Ecclesiastes 11:1-10
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Ecclesiastes 11:1
Cast your bread on the surface of the waters, for you will find it after
many days.
If we were to literally do this, we might change this to cast you bread
upon the waters and after many days you will have soggy bread.
Well, we can be sure that is not the interpretation. This verse must be
understood in the context of the next verse.
Ecclesiastes 11:2
Divide your portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know
what misfortune may occur on the earth.
The dividing of your portion is an investment strategy. Our portion is any
money to be used in commerce. The wisdom here is to diversify investments
to seven or even to eight different categories.
Since we do not know the future we do not know what will happen with our
investments so the wise advise is to diversify. Prudent investments in a
number of ventures.
Rather than, as we might say, putting all our eggs in one basket.
In light of that we then go back to verse one and see it as a statement
regarding commerce. The wisdom is that we are to Send our grain across the
sea and in time you will receive a return for you investment.
However, this same principle can be more broadly applied.
When you send grain that you own across the sea you are taking a risk. You
may never see it or any return again. That activity, the activity of investing
requires faith.
Ecclesiastes 11:3-6
If the clouds are full, they pour out rain upon the earth; and whether
a tree falls toward the south or toward the north, wherever the tree falls,
there it lies.
He who watches the wind will not sow and he who looks at the clouds will
not reap.
Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones {are formed}
in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God
who makes all things.
Sow your seed in the morning, and do not be idle in the evening, for you
do not know whether morning or evening sowing will succeed, or whether both
of them alike will be good.
In the same way, the activities of life are a risk.
1. We do not know what the future holds and therefore, anything we do will
involve a certain amount of risk.
2. The level of risk taken is equal to our information regarding what we
are doing and our trust in that information.
3. The level of trust we have for example in making an investment is not
based upon some uncertain wish for the future but is based upon our objectivity
in evaluating the information, past performance, history, experience. These
facts become the basis of our trust.
4. In the same way as we approach the future in the Christian life, we have
available to us certain facts as revealed by God through Bible Doctrine.
5. It is on the basis or foundation of what we know of God and how well
we know God that we venture into the future by faith.
6. However, there is still a measure of risk. Every time we get away from
that which is familiar, that which is comfortable, we become risk takers.
7. Whenever we take a risk we do so by faith in God, His Word, our experience
with Him.
8. This is the application of faith, a looking back upon what we have by
way of doctrine and relationship with Him, and a looking ahead with confidence
not in ourselves or our circumstance, but in him.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction
of things not seen.
Therefore, stepping out on faith is not a step into nothingness. But it
is a step that takes a risk because we are stepping away from ourselves
and onto the solid foundation God has set for us.
Illustration: Philippians 2:25-30
But I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow
worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger and minister to my
need;
because he was longing for you all and was distressed because you had heard
that he was sick.
For indeed he was sick to the point of death, but God had mercy on him,
and not on him only but also on me, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.
Therefore I have sent him all the more eagerly in order that when you see
him again you may rejoice and I may be less concerned about you.
Therefore receive him in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in
high regard;
because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life
to complete what was deficient in your service to me.
When we chose to invest in the commerce of God's plan we so by faith and
that faith overcomes the risk.
At verse 7 Solomon begins to move towards the conclusion of this examination
of significance. He is no doubt older now, having gone through fifteen years
out of the plan of God. Fifteen years and all he has to show for it is emptiness.
But the experiments in seeking significance have done one thing. They have
driven him back to what is really important in life, dependence upon God.
So he begins his conclusion by talking about light.
Ecclesiastes 11:7
The light is pleasant and it is good for the eyes to see the sun.
Solomon uses the figure of light as a contrast to the darkness he has experienced
for the last many years.
Where there had been darkness the lights are now coming on.
Solomon uses the figure of light back in Eccl. 2:13 as a parallel to wisdom.
And I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.
We are to live in the light, enjoy the day, but keep an eye to the future,
just as we are aware every day that the light will not last, darkness is
coming.
Ecclesiastes 11:8
Indeed, if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all,
and let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many. Everything
that is to come will be futility.
Solomon never looks beyond the grave. He is describing life on earth and
the quality of life man can have when he is a part of the plan of God.
But remember that even the Lord said that He came to give life and give
life an abundance.
That abundance for life is what Solomon comes to now.
HE HAS TRIED TO FIND IT IN MANY WAYS and he has failed, now he sees, as
the darkness of his life draws near, what was really important all along.
His relationship with God.
Ecclesiastes 11:9
Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant
during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart
and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment
for all these things.
Solomon has described the legitimate pleasures of life in many ways in this
book, eating, drinking, enjoyment of marriage, finding satisfaction in one's
work.
Now he expands that out to include doing what is pleasant to the heart even
to following the impulses of the heart.
The word IMPULSES is the Hebrew DE-REK and is used for a road or highway
but also for the manner of one's life
And then he says that the young man should seek his desires, the desires
of his heart.
DESIRE is MAR-EH which is also used for vision, so follow you visions, you
dreams.
NOW THIS MAY SOUND LIKE HE IS SAYING IF it is right to you do it...but notice
the last phrase.
Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things.
So what is the impulse of you heart, what is your dream? Have you looked
at these in the light of what God says of them, how He would judge them?
SO MUCH OF LIFE IS MADE OF THINGS that are biblically gray. We do not have
chapter and verse to tell us what to do in these areas of doubt.
So what are we to do...enjoy life. Follow your dreams but keep an eye to
how God would judge.
REMEMBER: Solomon does not look beyond the grave. Any judgment he looks
to is not in eternity but in time. God, he says, judges these things now.
And Solomon has experienced this, the judgment of God on his following of
his impulses and desires that were nothing more than an attempt to find
significance in life a part from God.
Ecclesiastes 11:10
So, remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body,
because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.
Vexation of heart is ANXIETY, the psychological problems we wrestle with.
Pain of the body is the PHYSICAL problems we deal with.
This is the opposite side of the enjoyment of life he mentioned earlier.
They contrast with the gloom and decline of physical vigor he will describe
as a part of old age in the next chapter.
Cast of the anxiety, put away the pain, chances are the pain will go away
and the anxiety will change to something else. After all nothing does remain
the same.
In our youth we do not let these things get us down.
Yet such passages as Proverbs 5:7-14 tell us that we can avoid these effects
by a wise lifestyle lived in the fear of the Lord.
And you say, How I have hated instruction! And my heart spurned reproof!
And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, Nor inclined my ear
to my instructors! I was almost in utter ruin In the midst of the assembly
and congregation.
NOW HERE IS SOLOMON'S ARGUMENT.
He is now old and he has wasted so much of his life pursuing significance
a[art from God.
And he now looks back and sees so many years wasted.
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