His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): You may have heard the idiom a friend in need is a friend indeed, and it's true. Here's Pastor Matt to add to that.

Matt VanderVen: I think we're all wise enough to know at this point we're going to trip. Every one of us is going to stumble sometime in our life. If we should live 60, 70, 80 years, 40 years, whatever it is, we're going to trip. There's going to be something in our lives where something's going to happen. Maybe it's a medical visit where we need someone to drive us to the procedure, or maybe we're going to lose a job, or something's going to happen, unforeseen, unfortunate circumstances. When we go through those things, we really find out who our real friends are.

Guest (Male): Welcome to our program today. This is His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. Two is greater than one. We learned that from our early days in math class, but it seems that we sometimes forget that principle when applying it to how we go about our lives. Today, we'll be in Ecclesiastes chapter four and learn how two are better than one. We need each other. Join us as we turn things over to Pastor Matt for these words about the importance of friendship and a warning regarding envy.

Matt VanderVen: Please open your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter four, right after the book of Proverbs. Solomon, we believe, is the inspired writer of this book, and he's been making his way—we've been making our way with him—as he's been going through what I like to call man's wisdom. He is struggling to try to understand with all his vast wealth, with all his vast knowledge and wisdom unlike wisdom any other man that walked this earth. And yet, in spite of all of that, he's constantly coming back to the point of life being almost vanity—really just *hebel* as they would say. That's vapor, steam. That's what that means in the Hebrew.

He says "under the sun," how many times he comes back and he talks about it because everything he's relating to is all based on this earth, the world, his understanding. There are times he sprinkles in God and things begin to open up: his understanding, his knowledge, things make sense, meaning in life. But then he falls back into his human intellect to try to explain the things that he's seen. Again, he's had more privilege than any man that's ever walked this earth, especially the privilege of time. That's the greatest asset that any human being can ever have: time. And he has all the time at his disposal. He's literally people-watching almost all the time or judging on the affairs as people come to seek wisdom from him.

So he's observing these things. He's saying, "Lord, when I see humanity," he says the way that humanity conducts themselves—they're fundamentally carnal. The decisions and the things that are happening are downward spiraling. It almost brings us into this point—if you're reading this book and you didn't know that by chapter 12 Solomon is going to go, "Praise God, it's all the Lord," you might sit here tonight and be like, "How many more chapters?" Well, it's important as we're going into chapter four. It's one of those passages where he's going to downward spiral pretty quick. It's going to be very depressive for the first portion of this passage of chapter four.

But I'm really grateful for that. I'm thankful that the Lord doesn't turn and remove those things to just try to paint a picture that's happy and perfect all the time. God's a realist, and he says when you're given to yourself in man's wisdom and intellect and you take God out of that equation, that's what's going to happen. It's going to fundamentally result in a sadness and a sorrow of heart because you were created and I was created to be worshippers. We were created to have relationship with God. So when we remove God from that equation, of course we're going to feel like there's something incredible that's missing in our lives. It's going to make us sad, and it's intended to do so so that we change and turn to the Lord. We call upon God, we ask Jesus to come into our lives, and then everything begins to have meaning.

Please look again at chapter four. We'll begin in verse one here. Solomon, finishing up on that section of verses 18 through 22, basically again, frivolity and foolishness ultimately leads Solomon to think that he is like an animal or that humans and animals are the same—completely ridiculous. But he goes back and he says, look at verse 18: "For I said in my heart concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them and they see that they themselves are like animals." Well, we're not like animals. God has given us such a higher level of understanding. He's given us dominion to care for and protect animals, to protect the creation of the earth. Certainly we're not like animals.

So he's building upon that, and then we come to chapter four when he says, "Then I returned and considered all the oppression." So now he's focusing on the depressive or the sorrowful things that are done under the sun. Whenever Solomon says "under the sun," what is he saying? "What I see on earth." That's his code for telling us "the earth." That's what he's really saying here. And look: the tears of the oppressed, but they have no comforter. On the side of their oppressors there is power, but they have no comforter. So what he is saying in his observation is as he looks out on those that are oppressed, those that might be taken advantage of, maybe some of those that are the most vulnerable—at this time it would have been women and children and different things, those that might have been enslaved—the most vulnerable. We all understand who we're talking about.

