The Blind Joy

Well, thanks for watching this morning. I’m sure many of you are wondering when we will be able to gather together corporately. Well, we do as well! There has been some communication from the governor that indicates that some of the gathering restrictions might lift as soon as next week. So please stay tuned via our newsletter and website satisfiedinjesus.org to find out the most recent plan.

For now, we are back in the book of Ecclesiastes. Now last week we talked about the danger of saying to yourself, “If only…” If only this thing were in place, then I’d be happy, or content, or satisfied. And the text itself illustrated four of these:

We tried to contrast the death trap of those who play the ‘if only…’ game with those who fear God.

Now before we leave the “if onlys” we need to make one final observation. Here’s what’s interesting about every one of these if only statements. Categorically, they are all really good things. It’s not like we are saying, “If only I could smoke weed and rob a bank.” I mean the desires here are good. Everything the heart longs for in this list is a good thing.

Solomon’s conclusion was not that you have the wrong desires. Those are good desires. In fact, God taught you and made you to want those things.

Solomon’s conclusion was not that you desire the wrong thing; rather, you expect the wrong things. There are plenty of healthy things we can desire but have unhealthy expectations about what those things can do for us. We can desire a beautiful thing and hold an ugly expectation in our hearts.

You see, it’s good to want a wife and kids. But to expect your wife and kids to fulfill in you in a way that only God can is not good.
It’s good to want a job and to be productive, but it’s not good to expect ultimate satisfaction from that job.

Now let’s take this next level. What is the best thing in the world you can desire? It’s God himself. And yet, even this great desire can be wanted in such a way that breeds unhealthy expectations.

We could call this warped expectation the ‘genie seeker syndrome’ where we expect God to operate according to our rules. It’s the belief that certain behaviors will result in certain outcomes. If I do this, this and this, then I should expect this result. If I obey this command and do these things, then God should do this for me. If I follow God, I pretty much expect to be protected from tragedy. And Solomon warns us, don’t go there!

Because it is sometimes the case that even if you do all the right things, tragedy and pain will still hound you.

Solomon is observing the fact that often life just doesn’t go according to our expectations. Here we thought we had life figured out.

If I start my 401k when I’m in high school I can start saving.
If I get good grades then I can get into a good college.
And if I get good grades then I can get a good, high paying job.
And then I can go to a good church so I can find that storybook wife or husband.
And then you get married and start your life and after a successful career, the bottom falls out of the market, your spouse cheats on you and your parents die of cancer.

Didn’t see that coming. Never expected that outcome. How many here are living a life that you never in a million years expected. And if you’re honest, in your heart you’re saying, “Lord, it’s not fair! I did all the right things and all this happened.”

I expected that if I ate all the right foods and exercised I’d be free of disease but here I am staring at this terrible disease.
When we decided to have kids, I never expected that one of them would be born disabled or have this stubborn personality or this learning disability. I never signed up for this difficulty.
Here I am obeying my parents and they end up getting a divorce.
How many parents are baffled at the behavior of their children thinking, “We didn’t raise you that way”. You did all the right things and now they are same-sex attracted, they are totally uninterested in God, they have a value structure that makes your head spin.

We really do believe, we really do expect that we can control the outcome with our behavior. Of course, we don’t think of ourselves as having formulaic expectations of how life ought to go. We are blind to our expectations but they are certainly there. The surest way to open our eyes and expose them is to upset them.

For example, when the calendar rolled over this year we would have said, “I don’t have any expectations for 2020. Whatever God wills, I’m good with.” Then COVID-19 hit and you realize,

I guess I was expecting that I could talk to other human beings.
I guess I was expecting that I could go to church.
I guess I wasn’t expecting to homeschool my kids for half the year.

Without exception, we all operate out of a nearly unconscious set of expectations of how we think life should go.

You know what Solomon is saying, “It’s time to let go of the picture of what you thought life would be like. It’s time to release this false conception that you can control the outcome.”

Because the expectation above all other expectations is that we expect life to be fair. We expect things to go according to our sense of how things ought to be. If we were God, the world ought to be structured like this. And suddenly we wake up and realize that our expectations are shattered and your life falls apart. The problem wasn’t the desire. It was a good desire. The problem was expectations.

So how do we manage those expectations? What do you do when you have this sense that things are not going according to your plan? What do you do when God is allowing things to happen that - if you were seated in the position of God - you would never allow to happen.

Here’s Solomon’s ultra-simple, ultra-wise two-step formula.

Here’s the first point. Let’s see it in verse 15. Enjoy what you understand.

