After delving into the mysterious and confusing things about life, Solomon brings us to a final crystal clear conclusion!

No matter what’s going on in your life today, the answer is to fear God and keep his commands because judgment is coming. If things are confusing or painful or hard OR if they are very good, the path forward is always to fear God and keep his commands. We will not understand or like everything that goes on under the sun but we are given an infallible rule for living life in this world.

Solomon said, “When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, every hidden thing, whether good or evil.” We WILL give an account to God for EVERY deed, and that truth should govern how we live our lives every moment. 

So..at the end of a book that SEEMS to say everything is meaningless, suddenly everything we do has profound meaning – because God sees everything, the good and the bad, and all that is secret. Phil Ryken said, “The final message of Ecclesiastes is not that nothing matters in the end but that EVERYTHING matters in the end.”  Every act of obedience, no matter how small, every act of worship, every attitude matters! 

And someday God will make his judgments known about everything we do, about everything EVERY person does.  And there WILL BE a recompense or reward for it.  We see stuff going on, that makes us shake our head and wonder why people get by with so much. It SEEMS God gives it a pass, but someday He WILL make his opinion known! He WILL pass judgment on everything done under the sun.

One of the hard messages of Ecclesiastes is that there are no immediate answers to the injustice, the evil and oppression that go in this world.  4:1 “I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed— and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors— and they have no comforter.” 

So..How do we deal with that?  What do you tell people who have experienced cruelty and abuse?  The answer is that God will put things right.  The answer is that God is the judge of all the earth and God will settle all scores, He will bring all things to perfect justice in the end. 

But that day is not just for those people. HE will decide whether our deeds are good or evil.  We won’t decide.  Other people won’t decide. God will decide.  He created us. He has every right to judge our lives. That day is coming very soon for all of us. It is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment.  And BECAUSE that day is coming, what we do every day matters.  

David Gibson wrote a book on Ecclesiastes called “Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End”.  Life is a breath, we die and then we stand before God.  Look at the end, let it grip you. Let that change how you treat your wife today. Let it restrain your impulse to complain. Let it keep you from having that meltdown.  Let it move you to forgive somebody, to love your brother or sister, or to take up a work for the Lord.    

This is much like what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:9,10 “We make it our goal to please Him, whether at home or away. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”  Paul said we strive as if going after some honor or prize, to please Christ.  We will stand before Christ someday. We want Him to be pleased.

There are two different kinds of judgment. There is a judgment of condemnation and a judgment of evaluation.  In one sense our judgment took place 2000 years ago. The condemnation we deserve for our sins were put on Christ. There is no eternal condemnation ahead for those in Christ.   But the Bible also says we will all stand before Christ for a testing of our works.  How Christians live DOES matter.

*Solomon said, “when all has been heard, this is the final conclusion”. So what have we heard?  We have heard that life is a breath, life is brief, it’s futile, and frustrating, things don’t seem fair, life is hard, there’s lots of toil, and tears, and sorrow, we do the same things over and over that often don’t seem meaningful.

Things we think will bring happiness don’t deliver happiness. Life doesn’t satisfy us. There are hungers that you have in your heart that just do not get satisfied in life in this world. And then we all die.. and it could be any day! 9:12 “No one knows when their hour will come:  As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them.”  Life under the sun is futility with a vengeance and sometimes it feels like that doesn’t it? 

Some look for drugs or alcohol to medicate the vanity and pain of life.  Some search for relief in pleasures and projects, wealth or houses, or some alternative form of spirituality.  But Solomon said, “Stop looking! I have the answer!”  And he warns against keeping up an endless search for happiness and meaning. Verse 12 “Be warned, the writing of many books is endless.” They will just wear you out!  A very common way that people try to find meaning and happiness in life is readin book after book after book. But Solomon said an endless search for answers will just exhaust your soul and leave you in futility. “The conclusion is this fear God and keep His commandments.”  

The only answer to life under the sun is life lived FOR God, with a proper FEAR OF God and obeying what He says! This is your purpose in life.  This is what gives your life meaning!

The measure of your life is not success or failure in anything on earth, but did you fear and obey God. This works ALL the time, for every person, in all the vanity and struggles of life.  No matter what you are going through, or have been through, this advice works.  If you are young, if you are old, if you are in poverty or riches, married or single, if you are experiencing present success or some kind of massive failure. Fear God enough that you obey Him and you have found wholeness and purpose.  

I talked with someone recently who was explaining to me that he had to do something directly against the command of God in order to finding healing for himself.  What a lie!  Wholeness, healing, answers, purpose, meaning, joy is all found in honoring, reverencing, obeying, pleasing God.  

*In the midst of lots of things that don’t seem to matter this always matters. It is a great way to simplify your life!  You get up in the morning and you honor God, you bow before Him and your realize your business today is to honor and serve the King and obey what He tells me to do. And we do that in midst of the vanity of life, with things going on that we can’t figure out.  9:11 “I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the strong, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; for time and chance overtake them all”.  

We are troubled by this injustice, this randomness, this unpredictability (especially when it happens to us) But in the end it doesn’t really matter whether you won or lost the race. It doesn’t really matter whether you had lots of money or not.  It doesn’t ultimately matter whether you got the honor you deserve or not.  God isn’t going to hold you accountable for ANY of those things. The only FINAL issue, is did you fear and obey God while you lived your life under the sun. 

Even when life seems repetitive, mundane, ordinary; THAT is what MATTERS! That you honor God and obey Him. That is what defines us!  You’re not defined by your looks, by your clothes, by your job. You are defined by how you live before the face of God.