When Solomon looks at it from a humanistic perspective, he says nobody seems to care, or the world seems indifferent to what's happening to these groups of people. From Solomon's temporal perspective, that leads him to a very depressed viewpoint of the earth and the people and the things that are going on. He says they have no comforter. Well, sure, when you take God out of the equation who is the Father of all creation and all of humanity, there is no one that would be an advocate like God the Father can be. So he's taken him out of that equation. So when he looks around, he's basically saying, "Who can fill the void?" And the answer is no one. No one.

So what he's saying apart from God is actually true. Look at verse two: "Therefore I praise the dead who are already dead," wow, "more than the living who are still alive. Yet better than both is he who never existed." Do you see how he is literally tanking right here? It is getting darker by the moment. He's saying it would be better that I never was born, and he's just going down, down, down. "Who has never seen the evil work that is done under the sun?" In other words, he's saying the things that I'm able to see, the oppression that happens to human beings—it's more than a man or a woman can handle. It's bringing him down. This is ridiculous. This is terrible.

Without God, man left to himself and his own wisdom is going to lead to all kinds of abuse. That's the point here. At the time Solomon's saying this, Solomon is saying this in such a way where he is trying to communicate apart from God being in the lives of individuals, the carnality of a human being will be to oppress other human beings. It will be to master other humans. It will be to be what Jesus said he hated: to be a Nicolaitan, to lord over others. So you live given man in his natural state without God, he's going to do the things that Solomon is describing here, and it should bring sadness and sorrow to our heart.

But the answer is God, as always, because God doesn't ever leave any human being in that state. When we place our faith and trust in Jesus, when we receive God, he changes us from the inside out. Not only do we look upon others, we're no longer indifferent to the situation and things that are happening around us. We're born again. We look at everything differently. And we don't look at it from our perspective; we look at it from an eternal perspective, Jesus' perspective. So it's important to understand the difference of where Solomon is.

Look at verse four: "Again I saw that for all the toil and every skillful work of man is envied." Please circle "envied." That's the point of this passage, the theme in these next few verses all the way to verse eight. He's going now to focus on the fact that when he looks at others, when they're working or the striving or the skill or those that are hard workers—you would think being a hard worker would be good. People would come over and say, "Hey, that-a-boy, that-a-girl, good job." He says actually the funny thing is the more gifted somebody is, the harder they work, the reality is the people left to carnality are going to be envious and jealous.

And he says that's exactly what he's seeing. And again, he's not understanding—he's not at this moment saying but it's because they don't know God that they're acting this way or carrying themselves—he's just looking at it in a pure temporal perspective. So he says, "Again I saw for all the toil of every skillful worker a man is envied by his neighbor." That's the whole point. "This also is vanity and grasping for the wind. The fool folds his hands and consumes his own flesh. Better a handful with quietness than both hands full together with toil and grasping for the wind."

What he's also saying in verse five and six is a fool just folds his hands, he consumes his own flesh, he doesn't even care. But better a handful with quietness than both hands full together with toil. Putting both hands together, you worked hard, you've done well, the reality is nobody's going to celebrate with you, apart from those that are filled with Christ that want the best for you, that choose to look at the heart and see the best in you. One of the things we hear at this fellowship in our staff and our leadership in our ministries—we constantly are reminding ourselves: look for the best in everyone. See Christ in everyone.

It doesn't matter their faults; try to see Jesus in everyone because Jesus, when we look in a mirror, he says right now in scripture, "we see dimly." We actually don't see as Christ sees us. Christ is so proud of us. He loves us. Christ wants us to take that same love and bring that to others and to be proud of them and love them and be an encourager of people's faith. And it's so easy to turn around and go, "But yeah, they did this," or, "They think this way," or, "By the way, they watch this TV show." I'm making things up as I go. Or, "By the way, they listen to this music."

If we really don't even have to try that hard, we can find something to pretty much dislike in almost every single person, can't we? It's almost very easy for us to go around this room and go, "Well, what don't you like about Pastor Matt?" or, "What don't you like about this other person?" It wouldn't take very long. Each and every one—well, boom, boom, boom, boom, right across the board. Why? Because it's natural in our nature, in the adamic nature, the fallen nature. But Jesus, when he walked the earth, he always saw the best in everyone.