So Solomon commends joy. Enjoy what you understand. What do you understand about joy?

You understand that hard work is rewarding. Enjoy that.
You understand that going on a long hike makes food taste really good. Enjoy that gift.
You understand that doing the work of getting involved in people’s life creates meaning. Enjoy that gift.

Enjoy the fruits of wisdom. Enjoy the parts of life you can control. Enjoy what you understand. Enjoy art. Enjoy hobbies. Enjoy taking care of something you’ve worked for. That’s all legitimate joy.

Life has thousands of simple pleasures that God intends for us to enjoy. None of these pleasures are ultimate. If you EXPECT those things to fulfill you, you will be so miserable.

But that doesn’t mean they are not legitimate gifts; when God sees fits to offer it to you, he wants you to drink them in fully. Enjoy what you understand.

Often, the gifts of God come when you least expect it.

This week, we were all starving and we had been working around the house all day and we were spent. And we had been working in our kitchen so it was off-limits and so we had no way to cook a meal. So I went to the store and bought two giant loaves of French bread, split it down the middle, loaded it up with meat and cheese and condiments and I bought a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips and I bought a pack of sparkling waters. And it was evening. The sun was setting. And man we just sat on our patio and the temperature was perfect and I just looked out at the green grass coming up and I was so happy. And I breathed deeply and filled my lungs with the cooling evening air (that was extra clean because no cars have been on the road). I just loved that moment of biting into that sandwich. I just paid attention to the rush of sugars replenishing my body. God made that moment for me to enjoy and I totally enjoyed it. It was a wonderful gift from God.

And you’ve all had similar experiences.

It was the perfect moment where the food tasted so good.
It was that perfect time of the year that you just love.
That moment when you press ‘print’ on your final exam and you know you aced it and you are officially done with the semester and you are free.
It’s the rapture you experience when you hear that song that has that beat that just is next-level awesome in your brain.
It’s the moment where you take a shower or bath and it feels so good.
It’s the unexpected pleasure of when your newborn baby does something cute you would have never expected.
It’s the game-winning shot that you could never recreate.
It’s the unexpected adventure that happened when you broke down on the side of the road and had the best time exploring in the desert.
It’s that moment when you look at a piece of art and it awakens parts of your brain you never knew existed, causing you to feel.
It’s these private moments when only you and God know how delightful his gifts are.
It’s that magical moment when the family is all enjoying hanging out and all the family members are in their lanes doing their role and the air is full of laughter and banter and joy. That’s a gift from God.

These are all gifts, small joys. Enjoy what you understand. Solomon is commending joy to you.

Our hearts are made to soak those up!

Solomon warns you to not think you can fabricate that moment. You didn’t create it to start with and you certainly can’t recreate it. It was a gift of God. There’s no formula for making moments like that. Remember, “…there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked.” It’s not a moment your genius cooked up, it’s a gift God gave you. And when it comes, enjoy it. Taste the nectar of that moment. Soak it up. Let time slow down and just enjoy it. And when it flies away, smile, wave it away without regret, and turn again to serving your good and loving God without the expectation that you can somehow fashion the forces of life to affect another of those moments.

I’m calling this sermon “Blind Joy” for several reasons. Number one, is it not the case that so many of the joys of life hit you blindside? You never saw it coming. You weren’t trying to find happiness, it just snuck up behind you and tapped you on the shoulder. So it’s blind in that sense.

But it’s blind joy in a second sense because in order for you to enjoy what you understand you have to turn a blind eye to the things you don’t. We can all point to troubles that you’ve carried on your shoulders that destroy the simple joys.

Food hardly even has taste if you are weighed down by a serious conflict or a stressful situation at work.
Watching other people laugh almost makes you mad when you are burdened down with worry.
If you have piles of work to do, loads of unfinished business at home, you’ve got relational deficits everywhere you look, then a ‘vacation’ sounds like misery.

You see, in order to enjoy the simple pleasurable gifts of God, there is a sense in which you must be blind to the real dilemmas of life. So this leads us to our second point.

I remember when I was a kid, my parents were just starting out and they were starting a business and it was just getting off the ground and I don’t think their initial attempts were going very well. And I remember them gathering us together in a really somber moment and saying, “We are really poor right now; we aren’t sure how we are going to make this upcoming payment. We aren’t even sure if we are going to be able to stay in this house. Mom and Dad have to talk about what we are going to do so we want you guys to go play in the sandbox.”

