Ecclesiastes 8

Ecclesiastes 8:1-17

THE MYSTERY OF DIVINE Ecc_8:1-17.THE Book of Ecclesiastes, to all too many, is practically a closed Book. This is due, in considerable part, to the fact that its expressions are archaic. Since Solomon’s time we have so changed, in the use of words, that one does not immediately sense the old-time employment of the same. And yet, a little study will reveal the certainty that while language changes, men remain the same, and the experiences of life are immutable.This eighth chapter deals with an age-long subject—The mystery of Divine Providences. From time immemorial men have admitted the mystery and sought in vain to solve the same. But by searching they have never found out God.

We know Him only as He is pleased to reveal Himself; we have the light only in proportion as He sends the same upon our path, and our wisdom is only valuable to the extent that it is superhuman and comes down from above.This chapter describes for us The Acceptable Man, discusses The Uncertainty of Life, and affirms The Unfathomable God.THE MANA man’s character is in his face.“A man’s wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed” (Ecclesiastes 8:1).The word “boldness” is rather an unfortunate translation. The Hebrew is “the strength of his face shall be changed”; and that conveys the exact idea.

On the first assertion, “A man’s wisdom maketh his face to shine” sound students are in practical agreement. We read intelligence or folly; we read strength or weakness; we read holiness or debauch, in the faces of men; and the man who is truly wise not only looks at us from a shining face, but from a face of strength as well. In many cases the very nature and character of the strength is written into the features. Who ever looked upon the likeness of Abraham Lincoln without feeling confident that history had correctly reported him? The eye kindled with the kindliness for which he was famed; the face told the story of the rugged character that lay back of it, and yet shone through it as glints of the diamond shine out from the rough stone that has a diamond heart. Who ever studied carefully the features of Woodrow Wilson and questioned, for one moment, either his intelligence or his dominating will; or the face of Roosevelt and doubted his daring.Within the past year it was my privilege to journey one day into the White Mountains to that particular point from which “the Great Stone Face” is best beheld.

You will remember that Hawthorne long since immortalized this marvel of the New Hampshire mountains. He calls this Great Stone Face “a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness,” and he weaves around it his marvelous story of Ernest, the little lad who grew up in the valley below, and whose infant eyes rested upon this marvel of the mountains and whose mother told him the tradition that had long lived with the villagers of the vicinity, to the effect that some day a child should be born in that region who would become the greatest and noblest personage of his time, and whose countenance would bear an exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face.The little boy received the story with enthusiasm, clapping his hands and saying, “I do hope that I shall live to see him!” Day after day he studied this mountain vision, and time after time he scrutinized the features of distinguished visitors who came, for points of resemblance, only to be disappointed again and yet again, so that his mother had to encourage him by saying, “He will come; fear not, Ernest; the man will come.”Time moved on!

More than one supposed resemblance was discovered, but further study disappointed the seekers. Finally, when the neighbor inhabitants had gathered for their evening hour, and Ernest, now in the fullness of age, his hair whitened, his countenance strong but softened by the touch of time, was the speaker. His friend, the poet, listening to his marvelous words, had at the same time looked at the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the face of Ernest, when suddenly he saw, and with a shout cried, “Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face.” And Hawthorne said, “All the people looked and saw that what the poet had said was true; the prophecy was fulfilled.”Evidently Hawthorne meant to say, with the lifelong study of the Great Stone Face, Ernest had brought his own face into conformity with the mountain vision upon which he had looked a thousand times and always with admiration and hope.Do we not this morning recall that remarkable passage in the New Testament in which a kindred experience is propounded? Those who have read it will not soon forget Henry Drummond’s interpretation of 2 Corinthians 3:18—“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord”.As the face of Ernest was affected by the fact that it was often lifted in admiration to the marvelous countenance of the mountain, so the faces of men are profoundly affected by the visions of life, the sights they behold, particularly the subjects of their admiration.

It is no wonder that the true Christian countenance is attractive. He looks into the face of Christ!There is a significant phrase in Acts 4:13.

