Friend, you brought nothing into this world and you can’t take anything out. And there’s an issue here that’s very important about our accountability to God. When you die, it’s all over. What you’re going to do, you do now. There’s a time for everything. This is the only time you have to live right now. You may not have tomorrow.
SPEAKER 01 :
When we hear the word judgment, it can get personal really fast. We might think, what about me? Where do I stand? Ecclesiastes chapter 3 reminds us that God is a God of justice. Right and wrong do not blur with him. Sin is dealt with, and that raises the question, if God judges both the righteous and the wicked, what hope does anyone have? Well, this is Hope for Today, the Bible teaching ministry of David Hawking. And scripture gives us a clear answer. God judged sin, not by overlooking it, but by placing that judgment on his son. Today, David continues in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, as God’s word shows us again how justice and mercy meet at the cross. We’ll get back into the passage in just a moment. First, we’re fairly early still in the series in Ecclesiastes, and we encourage you not to miss a single program of this very powerful Old Testament series. But if you do, well, you can catch up at DavidHawking.org. Click on the radio tab, and you’ll see the most recent broadcast there for you. You can also find David’s original message outlines and sermon notes for the series. There’s a set of sermon notes for each message in the series. And when you get these, you can follow along with David capturing key points and remembering illustrations and lessons that you want for the future. Now, the sermon notes for the Ecclesiastes series, the complete pack, just $10. And you can purchase them online and download them. You’ll have them in seconds. Or if you want a printed copy, just give us a call. The website again, davidhawking.org. Our phone number in the U.S., 875-BIBLE. And in Canada, 888-75-BIBLE. Let’s get back to Ecclesiastes 3, verses 16-22 now. And here’s David with day three of A Time for Judgment.
SPEAKER 02 :
In chapter 3, verses 1 to 15, we had the following points, just to kind of review in your mind a little bit. That great section dealing with everything, there’s a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. And we made these statements. One. that we must acknowledge that God has a reason for everything that happens. Two, that we must accept the fact of his control and purpose in our lives. Three, that we must appreciate the time God has given to us. Tells us how to respond with joy and rejoicing. And four, that we must apply these facts that we know, that God is in control, that he has a time for everything. that he’s given us time to use and to enjoy for his glory, but we have to apply those facts to our attitude toward God. And then the final point we gave you was that we must answer to God for how we have used our time. Okay, enjoy it, but recognize that God’s going to ask you to give account for how you’ve used your time. God’s given us time to enjoy, and to everything there’s a purpose and a reason. But he said, okay, enjoy it, but know this, God’s going to bring you into account for what you have done. That is a principle that nestles itself in the character of God. God couldn’t possibly not evaluate you. God couldn’t possibly have no point at which He gives you a judgment on what you have done. Now, if you’ve turned to Christ, there’s no sin-hell issue here. But you are going to be evaluated for what you have done for Christ now. Now, why is that such a problem? Many Christians have said to me, if you believe that, it’s like God’s in heaven ready to hit you over the head with a bat. You know, you’re living in fear. I’m not living in fear. Everything he says about that is reward and joy and blessing. So I’m literally robbing myself when I don’t live under the accountability of God. I’m robbing myself of the wonderful things that God says he will give me in the future. I ask you, do you believe it or do you not believe it? 2 Corinthians 5. Let’s take a look at this one. Verse 9. Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. For what? That each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. You know, really, God probably made a mistake there. Why don’t you just cross out bad, huh? Hey, you cross out bad, you’re under a curse in Revelation 22. Don’t add to it, don’t take away from it. It’s amazing to me how many Christians read that verse and don’t like that word bad in there. They want to take it out, but it’s in there, isn’t it? Why should I run? Am I faithful to the gospel by ignoring that? Are you kidding? I don’t like it any more than you do, but that’s what it says. He’s writing to Christians, and he says that Christians will be at the judgment seat of Christ, and it says that we’re going to receive the things done in the body according to what we’ve done, whether it’s good or whether it’s bad. That’s exactly what he said. You see, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge for the believer, certainly. It’s the lack of our focus on God that is causing most of us to think we can get away with anything. You say, well, what loss is there? Okay, loss of reward, that’s one. And I think sometimes we don’t understand what the Lord has planned for us in the future. It’s as though it doesn’t make any difference what we do now. Some people feel from the moment they accept Christ to the moment they die, it’s kind of just like a lobby. You’re waiting for something to happen. You’re just in between. Like nothing we do now is of any significance to eternity? That is not taught in the Bible. God’s going to evaluate all that we have done. He’s going to have responsibilities in His kingdom on earth, by the way, that are going to be based on it. He’s going to have rewards that are going to be based on it. I don’t understand those. I don’t know what they will entail. But I know there’s nothing you’ve done in this life that you won’t receive a hundredfold according to the Lord Jesus Christ. Every cup of cold water given in His name shall receive a reward. The Bible says God will never forget your work of love that you’ve done in ministering to the saints. I happen to believe him. I believe him. Do you believe him? Do you believe it’s going to come? You see, it will make a difference in how we live in this world. Solomon looked at the world and he said, man, there’s no judgment here. There’s no justice. There’s nothing but sin. But I know who God is and everyone must give an account. I’m going to live by that principle. I’m going to live by it. That means I won’t take revenge on people that have done me wrong. That’s one thing it means. And secondly, it means that I know one day I also will give an account of what I have done. And I want to please Him. