Saturday 16 November 2019

'Don't waste your suffering' (Ecc. 7:1-14)


Many years ago, there was a tribe in Africa who would ask the following when they were told about a Christian: ‘Is he a broken Christian?’  They didn’t ask, ‘are they a knowledgeable Christian?’ or ‘are they a gifted Christian?’  They wanted to know that the person was a broken Christian.  For there is a maturity that comes only through the experience of brokenness.


In some ways, given the inevitable pain that we experience in life, it is not so much whether we have experienced brokenness that matters, but how we have reacted to it.  Some, as we see in these verses, simply laugh pain off.  They pretend it doesn’t exist.  They pretend that the day of death is never going to come to them.  You will find that such people are hard to relate to.  There is no depth to them.  

This morning we are going to be urged not to waste our suffering.  Don’t waste your suffering, because right throughout the Bible we are told that suffering is something that can produce maturity.  It is a part of God’s plan for us.  So maybe in the New Year I will send you a text that reads: ‘this year, may God send you all the suffering you need to grow.


Life is short

The first lesson that we see in our reading is that life is short.  You are not engaging with reality if you are not prepared for the fact that life is short.  We are going to die, and it will be some time relatively soon.  

Solomon writes, ‘the day of death is better than the day of birth.’  It is not entirely clear whether this is a reference to our own day of birth or death, or the birth and death of someone else.  But both are true.  You learn things at funerals that you would not learn if you only ever go to christenings.  You will learn that you need to be ready for death.

We have a neighbour who avoids funerals.  I remember watching him drop his wife to a funeral home and speed away in his car.  Death makes him feel so uncomfortable.  But he needs to come to terms with the fact that he is aging.  Not thinking about something won’t stop it from happening.  He needs to come to see that Jesus came to take away the fear of death.  The psalmist prays, ‘teach us, O Lord, to number our days that we might have a heart of wisdom.’  Death is the destiny of everyone, and we need to take it to heart.

What if Solomon is talking about our own death?  ‘The day of our own death is better than the day of our birth.’  That is true for those who have turned to God.  Jesus has removed the sting from death.  I have had to preach at many funerals, and there is a world of difference when the person who died has trusted Christ.  You can speak with confidence and expectation.  There is hope and joy in the midst of the grief and sorrow.  The Bible offers no such hope for those who have resisted God’s love in their life!

If you are a Christian, if you have entrusted your life to him, accepted his forgiveness and let him lead you, then your best day in this life falls infinitely short of every day in the life to come.  Heaven awaits!  But if you neglect Jesus’ offer of forgiveness and want to take the price of your own sin on your shoulders, if you refuse to let him be centre to your affections and simply live for self, then your worst day in life is only a taste of what is to come.  Hell awaits! 

The wise person thinks seriously about life and death.

Learn through your suffering

‘Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us’ (NLT).  There is a time for rejoicing and a time for laughter.  When times are happy, enjoy them.  But there is something to be learned as we experience sorrow.  God uses sorrow as a way of changing us from within.

Sometimes God uses sorrow to break our attachment to this life and to cause us to long for eternity. When we are happy, we don’t tend to consider the life to come.  When we are sad, we want life to come to an end.  Sorrow also has a way of teaching us.  It helps us depend on God.
    
But there is a rick that we respond in the wrong way to sorrow. 


In verse eight, we are taught that patience is better than pride.  Why are patience and pride opposites?  Patience allows God be God and relies on him.  Pride says, ‘I don’t deserve this.  I deserve a good life.’


I was down at the Christian Union in UCC.  They asked me to speak of suffering.  I spoke on Job.  As I was preparing for this, someone made a good point to me: we often ask how a loving God can allow bad things to happen to us, but we should ask how a holy God allows us to be blessed.  There is a mystery is blessing.  We have rebelled against God’s loving rule.  I have done nothing to deserve God’s kindness, and neither have you.  Yet every day he gives us life and breath and joy in our hearts.  He blesses those who trust him, but he also blesses those who resist him.  Even those who hate the very sound of his name have so many things they should thank him for.


