The Teacher Looks at Wealth
Today we are looking at what the teacher of Ecclesiastes says about wealth. Wealth is something which each of us must deal with. We live in a material world. That is our reality.
God has made us with physical bodies with physical needs. We need food to keep our bodies going, and to not have to endure the pain of hunger. We need clothing to cover our bodies, for the sake of modesty, for the sake of sexual purity, and for the sake of warmth and protection of the elements. We need shelter to keep the beating sun, the cold scorching wind, and the rain off our bodies. We have health needs which all cost money. So we need wealth. That is a reality in which we live.
We also live in a society with particular expectations. We need a job, which then has particular expectation, all of which need money. We have to communicate, which in our situation perhaps requires a computer connected to the net and usually a mobile phone. We live in a place that effectively requires a car, or perhaps two. And if we don’t need these things personally, it is because someone we know is doing all this for us.
Of course, we could choose to opt out of those things. We could sell the car, get rid of the computer and the mobile phone. But more often than not, we will be a pain in the neck to everyone else. It would probably mean that we were not taking our responsibilities seriously. Usually opting out of these things involves opting out of society. So these expressions of wealth, the car, the computer, the phone, are pretty much necessary for life in our society.
In our society, we also need to save. We are, for example, required to have superannuation. We are required by law to save a portion of our income for the future. We are also required by law to have certain insurances. And it is also wise that we have certain other insurances.
And as a society, we are wealthy. As well as personal wealth, we have social infrastructure. We have roads that are maintained. We have hospitals and schools. We have medicare. We have garbage collection and town water and sewerage and reliable electricity. We don’t wake up to the stench of rotting rubbish and raw sewage in our streets. We have immunization and public health programs. We have emergency services. We have home nursing as well as nursing homes. We have people paid by the government to help the elderly bring in their washing. All of this is good, and it shows that we are wealthy.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, the teacher, who looks for all the world like Solomon, speaks about wealth. And Solomon has particular expertise about wealth. After all, Yahweh said this to Solomon, in 1 Kings 3:13 (NIV):
13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both riches and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.
In 1 Kings 4 we read about Solomon’s personal provisions as King.
22 Solomon's daily provisions were thirty cors of fine flour and sixty cors of meal, 23 ten head of stall-fed cattle, twenty of pasture-fed cattle and a hundred sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice fowl. (NIV)
I don’t care who you are, that’s a lot of food. 30 cows a day + game meat + poultry + bread to go with it is a lot for anyone. Clearly, he didn’t eat it all himself.
Solomon had no transport or military worries. He had peace on all side. So, we read again in 1 Kings 4 (NIV):
26 Solomon had four thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses. 27 The district officers, each in his month, supplied provisions for King Solomon and all who came to the king's table. They saw to it that nothing was lacking.
Solomon’s wealth meant that he engaged in at least two major building projects during his life. The first was the temple of the Lord. It was a permanent tabernacle, and 7 years in the building. And no expense was spared in it’s construction. The second was his palace. It was 13 years in the making He also built a palace for his Egyptian wife, the daughter of Pharaoh. (1 Kings 9:24). He had managers and skilled artisans and tens of thousands of forced labourers. He had ships and sailors and merchants bringing him gold The Queen of Sheba voluntarily did the same, bringing gold and pices and precious stones. So this is the summary of his riches.
1 Kings 10 tells us this:
23 King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. 24 The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. 25 Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift—articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons and spices, and horses and mules. 27 The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. (NIV)
Solomon does not write about wealth from a position of lack. He has abundance. He lacks nothing. The things his heart wanted, he had in abundance. It’s not as if I said from the point of view of my lack. It's more like someone speaking who owns his own television net work and a Ferari and a helicopter, a private jet and a theme park and a big church building so that everyone can come and hear his wisdom and having squillions of dollars and minions at his beck and call. Solomon owned the ancient equivalents to all these things. He had all this and more. And yet he speaks of the limitations of such things.
Ecclesiastes 5:10
10 He that loves silver will not be satisfied with silver, nor is he that loves abundance satisfied with increase. This also is vapour.
At a very crude level, you see this on the game shows before the news: Deal or No Deal. If you walk away with $5,000, that’s a failure. The one who wins $5,000 wishes they got at least $20,000. The one who wins $20,000 wishes they won $50,000. The one who got $50,000 remembers that there was still $200,000 somewhere there. And the one who gets the $200,000 remembers that if she went to channel 9, they have a show called, Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
When is enough enough? I remember hearing a story about a very rich man who loved gambling. He asked someone around the table, how much are you worth? And he said, $50 million dollars. And his response was a disdainful, ‘toss you for it!’