He went to a group of fishermen with very little education and knew that they would become disciples and fishers of men. He took people that were disqualified from the world's standards because they didn't meet the educational requirements or they didn't have all the accolades. He went to the people that did have all those diplomas and degrees as I would say it—the rabbinical system and the rabbis and the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Sanhedrin—and so often he would say, "You're whitewashed tombs." But the reason he would say that is because their pride in going to the people and pushing them down and never letting the people ever be encouraged that God was enough.

They actually were imposing a religion on the people that was pushing them further from God than drawing them to a God of love and truth. And so here Solomon's saying look, the natural man, he sees somebody else working harder, he's getting ahead. Instead of the natural man saying, "Hey, I'm going to celebrate this other person's hard work and go up to him and say good job," what the natural instinct of the man apart from God is he starts envying and he starts becoming jealous of that other person that's really working hard. He says it's toil and grasping at the wind. Without God you're not going to love your neighbor. You're not going to lay your life down for another person.

In verse seven he says, "Then I returned and I saw vanity under the sun" again, on the earth, right? And he said this: "one alone without companion." So now he's again building on this whole envy. Well, sure, he doesn't have a companion because who's there building him up? "He has neither son nor brother, yet there's no end to all his labors. Nor is his eye satisfied with riches, but he never asked, 'For whom do I toil and deprive myself of good?' This also is vanity and a great misfortune."

Then he also goes into this and he says there's a part of it that's foolishness, that one who works very diligently and so hard but never takes time to actually enjoy the fruits of their work. He's also saying that's vanity, that's silliness, that it seems like it's two extremes. Either there's those that are working so hard and they're toiling and they're just going at it and there's nobody around them, not a single companion to come up and be a friend and say, "Hey, you're working and doing a really good job and hey, let's go do something."

Then you have the other side of that where the person themselves that's doing all the toiling and working very difficultly—they're so busy they don't slow down to look to somebody else and say, "Hey, would you like to go grab lunch? Would you like to have dinner? Hey, let's take a moment and just enjoy God's creation. Let's go to the park together. Let's walk. Let's go for a run," whatever it is. Both extremes are wrong, and that's what he's saying he's seeing. And it still exists today: those both extremes are wrong. Either you're what we would call a workaholic if you know the term. He would say that's also wrong and he says it's a grave misfortune.

Because you can work your whole life away and while you can build your bank account, at the end of the day you're actually spiritually bankrupt if you haven't invested in others and others haven't invested in you and you don't have family, friends, people around you. You can have your money, but your money's not going to love you. You may love your money, but your money's never going to love you. And that's what he's saying here. Then he goes on and now he's going to contrast that in verse nine, one of the most popular points of passage, especially in weddings and different things, verses nine through 12.

He's going now to contrast this. This is actually not a marriage text. Many of you might even had this read at your marriage, but it's not a marriage text; it's actually a text in regards to friendship. But here's how he's going to lay it out. Because that man that worked so hard and toiled and everybody was envious, and then the other extreme, the guy that just works so hard and didn't give himself to any friends either. Both extremes are wrong. What's the right thing look like? And that's what verse nine is. "Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor." He's talking about friendship and working together and teaming and coming together and helping those as being willing to be helped yourself.

Verse 10: "For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls." So he starts talking about the benefit of help that when you invest in somebody else—listen, I think we're all wise enough to know at this point we're going to trip, right? Every one of us, we're going to stumble sometime in our life. If we should live 60, 70, 80 years, 40 years, whatever it is, we're going to trip. There's going to be something in our life where something's going to happen. Maybe it's a medical visit that we need someone to drive us to the procedure, or maybe we're going to lose a job, or something's going to happen, unforeseen, unfortunate circumstances.

When we go through those things, we really find out who our real friends are. Because when we're in those difficult times, it's amazing sometimes how many times we can really feel alone, like we're doing what we're going through and we're going through alone. Maybe people aren't calling upon us just to even say, "How are you doing? How are you feeling? I love you." He says woe to him who's alone when he falls. Again, if you're not investing in other people, when something comes around who's going to invest in you, especially if you in context here are so busy working that you're not even making yourself available to make friends? Because that's the context, remember.

