People Made to Fear God
11He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man can’t find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end. 12I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice, and to do good as long as they live. 13Also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy good in all his labor, is the gift of God. 14I know that whatever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; and God has done it, that men should fear before him. 15That which is has been long ago, and that which is to be has been long ago: and God seeks again that which is passed away. 16Moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, that wickedness was there. 17I said in my heart, “God will judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.” 18I said in my heart, “As for the sons of men, God tests them, so that they may see that they themselves are like animals. 19For that which happens to the sons of men happens to animals. Even one thing happens to them. As the one dies, so the other dies. Yes, they have all one breath; and man has no advantage over the animals: for all is vanity. 20All go to one place. All are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. 21Who knows the spirit of man, whether it goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, whether it goes downward to the earth?” 22Therefore I saw that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his works; for that is his portion: for who can bring him to see what will be after him?
Solomon is telling us what happens after a person dies. He said that the dead cannot come back into this world just because they are curious about its affairs, and that even if they did not finish the work they were doing, they can never come back into the world. Once we die like this, we have nothing more to do with this world, so we must live well while we are alive, without regret.
The moment the body and the soul separate, a person is completely cut off from the world. So they can have no influence on it at all and exist only in the memories of the living. Relationships with parents and children, brothers and sisters, and friends are relationships for as long as we live; once we die, we exist only in the memories of the living, and there is nothing we can do for one another. However much food people set out in remembrance of the day someone died, the one who has left the world can never eat it. That is why ancestral rites are meaningless. Solomon says clearly that even if we do not finish our work while we live, and even if we wonder how that work is going, we cannot come back.
People and animals breathe the same way and die the same way, and after death they return to the dust the same way, so people and animals are no different at all. But the Bible says that the soul of an animal goes down to the earth and the spirit of a person goes up to God, and that this is the difference between people and animals.
If someone whose holy spirit goes up to God lives a life no different from an animal’s, they will be judged for that sin when they meet God. That is why we must live according to God’s will now, while we are alive. A life without Christ has not been forgiven its sin, so it cannot escape judgment.
You know that to enter heaven after death you must believe in Jesus. Yet if anyone still does not receive Jesus Christ and falls into darkness, nothing could be sadder. The word that no one can bring back into the world someone who has left it tells us that death cuts a person off completely from this world. So we can see how important it is to live well by faith now. Once the body is put off, people are divided between heaven and hell, with Jesus Christ, the standard of salvation, at the center. I am not saying this to threaten you into going to church; I am saying it because it is true. So you must prepare for the life after death by faith.
Whether old or young, we must fill the time we have been given with faith in Jesus Christ alone, for death keeps no fixed age. If Hezekiah had looked back on his life before he died, I think he would have regretted most of all the moment when his life was extended by fifteen years. He would have regretted it, wondering what he had prayed so desperately for, because during those fifteen extra years he fathered the wicked Manasseh.
Manasseh became king at twelve and reigned for fifty-five years. He set up idols in Yahweh’s house, built altars for all the army of the sky in the temple courts, made his children pass through the fire, and did other evil things. He also raised up those who had familiar spirits and wizards, worshiped idols, and killed many innocent people who served God. For if Hezekiah had left the world gladly when God called him, the sin of filling the nation with idols would never have been committed. But this too was not something Hezekiah could decide, so even his regret is nothing but vanity of vanities.
Starting now, imagine that you too have come to the last moment before you leave the world, and look back over the years you have lived. There will be moments when words and deeds you thought came from love for your family now look, as you think back, less like love and more like emotion let loose because you could not master your own temper and pride. There will also have been moments when you did not forgive with a gentle heart and, narrow in outlook, failed to respond maturely. You will also realize that things you thought great enough to stake your life on, to defend what you had learned and what you believed, were, looking back, only trivial passing affairs of the world. You may even want to tell your younger self, who staked your life on things that were vanity of vanities, that it was not so important.
If there had not been that time when you received an answer and rejoiced, you would not be regretting like this now; and the moments when you feared people more than God and shrank to the size of an ant will also seem, as you think of them now, to be vanity of vanities. There will also be the regret of wondering how it would have been if, back when you hated so much, flew into rages, scrambled, and poured all your passion into things that are over the moment you leave the world, you had stood back a little, judged spiritually, and thought a little more objectively. There will surely also be moments when you regret that, however angry you were, you said what you should not have, or wish you had paid more attention and shown more love. At the time you thought it was your best, but looking back, it may have happened because you could not bend your pride.
