Are you enjoying your life? Or is it something you just muddle through because you have responsibilities you feel you must attend to? Do you live in the moment, or are you constantly attacked by the problems that may arise in the future?
I rather like this quote (it’s been attributed to various people in various forms, but I like this version best), and I think it fits perfectly with the ideas conveyed in Ecclesiastes 9:1-10: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift from God, which is why we call it the present.”
Solomon begins to tackle the ideas presented in this quote from verse 1. “Indeed, I took all this to heart and explained it all: the righteous, the wise, and their works are in God’s hands. People don’t know whether to expect love or hate. Everything lies ahead of them.”
He skips the history because it’s not relevant to his point, but he tackles the mystery of tomorrow with “People don’t know whether to expect love or hate. Everything lies ahead of them.” This is fairly clear. We don’t know what’s coming next, so we have no way to determine the outcome of our actions until we live through them. And then Solomon qualifies this further while relating back to chapter eight’s themes.
Verses 2-3 say, “Everything is the same for everyone: there is one fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not sacrifice. As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as for the one who takes an oath, so for the one who fears an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: there is one fate for everyone. In addition, the hearts of people are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live—after that they go to the dead.”
See, while you can’t know a lot of what’s coming, there is one thing that comes for us all: death on this Earth. As we discussed last week, the consequences of sin affect everyone, even if you feel like you’re a good person, even if you follow closely the commands of God. The product of being in a sinful world is sinful consequence. So, the one thing about your future that is not mystery is death. You won’t know the time or hour, but you know it’s coming.
So, for many, it’s difficult to not live for the future, to plan and prepare in hopes that they can determine what’s coming. In doing so, they often forget to live for today. But God gives us three gifts if we choose to live in the present. The first is the ability to hope.
Verses 4-6 say, “But there is hope for whoever is joined with all the living, since a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead don’t know anything. There is no longer a reward for them because the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate, and their envy have already disappeared, and there is no longer a portion for them in all that is done under the sun.”
I think this points directly to salvation and the ability of people to pursue God and find His salvation while they are still alive. We know, for a fact, that once you’re dead, your chance is gone for good, so it only makes sense that this is what Solomon’s referring to.
The comparison between a live dog and a dead lion is striking in this case for a number of reasons, but mainly the position of each animal in a food chain. A dog is one who relies on a master to feed and care for it, while a lion is a top predator in its habitat. Once a beloved dog is dead, its body is cared for and it lives on in the memory of its master. But once a mighty lion dies, its body is torn apart by scavengers and memory of it, its loves, hates, whatever, is gone. Similarly, a believer who is taken care of by God is taken care of and remembered after death by God, but a predator of sin who chooses no master but herself dies and is torn apart by other predators. That’s a pretty clear image of humanity’s treatment of the dead. If given the chance and the provocation, a dead man’s reputation will be torn down without hesitation just because he’s no longer around to defend himself. There’s no place for the dead among the living. In essence, the gift of hope God is providing is for safety, both in life and death.
The second gift God provides is a reward. It comes with having your name listed in the Lamb’s Book of Life—the Lord your God will remember you and care for you, just like a master would his dog. Your reward is undying loyalty, love, and care that only God can provide.
The third gift God promises for today is joy from peace, from verses 7-9, which say, “Go, eat your bread with pleasure, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already accepted your works. Let your clothes be white all the time, and never let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life, which has been given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that is your portion in life and in your struggle under the sun.”
This is also fairly cut and dry. God grants us the ability to enjoy the days we have in this life in the moment with the pleasures of good food, drink, and companionship. These are all things we are granted by God, knowing that He had already planned out the days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries ahead. He has already accepted us into Heaven when we become His children, so we are granted the peace to enjoy the gift of today.
But the real power of these verses becomes apparent when we reverse the gifts and apply the consequences to nonbelievers. While believers are granted the gift of hope, nonbelievers are not. Hope disappears with worry, and for many nonbelievers, all they can do is worry about tomorrow, next week, next month, etc. That’s not to say worry isn’t a problem with believers, but the stress that comes with the belief that you are fully in control and responsible for everything in your life reduces the chance of hope being alive and well.
Straight from verse 5, we know that they don’t receive a reward because they declare themselves to have no master. When they do well, they have no one to whom they can turn to be rewarded except themselves, and when they’re dead and gone, their only reward is to be devoured by scavengers.
Finally, they can have no joy, no pleasure, because they aren’t capable of living in the present. Their circumstances are always monitored, always important to them. In the same way worry blocks hope, worry blocks joy and pleasure because worry is a distraction to what is good.
This works with the quote, too. For believers, our yesterday is history, as God has removed our transgressions from us, freeing us from the past. Our tomorrow is a mystery, but not to the God who has it planned out. And we are truly able to enjoy the gift of the present because we have no need to despair over the past or future.
But for nonbelievers, their yesterday is no history because they must account, and face punishment, for their transgressions come judgment day. Tomorrow is a mystery, but one they believe they must work tirelessly to uncover and change. And because they are so obsessed with tomorrow, they are incapable of living in the gift of today. The worst part is that these beliefs set them up for a rude awakening come time for them to pass on from this life.
Verse 10 says, “Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength, because there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in Sheol where you are going.”
Sheol refers to, basically, death. Its meaning is complicated and somewhat confusing biblically, but it’s pretty much just the land of the dead, a euphemism for the afterlife, if you will. The depth of the frustrations of nonbelievers in life will become apparent in death because nothing they’ve lived for will prepare them for what death is like and the things that come from it. Work, planning, knowledge, wisdom, none of the things that matter to a nonbeliever on Earth will matter in death.
And that takes us back to verse 4. There remains hope for any who are still alive to turn from being a proud, dead lion to become a living, loved dog. The life of a nonbeliever, the mindset of a nonbeliever, will not prepare anyone for death and eternity. Only God can do that, which I think is a key point of these verses. The other is a reminder to believers to have faith and take the gifts that God gives you.