Ecclesiastes Chapter 9 Verse 1

 Solomon really wants us to know that he thought this one through.

Works as a result of righteousness and wisdom always yield a

significant profit. And where do you go to find this fortune? The

hand of God. The implication is that these things are there, provided

and given, the picture of an extended hand from the throne of God for

anyone.

 Love and hatred in the heart of a person is connected to this truth.

That’s why he says them together. That the reason and motivation and

catalyst for love and the same for hatred are actually not outside a

person but they come from inside a person. The thing is the thing. The

person is the person and the circumstance is the circumstance.

 It’s all a matter of personal perspective, personal decision, if I will

love or hate it. Have you ever heard, “One man’s trash is another

man’s treasure?” Why is that? Because one person, their vantage point

in life, their situation in life, their condition, they see something as

trash…, but another person in another experience, sees it as treasure.

Did it change? Nope. The change is the person…

 Solomon in his wisdom is able to almost step out of time and into

eternity and look and see all the things of life from the vantage point

of life being either over or from the observation deck of eternity.

Where everything is viewed much much differently. In light of time

being here now but passing away, and nothing in the physical realm

being a part of the realm to come…, Solomon is able to see by wisdom

what we cannot see by circumstantial perspective.

 That I can choose to love something. In fact, if I love something, it

IS my choice. Same goes for hatred. Because the thing, the person the

circumstance, no different for the one that hates and the one that loves.

 So, here’s the thing. When it’s all done, or looking at it as if it already

is all done, what really matters? What really is so terrible that we fill

our hearts with exceeding stress, worry, fear and hatred? Solomon is

asking us to seek the Lord and find out the answer… Very very little.

 Would to God that I was able to handle things like I knew

experientially and whole-heartedly that the next life is forever and this

one is not. And that this one is gone just as quickly as it arrives. Then

I’d laugh more. Worry less. Love MUCH more and ease up. Lighten

up and live! Which was the design before all the mess… And that’s

why Solomon says its wisdom, righteousness and those types of works

are all hidden in the hand of God for me to go get, freely!

Ecclesiastes Chapter 9 Verses 2 – 4

 It’s an interesting phrase he uses for those that are able to operate

effectively in the eyes of heaven in the life that is lived under the sun.

He uses the phrase, “he who is joined to all the living.” What does

that mean? It’s an interesting phrase in the Hebrew and it literally

means the person that is in league, partnership, fellowship, symbiotic

relationship if you will with that which is of life. That which is a

source of revival, renewal. A community of that which does not end

with death.

 This is the awareness and awakeness of someone that knows by

wisdom that this life is what we have already discussed. A simulation

of sorts that will one day pass away and all that will remain will be the

amalgamated result of the decisions you have made on who you will

be as a result of what you have experienced…

 So, the critical, the hard to please, the hard to love and the hard to

befriend…, all on you. Nothing to do at all with others. And man, I

know that sounds harsh, but pull your mind out of the under the sun

realm for a moment and see it from the vantage point of the hand of

God. Outside of time. Outside of this mess. And within the

understanding of all of this is just a blip and not forever.

 So, join yourself to all the living and see hope. And then if you have

nothing, you’re still better off. A living dog better than a dead lion.

Duh! Check this out! Super well know verse! John 10:9-10…

 “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go

in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal,

and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and

that they may have it more abundantly.”

 Life (the word) here is not breathing it is zoe in the Greek. This is life

alive. A quality of life that we might say that is the “life!” We don’t

mean the physicality of life but the experience of life! And Jesus said

that they, that you might have life/zoe and have it more abundantly. In

the Greek that is the phrase echo perissos. An echo of the truth that its

all perishing! So, lighten up! LIVE a little. The word perissos means

“beyond.”

 Beyond the offense. Beyond the shortcomings of others. Beyond the

sin of others. Beyond the fallenness of even this word. Beyond your

past. Beyond your triggers. Beyond it all. That life is captured and

experienced even so… And all of that, Solomon knows, is up to ME,

and has NOTHING at all to do with anyone else in my life for my life!

Ecclesiastes Chapter 9 Verses 5 – 6

 All missed by those that miss this…. So tragic and so my own fault!

Love, hatred, envy and really everything done, accomplished, failed

and lived under the sun, perishes with us! So, what are we to do!?

Know that we will die! And live today because of it!

 Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a

heart of wisdom!” What is the thing really going to be worth in

perspective of life being short and only one time!? Yes, we have life

coming, life eternal, but it isn’t this one! And it’s not even going to be

like this one, but completely new and different!

 So, does it really matter that your neighbor doesn’t mow his grass like

you mow yours? Does it really matter that she steals the covers? Does

it really matter to the point where you’d rather stay bitter and withhold

forgiveness!? Not only does it not really matter but in light of wisdom,

you’re robbing yourself of life!

Ecclesiastes Chapter 9 Verses 7 – 8

 This speaks of living your day with the past forgiven and the future a

gift but it also speaks of the incredible unconditional love and

forgiveness of sin that we have in Jesus. I wonder do you know this?

Do you know that you are actually forgiven!? Or are you holding on

to your own sin and the sins of others rather than the actual power of

the blood of Jesus!?

 Let me read this to you. This truth of the gospel that so many miss,

grasp, release, rinse and repeat when we should grasp on to this once

and for all and be filled with the truth of the all-encompassing love

and forgiveness of God through Jesus…

 Colossians 2:11-19, “In Him you were also circumcised with the

circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of

the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in

which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of

God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your

trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive

together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped

out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was

contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to

the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a

public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. So let no one

judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or

sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is

of Christ. Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false

humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he

has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast

to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by

joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.”

 Let your garments ALWAYS be white and your head lack no oil

because what God has done is actually DONE. Comprehensive and

complete! To the point that John writes in 1 John 3:9, “Whoever has

been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he

cannot sin, because he has been born of God.” I have been justified in

Christ. Reject that and you have yet to receive the gospel and your

love is yet unseen, unknown, ungripped and unreleased to the point

that you have yet to enter into the rest promised, secured and provided

by Jesus Christ. And according to Solomon, you haven’t yet even

experienced life!

Ecclesiastes Chapter 9 Verses 9 – 18

 Wisdom is life and yet those that have it in this dead world are counted

the same as the fool. So be it! Who cares!? Not the living, because the

living know they are alive and alive in the midst of the dead. So

live and who cares what folks get or don’t get. What matters is what

YOU get! What you figure out because it’s not the outside that makes

anyone live life alive or live life dead, it’s what’s happened inside!

And the entirety of that accomplishment of the heart of a person is in a

real, worshipful, genuine and holy relationship with God through

Christ!