Word of Salvation – Vol.35 No.08 – February 1990
Cast Your Bread Upon The Waters
Sermon by Rev. W. J. Bosker on Eccles.11:1-6
Readings: Eccles.1:1-11; 11:7-10; 12:1-8, 13, 14
Singing: P/H 323; 140; Bow H.832; H.825
Dear congregation, brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ,
Have you ever spent a few lonely hours thinking about life, and wondering, “What’s the use?”
Everything I’ve ever worked for, all the energy I’ve expended, what’s there to show for it?
We can’t take anything into the grave with us. Whoever inherits what was mine might not even look after it.
What’s the point of life? Why go on with it?
I think that most of us (other than perhaps our young children) have at one time had thoughts like these.
In days when our society seems to be consumed with a selfish desire for material and personal happiness, it’s the youth of Australia and New Zealand who are often seeing past the facade of gloss and glitter and see only an emptiness.
The result is that young people in Australia/NZ are taking their lives in their hundreds.
What’s the use? Everything is meaningless!
That’s exactly how the book of Ecclesiastes starts out.
“Meaningless! Meaningless!
says the Teacher (or Preacher).
Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless!” (1:2)
It’s a good thing this book is in the Bible. Even though this book doesn’t mention God by His covenant name ‘Lord’ or ‘Yahweh’, the Jews included Ecclesiastes in their canon of Scripture.
We can be thankful that God caused this book to be written and preserved in Scripture because it has an important message for us.
The writer, who calls himself the Teacher or Preacher of Israel, looks at what it must be like to live without hope and without God.
To make sense of Ecclesiastes, we have to read it as an insight into the mind of a person who looks at the world in the light of this world alone.
That makes the book so philosophical, and to many such depressive reading.
The writer – and God who stands behind the book – is observing life from man’s point of view.
Seeing what life without God is like. And then see it for what it is!
God intended man to find ultimate satisfaction not in life, nor in man himself, but in God, man’s Creator and Redeemer.
If you read this book, don’t get depressed and give up before the end. Don’t miss out on the conclusion! Don’t forget to read the last page!
It’s in this last section of the book that we find our text. To understand it we must be aware of the contents and message of the whole book.
Ecclesiastes is a book of wisdom. Wisdom about how God wants us to live our lives.
The same theme that runs through the rest of the Bible’s wisdom literature in
Job,
Psalms,
Proverbs,
and Song of Solomon (Songs).
So what has
“Cast your bread upon the waters,
for after many days you will find it again”
got to do with wisdom?
and about how God wants us to live our lives?
From the framework of Ecclesiastes we can look at this text from 3 points of view.
The first two are extremes to be avoided. What are they?
- The first extreme is one of despair and carelessness.
Everything is meaningless. Why should I bother?
What’s the use?
Whatever I do, it’s here today and gone tomorrow. Nothing lasts.
I don’t stand to gain anything. What’s the point of it all?
You can see the hopelessness of this view – or at least I hope you can.
This extreme gives up on life.
It’s a non-Christian attitude. God is missing from the picture.
Many people think this way.
The fatalist says, “Whatever will be, will be.” Life’s all mapped out.
There’s nothing I can do to change it. So what’s the use?
The Sceptic says everything is meaningless. He doubts the truth of anything.
It’s often an excuse for sitting on the fence, pretending to be neutral. The end result is that such a person is not concerned about anything anymore.
The Epicurean says,
“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
The only purpose to life is to enjoy yourself now. What’s the point in working for others to enjoy the fruits of your works after you’ve gone?
These views have in common that there is no real purpose to life. The end result is to care about nothing, or to care only about self. And in the end there isn’t much difference.
There’s a lack of concern about life. And if there is a concern, its focus is so narrow, it’s only about ME.
It’s a non-Christian attitude.
God is missing from the picture.
- The other extreme is to be worried about everything in life.
Worry about all the things that can happen, and all the things that can go wrong.
It’s not a lack of concern, but an over-concern about many things that shouldn’t even concern us!
So much energy is spent in worry and anxiety that you feel tired, even exhausted, and there’s nothing to show for it.
