Passage: Ecclesiastes 7:13-18 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Bittersweet SymphonyAn old man turned ninety-eight He won the lottery and died the next day… A traffic jam when you're already late… It's a death row pardon two minutes too late… And isn't it ironic? Don't you think? 1"Ironic" by Alanis Morissette, Glen Ballard Those are some lines from Alanis Morissette's 1995 smash hit, "Ironic," a song that recounts all of the ways that life doesn't make sense. How the world doesn't work the way we want it to. How powerless we are in the face of circumstance and how often Murphy's Law tends to work against us. I wasn't allowed to listen to Alanis Morissette in 1995, and for good reason. Don't take what I'm saying here an an endorsement. But it is interesting to me that, 30 years later, her song captures an aspect of life on planet earth that was almost totally missing from the Christian music that I was allowed to listen to in 1995. A lot of CCM music from that era can be summed up like this: Life is hard, but it's okay because I'll quote a Bible verse and/or a Christian catchphrase, and you'll feel fine by the second chorus. But life doesn't work like that. Three minutes and a cliche don't make everything better. Life is hard. Planet earth is a tough place to live. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Things so often don't make sense. And that's why I'm so grateful for the book of Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth, the preacher of Ecclesiastes, is relentlessly realistic about life under the sun. In our time today, we'll be looking at a whole bunch of passages in Ecclesiastes that talk about the way that life so often makes no sense and things so often don't work out the way we expect and how there's very little we can do about any of that. And then we'll see how Ecclesiastes helps us to have a truly authentic faith in the midst of this messy and broken world. 1. A World That Doesn't Make Sense Let's start with Qoheleth's reflections on a world that doesn't make sense. And we'll start with his reflections on injustice and oppression, picking up with a single verse in chapter 3. Injustice & Oppression Verse 16: “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” (Ecclesiastes 3:16). As Qoheleth looks around, he sees a world that isn't working the way it's supposed to. And a key example of that is the way that wickedness had taken root in the place of place. "The place of justice" or "the place of righteousness" is perhaps a reference to the courts, where cases were tried. In many Israelite towns this happened at the city gates where the elders of the place would decide on cases together. Their job was to make sure that righteousness and justice was upheld. They were to speak up for the innocent and make sure that the vulnerable was protected. But instead of justice, Qoheleth sees wickedness. The judges were condemning the innocent and protecting the wicked. Perhaps taking bribes, favouring their buddies, protecting their own. You've no doubt had the experience, or know someone who had the experience, of going to seek a decision from a court or a government official or someone with some power over you, and you're looking for righteousness or justice, and instead a decision is made that is just wrong. It's wicked. And there's nothing you can do about it. Surely, this is one of the greatest examples we can think of for a world that is not working the way it's supposed to. We see more examples of a similar experience down in chapter 4, starting in verse 1. “Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them” (Ecclesiastes 4:1). Powerful people using their power to oppress the vulner...
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2025/11/2347 分