As people go through life, there are one or two things they take a special interest in. What is it that you are more interested in now than God? You may regret not having kept your faith to the end and loved those beside you more, had you known you would leave the world this emptily. Solomon knew that once he died he could not return to the world, and so he regretted all the more the years he had spent living for pleasure. In the world, good people in authority sometimes lose great power and wealth overnight, and wicked people in authority sometimes live comfortably with power and wealth, without going through a single hardship.
Our lives are just this: things happen in them that no one can predict. It is only natural that people who cannot know what will happen in their own future cannot find out the work of the eternal God. Seen against the history of God’s work, our lives are as slight as a single dot. We cannot know how God will lead our lives or when he will bring them to an end, so all a person can do is live honestly by faith, doing good.
If you could know everything that will happen in the future, do you think you could live happily without anxiety or worry? If people knew what would happen but could not stop it, they would never get free of their worry, and so it might be even more painful. Even if people knew the future, they would in the end judge and decide the same way, so as the event drew near they would only grow more anxious and their worries would only pile up. That is why God told us to live content with today.
Matthew 6:34
34Therefore don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own evil is sufficient.
Jesus told us not to be anxious today for tomorrow; tomorrow can be anxious for itself, and so today is sufficient for today. To live that way, we must be careful in what we say and do today and judge prudently, so that we do not create tomorrow’s problems. A person who does not create problems in this way is the one who lives a peaceful life, not anxious about tomorrow. A foolish person is one who lives unhappily today in order to be happy tomorrow. On the other hand, one who enjoys today without preparing for tomorrow is also foolish.
To make today a day of contentment, we need good wisdom. Someone who lives only for themselves and pays no attention to the unhappiness of those beside them, even when those people are unhappy because of them, is making their own tomorrow unhappy. Selfish people who make those beside them unhappy for the sake of their own pleasure and enjoyment, or because of their pride and temper, are not forgiven by God. Such behavior is itself something people can do only because they do not believe in Jesus Christ. So unless they abandon that life, the repentance they speak with their lips does not reach God.
People who believe in God strive so that those beside them smile happily because of them, lean on them, and have peace of mind. Those who are with such a good person will taste the happiness of enjoying on this earth the peace and rest that are enjoyed in heaven. Giving peace to the people you are with and helping them feel happy is by no means easy. It is impossible without self-sacrifice and effort. So if someone strives for the heart and peace of the other person more than for their own, God will see it and fill them with overflowing grace. So it is also a blessing that people do not know their own end.
What would you do if you had to leave the world without even time to leave last words to your family? If you meant to apologize tomorrow morning but today turns out to be your last day in the world, the chance to apologize is gone forever. So we must live now thanking, loving, apologizing, and forgiving. If we live a beautiful life like this, filling today with faith and love, the moment of death, which could come at any time, is not frightening. Because people do not know their final moment, they can live today in peace and can plan for tomorrow. People who have entrusted their lives to God in this way always live with thanksgiving, praise, and prayer, and so they can enjoy on this earth, too, the joy that is enjoyed in heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:16
16Moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, that wickedness was there.
Christ is the righteous Judge who will judge human beings on the last day. All the ways of Christ are perfect and just, true and without falsehood. This holy God created people in his own image, but people committed the sin of eating the fruit that gives the knowledge of good and evil. So although they try to live good lives, evil always exists alongside them. Even in the place of justice, where justice should be done, evil is being done. Human pride, which defied the Word, has made it impossible to do true good. The courts are the ground in which a society grows, so they must rest on God’s law and on trust. Yet Solomon saw judges taking bribes and handing down unjust rulings, and he lamented greatly.
If you have been taught that bribery is an evil sin and yet use bribes to get ahead instead of succeeding by your own ability, you will surely fail, because it is sin. Bribery is an act against God’s will and comes from human greed, so God will never help the person who has committed that sin. God wants you to do your best to develop your abilities. So if you want to succeed, work hard by good means and live sincerely and honestly.
We must first rightly define good and evil as people see them and good and evil as God sees them. Those who decide good and evil by human judgment are no different from foolish animals. God meant to reveal his justice through judges. Seen broadly, judges may be parents who show their children the way of life, pastors who teach believers truth and untruth, or teachers who teach their students.
So judges must weigh good and evil at the same time and must find the way for people to live, and for that reason they must carry a heavy sense of responsibility. And judges must not forget that they themselves are sinners who have both good and evil in them, and they must give right judgments according to the law God has given. When people pass judgment on the sins of other people, they have received a very great authority, like that of a god. So judges must live honestly and act justly. Parents, pastors, and teachers are people who go ahead of others, so they must judge rightly and live rightly, just as God is just and true and without falsehood. To teach children, believers, and students false ways is to defy God’s will; if that has happened, it must be repented of.
