A Little Gloomy

Ecclesiastes 9:12, Psalm 124:7

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One of our Bible classes at Mount Olive. We’ve been reading through the Old Testament book, Ecclesiastes. If you’ve ever read or studied that particular book from the Old Testament, you know that it can be a little bit gloomy. Solomon is speaking in a very blunt and realistic way about life here under the sun. And one of the themes that he returns to again and again is the universality of death and the inevitability of death. In other words, everyone will die unless our Lord comes back on the last day before then. Nobody gets out of here alive. Death is inevitable.

That’s a frightening thought, of course, if we dwell on it, especially as we realize that sometimes death can come with cruelty. Can be unexpected. And so true to form Solomon here, in Ecclesiastes in the ninth chapter says

Certainly, no man knows his time [of death]. Like fish caught in a deadly net and like birds caught in a trap, people are trapped at an evil time which falls on them suddenly. (Ecclesiastes 9:12)

And so, of course, the caution for us is, that we be ready to face that inevitable death that comes to us all, knowing that sometimes it can come to us very suddenly and with cruelty. As Solomon speaks of that, a bird getting caught in a trap. One moment it’s flying, enjoying the world God has created, the next the bird is on the ground looking for something to eat. And then suddenly it’s caught in the trap. And the fouler now has that bird in its possession and its life is probably about to end.

We’re reminded that when Jesus calls us out of this world, it could be quite sudden and we need to be ready for that. If this is where the message of the Scripture ended, of course we would be very discouraged and frightened by it. Solomon’s father was King David. David, we know, wrote most of the Psalms, beautiful poems, often very comforting and uplifting. And here’s an example of what Solomon’s father said about this notion of birds getting caught in a trap. In Psalm 124.

We have escaped with our lives like a bird out of the fowlers’ snare. The snare has been broken, and we have escaped.(Psalm 124:7)

Well, who broke it? Here we can picture our Lord Jesus walking through that field on the floor of that forest and coming upon a trap and with a heavy stick, he hits the trap and it breaks. And the little bird is suddenly free. Free to return to its nest, free to fly. And that’s what we too, can look forward to, because our Lord Jesus, by his holy sinless life for us and by is innocent suffering and death on the cross has paid for all of our sins, and he has actually wrecked death itself, just as the snare of the fouler has been wrecked.

And when life ends for us, in the words of the famous American folk song. Someday I’ll fly away. Now, as we approach Lent, we’ll again celebrate this wonderful news that in Christ, our sins have been paid for and nothing can hold us back from entering into paradise when life ends. May God keep us in that faith always, amen.