Ecclesiastes 7:14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also has set the one over against the other… I. First, concerning THIS TWOFOLD WORD OF EXHORTATION. "In the day of prosperity be joyful." Prosperity then is not in itself an evil thing. Undue prosperity is not to be coveted. "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." But prosperity which is obtained in honest fashion, accepted with a thankful heart, and employed for the glory of God, is surely one of the best boons that Heaven itself can send. Further, gladsomeness is by no means to be prohibited. Alas! for those who would stop our laughter. God Himself is glad, His Gospel is glad; it is the Gospel of the glory of the happy God. Christ Himself is joyous. Let your hearts have their sacred outpourings; let your souls rejoice before the Lord in the land of the living. "Be joyful in the Lord." Spiritual prosperity is best of all. Be thankful and bless His name. But the other part of the exhortation is not less necessary, and is, perhaps, more appropriate to the most of my hearers. "In the day of adversity consider." What are we to consider? Not the adversity only. "Consider the work of God." So this adversity is the work of God. He may have employed agencies, but He is at the back of them. Even the devil works in chains, and can do nought apart from permission from the throne. "Consider the work of God." Look away to first causes, trace the stream to its source. When you think of this adversity as being the work of God you come to the conclusion that it is all right, that it is the best thing that could happen. It is better than prosperity if it is the work of God. II. Now we turn to the second point, As OBSERVATION. "God hath even made the one side by side with the other." Oh, what mercy there is here. If you had prosperity all the days of your life it would be the ruin of you. He has woven our web of time with mercy and with judgment. He has paved our path of life with mingled colours, so that it is a mosaic, curiously wrought; sunshine and shadow have been our lot almost from babyhood till now, and April weather has greeted us from the cradle, and will be with us till the tomb. If this is true in daily life, it is true also of religious experience. You must not be surprised that your way is up and down. So far as we are responsible for it it should not be so. Spiritual experience is of the switchback order after all, up towards heaven and down into the deep, but it matters little if we are going onward all the time, and upward to the glorious end. The Lord sets the one beside the other. III. This word of EXPLANATION as we end. Why has God allowed it thus to be? Why does He give us joy to-day and grief to-morrow? It is that we may realize that His way is not of a set pattern; that He works according to a programme of His own choosing; that though He is a God of order, that order may be very different from our order; that we may come to no conclusion as to the probabilities of our experiences to-morrow, that we may make no plans too far ahead; that we may not peer behind the curtain of obscurity and futurity. (Thomas Spurgeon.) Parallel Verses KJV: In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him. |
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