Other people may have gone ahead, made a few mistakes, corrected them, and for the same amount of energy expended, they have actually made some progress!
In one of our hymns we sing,
“What does it help, that anxious caring,
that fear and grief and bitterness?
What do you gain if you are bearing
your cross in dark despair and stress?
God does not lay on you the load
to dread tomorrow’s unknown road” (Bow H.832:2).
Our Lord Jesus spoke about the subject of worry in His Sermon on the Mount (Matt.6:25-34).
He concluded that section by teaching us to set godly priorities of seeking first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and God Himself will see to it that we will receive the things He considers necessary.
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own” (v.34).
In the parable of the Talents Jesus was teaching His followers that every believer has been endowed with gifts differing according to ability, and that these gifts must be put to use in God’s service.
Fear is the opposite of confidence. Fear devoid of love, trust and faith leads to faithlessness and inactivity.
That was the problem with the third servant entrusted with one talent.
Out of fear he buried it. His activity was condemned by his master.
The Preacher in Ecclesiastes is thinking about this sort of person in the verses of our text.
He says,
“Whoever watches the wind will not plant;
whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.” (vs.4).
The person who is worried about all the things that can go wrong, won’t do anything either.
In that sense, this extreme is not much different from the first one.
If God is in the picture according to this view, the problem of the worrier is that his view of God is too small.
Where does this leave us in understanding Vs.1?
“Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again.”
What’s the biblical balance about living our life in God’s world that this text is talking about?
Where is the wisdom in this saying?
- In the 1st view, God is missing from the picture.
In the 2nd view, if God is in the picture at all, He is small.
In this 3rd view, God is in the picture as He really is.
Life revolves around Him. God gives life meaning and purpose.
In comparison with Him, we are so small, yet in His eyes significant, because He made us.
We see life from the perspective of only being a small part of a giant tapestry.
God sees life as the Weaver of this tapestry. He made it. He’s in control. He is its Creator and Producer.
That’s what vs.5 is saying!
You don’t know the path of the wind.
We might predict where the wind is coming from, where it might go and what it might do. But how many times has the Weather Bureau been wrong?
With a few thousand more years of knowledge and modern biotechnology, how much do we really know about the human body?
We can’t see things from God’s perspective! We are like ants below. Our view of the universe is no better than an ant’s view of Perth.
God, the Maker of all things, is central in the universe. All creation, and all its meaning revolve around Him.
God gives life meaning. Life cannot be understood without God!
In that context vs.6 helps us to understand vs.1.
“Sow your seed in the morning,
and at evening let not your hands be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that,
or whether both will do equally well.”
Casting your bread upon the waters has to do with the activities for life.
The things you do, your life’s calling.
It is thought that there is a reference here to those who were traders in corn, from which bread was also made.
These enterprising traders would ship their produce over the waters to make a profit and so earn their “bread”.
The risks of sea-trade were many, but the profits proportionately larger.
If these traders would keep on worrying about the hazards, their ships would never leave the dock.
But because they went, there was eventually a return for their labours.
Vs.2 is added as a precaution. It’s not wrong to be enterprising, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket!
And so we come to the biblical balance of how we are to live life in God’s world.
We are not to say, “What’s the use of it all?” and do nothing.
We are not to worry about all the things that can happen and do little.
But in the words of J. I. Packer in his book “Knowing God”,
“Seek grace to work hard at whatever life calls you to do,
and enjoy your work as you do it. Leave to God its issues;
let Him measure its ultimate worth;
your part is to use all the good sense and enterprise at your command
in exploiting the opportunities that lie before you” (p.116).
The believer has the assurance that this is God’s world. God the All-Wise and All-Knowing is in control.
We live out of the sufficiency of God’s grace in Christ.
God who did not withhold His own Son, but for our sakes gave Him up as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, will he not give us all He knows we need?
Are we prepared to work hard for the Lord and still leave room for faith?
Will we trust Him as we cast our bread, our livelihood, on the waters of the sea of life and entrust Him with the results?
It seems to me that a man like the Apostle Paul was able to view life this way.