Solomon’s point is that no amount of money or property is never enough for the one that loves it. No profit is never enough. If there was a 100% profit, we might ask, ‘Why wasn’t there 200%’. That’s what the other bloke got. Cut costs, sack staff, bring a greater yield, work harder, work smarter. That’s why the new houses are getting bigger, not smaller.
And the teacher says that it is all vapour. It is a fruitless pursuit and meaningless. Why? Because it is unsatisfying, it is never ending, relentless, exhausting and all consuming, and it only stops when God puts us to death.
Now, Solomon was a rich man. And rich men have many hangers on. If you have a helicopter, you need some one to service and maintain the helicopter. You need someone to fly the helicopter. And you better hope they are your friends, because, well, if they get a bit upset, they might not do their job so well, and that would be bad for you. If you want to have a theme park, you need to pay for the attendants. If you want to have $50 million dollars, you will need financial advisers to tell you where to put it and what to do with it. And all of them will be taking their cut. So the teacher says, chapter 5 verse 11
11 When goods increase, those who eat them are increased. What advantage is there to the owner of them, except looking at them with his eyes?
The teacher says a similar thing in chapter 6 verse 1 and following:
6:1 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is weighs heavily upon men: 2 a man to whom God gives riches, wealth, and honour, so that he lacks nothing for his life of anything that he desires, yet God does not give him the ability to eat from it, but a stranger eats it! This is vapour, and it is an evil disease.
Imagine what it is like for someone who owns a television station. He pours hundreds of millions of dollars into it. And as he walks around it, he sees all these people. And he thinks. That cleaner leaning over there, that’s costing me $40,000 dollars. And that make up lady there, she is costing me $60,000. And those well preened presenters, they are a cool half a million for their well groomed smiles and inane cackle. Every man behind a camera, that’s $100,000 each. That bloke holding the boom mike is $80,000. They call that sound engineering, do they? That woman at the front desk answering the phones, that’s $50,000. Look, there goes $60,000. There walks $50,000. Oh yes, it cost us over a million to keep Mr Ratings over there from going to the opposition. That little titch over there, just out of school, running around for this or that, is getting $30,000 of my money. Here are all these people, munching my money, eating my profits. I earn more money, these people eat more of it. They want a new show here, a new wing there, a pay rise here, a new car there. Money, money, money, money, money, money. Do you think I’m made of money.
Think of that little volcano in Iceland that sent a few clouds in the sky. A pretty little pyrotechnics display for those living around it. No-one dies or is killed, mind you. And the great big airlines start losing billions of dollars because they cannot do anything and still have to pay for all these people sitting on their assets all around the world and munching them into the ground.
It is no wonder that Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 5:12:
12 The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much. But the fullness of the rich will not permit him to sleep.
Solomon in all his wealth begins to envy his conscript labourers. I might not feed them much. But at least they sleep well. But I can’t get to sleep for all of these money worries. Poor little rich man.
The rich man, unlike the poor man, has something to lose. The poor man lives hand to mouth. But the rich man has ‘investments’. And these can be lost. Chapter 5 verse 13.
13 There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches kept by the owner to his own hurt, 14 and those riches perish in a bad venture. So if he has fathered a son, there is nothing in his hand [to give him].
We’ve all heard of bad investments. We had a global financial crisis because of bad investments. Money lenders lending money to people with no hope of paying it back. Businessmen from overseas selling bundles of toxic debt to local councils in Sydney. The Sydney diocese losing a couple of hundred million dollars in gearing. Your superannuation fund going backwards. The crop failing because of not enough rain, or too much, or rain at the wrong time. Once there was something. Then, after the disaster, there is nothing. It’s not good. But, in the end, it doesn’t make that much difference, because he was going to die anyway. Chapter 5 verse 15:
15 Just as he came naked from his mother's womb, in the same way he will depart again, and he will carry away nothing in his hands for his labour. 16 And this also is a grievous evil, that in every point as he came, so also he shall he depart. So what profit does he have who labours for the wind?
We are born naked, we die naked. I guess for those who lose money, there is the bitterness about what could have been.
17 All his days also he eats in darkness, and he is severely troubled and has sickness and anger.
Each person, I guess, in the end loses his money. For each of us dies. And it is at that point that the deception of our security in wealth is uncovered. Money didn’t protect us from death. Perhaps that is why we become grumpy old men. Because there is some point where we begin losing everything we dreamed that we would have or worked for. That all the Disney movies we watched which told us, ‘chase your dream’ and had happy endings were profoundly wrong and just a fantasy. That you cannot have everything that you want. And even if you get it, it doesn’t satisfy. That we have not fulfilled our promise or our expectations. It has all ended in death, a death we kept forgetting that was coming. We realize that we’ve been sold a lie.