And I remember thinking, “Okay, wow, that sounds pretty significant. Well, hope you figure it out!” And then I went tearing off into the yard and forgot all about it and had the best time of my life with a hose and box of sand. Now that sounds like carelessness because that’s exactly what it was. But it’s the greatest compliment in the world. Because that kind of childlike faith says, “Man, that’s a problem I could never solve but I know my dad will take care of me. He always does. And he just wants me to play!”

You see, my dad shielded me from all those troubles so I could just enjoy the simple pleasures of life. As a kid, I couldn’t understand taxes and market strategies and mortgages and profit and loss sheets or business deductions. But I understood building sandcastles! Enjoy what you understand. Solomon is actually commending this kind of simple, childlike joy. I commend joy. Isn’t that freeing to just let God handle all the problems of the world and just enjoy the simple things of life?

Do you see how these two points relate?

To be able to ENJOY what you do understand you must firsttrust God with what you don’t understand

Now he’s going to describe what life was like for him before he came to this simple place of just trusting. He didn’t always trust. He wasn’t always able to give mystery to God. It was a long painful process where he learned to trust.

#Context

I love the honestly of this. Solomon says he tried his hardest to explain why things are the way they are. There must be an answer.

There are two ways to translate the end of verse 16. It’s either, “I tried to figure out life, why people are filled with stress and worry such that people don’t sleep day or night,” or you could translate it, “I tried to figure out life with such effort that I couldn’t sleep day or night.”

Either way, you get a picture of a man who is on a mission to determine reasons for the injustices, the pain, and the suffering.

Why would God do it this way?
Why does he allow the righteous to suffer?
Why is evil winning?
Why a random catastrophe that irrespectively sweeps away the good along with the wicked?

And he’s struggling.

Solomon continues now into chapter 9, letting us know the intensity of his search for meaning. He says, given the randomness of life, given that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, it’s almost as if we are standing before a God with knees knocking not knowing if this God is loving or hateful toward me. I concede that it’s all in God’s hands but it feels like his disposition toward me is random and unrelated to my actions.

And his clincher argument is next. I can prove to you that bad things happen to good people he says. What’s the worse thing of all? Death. And death indiscriminately destroys every living thing.

Where is the sense in that? What is the meaning of that? No matter what you do, you die.

This is Solomon’s life long conclusion. Keep in mind, Solomon is at the end of his life and he is reflecting on all the things he has observed. A sage would observe his behavior and what is going on in the world and try to make sense of it and help explain it. And one of the most important jobs of the sage is to provide clarity for what things in life are controllable and what things are not.

Do you remember earlier we made the distinction between affirmative wisdom and acceptive wisdom?

Proverbs is affirmative wisdom. Proverbs gives you formulas. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart. And that is generally true. It’s an if-then statement. It explains how you can get an outcome and manipulate life to your advantage. But there’s a second kind of wisdom we talked about.

Then there’s the second kind of wisdom. There’s acceptive wisdom. Job and Ecclesiastes are acceptive wisdom. It’s not explaining how the world works; it’s accepting a world that doesn’t work and you have no power to change it. The best example is death. Nobody can explain. Nobody can change it. All must go through it. We just have to accept it.

Acceptive wisdom is the type of wisdom that allows me to function when I don’t understand. What do I do when God doesn’t make sense? There’s this incredible uneasiness that happens when I can’t explain why something is the way it is. Acceptive wisdom says, “I accept that I don’t know the answer, but God does and I’m good with that.”

Solomon is describing this journey, but he isn’t there yet. He’s wrestling with the injustice of death. And now he just compares the living and the dead.

He’s pointing out the finality of death. It really is final.

You could be a financial lion. You could own great skyscrapers, mansions on the beach, hotel chains, resorts. You could have the power to shape markets, move political parties, transform economies, but then you die. And when that happens, he says, even a living dog is better off than a dead lion. Don’t think golden retriever here. Think feral, nasty, street dog. Think rat.

Why? Because the dead are forgotten. They can’t make any more money. They can’t make any more progress. They can’t make any more relationships.

It really is ultimate. Once your heart stops beating, the pen that has constantly been scribbling the story of your life stops moving mid-sentence. You can’t add to it. It’s over.

Solomon is trying to make sense of it. Why is all this happening to the good and the bad? Death happens to both the good and the evil. This makes no sense. What is the answer? There is no answer.

I think my favorite verse in this section is chapter 8 verse 17, “However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.” I love this because I picture Solomon in the zeal of his idealistic youthfulness asking these really hard questions. His mind is electrified with new ideas and his brain is just pumping with energy making connections and figuring things out. He’s exploring ideas.