He knew what it was like to work hard for the Lord. He was enterprising in communicating the gospel. He used the Roman law to his advantage to promote the good news that Jesus saves.
Through thick and thin he saw himself as a servant of God. He expected results, but was prepared to leave that to the Lord. He pressed on knowing that the crown of righteousness awaited him.
Casting his bread upon the waters, he knew that after many days he would find it again.
That made him able to say,
“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.”
The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labour.” (1Cor.3:6,8)
As the Scriptures say,
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart,
as working for the Lord, not for men,
since you know that you will receive an inheritance
from the Lord as a reward.
It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Col.3:23, 24)
The example of the farmer sowing wheat helps to illustrate the meaning of our text.
Anybody who hasn’t seen seed sown into the ground before would think that the farmer is wasting his wheat.
They might ask why the farmer doesn’t grind it into flour to make bread which he can eat.
The farmer, enterprisingly sows the wheat into the soil.
It’s buried and seems to be lost.
But the seed germinates, a wheat plant grows, and the resulting crop yields a harvest 30, 60, or 100 times what was sown.
He now has enough both to eat and to sell. His reward is very great.
That’s how we are to live the Christian life.
We are to work with all our God-given skills and talents and all the enterprise we have.
We are to remember that it is God’s world and that He is in control.
All our talents and gifts are his on loan to us.
We are to venture out for the Lord in faith in every walk of life. We are to do our best for the Lord, though even that will include our mistakes, and we are to leave things to the Lord.
In other words, we are to faithfully work the Lord’s vineyard and learn to leave the results up to Him.
He will ensure that our work of faith will bear fruit in His good time.
We can relate this biblical view of the Christian life to every area of our lives.
* If our financial giving to the Lord’s work is done in faith, then it’s not even a sacrifice. It’s a thank-offering to the Lord. It’s not money down the drain, as the world might see it, but an investment in God’s Kingdom. We may see the fruits of it in our lifetime, or we may not. But does that matter? The Lord may have different plans. If Jesus was the reason for your giving, then you can be sure of your eternal inheritance graciously earned for you by Christ’s blood.
* In the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, we will see our time as a God-given commodity. We won’t say, I work for my boss from 9 till 5, and the rest of my time is my own, and grudgingly give the Lord a few hours a week, especially on Sunday. All my time belongs to the Lord. Every second of it! What matters is what sort of steward you are of God’s time and His gifts to you.
* We can also relate our text to the way we do evangelism. The biggest obstacle I have encountered among Christians about evangelism is FEAR. It’s incredible that so many Christians who are saved by the blood of Christ from the punishment of hell, are too frightened to talk about their Saviour with others! It’s incredible that Calvinists who so much treasure the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, don’t rely on His sovereignty to help them speak up for Christ! I find the account of Philip’s evangelism effort very amusing and yet so comforting!
This guy was one of Jesus’ disciples. Soon after he followed Jesus he witnessed about the Lord to Nathaniel. Philip didn’t have a way with words, and his message was a bit mixed up. Nathaniel’s knowledge of the Bible was better and he gave Philip a hard time. Philip wasn’t deterred. He said, “Come and see for yourself.” And so it was that Philip led Nathaniel to Christ. He was casting his bread upon the waters, and the Lord saw to it that it would bear fruit.
The biblical balance about living our life in God’s world is that He is in control.
And because God is in control there is meaning to life.
He has done something about life’s most vexing problem. The brokenness is restored through believing in the sacrifice of Christ who was crucified on the cross and rose again from the dead, that through His life we might truly live.
Jesus makes life worth living.
True wisdom, a gift of God, is the disposition to confess that God is wise, and to cleave to Him and live for Him in the light of His Word through thick and thin.
Then we can venture out into God’s world casting the activities of this life on the waters of this world, not crowding our faith, but knowing that in God’s good time it will bear fruit, and ultimately we will receive our inheritance in Christ as a reward.
How much more meaningful that is than despairing of life, crying out, “What’s the point of it all?”, or to be so stricken with worry that we never get around to doing anything for the Lord.
AMEN