Karl Marx, the economist and founder of communism said ‘religion is the opiate of the people’, but money and wealth, and the control of the means of production, was reality and the thing worth fighting for. And his disciples did. But the teacher, Solomon, who had the means of production, says, no, it is work and eating and drinking that is the opiate of the people. Chapter 5 verse 18 and following.
18 Look, that which I have seen to be good and appropriate is for someone to eat and to drink, and to enjoy good in all his labour in which he labours under the sun, all the days of his life which God has given him. For this is his lot. 19 And to every man who God has given riches and wealth, and the opportunity to eat from it, and to take his lot, and to take pleasure in his labour, this is the gift of God. 20 For he will not remember much about the days of his life; because God keeps him occupied with the pleasure of his heart.
What is the real opiate of the people? What is the pain killer, that makes us forget about all the misery and oppression of life under the sun? What makes us forget that our days are short, that we are going to die very soon.
Our work, our food and our drink.
Look, we’ve just had a little bit of pain killer now. Our scrumptious breakfast was a kind of opiode. It helps us forget that we are going to die, and our children are going to die, and all of this is because of our sin.
For now, I fix this thing, make this widget, provide this service. I do this meaningful work in my community which helps others. Sure, the work itself is eternally insignificant. In the long run, the work I do, while not wrong in itself, will be unnecessary. The technology will change, the information will be outdated, my skills will be unnecessary and my services obsolete. And I and all of these people I serve will be dead in a little while.
But for now, I can serve others in my community. I can do something that helps them, that serves them, that does them good and lessens their misery and gives them joy during their short years. And I know that this pleases God. And hey, I get paid this money for what I’m doing. Fancy that, I get paid for this! This pays for my house and the clothes for my back, my wife and my children, our food and drink. And I forget about the fact that I live in a fallen world, where there is mourning and death and crying and pain.
Friends, work and food and drink are the opiate of the people. Not religion. For the reality of the world involves us reckoning with our death. And death tells us that something is desperately wrong with our world. It tells us, we are sinners. The wages of sin is death. Death is God’s condemnation of our sinful lives. And moreover, we read in scripture that man is destined to die once and after that face judgment. That is why, at the very end of the book of Ecclesiastes, we are taken beyond death. We are taken to the judgment and we stand on the brink of heaven and hell. And this is what we are told. Ecclesiastes 12 verse 13 and 14.
13 This is the end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.
And friends, allow me to remind you, no matter how big and tough a man you are, for you to stand that day, you will need someone to hold your hand. If you want to rock up before God and take your chances based on your own works, you will have an eternity of hell to regret it. But if you listen to the New Testament, and take seriously the fact that God sent his Son into the world, and that he died on the cross for sin and rose again and now rules the world, well, you will have one to speak to the Father in your defence.
Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, creator of the World, God in the Flesh, man who will judge the world with justice, Jesus Christ himself will be your advocate and mediator with the Father. The one who would condemn you as your judge has already been your saviour and redeemer by shedding his blood for all your wickedness. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. (Romans 8:34 NIV)
Cast yourself upon Jesus Christ now, this very day, and you will not be disappointed. He will save you, because he has promised, and you can say with Charles Wesley. ‘Bold I approach the eternal throne to claim the crown through Christ my own.’
But what about those of us who already trust in Christ as King and Saviour? What if you are someone who knows that Jesus Christ is the Mediator between God and Man? What if you know that by faith Jesus Christ will claim you as his own and that you no longer fear the wrath and anger of God? There is sound advice for us. Yes, we should lose ourselves in the joy of our work. We should work diligently and hard at our jobs, and sleep the deep sleep of those who’ve put in a good days work. And yes, we should eat our food and drink and use God’s world the way he says. Clothing, shelter, food, drink, marriage and family life, and whatever else God has created for us to use is good. It is not to be rejected if it is received by us with thanksgiving. We can thank God for these things, and they are consecrated by the Word of God and prayer for us.
But we must not stay satisfied with these things being good things for alone. We are called to be generous. And the teacher says to us now to share around the good gifts God gives. Chapter 11 verse 1:
11:1 Cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days. 2 Give a portion to seven, indeed, even to eight; for you do not know what evil will come upon the earth.
This is a puzzling verse. The traditional interpretation of it says it is a command to be a generous giver of money. Give money to those in need. Modern commentators generally understand it as a reference to business. Give business a go and diversify, because you don’t know what will work.
But the two interpretations are not that different. They are the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him how to fish. By being generous and charitable, you can give people money. But in business, you can give people a job, which means they can earn their own money. Both are a way to love your neighbour. And friends, there is a disaster coming on the earth. It is the judgment that will come when Jesus returns.
And the advice of the Apostle Paul in the light of that end is the same:
17Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. (1 Timothy 6:17-19 NIV)
Let’s pray.