Ecclesiastes 11:7 - Dust and Spirit

Matthew Henry's Commentaries on Ecclesiastes 11:7:

Man is a strange sort of creature, a ray of heaven united to a clod of earth; at death these are separated, and each goes to the place whence it came. First, The body, that clod of clay, returns to its own earth. It is made of the earth; Adam�s body was so, and we are of the same mould; it is a house of clay. At death it is laid in the earth, and in a little time will be resolved into earth, not to be distinguished from common earth, according to the sentence (Gen. 3:19), Dust thou art and therefore to dust thou shalt return. Let us not therefore indulge the appetites of the body, nor pamper it (it will be worms' meat shortly), nor let sin reign in our mortal bodies, for they are mortal, Rom. 6:12. Secondly, The soul, that beam of light, returns to that God who, when he made man of the dust of the ground, breathed into him the breath of life, to make him a living soul (Gen. 2:7), and forms the spirit of every man within him. When the fire consumes the wood the flame ascends, and the ashes return to the earth out of which the wood grew. The soul does not die with the body; it is redeemed from the power of the grave (Ps. 49:15); it can subsist without it and will in a state of separation from it, as the candle burns, and burns brighter, when it is taken out of the dark lantern. It removes to the world of spirits, to which it is allied. It goes to God as a Judge, to give account of itself, and to be lodged either with the spirits in prison (1 Pt. 3:19) or with the spirits in paradise (Lu. 23:43), according to what was done in the body. This makes death terrible to the wicked, whose souls go to God as an avenger, and comfortable to the godly, whose souls go to God as a Father, into whose hands they cheerfully commit them, through a Mediator, out of whom sinners may justly dread to think of going to God.

Ecclesiastes 3:21

I have been thinking about the meanings of Ecclesiastes 3:21 for several days. To understand what the writer wanted to relay in the verse, I think I need to consider previous and following verses together.

Ecc 3:18 I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

Ecc 3:19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all [is] vanity.

Ecc 3:20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

Ecc 3:21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

Ecc 3:22 Wherefore I perceive that [there is] nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that [is] his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

Here the writer is saying that the sons of men and beasts are pretty much the same and their fates are not much different. So when the writer says "Who knoweth" in verse 21, I think the writer was questionining the common belief that the destinations of the spirit of man and the spirit of the beast are different as he said in verse 20 that the man and the beast are of the dust.

Another thing to ponder is whether the beast possesses the spirit as the man does. The same Hebrew word "ruwach" was translated as spirit for both the man and for the beast. The concordance on the word is found at the Blue Letter Bible web site.

What I cannot conclude at this time is whether the writer was saying that the animal possessed the same spirit as the man as the same word ruwach is used in many verses in the Bible to talk about the spirit of the man.

Wave Offering

Exodus 29:24 reads:

And thou shalt put all in the hands of Aaron, and in the hands of his sons; and shalt wave them [for] a wave offering before the LORD.

As I heard the message last night about the wave offering, I tried to picture the scene of wave offering: Israelites placed the fat, right shoulder, breast of the ram, or the first fruits of barley and wheaten bread in the hands of the priest and waved them before the Lord.

Nowadays I do not see the wave offering or other kinds of offering such as burnt offering. When I think about offering, I think about money: bills and coins or money sent to the church from my checking account via bill payment.

In the time of Old Testaments people brought the offering and waved them before the Lord. They offered ram and barley waving them before the Lord but they must have felt that they were offering themselves as they waved the offering in a solemn ceremony.

Numbers 8:12-15 in NIV read:

After the Levites lay their hands on the heads of the bulls, use the one for a sin offering to the LORD and the other for a burnt offering, to make atonement for the Levites. Have the Levites stand in front of Aaron and his sons and then present them as a wave offering to the LORD . In this way you are to set the Levites apart from the other Israelites, and the Levites will be mine.

After you have purified the Levites and presented them as a wave offering, they are to come to do their work at the Tent of Meeting.

Not only the Israelites offered ram and barley as a wave offering, they also offered people - Levites - as a wave offering. God explains in Numbers 8:16-18 why the Levites were to be offered to him:

For they [are] wholly given unto me from among the children of Israel; instead of such as open every womb, [even instead of] the firstborn of all the children of Israel, have I taken them unto me. For all the firstborn of the children of Israel [are] mine, [both] man and beast: on the day that I smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself. And I have taken the Levites for all the firstborn of the children of Israel.

The Levites belonged to God instead of the firstborn of all the children of Israel. All the firstborn of the children of Israel were God's because God spared their lives in the very first Passover. I too was to die of my sins but Jesus died for me as my Pascal Lamb. The same principle applies to me as well.

Romans 12:1 reads:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [which is] your reasonable service.

