It Shall Be Well and It Shall Not Be Well
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
4/22/2018 PM
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Text:
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Ecclesiastes 8:11-14
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Psalters: |
112, 355, 99, 201 |
- The people involved.
- First, there are the “sons of men” (11), a “sinner” (12), and the “wicked” (13).
- The “sons of men” are contrasted to the children of God.
- They are sinners who do evil an hundred times, with the idea that they run in their sins, committing them over and over.
- The “wicked” are literally the unrighteous.
- They ‘fear not before God” (13), i.e., have no awe for Him, do not tremble before Him, even say that there is no God.
- Second, there are the “just” (14) who “fear God” and “fear before Him” (12).
- A genuine fear of God is the fruit of the Spirit’s work giving one rightly to know God, His presence, and my obligations to Him
- God’s work of justifying makes one just/righteous in God’s sight by faith alone without works.
- It appears as if God in unjust in what He does to the just and to the wicked, which makes it appear to be vanity.
- The wicked sinners seem to enjoy prosperity and ease, with an abundance of this life (Ps. 73:7,8,12).
- And it appears to the just that they receive from God what the wicked deserve and vice versa.
- This apparent injustice makes the faithful either cry out in anger or be tempted to join them when they sin.
- But we know (because the Bible tells us so) that “it shall be well with them that fear God” and “not be well with the wicked.”
- Consider everyone’s destiny. We must not be short-sighted as the wicked are who think that no punishment is coming.
- “It shall not be well for the wicked” (13).
- But the reward of the God-fearing is that is shall be “well” with them (12).
- We learn that God’s apparent injustice is His punishing judgment allowing them to sin even more and more grossly and openly