Ecclesiastes 6:10 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ecclesiastes 6:10

Comments

Man should not try to change his own nature but accept what he is and recognise his limitations. Man’s nature is defined by what God made him to be as summed up in the name which God gave him in Eden shortly after his creation. He was then and still is today ‘Adam’, ‘Man’ a word which derives from the Hebrew for ground or earth from which he was made. This humble origin was deliberately chosen by God to remind us that we are joined to the earth and cannot rise above it except by divine working. Only in Christ can we escape our fleshly limitations, and, more particularly, only in Christ can we also break free from the power of death which came upon our race after the fall. Let us not imagine that we can break free from these limitations and become what God did not make us to be. By doing this we contend with our Creator and enter into a battle that we are not going to win. God who made us is almighty and no one can prevail against him. Yet men attempt this very thing when they vainly imagine that they can find fulfilment on earth without reference to God, when they suppose they can turn this world into a paradise and create for themselves all manner of pleasures on earth that mean that they do not need heaven and can live without God. All covetousness is contention with God and an expression of dissatisfaction with him. It is an attempt to substitute something in his place, something which we assert to be superior to him. No man by striving can obtain for himself more than God has dealt out to him.

Application

You and I are full of appetites for pleasures. How will you stop them from making a slave out of you? They will ruin your life. They are bigger than you are, for we are only men and women. We are also cut off from God. We cannot take on things bigger than us. We are all getting older and our health will fail eventually; you can never beat the ageing process. It is there to remind you that you are just a man and sinful. The devil is also far mightier than you are. He is dedicated to keeping you away from God. He floods your mind with cynical questions. Only by coming to Christ can you defeat him. He wishes to drag you into sin. There is death to experience, the last enemy, the king of terrors. Then there is the Lord to face, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. What will you do when you must answer to him as your judge? We are up against these forces, and all the time we have such a Saviour. Why do we live for all the foolish things that things can never satisfy, when all the time we could come to him?

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Ecclesiastes 6:10 Commentary and Bible Study