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 here, I make it my aim, whether I die or live, to be pleasing to the Lord. I want His approval. The real tragedy is, as we all know, It’s easy to let the world’s view dominate us to the point we don’t even think about that at all. Never crosses our mind. We’re not living as though we’re accountable to God. We’re only living on horizontal. The vertical relationship is often lacking in our life. Back to Ecclesiastes 3 again. He said, I said in my heart one thing about accountability to God. But the next thing he said is what causes a lot of people trouble. He said, I said in my heart… And this is kind of a tough passage, verses 18 to 21, about the advantage of men when faced with death. Now, if you see the way he’s talking about accountability, that you’re going to have to stand before God, then I think you can understand why he brought up death. If you knew, if God just, for instance, came to you today, talked to you, identified himself, you knew clearly it was him, and he gave you his address and all that sort of thing, you knew who he was, okay, and he said to you, 2 o’clock today is your time. Just want you to know that it’s all over for you on earth, but we’ll be bringing you to heaven here at 2 o’clock. Right on the nose. So do whatever you need to do. But you know, you knew you were going to die right at 2 o’clock. It’s amazing how that sort of just levels everything. all the little games we play, you know what I mean? It just kind of crushes it. You know, all the feelings you had that you were more important than somebody else, you know, and all that sort of thing. You’re going to die today at 2 o’clock, right on the nose. That sort of just changes things, doesn’t it? In fact, we can move that up and say in 15 minutes, it’s your time. You know, it just sort of puts fear of God into you a little bit, right? And you know you’re going to go to heaven if you’re a believer, but you’re saying, wow, if we really knew that, And so Solomon, the wise man that he was, follows through on the reasoning and says, you know something? You’ve got no advantage over an animal. You all die. Boy, that’s interesting. I think we ought to look at three things here. One, the purpose of God, verse 18. I said in my heart. concerning the estate of the sons of men, God tests them that they may see that they themselves are like beasts. Notice he does not say we are animals. He did not say that. It’s a comparative statement. We’re like them in what sense? In the fact that we both die physically. Now, praise God, as the text ends, it’ll tell us that there’s a difference in the way we die. But right now, we’re just looking at what is similar. What is common about my dog and me? I hope nothing, but there is one thing. You understand? I mean, you talk about lowering yourself. I mean, look at your dumb dog. He doesn’t do anything. He just sits there and wants love, and you’ve got to feed it. And I look at the dog. What good is the dog? You know, I can’t even train the dog to go get the paper. I mean, it’s so ignorant. And I look at that dog. And God says, Dave, you are like that dog. I don’t like to hear that, okay? But God often compares us to animals. All we like sheep, the dumbest animal God ever made. Little fluffy cute things. If you don’t know about them, they’re dumb. All we like sheep have done what? We’ve gone astray. You see, there’s something about us that’s exactly like the animal. And that is that we both die physically and the bodies go to the dust and they decay. Why is God telling us that? So that we’ll wake up to the reality of what’s important. If that really is true, then what I am doing in the sense of the Spirit and what I am doing in the sense of my accountability to God is the real issue in life. Hey, we work hard at looking good, right? We beautify ourselves, put on a little foo-foo juice, whatever, comb my hair, get hair, whatever. You know, we’re working on the bod that’s going to the dust. You know, this bothered me so much I almost got irritated that I had to study Ecclesiastes. I mean, I’m looking at my dog. And I’m just looking at this passage and looking at that dog. I mean, you’ve got to do this to really get into this thing. You know what I mean? And I’m looking at that dumb dog and I’m thinking, I am not like that dog. And God says, there’s one way in which you are when you die. You know, that does something to your heart. There was a principle he understood, not only about his accountability to God, but about the advantage he has the moment he dies. Friend, you brought nothing into this world and you can’t take anything out. And there’s an issue here that’s very important about our accountability to God. When you die, it’s all over. What you’re going to do, you do now. There’s a time for everything. This is the only time you have to live right now. You may not have tomorrow. But not only the purpose of God is involved to test men and show them that fact, but also the preeminence of man is clearly shown here. In the sense of physical death, man has no preeminence at all. Thank God he does in some areas, but not in the sense of physical death. That’s why verse 19 says at the end, man has no advantage over animals in this sense. They die physically. All therefore is vanity. If the physical and the material world is all there is, then just check out death for a moment and tell me that again. What advantage is it? And also look at the place we go when we die. Verse 20, all go to one place. You say, does that mean animals are going to be in heaven? No, that’s not what he’s talking about, heaven or hell. He’s talking about going to the dust. He’s talking about a physical organism dying and going to the dust and decaying. The same thing happens to a human body that happens to an animal. Boy, look at that. Wow. Look, Solomon is not expressing uncertainty about life after death. To those of you that may have been thinking that. He’s not expressing any uncertainty about life after death. But he’s that most people, what he is saying, lack understanding of the reality of death as to what it means to their accountability to God. Physically, we are the same as the animal. And when death comes, that’s it. It’s all over. It’s time to meet God. But see, he did talk about the spiritual difference. Look at verse 21. