Word of Salvation – Vol.24 No.09 – December 1977
But What Then Did You Expect?
Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf, B.D. on Eccles.5:8-9
Scripture reading: Eccles. 5.
Law: Ex. 20; Rom.3:19-27a (pardon); Rom.6:1-4 (gratitude).
Psalter Hymnal: 327; 66:3,7,9; 172:6; 361:2,3; 337:2,3; 133
Brothers and sisters, boys and girls, young people, congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ!
The text we have before us today deals with quite a hot topic in our society: corruption in high places. Our news media, always hungry for exciting stuff to feed their readers and viewers, get quite a lot of mileage out of this thing.
Miss Junie Morosi, herself one of the persons talked and written about in this kind of context, once said, “People must have something to talk about!”
We hear of shady loan deals, of ministers sacked and others slandered; we hear of Members of British Parliament making off with lots of money and brushing with the law. We hear of Union bosses making themselves fat with rip-offs and ways and means to buy the co-operation of department heads.
But this, too, is no new problem.
In Eastern countries, of which the one where the Preacher lived was also a part, we still know today that many high officials are for sale. If you are poor and cannot give money under the counter, you are at their mercy. And you do not get much mercy at all.
What is the hurtful part of all this is the absence of JUSTICE. Not only on the part of crooked individuals in government, but also these governments THEMSELVES.
Socialism has always claimed that it stood up for the underdog and the poor who has neither help, nor money. But what of the savage increases of mail and telephone charges which were brought in while the Socialists themselves were in power?
The poor widow who needs a telephone to keep in contact with her children or summon help if she falls ill will be priced out of this commodity. And the writing of a letter will become something only those with money can afford. And many people will ask: is this the kind of justice we expect from our government? Is this just? Is this fair?
The small business and the small shop, the one-man farm and the family firm where you knew the one you were dealing with, are pushed out of existence by big Labour Unions and big businesses alike.
Inflation, which is the result of all this, is hardest on the savings of old people, and again one wonders: who thinks of THEM?
Now these things are very important to God. His Word – like the Preacher of our Bible book now talks about JUSTICE and FAIRNESS and RIGHTEOUSNESS a lot!
JUSTICE, that is what we all are homesick for. Whenever we have an election we wonder (OR SHOULD!), “will we get justice NOW?” Whenever – as happens overseas – a government is overthrown, the underlying question is: “will we get justice and fairness NOW?”
Justice is at the very heart of the Word of God. The grace of God to undeserving sinners is a matter of JUSTICE first of all, as Jesus went to the cross to PAY THE FAIR PRICE for our redemption. The very LOVE of God would be a formless jellyfish of untrustworthy feelings and oozy sentiments, were it not that JUSTICE is its very skeleton.
On Calvary’s stark hill love and justice meet each other! Justice is the very buttress that keeps the Covenant between God and Man standing up; and when Amos and Micah thunder for JUSTICE in the decaying country of Israel, they call for justice as the best way we can serve God. If we do not seek that, then all hymn singing and pious show in church and temple become meaningless, empty show.
Isaiah, too, when foretelling the coming of the Messiah, sings that His Kingdom shall be based on right and justice and this is something to be mighty glad about, THEN ONLY can we hope that this Kingdom will STAND.
A society without justice, never mind the smiles and never mind the fun and games, is a terror to live in. You’ll never know where you are; the poor and needy will never have a helper.
But, says the preacher here, NOW WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?
Yes, isn’t that amazing that we keep on expecting this high divine virtue, JUSTICE, from those WHO CANNOT REALLY GIVE IT?
We expect it from humanists because they’re so nice. BUT THAT SAME HUMANIST HAS OUSTED GOD FROM HIS HOLY THRONE..!!
Now, after he did that – be it ever so noble-looking, and be it ever so welfare-promising – after he did that to the God that made him, what do you expect he will do to man, his fellow-man, when he can be sure no one will bother him over it?
Don’t you be amazed, says our preacher. If you are, it just shows that you have had too much trust in man. If you are, it just shows that you have not really seen what God means when He talks about human SIN and what it does.