Peter and John having been the instruments of healing in the miracle at the gate Beautiful, and a great uproar having been created by it, the Apostles had been imprisoned for a twenty-four hour period, and the rulers and elders and Scribes had sat in judgment, and asked,“By what power, or by what name, have ye done this?“Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel,“If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole;“Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man stand here before you whole.“This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the Corner.“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus”.The King’s companionship affects alike countenance, conduct and character.The King’s commandment is the basis of conduct.“I counsel thee to keep the king’s commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God.“Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him” (Ecclesiastes 8:3).There were some accusations made against Jesus that were entirely justified. In the twenty-third chapter of Luke’s Gospel, and in the second verse, we read this charge: “We found this Fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that He Himself is Christ a King”. He was and He is, “King of kings, and Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15)!The time has come when many men are asserting what Christ presented in a parable, “We will not have this man to reign over us”. In fact, the reports that reach us from China, Russia, and other countries, and the growth of atheism in our own land, all tend to indicate the literal fulfilment of Psa 2:2-3,“The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His Anointed, saying,“Let us break Their bands asunder, and cast away Their cords from us”.But this spirit of rebellion only suffices to make the more clear, and even to emphasize, the great essential of obedience to the King’s command, and the sin of attempting to escape from His sight that one might stand in an evil thing. The King’s command is life, and the King’s command is Light. We are His friends, if we do whatsoever He has commanded us. “To obey is better than sacrifice”.The King’s word is the end of controversy.“Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou? “Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment”.The fundamentalist world holds today, as the faithful adherents of Christianity have always held, that the King’s command is an end of controversy. When He speaks the subject to which He has addressed Himself is settled once and for ever. Men may debate as much as they like the authorship of the Pentateuch, but when the King says that Moses wrote it (John 1:17; John 3:14; John 6:32), for the believer, that is an end of controversy. They may dispute the time of Daniel’s history and call into question the recorded experiences of that Old Testament worthy, but when Christ has confirmed it (Matthew 24:15). further debate is useless. Men may quibble about the experience of Lot’s wife, but when Christ asserts its truthfulness and employs it in illustration (Luke 17:32) further discussion of that subject is out of order. Men may continue to scoff Jonah’s experience in the fish’s belly; but for the believer, the words of Jesus are not only an end of controversy but to infidelity upon the subject.

Jesus said, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).It is not likely that the God of all wisdom would employ a falsification of history to confirm a matter of prophecy. “Where the word of a king is, there is power”. The mooted questions of life have never been settled by another; but the King’s word is final.We come, however, upon a great many subjects upon which we have no revelation that descends to minutiae.

That is why we speak of the mysteries of providence.One of these relates itself toTHE OF LIFEThe day of judgment is certain, but the time is not determined.Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.“For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be”? (Ecclesiastes 8:6-7).There are those who seem to think that this is all wrong; that we ought not to live in uncertainty; that we should know what tomorrow will bring forth. Such knowledge, instead of contributing to human happiness, would utterly destroy it. The mother who holds the new-born babe in her arms has no promise of long life for the same, but that hope, that expectation, is an hourly contribution to her joy. The bride who walks to the altar with the husband of her choice has no assurance that he will be found at her side for all the long journey through, but her hope to that effect is the ground of her happiness. The business man whose affairs are prosperous, and even he who suffers reverses, clings to the expectation that prosperity will yet come, and his hope for ever furnishes the inspiration for the day’s endeavor.A recent Wall Street publication tells the story of a man who had lost a fortune in the slump in stocks. His millions had been reduced to less than a hundred thousand.

In his despair, sleep came but was troubled with dreams. In the dream a fairy came and said, “Ask what you will and I will give it to you.” Whereupon the broker said, “Let me see the daily paper, published one year from today.” Instantly the fairy put the paper into his hand.

He turned to the daily finance report and shouted, “Thank God, I am worth thirty millions”! But as he moved to lay the paper aside, he noticed the obituary column and as his eye ran that down, he saw the record, and exclaimed, “Great God; I died two days ago.” What would the prospect of $30,000,000 be worth to a man if he knew that two days before the report was to be published, his obituary would be written?It is better that we should not know that which shall be; it is better that we should not know when it shall be. It is better that we should have no power over the spirit to retain the spirit, no power to determine the day of death. It is better to face the fact there is no discharge in that war, and live as Ward Beecher once suggested, in such a way that whether we live or die we should yet be the Lord’s. Paul could laugh at death and rejoice in life. If life continued the grace of God would be his sufficiency; if death came, it would only effect his translation.

That is why he could live in a strait betwixt the two, life or death.The exercise of power is not always with profit.“This have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt”.Now here is a suggestion for thoughtful men. The most of us want to be rulers.

But rulership involves responsibility, and it may be exercised to one’s own cost. In fact, it often is. The white race of the South could not see it, but it was none the less true on that account—Abraham Lincoln was the best friend they had in all the world; for Abraham Lincoln saw the truth of this text, namely, that the white man ruled the black man to the white man’s own hurt. History has illustrated that fact. The South would never have marked the progress it has made in the last sixty years had slavery continued. The indolence of the whites, superinduced by slavery itself, and the slothfulness of the black, produced by the same system of servitude, affected deleteriously both races and despoiled the very land on which they lived.