*Fearing God and obeying God are connected. They are not two unrelated things. We are to fear the Lord to the point that we obey Him! When a brother or sister is living in sin, there is always a lack of fear of God at the root of it.  When someone says, “I know this isn’t what God says I should do, but I’m going to do it anyway. I just can’t help it.” That kind of reasoning comes from NOT fearing God. 

That’s because we obey what we fear. If we fear rejection, we will be a slave to the opinions of other people. If we fear men, we’ll end up pleasing, serving and obeying men.  If somebody says, I only do whatever so and so says, that means THAT person is who they fear and respect most.  If we fear God we’ll end up serving, pleasing and obeying Him.  That is how it works...all the time.  We obey what we fear, what we respect the most.

Jesus said, “Not every one who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven.  But only he who does the will of my Father in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons and work miracles?  Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Depart from me you workers of lawlessness.” 

Jesus called them workers of lawlessness, meaning people who disobey God’s rules for life.  And that’s because they don’t fear Him.   So Jesus said on that day I will say I don’t know you. 

Talking about God, calling Jesus Lord is not a substitute for fearing and obeying God.  Supernatural experiences are not a substitute for fearing and obeying God.  Godly fear is what keeps us from living a life of lawlessness.  Godly fear leads to obedience. 

Eccl. 7:18 “It is good to grasp the one and not let the other slip from your hand. For he who fears God will follow both warnings.”  If you fear God and he gives you one instruction you do that.  And if he gives you another you do that without letting go of the other thing he told you. IE The point is you take what God says seriously.  You GRASP His words and His warnings and you don’t let then slip through your hands. 

*Solomon said, To fear and obey God is the whole duty of man. Or the “whole of man’s life”. The answer to life is really NOT confusing.  The old hymn got it right! “Trust and obey for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” Micah 6:8 says, “what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  

God created you for Him!  He created you to love Him, obey him, worship him and enjoy Him. Sin separated us from that purpose. Christ died to bring us back into that place of reverence and joyful obedience to your God. 

Titus 3:3-5 “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. ...But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit..” We were ONCE disobedient but the outcome of salvation and being renewed by the Holy Spirit is that we are becoming obedient people. 

Christ saved us and sent His Spirit into our hearts that we might begin to obey God. Romans 6:17 “thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed”.  This is at the very heart of the gospel.  We aren’t saved by our obedience, but Christ saved us to become obedient children. 

*God calls us to fear and obedience because that is to our benefit. The good life is the life that fears the Lord. Eccl. 8:12 “Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and still lives long, yet I also know that it will go well with those who fear God” The fear of God is to your advantage, your protection and well being. Proverbs 14:27 The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death. 

Fearing God will keep you out of LOTS of pain and trouble. It will keep you out of many snares and traps of the enemy. Disobeying God is like driving on the wrong side of the highway, running stop signs and red lights. You are going to crash!   

Prov 28:14 “Blessed is the one who fears the LORD always”.  NKJV “Happy is the one who is always reverent”.  God manifests His presence and loving-kindness where there is reverence for Him. Psalm 103:11 “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving-kindness toward those who fear him.”   This is the good life!

*It is significant that Solomon preaches the enjoyment of God and His gifts right ALONGSIDE the fear of the Lord.  Roy Zuck said the theme of Ecclesiastes is enjoy life and fear God. Seven times he commends fearing God.  Seven times he commends enjoying God.  2:24 “Nothing is better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy his work. I have also seen that this is from the hand of God.” 3:13 “every man should eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his labor--this is the gift of God”  Joy in life and fearing God are married, like husband and wife.  What God has joined together let no man separate.  

The message of Ecclesiasties is that Life is not perfect, in fact it’s painful, there is toil and tears. I find great freedom is just accepting the vanity of life. Stop worrying about trying to have a picture perfect life. It is NOT found under the sun!  So fear God, obey God and go enjoy God and his gifts whatever He has given you to enjoy today.  

*Fearing God is for young people, old people and everyone in between. Chapter 12 begins “Remember your creator in the days of your youth.”  Because God is our creator, we should remember him as we go through life, knowing that ultimately we belong to him (and will answer to him).

Solomon said “Rejoice, O young man while you are young, and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth… But also remember that God judges all things in your life.”  By the grace of God, He put the fear of the Lord in me when I was a young person, and it made me feel like an oddball among most of kids I was around.  If you are young and you have a fear of the Lord, GUARD THAT! It’s one of the greatest gifts a young person can have. 

And if you are older, 40, 50, 70 whatever, and you have not been walking in the fear of the Lord, today is the day to begin. After spelling out how our bodies wear down and fall apart like an old house, Solomon said 12:6 “Remember Him before the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl is crushed, before the pitcher is shattered at the spring and the wheel is broken at the well, before the dust returns to the ground from which it came, and the spirit to the God who gave it.”  Before all that happens, remember God.

Life is coming to an end for us! My mother was a beautiful young woman! Remarkably beautiful! She had tons of energy. She could wear me out clear up into her eighties. But that was all gone in her final years. And now she’s gone. We are all marching toward death.

Sometimes at a big football game they will honor the greatest players from the past at halftime.  If you watch those ceremonies, some of those guys can hardly walk.  Once in a while they come out in a wheelchair. The best athletes in the world with the strongest bodies are just a shadow of what they once were.  

That is where we are all headed.  Then comes death and judgment. So what should we do with that? Solomon says Remember God and Fear God and obey God.  That is the end of the whole matter!  And live your life today in light of that end! That’s the path to joy in a world of sorrow, that’ the meaning of life that is just a breath.

We each need this.  But also, this is an attitude for us to have as a church.  When Luke described the high point of the early church, he said the church.. had peace and was being built up, walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit.  Churches want to be a lot of things, but the Spirit was poured out on the church that was walking in the fear of the Lord. May we be a church like that.