Luke 16 records the story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus. The rich man, who had lived only for his own happiness and pleasure, and Lazarus, who had lived a painful life with nothing to eat, both left the world. One had lived in wealth, and the other had lived in poverty with nothing to eat. After these two left the world, something they had never imagined happened in the life after death: a life completely reversed from the one in the world was waiting for them. The rich man, who had lived at ease, throwing great feasts with music and wine, would have been shocked to find himself in the middle of hell. He had never once in his life thought that he might end up in such a place, so he had not prepared for life after death.
Lazarus, on the other hand, lived a life despised even by dogs because he always had to go hungry in hard circumstances, but the moment he put off his body, his soul was held in Abraham’s bosom. He had already forgotten everything of the world and was enjoying peace and rest, so he would have been all the more thankful to be enjoying peace in Abraham’s bosom. I have always preached that what separated these two was faith, the thing the world held cheap. So do not forget it.
The rich man knew that Lazarus, a man of faith, was starving at his gate, yet even while he gave food to animals, he did not share food with Lazarus. He cared nothing for Lazarus’s suffering; that is why he did not share his food. But after death the rich man came to suffer more than Lazarus had suffered, and ended up begging Lazarus for a single drop of water. Now the rich man understood how greatly Lazarus had suffered at the gate of his house all that time, but there was no way to undo it.
So, hoping that his five brothers in the world would not come to hell, he begged that Lazarus be sent back into the world. But Abraham said that there are many preachers in the world, and that those who do not listen to them will not listen even if one rises from the dead and brings them the Word. This means that there are people who will not believe in Christ even if they experience and see countless miracles, and there are people who receive him just by hearing the gospel.
A person who hears the gospel and whose life does not change shows by that very fact that they have not received Christ, and so falls into hell. For us who hear this word, that is a fearful warning. But it is also a word of blessing: those who live good lives by faith enter the heaven Jesus Christ has made, even without striving for it.
In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, we see that the rich man still carries the anxieties of the world after death, while Lazarus, the man of faith, has forgotten all the worries and cares of the world. The rich man tries to keep his brothers from coming to hell, so it seems that even after death he remembers his life in the world. But Lazarus, held in Abraham’s bosom, does not remember the things of the world, and from this we can see that in heaven people lay down all the burdens of the world and enjoy peace in the glory of God. If people remembered the things of the world in heaven, that in itself would not be heaven.
What we must notice here is that it is Abraham, not Lazarus, who is giving all the answers. Lazarus is enjoying peace and rest in Abraham’s bosom, so he has forgotten all the suffering he went through in the world. But the rich man cannot forget the days when he lived in luxury in the world, so hell, without a drop of water, will be all the more painful to him. Afraid that his brothers would come to this place ruled by Satan, he asked that the dead Lazarus be sent to them, but the dead cannot come to the world.
Those who do not receive Jesus Christ, though God gave them the chance to hear the gospel, gain nothing from regret after death, however great it is.
Friends, the rich man was not someone who did not know God. He was someone who thought he believed in God well. He thought he had become rich because his faith was good and he had been blessed, so he dressed in purple and fine linen and pretended his faith was good. But even if people go to church, worship, and pretend to have faith, if they do not live as Jesus Christ said, they are sinning. Do not hold a faith of your own making; lean on the Holy Spirit so that you will not sin, and strive to change your life.
What words, actions, and work fill most of your day, and what do you think about most? When a mother cooks rice for her family and trims the bean sprouts, that work is not worthless just because it does not earn money; it is God’s work. Working hard at your company, too, helps your family keep healthy lives and serve God well, so it is also God’s work.
Food made with care is the most basic thing in human life. That is why parents must devote themselves to their families with a sense of mission, and children must be grateful to such parents. Knowing such love, sacrifice, and gratitude and living rightly is also God’s work. If truly grateful hearts come together, families can live more happily, and when healthy families like these come together, the church becomes healthier. If believers have a healthy faith, someone will be influenced by them and receive Jesus Christ. So God, who sees the sacrifice of such believers, will lead them on a safe path so that they can give thanks in all things. Such a blessing is the reward, and this is a believer who has carried out the mission well. When believers who set such an example preach the gospel, their word gains power and can influence many people.
Friends, every relationship is connected only while we are alive. So while you are alive, love deeply, embrace, forgive, and share. Death affects only the living, so I hope you will share the gospel with those beside you and embrace them with overflowing love.