And in that process of exploration, he’s jumping from sage to sage to sage trying to find answers. And then he finds the guy. He’s drawn to this confident personality who is persuasive and intimidating with his intellect. I mean this guy speaks authoritatively, definitively. He speaks as though all the riddles of life are simple. And you think, Eureka! This is it. This guy knows what’s up. He’s got the answers. But then over time, the cracks in his arguments begin to show. You see that he’s just papering over problems with confident, empty claims. You begin to see the impure motivations that are driving the celebrity culture of his following.

And Solomon’s shoulders droop. And he shrinks back to his cave and writes, “Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.” The wisest men in the world will say they know, but they don’t.

This is the actual answer the Bible gives to the problem of evil and suffering. It’s so great a problem, that not even the wisest mind in the entire universe who ever lived will come up with a satisfactory answer, even though he will claim it. The Bible tells you two things about the problem of evil:

#1 No man has an answer. If he claims to have it, he’s lying. #2 God is good and therefore there is an answer.

The problem of evil has a resolution. But its resolution is only knowable by the mind of God. It’s a problem too large and complex. We will just grasp bits and pieces but not the whole solution. So what do you do? You trust.

He’s moving this toward a final argument. It’s all building. Last week we talked about fearing God because of his power. If we cross him the wrong way we will be destroyed.

But here’s another aspect to fearing God. I’ll introduce it through a riddle.

What has God never seen? Answer: His equal.

We see our equals everywhere. We compete with our equals. But God has no equal and is it not right fear a being who, when you compare yourself to him, all you see is incredible inferiority?

You see, to fear God means to submit to him because he is clearly so much greater and wiser and higher and more powerful. And I distrust my perspective, given his superiority! It is not my place to question him simply because I cannot understand.

We hate not understanding. We want to understand God. We want a God that is manageable. A God that’s more like a genie that we can control. At the bare minimum, we want a God who at least plays according to a rule book we understand. If I do this then I can guarantee this sort of outcome. But we don’t understand God. And some, at this point, will then conclude, since I don’t understand him, he cannot be trusted. Don’t make that mistake. It’s illogical and horribly destructive to the soul.

It is right to fear God in this sense, to assume that if I don’t understand the problem is with me and not God. Oh, how many of our problems in life would be solved if we could only do that one thing! When we get to chapter 11 we’ll see this beautiful statement as Solomon begins closing up the book.

This is the ultimate wisdom of acceptance. How is it that a baby comes together in the womb? Here we are three thousand years after Solomon and we think we are all smart. Oh, well you see the DNA of the mother and the DNA of the father come together and the RNA replicator begins its magic and the proteins are assembled according to the genetic maps and fold into synthetic blocks that build the baby.

I see. So how does the spirit come into the bones of a child? The most fundamental question of how we have self-consciousness and awareness, that we ask questions and demand answers about origin and purpose remain. The whole thing remains entirely elusive. And yet, here we are. There must be an answer since we exist and yet we cannot find an answer.

In the same way that we relinquish the mystery of life to God, we must relinquish the mystery of death to God as well. And the logic must remain tight here as well. God is good. And yet there is death and injustice. How can it be that God is good and that these things exist? We have no answer, and yet it must be because here it is. We must relinquish that mystery into the hands of God.

One of the main points God makes in the book of Ecclesiastes is this: don’t wait until you understand everything because you never will.

Enjoy what you understand. Trust when you don’t.

##Application.

Now, this has all sorts of practical value in the way we approach our life. Solomon wrote this book to smash to tiny pieces our idea that we can be like God. If we try to bend this book into our comfort zone, we will miss what this God-inspired text reveals about him.

We aspire:

To have it all
Know it all
Do it all
Achieve it all
Be happy forever
Have all the answers
Understand all the causes
See the purpose
Live forever
Be remembered for all time

In short, we want to be God. And yet we aren’t. Not even close. We can’t get what we want. We have so little control over our life. The simple proof of this is just to ask the question, “Is your life what you planned when you were in high school?” Nobody has a clue. Did you plan to have that tragedy? Did you plan that great windfall opportunity? And yet a good God orchestrated it all.

We are not in charge of running the world. We aren’t even in charge of understanding the world. We are asked to fear a good God who has your best interest in mind. To enjoy what we understand, and trust when we don’t.

Here’s what I want you to do this week. Trust God so that you can enjoy God and the gifts he gives. At the end of the service, we have some discussion questions for you to ponder that we hope will stimulate some good discussion.

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