June 11 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 42—Ecclesiastes 12:9–14

⁹Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. ¹⁰The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

¹³The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. ¹⁴For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Devotional:

Qoheleth knows that nobody is free of guilt before God. "Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and does not also sin" (7:20).—These are the author's own words. Righteousness is not sinlessness. But if God brings every deed and thought into judgment (as our text says), is there any hope of acquittal? Then again, to what purpose are we being warned of the judgment if there is no escape?

With regards to judgment and acquittal, there are two options. Righteousness can be defined in terms of doing more good than evil, a simple equation of plus and minus with a positive value as the result. This happens to be by far the most popular sentiment, namely that our righteousness emerges when good deeds cancel out bad deeds. We are not that bad after all! But this would be very strange indeed. The Bible destroys the myth of righteousness as a concept of mere relativity (cf. Rom. 3:9-19).

The second option is that righteousness is absolute. Either be altogether righteous or be altogether guilty. Righteousness translates into blamelessness in the ultimate sense. It follows, then, that if God brings every deed and thought into judgment that there can be no hope of acquittal, unless there is also divine mercy. There must be forgiveness, even though the text is silent on the matter.

We may refer to a little anecdote from the book of Judges for illustration. Samson's parents had seen the angel of Yahweh announcing the birth and calling of Samson (Judges 13). The husband then says to his wife, "Now we are surely doomed, because our eyes have seen the Yahweh." The wife, being more reasonable than her husband, replies, "If the Lord really meant to kill us, we'd already be dead. In the words of Judg. 13:23: "If Yahweh had meant to kill us he … would not have shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these."—The same rationale applies to the closing warning of Ecclesiastes. Why are we warned if there is no hope?

Of course, we know a little more than the author of Ecclesiastes. We know how it can be that sinners find justification and peace with God, and how God can be just and still the justifier of the ungodly. "For now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,… the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and [yet] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation [for our sin] by his blood, to be received by faith" (Rom. 3:21-25).—Faith is another way of speaking of the fear of the Lord. To believe in Christ and thus to fear God all our days is our very reason for being. Apart from him, all is vanity and full of meaningless labor.

Ecclesiastes is the book that religious Jews traditionally read during the feast of booths. Booths is the most joyful and festive occasion in the Jewish calendar. We may draw a parallel to our Thanksgiving. Given the content of this book, why do Jews read such a sobering document during the feast? Perhaps to remember God, the giver of every good and perfect gift; perhaps to remember that in the midst of joyful celebration and a time of plenty our lives are still a mere breath. We must find our peace and satisfaction in God, and for the Christian, this means, in Jesus Christ.

The author of these devotionals, the Rev. Martin Emmrich, is an ordained OPC minister (Westminster OPC, Corvallis, Oregon) as well as the author of Pneumatological Concepts in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a book on the teaching of Hebrews on the Holy Spirit. We are happy to make these devotionals on Ecclesiastes and other passages of Scripture available to you.