and instead live in the present. As we learned last week, the experience of joy is our recognition of grace, the undeserved favor or welcome of God. The writer of Ecclesiastes came to understand that in this experience of joy, an experience that God expected during the various festivals where his people gathered in their harvest, in this experience they were to come to an understanding that all that they had was theirs because of the undeserved love of God, his favor given to them not because of who they were but given to them because of who God is. When the mind suddenly becomes aware that God in his grace desires us to experience life in a new way, a life where fear gives way to favor, then hearts are set free to overflow with joy. The writer of Ecclesiastes knew in a vague sort of way that what God wanted his people to experience was what the life of God was like, a life absent of any fear even if for a moment. So, instead of God securing our future what he does instead is to set us free from fear so that we might enjoy the present. The present is the very realm of God for as he spoke his name to Moses in the third chapter of Exodus, our God is to be known as “I am who I am”. God is not known as the “I was” nor is he to be known as the “I will be”. No, our God is the “I Am”, the ever present God. So, the guarantee our God gives to us is not the guarantee of a blessed future in exchange for our righteous or wise living but instead God guarantees that he will be ever present with us. This is what Jesus understood so well for as he explained to his disciples on the night of his death, they, his good friends, would all be scattered each to their own homes, leaving Jesus to fend for himself but not to worry, Jesus went on, because his Heavenly Father was with him. Jesus who represents us as perfect man knew what is true for all of us, no matter what the circumstances, God is ever present with us. As the writer of Ecclesiastes continues in the ninth chapter, those who are joined with the living have hope. Through this experience of eating and rejoicing, one was to come to the realization that it was God, his grace and his love which was the source of their life, the very origin of their life. To this then we must add that our God is the God who is ever present with us which means that we are united to God because God has chosen to be faithful to us. It is that God is united to us through his faithfulness that we have hope. This makes all the difference when facing a future where death is always a possibility. As the writer explains, the living are aware of their death. Those who are dead, those who have not realized that God is their very life will also never realize that God remembers those who have been united to him. So, our lives mean something because the God who gives us life, the one we realize is always with us through his faithfulness, this God will not forget us when we die. Here in the writings of the Old Testament are the first inklings of the resurrection, the living hope given to us that God does not forget those who are united to him. This is why the living have a living hope.

         You see, this hope we have which is the consequence of our rejoicing is a gift from God that is not dependent on our righteousness or our perceived wisdom. Our hope is a result of grace, the grace recognized in our joy, a grace of God’s unmerited favor whose love is poured out on the good and evil alike, showered upon the just and unjust. The circumstances we might face in the future are no indicator of our present perception of where we might think we are with God. The wicked may prosper, the righteous may suffer yet no matter what God remains faithful to those who have experienced his grace and acknowledged his grace with joy. It is not the suffering which indicates to a watching world that we are united with the living God but rather it is how this God, who is united with us, transforms how we react to our suffering. Paul was criticized by rival preachers that he could not be an apostle of Jesus because his life was filled with suffering. These rival preachers held to the continuing theme refuted by the writer of Ecclesiastes which believed that because of their righteousness they would have a future free from hurt and pain. Paul who suffered mightily could not possibly be right with God because God surely would have kept this suffering from happening. Yet, Paul knew how very twisted was their thinking because the suffering he endured was  the means which proved how wrong his skeptics were. It was there, in the midst of his hurt and his pain, that the ever faithful God who was united with him was quite evident. Paul writes in the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians, ‘We have this treasure in clay jars to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not us. We are afflicted in every way; but we are not crushed. We are perplexed; but we are not driven to despair. We are persecuted; but we are not forsaken. We are struck down; but we are not destroyed.  We are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus might be manifested in us.” This is why James could write in the first few lines of his letter that we are to count it all joy when we face our trials because it is there in the darkness of our future that the light of God’s grace is so easily seen. God doesn’t guarantee a future of bliss but rather what God does guarantee is that whatever our future does hold, he will be our power and strength through it all. To his honor and glory! Amen.