THINK TOGETHER
Have you ever had something happen to you that wasn’t fair?
READ TOGETHER
We all want life to be fair don’t we? When we do something bad we should be punished. And when we do something good we should be rewarded. Fair means that bad people and good people should not have the same things happen to them. Good people should have a good life, while bad people should have a bad life. Isn’t that how God should make things happen?
But the Teacher in Ecclesiastes wants to make sure we know that life is not fair at all. He gets really upset because both the good people and the bad people have the same things happen to them. Sometimes good things happen to bad people, and sometimes bad things happen to good people, and in the end everyone dies, whether they are good or bad. And this really, really bothers the Teacher. Listen to how he explains it all here in Ecclesiastes chapter 9. It’s a bit hard to understand, but listen carefully to see if you can hear his complaint about God and about how unfair life is.
Ecclesiastes 9:1-5. But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all… 4 But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
The Teacher is saying that life isn’t fair, and God isn’t fair, because the good people and the bad people all have them same things happen to them in life. Both get sick, both get hurt, both die. But he’s forgetting this important truth – nobody is good. Everyone is bad. Everyone is a sinner. We all deserve to die because we have all sinned against God.
The Teacher thinks that making everyone die isn’t fair. He wonders out loud if death means that God hates us or loves us – “Whether it is love or hate, man does not know.”
But now we never have to wonder if God loves us. Why? Because of Jesus.
With Jesus we know for sure that God loves us. We know for sure that the sad things in life, including death, are all part of how God is saving us from our sin. How do we know? Because Jesus, the only really good person to ever live, died for us. His death was the only truly unfair death. He suffered and died but didn’t deserve it. But did God hate Jesus? NO! God loved him very much, and God loves us very much, and that is why Jesus died for us. And now we can be “joined to the living” (Ecc. 9:4). We can be joined to Jesus and his eternal life when we trust in him to save us.
Because of Jesus we know that God loves us very much.
With Jesus wedon’t have to worry if life is fair, we can just trust God.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Make a list/talk of all the ways we know that God loves us. Then make sure that your children know that the best way that we know God loves us is because he sent Jesus to save us.
PRAY TOGETHER
Jesus,
You suffered and died unfairly for me. Now I know that God loves me.
Amen.
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