“What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away. Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?”

We’ve covered many recurring themes in Ecclesiastes up to this point – the futility of human existence, the brevity with which we live upon the earth, how temporarily satisfying, yet ultimately empty our toil is. We’ve considered Solomon’s position – the exceedingly wise old king, not necessarily flourishing in his later years, but looking back and with eyes sharpened by divine wisdom, lamenting his faults and failures, and writing what in many ways amounts to a warning for all who follow him. There is no true glory in the glory of man, no endurance to the work of our hands, there is nothing that, for all our perceived intellect and power, we can do to stay the shadow of death, walk back the hands of time, or preserve the fleeting legacy that we imagine ourselves to build. But for all these words, there is an unspoken response – silent echoes that reverberate back, questions that loop again and again with each of Solomon’s pronouncements. Man is weak, sinful, wicked, and fleeting – but what are we if our lives are turned over to God? God is mighty, holy, righteous, and eternal. We may be broken vessels, incapable of repairing ourselves, but if all this is fleeting and pointless and destined to end in death, and that’s all that the world can hold, what can we know through the transforming, transcendent power of God? In ourselves there is a dark emptiness, the chasm of Sheol stretches wide within our own hearts, but in God there is Light, and Life, and eternal purpose. Psalm 23:3 tells us of the Lord,

“He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

If left to rely on our own merit we would be consigned to death forever, but our great hope is the power and righteousness of the name of God. Last week we looked at the timing of all things and the imbalance of the flesh that is ultimately corrected by the perfect balance of God. Now, after the almost poetic ebb and flow of the first eight verses, Solomon returns to the faults of man with a magnifying glass and communicates this brutal truth – we are creatures of dust, and left to our own devices we are truly good for nothing. However to again ask the unwritten question – what happens when we who are dust in the wind, destined to the same death as all flesh, are made new by God? What happens when our own broken wills are replaced by His one, perfect, right one? What happens when we decrease and He increases, to the point that it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us? What we can see and understand is that when the perishable puts on the imperishable, when the miraculous work of God unfolds in our lives, what once was dust may become something that endures to eternity, belonging in the kingdom of God.

The Forsaken Kingdom of Dust

1. No Contribution

“What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Romans 1:19–23 tells us,

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”

But if we consider this alongside Romans 3:10–12, which says,

“… None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

We have to adopt a measure of humility, and acknowledge that the mysteries of God are not only obscure to the unrighteous – even the redeemed, the children of God maintain a war with their flesh that often hampers our sight. God is too great, too righteous and pure, too vast and wonderful for us to fully fit Him within the bounds of our limited minds. Isaiah 55:8–9 says,

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

God is not a figure that we can tuck neatly into a box and treat as if we fully comprehend all that He is. Even through the illumination of the living, breathing Word, where God mercifully reveals many facets of Himself, it would be beyond foolish to imagine that we understand a complete picture of our Creator and the Author of reality Himself. Despite the fact that John is told at the end of Revelation to not seal up the words of the prophecy he’s been given, there is one part of what he’s shown that he’s specifically told not to record in Revelation 10:2–4,

“He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.’”

As Solomon says, God has placed the knowledge of Himself within the very bones of man, woven into our very being – and yet our eyes remain darkened by the time and space of our own reality. Because of our sin, because of the stain that exists in our flesh, because of the limited structure of time in which we exist, we lack complete knowledge, but rather exist with the day and time in which we live thrust before our faces, unable to fully know what has come before and what comes after. These mysteries are solved in eternity when the shadows of this existence are erased, but for now we live with shuttered sight – entirely blind except for the illumination that comes from God alone. In seeing and understanding what is revealed we contribute nothing – all we can do is seek, responding to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, but whatever understanding comes is a gift from God alone, not anything seized by the wit or power of man.

“I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it.”

What true work we do in this life is not of ourselves – there is no corporate legacy to build, no family dynasty to leave behind, not a single thing that any man can do to leave a mark upon the world that will not fade into nothing through the passage of time. Rather, the true work is of the kingdom of heaven – our work is fleeting, monuments built today that are crumbled to sand tomorrow. But when we’re used to do the work and will of God, then we take part in work that is eternal, unfading, imperishable. In the work of God we’re blessed to take part in something that doesn’t just endure for the sake of itself, but because it truly matters. To put it simply, there are no mortal riches that compare with testifying to the truth of Holy God. There is not a single possession, or collection of possessions over the whole of the earth that compares to the value of one more soul added to the eternal song of heaven. We do not contribute, but we are blessed immeasurably as God contributes and brings His will to fruition, and uses us as part of the process.

“God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.”

What is it that has been driven away? In some respects we could say that it’s the fear of God itself. We sometimes struggle with the word “fear” in Scripture, because it’s not being applied in the exact framework that we understand fear in our modern language or culture. We’re not called to run screaming from God, we’re not supposed to experience pure terror in our relationship with our Father. However, we are to show Him awe, reverence, respect, worship, admiration, and mixed in with all of this – fear. The fear of one who is flawed before the One who is flawless, the fear of one who is finite before the One who is infinite – we should feel fear and wonder as we contemplate and worship God who spoke all creation into being and breathed us into life. And that fear – that beautiful, righteous fear is the exact opposite of what Adam and Eve showed in the garden. Genesis 3:2–6,

“And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

What Adam and Eve showed (and by their example, all mankind), was a profound lack of fear for the commands of God. The fear returned when God came forth, when the two, aware of their nakedness, tried to hide themselves from their Creator. The sin of man is characterized by a distinct, and remarkably ignorant lack of fear. We mock God, we trivialize Him, we make light of His commands, His works, and His bride – we are so insanely foolish in our sin that we can’t fathom how profoundly wrong we are. But rather than simply end all of creation and existence as we know it, as God is more than capable of and well within His holy right to do, He seeks what is lost. We contribute nothing, and yet through His mighty contributions, through the framework of existence and creation itself He points us toward Himself, He offers us a path, a gracious invitation to know Him – to love and fear Him in His might and glory, and to live a life that is more than the empty contribution of dust.

