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“3This is the tragedy of everything that happens under the sun: Everyone shares the same destiny. Moreover, the hearts of mortals are full of evil. Madness is in their hearts while they are still alive. After that, they join the dead. 4But all who are among the living have hope, because a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5The living know that they will die, but the dead don’t know anything. There is no more reward for the dead when the memory of them has faded. ”
Is Solomon dogging us?
Ecclesiastes is, in many ways a troubling and troublesome book. Among the sixty-six books comprising the Holy Bible, Solomon’s little letter is perhaps the most pessimistic. It has this sort of que sera, sera feel of fatalism and hopelessness. Whatever will be already has been and there is nothing anyone can do about any of it.
It is all “vanity,” as the King James Version puts it – pointless, hopeless, inevitable.
The key to understanding this book is to see Solomon’s perspective. More than any other phrase, he repeats the phrase “under the sun.” That is his perspective. He is writing it the way he sees it “under the sun,” under the circumstances, from a human perspective.
Interestingly, he champions a concept in the verses before us that we might find troubling if we really think about it. The phrase in question: a living dog is better than a dead lion.
Wow! It is reminiscent, this phrase, of one often heard in the United States in the 1970s among frightened young people. Caught in the throes of the Cold War and living under the constant threat of a nuclear disaster, many could be heard repeating the refrain, “I would rather be Red than dead.” In other words, “I would rather be alive in a communist regime than free and dead.”
But is that Solomon’s intent? Is he choosing cowardice over bravery?
No.
He is saying this: You may not be a lion; you may not be the king of the jungle; you may not have a majestic beard, a ferocious roar, and great strength; you may just be an old dog. But you are alive, aren’t you? And while you live, there is hope!
Cicero to the rescue!
Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of Rome’s greatest statesmen. He was a true patriot, committed to the Roman system of Republican governance (the model for the American system), and he resisted to the death the rise of the Roman Empire, which would reign with terror and madness by men drunk with absolute power.
Cicero seized on Solomon’s concept and left us with one of the great quotes in human history, concise and powerful and timeless: “While there is life, there’s hope.”
That phrase was more recently championed by the British theoretical physicist and one of the great minds in history, Stephen Hawking, a man who was terribly crippled by ALS physically and by atheism spiritually. Hawking’s version goes like this: “However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
Where there is life…
This is Easter Sunday and the best day on the calendar to remember the hope we have in Christ Jesus. However long and dark your night has been, it is followed by the joy of another sunrise and the eternal joy of the risen Son.
Have you lost a love or a loved one? Have you been stricken down by the hardships of living in a world crippled by sin? Has the situation been exacerbated by your sin, your own decisions, your misdeeds, your words?
Do you feel like a dog? I mean, not like a favored pet. I mean, do you feel like a dirty, low-down dog? Just a flea-bitten hound, lost and abandoned?
As Jeremiah declared (29:11), God has plans for His people that include “a future and a hope.” Sure, Jeremiah was speaking directly to his people at that time, but his words echo across the millennia because they foreshadowed the hope we have as New Testament Christians. That new testament is a blood covenant, a hope and a future purchased by the Son of the living God on a cruel, rugged, Roman cross and subsequently secured by his demonstration of power over the final enemy, death.
“16I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
Where there is life, there is hope and it is not the kind of frail, wishful thinking we associate with the word today. No. It is an assurance, a divine guarantee, an anchor for the soul caught in the tempest of life’s terribly troubled sea.
Where there is hope…
Let me turn it around now.
Where there is hope, there is life!
You may solemnly point to the graveyard holding the remains of those you have loved and lost and declare, “Life ends in death.”
You may stare into the city of the dead and feel the weight of knowing you will in time go the way of all who have lived and died before you.
I will, however, point to a tomb whose stone is rolled aside, an empty tomb, and declare to you and to me and to Satan and to death itself, NO! Death ends in life!
“50 But this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom, nor does corruption inherit incorruptibility.
51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all fall asleep, but we shall all be changed,
52 in an instant, in [the] twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and *we* shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must needs put on incorruptibility, and this mortal put on immortality.
54 But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruptibility, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the word written: Death has been swallowed up in victory.
55 Where, O death, [is] thy sting? where, O death, thy victory?
56 Now the sting of death [is] sin, and the power of sin the law;
57 but thanks to God, who gives us the victory by our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 So then, my beloved brethren, be firm, immovable, abounding always in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in [the] Lord.”
Jesus is referred to as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” That Lion became a lamb and sacrificed Himself to redeem a dog like me. Like you.
Where there is life, there is hope and where there is hope, there is life – abundant, eternal, victorious life.
Happy Easter!