Another amazing thing is that as a Christian, he even blesses us with suffering.  For he uses suffering in our life to make us more like Jesus.  I am not saying that this is easy! 


The person who is patient may cry out, ‘how long, O Lord, will you forget me for ever?’  But deep within there remains a confidence that God can be trusted.  Sometimes in the midst of pain, all we can do is look at the person of Jesus, and look at how he treated people, see his compassion and know that God is good.

In verse nine we are told not to become angry and bitter.

I remember the first time I really struggled with anxiety.  I was in college in Dublin.  I couldn’t settle myself and went for a walk.  I saw a man sleeping on the street, and my heart went out to him in a way that I hadn’t cared before.  While I didn’t know what his pain must felt like, my pain was making me more compassionate.  The apostle Paul tells us that God comforts us in our sorrows so that we can comfort others with the comfort we have experienced in God.  There is something about suffering that bonds us to other people who suffer.


But sorrow can also make us hard-hearted.  We may be jealous of the fact that other people seem to have life better than us.  In our pain we can close the world out, and close ourselves in.  That we be to waste our suffering!


Another way that we waste our suffering is through nostalgia.  Verse ten: ‘do not say, “why were the old days better than these?” for that is not wise.’  One of the reasons that this is not wise is that the good old days weren’t always good.  But, also, we can’t live in the past.  Even if yesterday was wonderful, we simply can’t get back there.

Learn to trust God

‘Accept the way God does things, who can straighten what he has made crooked?’ (13, NLT). 

There are certain things in your life that you can do nothing about.  You have to learn to depend on God at these times.  Don’t complain saying, ‘if only I was married to someone else’ or ‘if only I had her/his life’.  Those are stupid things to say.


There was a lady who got up at a conference and said, ‘I like to think of God as being weak God.  He is not responsible for our suffering.  He would change it if he could.’  Belief in such a weak ‘god’ may get us around some of the questions that suffering presents, but it is hardly a comfort.  Do you want your life to be out of control? 


During a time when I was suffering from depression, Caroline and I were comforted by the words of hymn-writer, John Newton.  He said, ‘everything is necessary that God sends our way, and nothing can be necessary that he withholds.’  That was comfort.  It didn’t take away the pain but did promise us that God had a purpose in it.  That is what we needed.


In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul has a ‘throne in the flesh’.  He prayers three times for it to be removed.  It is right to ask God to change things.  But God said ‘no’.  God had made the path crooked.  Then God told Paul, ‘my grace is sufficient for you, my strength is made perfect in weakness.’  No longer did Paul try to change his circumstances, he lived with the crookedness knowing that God knows what is best.


I remember when I started working in a church in Northern Ireland.  It was shortly after the troubles. People would tell me not to harp in about forgiveness too much.  ‘You haven’t experienced what these people have gone through, so don’t demand too much of them.’  I wanted to reply, ‘but it is not me who asks them to forgive.  It is Jesus.  And he has had to forgive more than anyone else.’  It is the same with suffering.  Maybe you look at me this morning and want to say ‘it is easy for you to tell me to trust God in my suffering, but your life is better than mine.’  I hope this is not trite to say, but it is not me who tells you to trust God.  It is Jesus who says that.  He has suffered more than any of us can imagine.  He was a man of suffering, familiar with grief, and he tells us not to waste our suffering.

Conclusion
Last verse.  When times are good be happy.  Enjoy the blessings of life.  Enjoy the good things in life.  Enjoy God’s people.  Enjoy good food and drink.  Have fun.  Get satisfaction from your work.  However, then Solomon says, ‘but when times are bad consider this; God made one as well as the other.’  There times of illness and sorrow times when life hurts, and Solomon does not say when times are bad, we need to be happy.  He is not saying don’t be sad and he is not forbidding mourning.  He is saying that we need to remember that God remains in control, and he is good.    

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