Lincoln’s sympathies were not with the black man only; they were with the white people as well. He saw that the white man ruled to his own hurt as surely as he ruled to the hurt of his slave.Take the present situation in Russia and the rulership of the Soviets, the whole world is filled with righteous indignation over such oppression, with rising anger over such enslavement, imprisonments and unlimited martyrdom.

But, in the end, the rulers will need the world’s compassion more than the men ruled, for in the end judgment will fall heaviest upon those who hurt others. Vengeance is not dead; and if judgment sleeps, it will yet waken. The day of the great assize is in the future. God will have the final word.Dr. Leon Tucker tells how he was stopping in a St. Louis hotel. The day was hot; the door of his room was open into the hall, and the colored porter passing down the same, said to the maid, “I’m goin’ to leave you all tonight!”“What, you goin’ to quit workin’ here?”“I’m goin’ to quit tonight.”“Why you goin’ to work here no mo’?” asked the maid.“ ‘Cause I is. What do you think that housekeeper said to me today?”“I don’t know.

What did she ask you to do?” “She asked me to git down on my knees and scrub, and you know these ain’t the days when nobody gits down on their knees for nobody.”“I should say they ain’t,” replied the maid.This is the social situation in a nutshell, as it exists today. There is no submission, no subordination, no subjection! There is defiance everywhere. Lawlessness and bolshevism cover the earth.This is, in fact, a consequence of the very truth to which Solomon here refers, namely, that oppressors have produced a rebellion. Many have ruled over others to their own hurt, and to the threatened ruin of society itself, and the revolt has swung to the opposite extreme of rejecting all authority.Solomon proceeds however to another point of great importance:The postponement of justice is not its abandonment.“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.“Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before Him:“But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall He prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.“There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity.“Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 8:11-15).This has always been the tendency of man. The exercise of God’s grace toward him too often results in the opinion that judgment will never come.“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil”.Solomon would have us see the converse truth, namely, “Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that * * it shall not be well with the wicked” as “them that fear God”.The judgment will fall.

And though, even for a time, it looks as if the righteous were suffering and the wicked were being prospered, the appearance is only a passing show. In the end the righteous will meet with Divine approval and the wicked with certain judgment.There is a wonderful illustration of this in William Beckford’s, “The Caliph Vathek”.

Readers of that little book will remember the description that Beckford gives of Soliman Ben Daoud. In fact, he puts the words into Soliman’s lips: “In my life-time I filled a magnificent throne, having on my right hand twelve thousand seats of gold, where the patriarchs and the prophets heard my doctrines; on my left the sages and doctors, upon as many thrones of silver, were present at all my decisions. Whilst I thus administered justice to innumerable multitudes, the birds of the air librating over me served as a canopy from the rays of the sun; my people flourished, and my palace rose to the clouds; I erected a temple to the Most High, which was the wonder of the universe; but I basely suffered myself to be seduced by the love of women, and a curiosity that could not be restrained by sublunary things; I listened to the counsels of Aherman and the daughter of Pharaoh, and adored fire and the hosts of heaven; I forsook the holy city, and commanded the Genii to rear the stupendous palace of Istakar, and the terrace of the watch-towers, each of which was consecrated to a star; there for a while I enjoyed myself in the zenith of glory and pleasure; not only men, but supernatural existences were subject also to my will. I began to think, as these unhappy monarchs around had already thought, that the vengeance of Heaven was asleep; when at once the thunder burst my structures asunder and precipitated me hither.”Unquestionably Beckford had in mind not only the human experiences that illustrate it, but the very language of Scripture itself that sets forth the fact that it will not be well with the wicked neither shall his days be prolonged, “But the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed” (Isaiah 65:20).There is such a thing, Paul tells us, as a hard and impenitent heart,“But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment ‘of God;“Who will render to every man according to his deeds” (Romans 2:5-6).The chapter concludes with a study ofTHE GODMan by searching shall not find Him out!“When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes:)” (Ecclesiastes 8:16).That is rather an accurate description of the present condition in student life. There are men, working! in the realm of science, who scarcely sleep day or night. They are so anxious to understand what has happened and to interpret all that has been done in the earth.

But though sleep is taken from their eyes their search is in vain.“Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?“It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know”? (Job 11:7-8).You can study the earth beneath; you can study the waters under the earth; you can study the heavens above the earth, and while each of them will bear testimony, in turn, to God’s existence, they will not give a perfect revelation of either God’s conduct or His character. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof”. But the Owner is not visible in the midst of His possessions; and His rulership is not with ostentation.“He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; He maketh lightnings for the rain; He bringeth the wind out of His treasuries” (Psalms 135:7).

