QT 20/01/2025 Mon. Ecclesiastes 4. Living in between promise and fulfilment. 生活在应许与实现之间.

QT 20/01/2025 Mon. Ecclesiastes 4. Living in between promise and fulfilment. 生活在应许与实现之间.

QT 20/01/2025 Mon. Ecclesiastes 4. Living in between promise and fulfilment
READ http://www.esvbible.org/eccl4

Oppression easily invokes anger against the oppressor and sympathy for the oppressed. Many examples prevail in history. But history also revealed that the oppressed today became the oppressor tomorrow! Sigh.

Read the whole chapter by the above link. We highlight

Ecclesiastes 4:1–3 [1] Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. [2] And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. [3] But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. (ESV)

The Qoheleth had said that God has made the world such that everything is beautiful in its time. God had promised many things for His worshippers. Yet for Qoheleth and many of us, the fulfilment of God's promises seemed far away for now. The justice and power of God seemed contradicted by the injustice and oppression that are now happening. The gap is so wide that Qoheleth lamented that he rather have people unborn, or the dead is better than the living (4:2), so that they both need not perceive this wide disparity between ideal and reality.

This disparity between what the straightforward promises that the Bible affirms and what is experienced now is the VERY place that God had placed you for spiritual growth, for developing skills for living in a world filled with much tension. Ecclesiastes prepares you to experience the complex world that is quite different from simple "textbook" answers.

For a start, you would experience humility—I do not know all things, I do not even know many things. Humility would change the tone by which you speak to others. Struggling with questions for which we cannot find certainty in answers remain a characteristic of life of faith under the Sun. Secondly, I must still move on to attaining maturity by not merely relying on human observations, but by turning to God and waiting for Him for ultimate fulfilment in the future.

Ecclesiastes is inspired by God Himself to be written down, and therefore does not catch God by surprise. The stuffs in Ecclesiastes is the very ingredient God had prepared for your sanctification, to be more and more like God and different from the world.

It is in this fallen world that God's activity of salvation and redeeming the fallen humanity and fallen world take place.

REFLECTION: God had graciously allowed us to participate in this fallen yet mysterious world for His purposes, in your personal capacity as "neighbour" to others, as well in your ministry in church and society for the sake of reaching out to others. Continue to live joyfully in between the past promises of God and the definite fulfilment of it in the future.


QT 20/01/2025 星期一. 传道书 4. 生活在应许与实现之间
http://m.bbintl.org/bible/ncv/ecc/4

压迫很容易引起人们对压迫者的愤怒和对被压迫者的同情。历史上有许多这样的例子。但历史也揭示,今天的被压迫者明天就成了压迫者!叹息。

通过以上链接阅读全章。我们强调

传道书 4:1-3 我又看见日光之下所发生一切欺压的事:受欺压的流泪,却无人安慰他们;欺压他们的,手里握着权柄,因此无人安慰受欺压的。2 我赞叹那已死的人,胜过那还活着的人。3 那还没生下来的,就是还没看过日光之下所行的恶事的,比这两种人更有福。

教师(科希勒)曾表达,上帝创造了这个世界,在那里,万物都有其美丽的时候。上帝曾许诺给他的崇拜者许多东西。然而,对于教师(科希勒)和我们中的许多人来说,上帝应许的实现似乎还很遥远。上帝的公正和大能似乎与正在发生的不公正和压迫相矛盾。这种差距是如此之大,以至于教师(科希勒)哀叹宁可让人不出生,或者死人比活人更好(4:2),这样他们都不需要感知理想与现实之间的这种巨大差距。

《圣经》肯定了许多上帝的直截了当的应许与现在所经历的之间的这种差距,正是上帝安排你进行灵性成长的地方,也是你在这个充满拉力(矛盾)的世界中培养生活技能的地方。《传道书》帮助你体验复杂的世界,它与简单的 “教科书 ”答案截然不同。

首先,你们会体验到谦卑--我不知道所有的事情,我甚至不知道很多事情。谦卑会改变你对他人说话的语气。在找不到确定答案的问题上挣扎,是太阳下信心生活的一个特点。其次,我仍然必须继续前进,达到成熟,不只是依靠人的观察,而是转向上帝,等待祂在未来的最终实现。

《传道书》是神亲自启示写下的,因此不会让神措手不及。传道书中的内容正是神为你的成圣所预备的材料,使你越来越像神,与世人不同。正是在这个堕落的世界里,上帝开展了拯救和救赎堕落人类和堕落世界的活动。

反思:上帝恩准我们为祂的旨意参与这个堕落而又神秘的世界,以你个人的身份成为他人的 “邻舍”,以及在教会和社会中的事奉,向他人传福音。继续喜乐地生活在上帝过去的应许和将来的必定实现之间。