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men which goes upward and the spirit of the beast which goes down to the earth? Now there’s a great argument over how this verse is organized and how it should be translated. Is it a question, meaning that Solomon didn’t know that when we die our spirit goes to the Lord? I don’t believe it’s a question. First of all, the word goes upward and the word goes down in Hebrew are what we call active participles. They have a definite article in front of it and grammatically it can’t be a question. It intimates that he himself knows which way they go, but he is pointing out the fact that you don’t know what’s after that. Because that’s clear from the end of verse 22 for who can bring him to see what will happen after him. What he’s trying to get people to see here, and he will mention this again in Ecclesiastes, is that when the day of your physical death comes, you are going to be facing your accountability before God. The conclusion of his whole book is, therefore, fear God and know, keep his commandments and know that he will bring you into account for everything you’ve done. Boy, what a powerful truth. Stephen, I believe, in the moment of his martyrdom, expressed somewhat of what Solomon said here when the spirit goes upward. You remember when Stephen was being stoned? He let out that cry to the Lord and said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. What happens to your physical body? It goes to the grave and it decays. But absent from the body and present with the Lord. Man is of a higher nature than simply the physical. And if the physical is all there is, if the material world is all there is, then, hey, when death comes, you are going to face your accountability before God. It’s all over. Whatever you were going to do, you can’t do anything else the moment you die. Therefore, you’re just like the animal in that sense. Solomon said, I saw under the sun a problem. Two, I set in my heart a couple of principles. One, that I’m accountable to God and that I don’t have any advantage over the animal when physical death occurs. But the third thing is in verse 22. And that’s the perspective that he accepted in the light of this. So I perceived, what? Here it is. That there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. That’s what God’s going to evaluate. That’s the possibility of reward in the future, what you have done now. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him? If there’s nothing better… Really, listen to me again. If there’s nothing better than maybe what Solomon says here could change the way some of us are running our lives now. Back up to chapter 224 and let me show you what I mean. In 224, he says there is nothing better. Chapter 224, there’s nothing better for a man that he should eat and drink and that his soul should enjoy the good of his labor. Why? Because it’s from the hand of God. Look at chapter 3, verse 12. I know there is nothing better for them to rejoice and to do good in their lives. And now he says in verse 22, I perceive that there’s nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that’s his heritage. You see, the response we should have to what we are doing is to have the joy of God. To have disappointment and bitterness because I’m going to stand before God? No, as a believer whose spirit goes upward, a believer who knows that God has promised wonderful things to us, then my whole response to what I’m doing now is the joy of God. I’m going to enjoy what I’m doing and knowing that one day I’m going to stand before him and he is going to reward us for what we have done. It does not need to be a matter of morbid thoughts and fearful suggestion to the believer. I’m going to be with the one I’ve come to know and to love. And my response over what I do in my life is going to be joy. I’m going to rejoice in it. And that’s my heritage, what I have done. You see, Jesus did say we could lay up treasures in heaven. You see, by what you do, you can send it on ahead. By the acts of love and kindness and ministry and love and ways you have ministered to people, you do send it on ahead. Therefore, I rejoice in the privilege and the joy that the hand of God has given to use my time for His glory. Are you putting Ecclesiastes together now in your mind? It’s so important to understand this. The joy of God can be there if you understand. what the hope of the believer is, and that his confidence is in the Lord and his plan. And the reason for this kind of response is the last phrase of verse 22. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him? You know the answer to that. You don’t know anything about tomorrow. Say, yes, I do. I’ve got to be at work at 8 o’clock. No, you don’t know that that’s going to happen. You have no idea that’s going to happen. You think it will. And that’s the danger, because man says, all things continue as they were from the beginning of time. Where’s the promise of his coming? I mean, I see nothing happening in the world, and you tell me God’s going to straighten things out? The believer has a confidence that is far greater than the secular world around him. He knows the Lord’s in charge. He knows there’s a day coming. He knows how it’s going to turn out. He’s got to trust the Lord, though. He doesn’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. He hears the statements of God and he must trust God and trust him completely and rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Are you?
