Pray
Read: Ecc 2:18-23.
Meditation
Ecclesiastes is like a labyrinth, a giant maze. One of the things Solomon does in this maze of life under the sun is show us which paths not to walk down, the dead ends, and which paths we should walk down, the paths that lead and instruct us in the fear of the Lord. Remember, that is where Solomon wants to take us ultimately. This book is designed to teach us to fear God. We see this clearly in Ecc 12:13, where Solomon says that the end of the whole matter is to fear God. His ultimate destination, if you like, in the labyrinth of life, is to teach us to fear God as we live our lives.
In Ecc 2:18-23, Solomon is showing us a dead end in the labyrinth: the frustration of work. In verse 18 he says, I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun. His soul is vexed. In fact, in verse 20 he says, I gave my heart up to despair. Solomon is recalling and recording the way he felt about his work.
The first obvious question is this: Why did he feel this way? Why is he so vexed and troubled? Why does he consider his work and turn to despair?
To put it bluntly, the reason Solomon is in so much despair here is a reason that will largely be completely foreign to the average modern person. If we get depressed about our work or do not like it, we might feel that way because our boss is overbearing, or we are not having fun in the job we are doing, or the pay is low, or our colleagues annoy us or make life for us, or we are discontent because we think the grass would be greener elsewhere. I am not trying to undermine these things, because they can be valid challenges. But what Solomon is getting at is far deeper.
Let me put it this way: Have you ever thought about what work would look like if the fall had not happened? That is a serious question. It is not one we often ask. We can imagine what relationships might look like without the fall. There would be no hatred, selfishness, bickering, fighting, or anger. Relationships would have been harmonious, loving, and selfless. Things would have been great. But what about work? If the fall had not happened, what would work have been like?
Many things might come to mind, but perhaps the most obvious is that there would be no retirement. With no death and no aging, retirement would not exist. It opens up a whole new idea about work. You would not have just a few decades to develop your skills and experience. You would have endless centuries. Year after year to work, grow, build, develop, achieve, and complete projects. It is hard to imagine. Forget about leaving a legacy; you would live a legacy and build one that kept going.
This may sound strange, but I want to put to you that this is actually what work was supposed to be like. Yet there is an even deeper question here. When you take the limitation of time out of the equation, you are forced to ask: Why do we have work? Why do we get up day after day and do things? Let me give you a few answers from the modern mindset: you work to get money; you work to get the stuff you need to live, such as food, a place to live, and transport; you work to enable you to do the things you actually want to do. Work, for many people, has become a means to different ends.
I want to put to you that this is very far removed from what God intended for work and from what Christ intends for us in work. In Genesis 1 we find out what work is for. In Genesis 1 verse 28 we read: And God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Fill the earth and subdue it. That is what work is about. It is about developing God’s creation so that God may be glorified. In Christ we are restored to this calling, and even to a higher calling in the Great Commission, though we will come to that later in Ecclesiastes 3. Work is about developing God’s creation, subduing it, and having dominion.
What does it mean to develop and subdue God’s creation? You see it everywhere. People subdue the elements, form and manipulate metals, discover their properties, and push these developments into new arenas. They build and construct. Think of the discovery of fire and electricity, and then the things you can do with them: cars, phones, computers. There are other areas too, like music. We discover principles of music and art and find new ways of making and experimenting with sound. We create beautiful things in painting and sculpture. With the written word we achieve endless things. We grow food and care for our environment. This is part of what it means to develop, nurture, subdue, and take dominion of God’s creation.
When God created the world it was a vast storehouse of untapped possibility. When he looked at Adam and Eve he said, go, discover, build, subdue, construct. Multiply together, have families, watch your children develop what I have made, work with them, work together, do amazing things, and you will see more and more of my glory, and you can show others the wonders of my creation.
This is what work is really about. It is about worship. It is about developing this world so that the wonders of God’s infinite mind may be displayed before all, so that we might see his wonders in and through his handiwork. The world is a great book, the book of nature, as the Belgic Confession says, and even today with all our technology we have most likely not yet read the first page.
Work was supposed to be magnificent. It was not a drudgery to be escaped. It was not a tool for self gain. It was a means for declaring and beholding the glory of God. It was a means for serving, benefiting, and loving mankind. Even today that is how it is meant to work. When we see grand feats of engineering we ought to think, this is the world God has made; this is the dignity and honour of being created in his image. It is also meant to serve one another. When you receive good customer service from someone who genuinely cares, you return and recommend them. The problem with capitalism and the free market is not the system itself but that fallen man is self oriented rather than service oriented.
Imagine the world as it was meant to be before the fall. Imagine artists honing their craft for centuries. Imagine Bach’s compositions after two thousand years of playing and composing. Imagine transportation and space travel in a world where scientists had perfect harmony in their relationships as they worked. You quickly stray into science fiction, and even then, the fallen imagination of most writers falls short of what could have been in God’s creation.
My point in all this is that these ideas actually inform Solomon’s frustration over his work. Scripture has a contour that runs from creation and paradise, to the fall, to redemption and hope in Christ. We have looked at creation, and what we see now in Solomon’s vexation is the fall. In verse 18 he says, I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool.
Solomon’s true frustration with work has nothing to do with the cosmetic complaints we have today. He senses the true consequences of the fall in his work, and that is what drives him to despair. He knows he could spend decades working and building, as we saw earlier in chapter two. He built magnificent buildings and gardens, great vineyards, and he formed choirs of musicians. Solomon’s achievements were staggering. Yet he saw clearly that the day of his death was approaching. At the end of verse 19 he says, This also is vanity. It is passing. It is hevel, temporary.
We can achieve great things in a lifetime of work: huge projects, new inventions. Steve Jobs took technology to a whole new level. But what is gained? What good does an iPhone do for Steve Jobs now? We die after all. We do not get to live on and enjoy the benefits of our labour. Verse 21 says, Sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. In a fallen world we no longer get to develop the potential that was there. We barely begin, then our bodies break down, and everything we have achieved is left to someone else. In verse 19 Solomon says, Who knows whether that person will be wise or a fool.
Here is the true vexation of the workplace. In verse 22 Solomon asks what we gain from it. The answer is nothing. We cannot keep it, cannot hold on to it, cannot ensure the next generation will carry on our vision. Most likely, everything we have done will crumble and be forgotten. Our wealth will be squandered by fools.
This is what Solomon truly hates, and it is a godly thing to hate sin and its consequences. One consequence of sin, one aspect of the curse, is this innate frustration that has become part of our work. When Adam was cursed, the curse was in relation to his work. He would no longer sow and reap vast productivity. He would sow and battle thorns and thistles.
We can barely grasp the vision of what work was meant to be under God, much less achieve even a shadow of it. This is lamentable. So much of God’s glory might have been displayed, and now work has been reduced to a pale, selfish, sinful shadow of what it was created to be. Worse still, fallen man has twisted it beyond recognition. People ply their skills in perverse ways: prostitution, thievery, abortion doctors, the slave trade that still exists in many parts of the world. Work in a fallen world, without Christ, is a dead end. Yet in Christ there is hope. Your labour is not in vain in the Lord. As we feel the weight of the curse of sin in the workplace, the frustration of the fact that both our our work and our very hands are disintegrating before our eyes, let us rest in Christ’s work, and commit what work we do unto him. SDG.
Prayer of Confession & Consecration