For he who has no one to help him. Again, if two lie down together they will keep warm, right? We know this. One of the things they teach in survival: if you're camping or hiking and you fall and you have an unfortunate circumstance or even an avalanche or anything like that, what's the first thing? Conserve body heat. Try to obviously, if it's in the summer you try to get to a body of water, but at night it can cool down. It's funny; you'd be surprised how quickly you will lay next to somebody head-to-toe or however you need to do it to stay warm. It's a survival instinct. It's built into human terms.

He says if two lie down together they keep warm because they benefit each other by body heat. But how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. So now he even says, "Hey, if you have an attacker or you have somebody that's oppressing you." Remember, that's what he started with: oppression back in chapter four about those that are oppressing others and how they had no one to help. There was nobody looking out for the most vulnerable because of the carnality. But now, if you have somebody trying to overpower one, two can withstand him. If you're attacked on a road, two are better than one.

Two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. This is the passage again that often is read, or sometimes they'll take a rope—we've done it here at weddings—we'll take the rope and we'll do it together and show the husband, the wife, and Jesus in the middle. And a threefold cord is not easily broken. However, in the context of this passage, that's not actually what it's talking about. It's beautiful and it fits perfectly in a marriage ceremony, but he's talking about just in life in general. A threefold cord: you and Jesus. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, certainly helpful, without doubt, all-knowledgeable, all-knowing, all-powerful, wonderful.

But he's also telling us when you have friends, all of that—especially when you're with like-minded believers—how beautiful that just all comes together. It's so wonderful when the body of Christ becomes that threefold cord that's not easily broken and how much stronger that gets. Some of you know that have towed—anybody in here ever tow a car? You know that if you take a single strand piece of rope and you hook a car up to it, it's going more than likely to snap. But you start taking multiple strands and you interweave them, that begins to form a very strong, stronger piece of rope, stronger line that way. Certainly obviously today we'd say grab a chain, but you understand the point here: what he's trying to say is it's not quickly broken.

Now he's going to move into this next passage because he says, "Okay, now that you're..." I love how Solomon writes. Are you catching the context and the pattern here in what he's doing? It's a lot of contrasting in the book of Ecclesiastes. Remember chapter three was all about couplets of contrast, and we talked about that when he would say there's a time to be born, a time to die—sort of these contrasting couplets. Well, in chapter four as we've been going through he's saying well, hey, there's vanity in work and if you don't invest in friends. And oh, by the way, if you work too much, okay, he's been doing this.

By the way, having friends is really great and you should be investing in friends because a threefold cord's not easily broken. But let's not go to the extreme that all you do is be so concerned about what other people think of you—popularity—that you consume yourself with that either. Doesn't God know us? We are so one or the other. There's no middle, right? I'm either on or I'm off. There's like no middle point, and humanity is so much like that. "Lord, okay, that makes sense. I need to be investing in others." And then because we don't want to blow that, what do we do? We then turn around and have playdates. We have get-togethers, we go out to dinner, we hang out, we do whatever we do.

Next thing you know, every night of the week we're booked, and by the end of the week we can barely stand up and we're just exhausted. And oh, by the way, all of the work that we were supposed to be doing because we're tired and we go to work the next day doesn't get accomplished. So then we're working over the weekend on Saturdays and then after church on Sundays to make up everything we should have been doing Monday through Friday. He knows humanity, so he's giving us spiritual guardrails.

Guest (Male): And we all need those spiritual guardrails to help prevent us from wrecking our lives. We'll learn more about it tomorrow on His Perfect Love as Pastor Matt VanderVen continues our study in Ecclesiastes. And if you enjoyed today's message, we'd like to know. Email us at our website, hisperfectlove.org. Be sure to include your prayer requests, and while you're there, you'll notice a place to listen to Pastor Matt's sermons, including all of Ecclesiastes. That's hisperfectlove.org.

You can also listen to us at oneplace.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And we also offer a free mobile app. This is a convenient way to listen to Pastor Matt on your mobile devices. Go to hisperfectlove.org for more information about that. And if you'd like to support this ministry with a one-time gift or ongoing monthly support, you can do so through the website at hisperfectlove.org. Thank you in advance. We want all of our listeners to have access to the Word of God, so if you're in need of a Bible, we'd like to get one into your hands. Just email us through the website and ask for the free Bible offer. Here's our web address again: hisperfectlove.org. There's much more to come in Ecclesiastes. This has been His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.