But no man beholdeth Him as He goes about this business. He “maketh the clouds His chariot”, but no one beholds Him as He rides therein. He “waiketh upon the wings of the wind” (Psalms 104:3), but He leaves no tracks that are visible. He “treadeth upon the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8), but He leaves no foot prints behind. That is why Isaiah (Isaiah 40:28) wrote of Him, “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of His understanding”. “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform;He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace;Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.“Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan His work in vain;God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.”(Cowper.)His works also are past human comprehension.“A man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it” (Ecclesiastes 8:17).The reason for this is clear. The finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite. Modernism boasts the marvelous discoveries of the twentieth century and it tells us now that we know so much about the universe we demand a new conception of God, and need a new book as our Bible. But how much do we know? Are not our discoveries the discoveries of our own ignorance? A recent great volume, emanating from a leading University, presents a sort of university course in twelve or fifteen lessons, on subjects of modern study.

In it two of the leading astronomers of the world appear as writers; and while they tell us of the marvelous discoveries made by modern astronomers, they confess that the biggest one of all is that of their own ignorance. They do not know how extensive the universe is; they cannot tell whether it is finite or infinite; and what they do know only emphasizes what our text says, that a man cannot find out about God’s world and though he labor to seek it out, he shall not find it.

All of which practically evidences an infinite creation and strongly argues an infinite Creator.Drs. Charles M. A. Stine and Milton H. Stine, both of them Doctors of Philosophy, one of them a Doctor of Science additional, and the other a Doctor of Divinity, unite in putting out a book, “Man in the Making”, on page twenty-seven of which they sanely say,“The evidence of nature for the existence of an omniscient Creator is to the minds of many scientists quite overwhelming. We have so much to gain in our conception of Deity and our appreciation of the grandeur and magnificence—the superlative wonder—of Deity as exemplified by His handiwork in the material universe that it seems to us the most deplorable of mistakes for many of the uninformed or prejudiced to assume a conflict between the evanescent theories of today’s science and the eternal verities of God’s Word.“Modern science has looked so much farther out into the infinite distances of the shining universes of the midnight heavens and so much deeper down into the infinitesimals of the atom and its marvelous balance of ceaselessly moving electrons in their mathematically ordered orbits, than it was possible for the science of a generation ago to do, that we, of this generation, have new cause to marvel at the majestic conceptions of Omniscience when ‘the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’. It has taxed the greatest intellects of our race to conceive the theories and formulate the hypotheses which have constituted the frail and evanescent bridge upon which man ventures forth, a step at a time, in his exploration of the transcendent wonders of creation’s orderly processes.

And these theories, these hypotheses, have often been revised or abandoned by their most ardent adherents, as new facts have been added and new light thrown upon the problems.”The wisdom of the wise is only weakness.“Though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find if”.It was on that account that Christ came to the world. He came to reveal God more fully; He came to manifest the Divine likeness; He came to make God known to man, as he could not know Him apart from His existence in the flesh. He came to bring the finite into contact with the infinite; and so combined the two in His own person. He came to reveal the Divine heart, to manifest the Divine affection, and to show men the depth of Divine love by the sacrifice of Himself. He came to speak the language within our comprehension and, if possible, rouse in us both the sense of His affection and the sense of our possible relationship to Him as God.The late F. B.

Meyer, told how in the 1862 Exhibition there was an exquisite statue of a girl around which the crowd always stood, wondering as to the meaning of the marvel. Her attitude was wistful; her hand was to her ear, and her whole face was lifted up with wonder, in an evident effort to comprehend and to understand some glorious thing.

The story associated with the statue was that in the long wars between the Indians and white settlers of America, a white girl had been stolen from her parents while yet a babe and carried into the wigwams and kept there until her young womanhood. The search of the frantic parents was in vain, except that there floated about an indefinite report that she was with some distant tribe. At last the mother started across country. She waded swamps. She fought her way through forests. She endured heat and cold. But finally she came upon her own in an Indian village at the door of the tepee. She spoke to her, but the girl knew not her language.

She tried in every way to communicate with her, but seemed incapable of making herself understood. Finally she made as if holding a child in her arms, and looking down into an imaginary face, she crooned over again the lullaby with which she had rocked this babe to sleep many a time. The child began to listen wistfully and then there sprang into her features the light of understanding and the rush of old memories, and she leaped up, and flung her arms about the woman’s neck and in the Indian tongue, cried, “Mother!”Then Dr. Meyer said, “I can but believe that something like this has happened all through the ages. That God has called to His lost children again and again; but in their world environment they do not understand, and in Christ He came to them, and He croons over them that He may excite in them the memory of the day when they knew and acknowledged Him, and bring them to be, not only His children by creation, but His glad sons and daughters by volition.”