Ecclesiastes 3:9 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ecclesiastes 3:9

Comments

Looking back to the start of the book and especially to the times and seasons he has just considered, he repeats the question he has posed several times already: ‘What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?’ The labour in mind includes the tasks mention in the list given in this chapter. Many of those tasks are very labour intense, and require a person to concentrate and focus all their energy on achieving their goal. That is not done lightly or half-heartedly, and so the worker needs to believe in what they are doing. But Solomon has argued, that for man without God the big picture is that life’s effort is vain, for nothing permanent comes from it. These words make it impossible to see this list in a positive way, as if it was given for man’s encouragement and suggested a profitable policy for life. No, it is all without any profit if you are living with only the sun over your head. What profit can we have from life when our purpose on one day is replaced by a contrary purpose on the next? No one makes any real advance when they keep reversing their direction. Gill says, ‘Sometimes it is time for one thing and sometimes for its contrary, so that there is nothing certain, and to be depended on; and a man can promise himself nothing in this world pleasant or profitable to him, and much less that will be of any advantage to him hereafter’.

Application

If there is no profit, there is no satisfaction, for man needs to gain something in order for life to be worthwhile, otherwise all his labour is pointless. Human nature has within it an unquenchable desire to make real gain, but such purposes as man is occupied with in this life mock him by drawing him first one way and then another until he despairs of life itself. But for those who know God, life is transformed. Although they are still subject to the law of vanity which universally affect our world, they see another law at work by which God allows none of their labours to fall to the ground. What is done out of service to man is done out of service to Christ, and he forgets nothing but rewards all who serve him. This provides a new motive for diligence which is unknown to an unbelieving world. No wonder it is those nations where the gospel has flourished that prosperity has also flourished, for the gospel provides a motivation for industriousness that a worldview of chance will never provide. For the unbeliever the hourglass of life is running out. His attempts to add significance to his life is like someone who draws pictures in the sand before the incoming tide.

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Ecclesiastes 3:9 Commentary and Bible Study