Without the explanation offered in the first verse of Ecclesiastes 9, the following verses would have an entirely different, hopeless meaning from what they actually do.
Ecclesiastes 9:1 ends by saying, “People know neither love nor hatred by anything they see before them.”
Verse 2 says, “All things come alike to all: one event happens to the righteous and the wicked…As is the good, so is the sinner.”
Verse 3 says, “This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: that one thing happens to all.”
Why is it that everyone in the world seems to receive the same things from God? Or, as was previously discussed in Ecclesiastes, why do the evil often seem to have a better plot in life? Why does God show common grace to both the evil and the good as Matthew 5:45 says?
Solomon explained that it didn’t seem fair, but he prefaces his discussion by saying in verse 1 of this passage, “For I considered all this in my heart, so that i could declare it all: that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God.”
What makes the difference in an “equally unfair” life? “The righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God.”
God knows who are His, and He sees what they do. We must live life from God’s perspective.
Though the world is full of both fools and the wise,
The same results seem to come upon all.
But remember that all is seen in
