Ecclesiastes 3:11 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ecclesiastes 3:11

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Solomon now provides further insight into man’s perplexing situation in this world. God, who has made this world precisely what it is, governs it in such a way that each one experiences exactly what he determines. Whatever he says about the difficulties that man faces, nothing is intended to take away from the perfection of God’s plan and timing. God who appoints the times and seasons has done all things well. His plan is beautiful as a whole and in every part, in every detail. He has appointed everything that happens and when earth’s history is complete, and God’s people can see the entire plan laid out before them with the insight that heaven will give them, they will have nothing but admiration and praise to him for everything that took place. They will be filled with gratitude to God for his providence towards them personally, but they will also worship him for every choice he made, because they see that all things worked together to the praise of his glory. What seemed like random events during our time on earth will be appreciated by the redeemed as necessary steps along the way. God has made everything beautiful from the perspective of heaven even in this seemly chaotic world. That is the light and consolation that the believer has on life, but the passage is really addressed to the unconverted and Solomon is continuing to reason with unbelieving men and women. ‘Also he has put eternity in their hearts’. The Hebrew is, ‘He has set the concealed in their hearts’; ‘he has set beyond-the-vanishing-point in their hearts.’ Man lives moment by moment, but is aware that there is such a thing as eternity. However, this only tells him there is a big picture; it does not tell him what that picture is. The last clause is concessive: ‘except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end’ (NKJV). Because of this, he always lacks context for his life. He knows that his perspective is too small, that looking at the world from the perspective of a single human life is never going to give him the complete answer. He is like someone with a minor part in a play, who comes on stage for a short time and then goes off again, but who does not know what their part contributes, and cannot see the whole drama. While he is involved with the present moment this doesn’t matter too much, but if he thinks about his lack of context, it opens up a pit of meaninglessness that threatens to swallow him up. Life has so many unanswered questions. Where do I come from? I know I had a beginning, but my origin is shrouded in mystery. I see all previous generations disappear from this world and I have no evidence of their continued existence, but I find it impossible to think of them as no longer existing. The earth is here and it has all the hallmarks of design, but without God’s revelation I cannot tell how it got here or what is going to happen to it, what God plans to do with it. It is as if the present is given to me and all else is taken away. Each experience is mine, but I have it for such a fleeting moment.

Application

Because we have this sense of eternity within us, we search for something to fill the void and nothing that we find on earth is large enough to do so. Without eternal meaning and eternal purpose, life becomes a terror which causes us to scream. I become afraid of my own existence, for eternity comes down upon me, and I alone am left struggling under its crushing weight. The task is too great for me. Most of the time I try to blot out the thought of eternity and fill the present moment with the trifles of time, but the effort leaves me sick at heart and I know there must be a day of reckoning for this act of self-deceit. We are trapped within time and although God’s purposes parade themselves before us as we move through life, we cannot see them in the context of his overall plan. Without God, human beings will always be frustrated, intimidated by the world that they find themselves in. Man’s refusal to come to God causes him much unnecessary pain. In his stubbornness, he refuses to come to his Creator for answers and insists on manufacturing answers for himself, but all that he invents is inadequate. God has cursed the creation so that nowhere that we look can we see something that matches the eternity within us. This teaches us to look away from the creation to the Creator. The only way we can find peace is understand why Christ had to come and die on the cross, to come to him for the pardon of all our sin, receive new spiritual life and realise that our significance comes not from what we do on earth but from the place he gives us in his eternal plan of salvation.

We see the scientific community persuading governments to spend fabulous sums on exploring the universe. It is really this instinct for eternity. Space – the largest horizon; if we do not believe in God, we have to be stretching out for something else.

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Ecclesiastes 3:11 Commentary and Bible Study