As I pray to God, praise Him, and serve Him, I am offering wave offerings before God. As I offer wave offerings before God, I need to be aware of the solemn and holy ceremony in the presence of God. I should realize that I am offering myself as a wave offering as I offer other things as my wave offerings.

He only [is] my rock and my salvation

Psalms 62:1-2

Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him [cometh] my salvation.
He only [is] my rock and my salvation; [he is] my defence; I shall not be greatly moved.



My vocaburary of God is very limited: when I pray, I often call him God, Father, Jesus, Lord, and Savior. The psalmist calls God many descriptive names: my rock, my salvation, my defence based on his experience of God.

God is also my rock, my salvation, and my defence. God only is my rock, my salvation, and my defence.

Lately I was worried about being laid off from my job. The worries made me anxious and I was not happy at work. During the lunch time, as I considered my rock, my salvation, and my defence, I then regained the peace in my heart. Surely I can and will depend on him whether I have a job or not.

Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me

Lord, what about him?

John 21:21-22;

When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"
Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."

Yesterday, our church moved to the new office space we just purchased. All our church things were stored in our garage and storage and we were expecting movers. So all I had to do was to seperate church stuff from our stuff.

I went to the storage and tried to carry church stuff and our stuff to outside on the lawn until I felt that the movers would be able to get in the storage and move church stuff without much problem. Same with the garage.

It took less than 30 minutes. It was not much difficult to do. Then I thought:

I could move most of the church stuff out of the storage to the lawn and that would make mover's job easier and therefore cost the church less money. But then other brothers were not helping me and they did not even call me this morning about the moving. What about the evangelist? How come he did not even call me about the moving? Forget it. I am not going to do any more.

I went inside and started to cook ramen and watch a TV show.

Little later the doorbell rang and there were Hyun Kim and her father, and So Hee Woo, who said they came to help moving. I told them there were nothing much to do since we hired movers but they said they could move the stuff out of the storage to make mover's job easier and started moving the stuff out of the storage.

I finished my ramen and came outside to help them. Later Young Min Lee came to help.

In about an hour or so we moved all church stuff out of the storage to the lawn.

I was touched by them. They made themselves available. They worked hard and sweated a lot. Sister Hyun's father was quite old but he carried many boxes and stuff. They were glad and joyful and did not complain.

They did not complain but I complained especially about the evangelist. How come he did not even call to find out how the moving is going? Many brothers and sisters joined at the new church building to clean up and arrange things. But the evangelist still did not come. Why? I was grumbing and complaining in my heart. Maybe he was busy. Maybe he was sick. But why didn't he even call? He might be upset about something. I did not know and I was rather upset myself about all this.

"Lord, what about him?" Peter asked the Lord about John and the Lord answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."

Lord, what about him? Jesus replies, "what is that to you? You must follow me."

Valley

Last Sunday's message was about Peter and how he experienced valleys in his walk with God and how he was transformed to be a man of God at the end of his life on earth.

When we were saved, we had visions how God would change our lives and we would be transformed and live as soldiers of Christ. As I look back my life however I realize that I was like Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years or like Moses in the wilderness tending sheep for 40 years or like Jacob going through all kinds of hardship and suffering before he appeared before Paraoh as a man of God ... Or like Peter whose zeals and confidence were shattered before he became God`s servant.

There are so many examples in the Bible that show that God wants us to throw away what is ours and to receive what is His and to depend on Him for all things. When I say, I do this and that, or I will do this and that for God, I still have a long way to go to be transformed and to be God`s person.

May I experience my wilderness and valleys and learn to wait on and depend on Him for all my needs. May I be God`s persons and gladly give up my plans, hopes, desires, wishes, times, ..., whatever make up me ... in exchange for Him and Him alone.

December 2002. MuJu, Korea;

Pure Religion

I have been somewhat busy helping a sister and her family who just arrived in Chicago from Jeonju, Korea. I remembered when my family first arrived in Chicago and how others helped us. I was glad to be a help. Their situation was quite similar to our situation back in 1977.

I remembered the following verses to praise myself and to teach others more than as a teaching from God. As I consider these verses however, I see that I am short of being "religious" or "pure religion".

James 1:26-27

If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion [is] vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world.

야고보서 1:26-27

누구든지 스스로 경건하다 ��하며 �기 혀를 재갈 물리지 아니하고 �기 마�� ��면 � 사람� 경건� 헛것�� 하나님 아버지 앞�서 정결하고 �러움� 없는 경건� 곧 고아와 과부를 그 환난중� �보고 � �기를 지켜 세�� 물들지 아니하는 그것�니�

God, help me to think before I talk. Help me to be pure and undefiled before you and to keep myself unspotted from the world. Amen.