But, for the restraining grace of God, a sinner will do, what he can get away with. That is a reality and you had better take that into account. False idealism here denies the truth, about our world, as GOD HIMSELF, has revealed it so clearly.
He tells you now: When a Christian says we can find enough justice in a non-Christian political party or a non-Christian trade union, he is ASKING FROM THESE PEOPLE WHAT THEY CANNOT GIVE.
He who has committed the greatest injustice there is, namely, ousting from His rightful place the Ruler and Maker and Life-giver of this world, how will he be fair suddenly when YOU are concerned? Or when other people are concerned? How will he be fair, except when someone is watching him?
In verse 8 that is a word you can translate two ways: the one official is spied on by the other – that’s the one translation. There you see them work with their elbows, waiting for a chance to take it out on the bloke below, or just waiting to topple the guy above so he can push him from his place. THE RAT RACE, we call that, and that is a pretty bad word because are people supposed to be RATS? But it’s there!
And now, hold it, please, for maybe you’re only a very tiny cog in the big machinery and you haven’t much chance THERE to do YOUR bit of pushing and string-pulling. But do we not all have those who depend on US? How much of this tug-of-war thing goes on in our own marriages? And may we, when coming home after having been pushed around by others at our work, always be free from taking these frustrations out again on our kids?
The rotten thing about this rat race is that it becomes an attitude: we go hard, we’ll show ’em! Or we get hard INSIDE and become bitter, but not with the humble bitterness that confesses to God, but bitter because WE cannot do or have what OTHERS can. Our so-called fairness then hides a good deal of SPITE and it’s eating our insides out.
Or we watch the people who have money, and we can never really talk to them in love, face to face, because we always wonder: “WHAT CAN I GET OUT OF HIM?” And the rich person feels that and it makes HIM pretty hard and lonely too.
The one watching the other.
Watching… what can I get out of him?
That is what sin does to a person. That is human life apart from the grace of God. Just as well that there still is a bit of a brake on it. That is in that OTHER meaning of the word ‘to watch’ in verse 8: the one official WATCHES other officials…!
The Hebrew word for ‘watching’ there is ‘SHAMAR”. The people in Amsterdam – where there were many Jews living before the last war and so a lot of Hebrew crept into the local dialect – got from SHAMAR the word ‘Shmeris’ which is Amsterdam slang for ‘cop’ – policeman. And that, of course, makes good sense, too. The one official, trying to get as far as he can himself, watches like a policeman what those above him AND those under him are doing. That stops some from going too far in seeking themselves, knowing that they are being watched. In a sinful world, everybody needs a policeman, somewhere.
I said before, WHEN A SINFUL MAN DOES THE ENOURMOUSLY UNFAIR THING TO PUSH GOD ALMIGHTY FROM HIS THRONE AND RIGHTFUL PLACE, what do you think he will do to others WHEN NOBODY IS LOOKING? Just as well, then, THAT somebody is looking!
As long as by the goodness of God there still ARE some standards and common decency, then some people who might do ANYTHING will stop somewhat short of ultimate evil because they don’t want to get caught..!
And, now our world is getting more and more torn loose from the moorings of common Christian standards, we may thank God perhaps that television and communications media have made our world such a GLASS HOUSE where everybody will hear if someone ‘high up’ makes an obviously wrong move!
But you realise of course that THAT is only small comfort. That is the kind of comfort that only sits on the outside. Only a brake this is, somewhat of a brake on the headlong downward rush of a world lost in sin.
We may proclaim more comfort to you from verse 9. This verse has been a problem to translators and commentators through the ages. You see, it can be translated in three ways.
One way is: In all this it is an advantage if the country has a King who promotes agriculture.
But that translation makes no sense. Why would a farmer be more honest than a banker or a factory man or university student? This is the kind of thing Rousseau and the Naturalists would say who expect salvation from just living on the land. The kind of thing the communists said in China and lately again in Cambodia when pushing city dwellers into rural life.
But when, in the Netherlands a century ago, social justice BEGAN TO WORK ALREADY in the factories, it was especially in the FARMING AREAS in the North of the country that labourers were exploited mercilessly!
