Ecclesiastes 8:5-9 says,...Bible reading week 8, day 5

Today's verses are Ecclesiastes 8:5-9, which read,

v.5-7 - He who keeps a royal command experiences no trouble, for a wise heart knows the proper time and procedure.  For there is a proper time and procedure for every delight, though a man's trouble is heavy upon him.  If no one knows what will happen, who can tell him when it will happen?

This is an interesting couple of verses.  We are told to keep the royal command, the command that has authority behind it and also is for our good and the good of others.  Keeping this command keeps us from trouble.  It might not look like trouble now when we are breaking it but trouble comes with the breaking and could be down the road.  We hold to the royal command because there is a time and a place for things.  

We will have delight but those delights are for those proper times and procedures.  It makes me think of marriage and also the pleasures of life that come from that union.  You can get those pleasures elsewhere but that would be out of step with proper times and procedures that the royal command has given us to follow.  Many follow this wrong path and their delight turns into trouble and trouble comes when you don't expect it.  

Another is how we spend our money and the amount we spend or even what we spend that we don't have at the moment.  I have put myself in that place at times.  I remember a vacation in the Upper Peninsula on a beautiful lake.  I had been planning the vacation all year and the weather was perfect.  The problem was that my boat motor broke down the first day and the repair was to the tune of 25 hundred dollars that I didn't have but I spent it anyways for my delight.  I rationalized it in so many ways to be an actual good to go against that royal command of spending only what you have.  It wasn't the proper time and procedure to repair that motor and what happened over the next couple of years was trouble that always came to the tune of 25 hundred dollars that was tied up in a motor only used a couple times a year.  We allow our delight which God wants us to have at the proper time and place to override the command of obedience to His instruction and we end up with trouble.

v.8, 9 - No one has authority to restrain the wind with the wind, or authority over the day of death; and there is no discharge in the time of war, and evil will not deliver those who practice it.  All this I have seen and applied my mind to every deed that has been done under the sun wherein a man has exercised authority over another man to his hurt.

There are many things we try to control that we don't have ultimate control over.  We may manage things around it but the exact time is not in our hands.  The anticipation of the first child is always so up in the air to what you plan to do or not plan because you don't know when the little guy or gal is coming.  Our second child was a planned Caesarean and so I planned my day up to the minute to when he was to come but even that could have all changed in a second.  

Solomon is talking about when we don't follow the royal commands and so we are doing something that is unwise or not at the proper time or under the guidance of the procedure.  The act of evil or act out of the proper time and procedure will not deliver.  Us practicing evil will not bring about good or a deliverance.  You have to start doing what is good and in the proper time and procedure to reap the benefits and delights that God wants you to have.  Doing that good is going to be hard at times but if you want the result of glorifying God then you need to do what God says.  If you don't then what comes is not only a hurt to you but it also hurts others.  A common phrase today is, "well it isn't hurting anyone but myself," but this truth says otherwise.  When we practice what is against what God says it spreads in ways that we can not control.   

Solomon ends with saying he has witnessed this himself and applied the principle to every deed that now presents itself to him.  What is the proper response?  Is this the proper time?  Is this the right procedure to follow?  Whose delight am I more concerned with, mine or God's?  Have I bought into the notion that I can do evil and it come out good?  Many questions to end our week with.  Let us pray.

"Lord, how we want to rush what You want us to walk through.  We want to run to the next thing but You know when and if we need that next thing.  Help us to slow down to actually walk with You so we can really experience delight and also be a benefit to others rather than harm them.  Amen."

Pastor Adam