Ecclesiastes - Eccl. 4:4-6 DailyBibleStudy.Org

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Ecclesiastes 4:4-6

Lesson # Eccl. 4:4-6
Study Material - Eccl. 4:4-6

You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.

Eccl. 4:4-6

4 And I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is the result of rivalry between a man and his neighbor. This too is vanity and striving after wind. 5 The fool folds his hands and consumes his own flesh. 6 One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind.

Life in the jungle (life in this world without God) has its lurings and its traps. Solomon gives examples.

First there is the workaholic. He hustles day in and day out. He is full of innovation and industriousness. He succeeds only to be met with envy from others not so successful. We see this in the world that hates the USA. Here we are extremely successful, giving more of our prosperity away to the rest of the world than the entire world combined, yet we are met with dislike from around the world.

So it is the same with individuals throughout the world. Anyone who is successful will be met with envy, and consequently bitterness and challenges to their wealth. The more ones makes, the more it takes to defend or preserve that wealth. If neighbors don't try to take it from you, then competitors, or local governments through new taxes, or even social ostracism may reach out to destroy you just for the mere pleasure of seeing you fall.

So you work even harder to gain more, to preserve more, to attain that elusive happiness, but happiness never arrives in your life. When God is absent there is no capacity for happiness or satisfaction in ones life, only the pursuit of staying ahead, of accumulating more and more never reaching at any point of satisfaction. The appetite is never satisfied.

Conversely, laziness is not the answer to avoiding the heartaches of wealth. Many a person has seen that keeping up with the neighbors, keeping up in the 'rat' race is a losing battle, and has gone in reverse in their life. So their hands are folded. They lack responsibility for themselves, and certainly have no responsibility for anyone else. They turn inward and try to escape the world. This does not gain happiness either. Also, neither does it eliminate problems from ones life. There are still needs that must be met in the life. One still has to live somewhere, eat from time to time, wear something, wash occasionally, associate with the public in some manner. There is no such thing as the perfect hermit, no such place as total isolation from society. There is no place that one can run to and hide from life. The end result of idleness is the consumption of ones self.

So is there a happy middle ground in the jungle? Well there might be for some who do not strive for much more than their basic needs, and that makes up the largest group on the planet. We all live from day to day, commuting to work and then home. We live in the repetition of our daily lives, perhaps having some time on the weekends, or in the evenings. Our lives look forward to that annual vacation, to graduation, to retirement, to something that we do not have currently, and that expectation is always future. We never really arrive there. So this middle ground is not the answer to anyone's quest for happiness.

All three categories mentioned are empty pursuits like the chasing after the wind. You can never catch that which you cannot see. Anyone who rejects God in their life, has no means of seeing the spiritual side of life. They see only the physical side. They see the promise of wealth and gain, and so use their 'God' given talents to pursue that gain only to be bombarded with all the problems that go along with it (unhappy spouse, unhappy neighbors, unhappy competitors, etc.), or they deceive themselves in another way and abandon life and wrap up themselves in some type of escape from reality (drugs, booze, philosophy of some type), or they just get along in life, or so they think.

Everything that can be tried, has been tried. There is no one who has been born a living breathing human being, that has ignored God, and succeeded in life. All have failed. Where do any of us think that we can come up with something new (never seen before) and beat the system, and even beat Gods plan for this universe?

This book of Ecclesiastes is the book of human viewpoint. Man tries anything and everything. Even working hard, abiding by all the laws, being the most honest person alive ('all these commandments I have kept,' was the response to Jesus), yet the good life will never gain even a toehold in heaven, nor a toehold in the spiritual life. The opposite - living a criminal life will not gain you anything either. Neither will do what the study of Bible doctrine will do in your life.

Passing your life off to God will gain you far more, with far less effort, than any of the above, and the results in Gods life are certain, not just hopeful objectives in a haphazard pursuit. The self righteous person who thinks that living a good life, that being clean is like being close to God, is totally misguided. The fool among many categories of fools.

The Christian life is not various degrees of morality resulting in Christianity, but the reverse. The Christian life is the study of Bible doctrine from which you learn the proper application of Gods Word to the life, some of which aspects result in good moral characteristics.

Biblical knowledge and wisdom precede character.

Now is the time to post a prayer.

End Of Lesson

Study to show thyself approved (mature) unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing (studying/discerning), the Word of truth.

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