No, farmers are not necessarily more pious and more generous and more JUST than other people. Some of the greatest fools the Bible depicts were farmers. Nabal, in the Old Testament and the rich fool of Jesus’ parable. Sure, some great saints are among farmers too.
But salvation does not come from JUST SOCIAL CIRCUMSTANCES. That is nowhere taught by the Bible.
It was wrong in the Middle Ages to say that it was easier to become a saint by becoming a monk, just as it is wrong now to say that it’s harder to stay close to God when you go to study at a university or get a job in industry. The battle is on everywhere. In New Zealand the drift away from God and the church was WORST in the rural areas: the farming community there is as materialistic as anywhere.
But there are two more translations possible of this verse. We will first give them both, and then deal with them one by one.
- In all this a country will have an advantage, will be better off, if it has a King who just lets himself be served by what grows on the land.
…and…
- But it is fortunate, when over the cultivated land a King is ruling!
It is hard to choose between these two translations, and so we won’t. Both give us the good tidings (this morning) of the Word of God.
The first one, A COUNTRY, in all these troubles in a sinful world, is better off if it has a king who lets himself be served by what grows on the land. That is: that right at the top there is a king who is content with what the land gives. A king who is not seeking more and more for himself, who does not import wives and horses and monkeys and peacocks like Solomon did, but who simply lives to serve his people, being served with only what are his basic needs.
And, we have such a King!
A King Whose life was not one of pushing and spying jealously, but a King Who on His road from Bethlehem to Nazareth to that cross in Jerusalem was simple, simple even when He rode into David’s city on a donkey.
A Shepherd-King Who did not live for THINGS but for PEOPLE. Who gave His body to be meat indeed, and His blood to be drink.
That is first of all the gospel we may preach to you now. Yes, we have such a King, and He calls His followers to be such rulers, who learn again to be content with what the earth gives them, content to live, so they can serve,
And blessed the household, the country, the firm or the union, where the leader, changed by the power of God, is such a Christ- like ruler!
Then, finally, there is the other translation that says: “It is an advantage, it is fortunate, when over the cultivated land yes, the land where there still IS corruption, and we had better not be amazed, what DO you expect? …yet it is fortunate when over the cultivated land A KING IS RULING.”
Cultivated land… says the text. Yes, there you have in one pen-stroke the place and task of MAN on earth.
If this would be just the planet of the apes, it would not all be so tragic. The place would be savage, but not quite as evil as it can be now.
But man, you see, man is ruling as he was called to do by God. And fallen man is a formidable power for evil and misery.
He can be so clever in his cruelty!
He can be so sly in corruption, so resourceful in self-seeking.
That is man. That – but for the grace of God – is you and me.
We will say that of ourselves if we look here, too, into the mirror of the Word of God.
That’s you, too, and me. Little tyrants, even in the church!!
That is man – but for the grace of God.
But the grace of God HAS APPEARED and a King has ascended on the throne to rule over this cultivated land. Not ruling by deposing people and doing it all himself, but a King ruling by His Word and Spirit and USING people – people like you and me.
He may not wipe out injustice and pollution in one fell stroke because He wants wheat and tares to grow up together towards harvest. And as the tares grow bigger, more clearly visible in our world of naked power struggle, so does wheat, as Christians arise and witness where before they might have thought all was alright.
The cultivated land… where man has ploughed and harrowed and sowed and built… where factories are and schools and battle-fields and hospitals – and, yes. graveyards too.
Not all the problems got neatly solved in our text today – just as they aren’t in our world today either.
But the King is over it all, and as we pray: Thy Kingdom come, we know we’d better not be too amazed when we see that, apart from Him, justice cannot be maintained in this sinful world.
But He did come, that we, by Word and Spirit made Kings after Him, might do battle against injustice, and fight for fairness, and know that we may have good courage even when we have tribulation in this world.
He conquered that world.
The cultivated field where man obediently serves the King.
The place where in spite of corruption and unfairness it is good to live because there is hope.
The place where we have to sweat it out at our work and in the market place – no illusions for we know what’s in man and in our own heart.
But no despair either, for we know – amazingly we know – what is in the plan of God.
What DO you expect, then?
He shall reign from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.
Maranatha!
AMEN.