2. No Justice

 “Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.”

This is a fairly straightforward continuation from what we’ve already established – if we in our sin are incapable of contributing to the makeup and course of the world, how then could we possibly dream of bringing forth some kind of justice? We’ve already read from Romans 3 as Paul quotes Psalms, reminding us that no one seeks righteousness, that no one does good. But we can see how this directly applies to justice, and how we are in a state of complete lack, looking at Isaiah 59:1–4, 7-8,

“Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness. No one enters suit justly; no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.” … “Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways. The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked; no one who treads on them knows peace.”

We who are made of dust, we who are still hampered in our flesh bring forth no righteousness of our own accord, we deliver no justice by our own hands. Paul – Apostle, church planter, and writer of the majority of the New Testament Paul, speaks of the war and discord that exists within himself in Romans 7:21–25,

“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

Humanity has no heart for justice or righteousness – we call sweet, bitter and bitter, sweet, we swap light for dark, and dark for light – it is in God and God alone that righteousness is found, it is only through Him that this is delivered to us. Solomon returns again to the matter of timing, and we’re reminded that despite the evil and chaos that the sons of men run rampant in, a day of perfect justice will come, the light of which is already shining in the hearts of those who have been made new in Christ.

3. No life

“I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.”

The fascinating thing is that this describes the entire secular understanding of humanity. From a scientific perspective we’re just animals – we’re big brained, hairless apes. Apart from our intellect, which somehow ended up evolving leaps and bounds ahead of every other living thing on the planet, to the secular mind a human is really just another animal. The thing is, in some respects, they’re right. Human beings are comprised of essentially the same tissue as other living things, and while all of nature has been designated its own place and cycle, we eat, drink, sleep, and biologically function in a similar way to many animals – at least on the surface. Because we don’t eat, drink, sleep, work, relax, or socialize like animals. We don’t build houses, raise families, or save for tomorrow in the same way as any animal – because despite surface level similarities we are entirely separate from every other living thing on earth. The scientific explanation is to throw a preposterous amount of time at the situation and claim extreme evolutionary advancement on the part of humanity. This works for them because if you’re going to deny God then you’ve certainly got to come up with some kind of explanation, and I suppose if you’re going to reject the Almighty, why not shove the theory of evolution down everyone’s throats as if it’s fact? But where man may claim a theoretical answer, God has already provided a concrete one – we may bear many similarities to animals in a biological sense, we are ultimately vastly different from all other life on earth. The simple and straightforward explanation of this lies in Genesis 1:26,

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’”

It is in the fact that we’re made in the image of God that we are made more than animals – and yet this is the thing that humanity rejects. We can’t claim to be made in the image of God, and also deny God at the same time. And so the children of man, with limited sight and limited intellect, look upon themselves and reason that we’re nothing more than beasts – rejecting their Creator, and our true purpose and call to life, favoring the fleeting creations of our own minds.

“For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?”

It’s interesting that Solomon makes the point that man and beast both live and die, and that we know no advantage over the animals, and yet he then points us to work. As I’ve mentioned, humans and animals do many of the same things, but because of our consciousness, our self-awareness, we do them for very different reasons, and this is vividly illustrated through work. One could argue that animals work to survive and humans work to survive, but this is aggressively reductionist and trivializes the matter. A man might work and save for the future, and a squirrel might work and save for the future, but there’s a significant difference between a cache of acorns and a 401k. There isn’t a single squirrel in all the world who pulls a double shift collecting nuts so that it has extra time next week to take a vacation. Animals do not eat, or hoard, or migrate because of thought or reason, they operate on instinct. There is no self-awareness, no thought behind the action, just movement. They live their lives without ever being fully aware of their lives. We are not like this at all – in part because of the curse of the fall. God says to Adam in Genesis 3:19,

“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

We may be moving toward the same bodily death as every beast made of flesh and blood, but humanity alone is aware of the path we’re on – and this unique quality, this awareness and ability to reason sets us apart from the animals entirely. We will all meet a mortal end, there is no lasting life in flesh, but what happens in the spirit is another matter. There is a clear, eternal distinction shown between those who have lived their lives in rebellion to God according to the flesh, and those whose lives have been saved by the redeeming blood of Christ, accounted in Revelation 20:12–15,

“And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Because we are made in the image of God, we have been given a distinction and an accountability that far exceeds what any animal has. We are held to a standard that applies to man alone, but we are also valued over and above the rest of the natural world, because unlike the beasts of the field, we have been made in the image of God. Jesus teaches in Matthew 10:29–33,

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

We are intimately known and lovingly made – and so the transgression of our sin is all the worse when, for the blessings we’ve been given we reject our Creator. What we can see and understand from Solomon’s words is a simple, brutal truth – mankind rules over a crumbling kingdom of dust. We make no meaningful contributions, our sense of justice and righteousness is no more than a lying imitation, and we hold no true life in the fading vapor of our mortal flesh. All that we’re capable of on our own is to live, to die, and to remain in the separation of death for eternity – but God is our deliverer from this fate. He is our Father, our King, our Good Shepherd. He is the Door opened before us, the Light to light our path, and the Life that endures forever and ever. If we are dust that is here today and scattered by the wind tomorrow, then He is the Rock, eternal and constant, and in Him we have the hope and promise of an eternity beyond this corrupt world, kept in His presence and purpose forever.