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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Ecclesiastes 7:13
Comments
Human beings do not properly understand their limitations. Human optimism imagines that it can turn this world into a paradise and easily remove all the obstructions to happiness on earth. It supposes that hardships are accidental, and only a little ingenuity is required to remove them. It does not grasp that the world is the way it is because God has deliberately made it that way, and he will not allow man to escape from the sentence imposed upon him. This applies to all the vanity that Solomon has describe in the world. It is not within human power to turn this vanity into something profitable, something which brings true gain in life, for God’s decree is firm. If we want to make a success out of life without coming to Christ for salvation, we find ourselves fighting against God himself. Is it a small matter to take this world which is under the curse and to remove its effects? Or is it a small matter to take what God regards as evil and sinful and redefine it as good, something pleasing to him? How do we think we are going to change God’s mind or how do we think we are going to make straight what he has made crooked? Yet mankind tries it; this is the great project of atheism, as it sets out to call evil good, and good evil.
Application
The preacher says to the lost, ‘Stop trying to create happiness for yourself on earth without God. He has ensured you will never succeed. You struggle to find a way round the terms of the gospel, and its conditions of salvation. You think you can find happiness without having to give up all that you love in this world, but you cannot. You want to be allowed to keep the pleasures of sin and still have eternal life, but God demands your total allegiance to him.’
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