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s David Hawking, and this is Hope for Today. David will wrap things up in just a moment, but first, Matt and I want to share this month’s featured Bible study resource package. And Matt, let’s talk about it. Solomon is called the wisest and wealthiest king among all of Israel’s kings and leaders. You know, at Ecclesiastes, Solomon lays before the answer to one of life’s most important questions we can ask. Is life worth living? If you leave a personal relationship with the God who created you, out of the answer, then the answer is clearly no. Yeah, it’s not worth the struggle, which inevitably comes to all of us. But if you see all of life as God intended, and you are rightly related to him, then the answer is an absolute yes. Yes, amen. Well, David makes the biblical case for this inside his book, Is Life? Is Life Worth Living is a powerful study guide for the book of Ecclesiastes and a perfect tool for getting the very most out of our current radio series. We’re combining the book with a complete collection of all of the messages in the Ecclesiastes series. So the 172-page book by David titled Is Life Worth Living plus all 18 messages in our Ecclesiastes radio series. And, of course, each message covers about three days on radio. Yeah, the complete package is just $40 plus shipping. It’s a perfect way to save and share all that you’ll be learning in the series for years to come. And your purchase will also help the ministry of Hope for Today. That is Life Worth Living Ecclesiastes package. Again, just $40. Consider adding a donation with your order or becoming a regular monthly contributor as long as God directs and supplies. And please pray for Hope for Today. To get your copy of the Is Life Worth Living Ecclesiastes package, call us at 800-75-BIBLE. That’s in the U.S. or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. You can also order on our website, davidhawking.org. And just before David returns, let me ask you something. Has God been using this Bible teaching on Hope for Today to steady you, to challenge you, perhaps to remind you that His Word still speaks clearly? In a very noisy world, if God is leading you, we ask you to prayerfully consider supporting this ministry. And if you’d like to make a contribution by mail in the United States, our address is Box 3927, Tustin, that’s T-U-S-T-I-N, California, 92781. In Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011, RPO7OAKS, Abbotsford, B.C., V2S 8P1. And thank you for stepping in. Well, as promised, here’s David.
SPEAKER 02 :
Take no thought for tomorrow, because tomorrow has trouble of itself. There’s so much trouble tomorrow that if you knew what was going to happen, you’d probably fall apart today. See? So don’t worry about it. The only time you have to worry about is right now. And you don’t have to worry about what I just said, because it’s now gone. That’s kind of encouraging, I think. All you have to worry about is right now, and that’s gone. What a way to live. The Lord is in charge. Blessed be his name. And I will simply trust him. But you’ve got a lot to worry about, my friend, if you’re not sure that when death comes, you’re going to be with the Lord. Father, I thank you for reminding us again that there’s a time for everything, including judgment. How foolish to think that we could get away with something. When you’re the eternal God who says all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to deal, we can’t fool you. We never have been able to. How deceitful of us to think that we will never have to face the consequences of what we’ve done. God, I pray that you’d help us to see how wonderful is the gospel because of this. For God judged our sin in the person of Jesus Christ when he died. The penalty of sin was paid for. And though we see the presence and practice of sin everywhere in our world, we know, Father, that one moment’s trust, one moment’s commitment to you, where we put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus for what he’s done, grants to us deliverance from the penalty of sin, from the consequences of hell. I thank you, Lord. God, I also know as a Christian that you’re going to one day ask us to give an evaluation, an account of what we’ve done. You even say when that happens that then every man will have praise from God. Lord, we’ve come to love you and we want to serve you. We want to please you. We don’t understand everything about you or your plan for us. But what you’ve told us in the word causes us to love you more and more. You are a holy and a righteous God and merciful and long-suffering, so kind to us. I pray for those in our audience that are really not sure if they died today they’d be in heaven with Christ. God, help them in this moment to turn to you before it’s too late. Help them, Father, to understand there is a judgment time coming. May they settle that sin question by turning to Jesus, who alone can save us. In Jesus’ name we pray.
SPEAKER 01 :
Amen. I’ll take you, David. And friend, if you aren’t a Christian yet, or if you’re new to the Christian faith, and you’d like to know more about what God’s Word says about Christianity, we’d like to send you David’s booklet, What Is Christianity?, and a Bible study by mail. Now, both are absolutely free, again, if you’re not yet a Christian, but you’re curious, or if you’re new to the Christian faith. Call 800-75-BIBLE, that’s in the U.S., 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. And again, Bible by the numbers is 24253. Or use the contact form at davidhocking.org. Well, next time, David turns to Ecclesiastes chapter 4 with a message called The Tragedies of Life. Solomon looks straight at oppression, loneliness, the tragedies of life, and the cost of a life driven by envy and endless work. Don’t miss it next time here on Hope for Today.
