October 21, 2010 – Ecclesiastes 10:5 – 12

Really, it appears you can boil most of this book down into three verses.

12:8 - Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, all things are vanity!

This is repeated many times throughout the book and is the running theme. He has gone through different experiences in his life and told of his trying to live life the right way. However, whenever he see people striving to achieve things, he realizes that when they get them, they will not be able to take them with them when their life is over. Not only that, but the more you get, the more you want, and the more worries you will have in life. That is what the material world does to a person. It continually tells them you need this or that, you should never be satisfied with the things you have. Trying to gain all this things in life is a vanity, a chase after the wind. But not only material things, but attributes such as knowledge and wisdom are also vanity if achieved for the purpose of prestige in this life. Thus, physical and nonphysical, all things are vanity.

12:13-14 - The last word, when all is heard: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all; because God will bring to judgment every work, with all its hidden qualities, whether good or bad.

People will always write books about how to live life and to study them all is a strain. Here is the last word, the one that sums up them all. We see this today with all the self help books that are out there. What do they really tell you that is not contained in this verse. If we live life fearing God and keeping His commandments, this is man’s all. And we will be judged according to our every work. I love how it talks about a works hidden qualities. I take this to mean several things. First, a person can do a good work for the wrong reasons. I think I did this for quite a while in some of my work with TEC years ago. I was there either to help myself or impress people, not to help others really. Does that mean people weren’t helped, no. But if those works are judged by their hidden qualities, they will not be weighed as valuable as things I do now, which I feel have a more holy motivation.

Secondly, the hidden qualities could be those results we don’t see. In the “5 People you Meet in Heaven” book, one of the people is someone the character never met. He was killed in a car accident that occurred because the character, as a child, ran out into the street to get a ball. The person swerved to miss him and was killed in an accident. The character had no idea this had ever happened. What effect our actions have, for good or bad, we will never fully know. But that is something that we will be judged on and find out exactly what effect they had at our judgment. We must think very carefully about our every action because we do not know who is watching, who will be reacting, who will be imitating, and who may be effected. This is something we should never take for granted yet is something we may never think about as we go through our daily lives. Pray that we are ever mindful of our actions and their “hidden qualities” as we move through life.

As a secondary thought, the Protestant Bible has this book in its canon. What does the verse about bringing our every work to judgment fit into a sola fide theology.