The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 4 – 8
We often read the Bible very lazily. We hear verses so many times they take on a life of their own, a separate meaning apart from the words themselves. For example, read Psalms 14:1. Notice WHERE the fool said that! He said it in his heart!
When we read that, we tend to ignore the “in my heart”, and just hear “I said…”. But that’s not what it said! You have to divide the I’s, not only in your own mind, but in the Bible.
Read Ecclesiastes 2:1. That was not said by Solomon’s soul! It was not said by agreement of his whole mind; it was said, as it plainly says, by his selfish heart! This is literally his beast talking!
Now read a few examples, in Deuteronomy 7:17; 8:17; 18:21, and Genesis 27:41. Notice what the heart says! The first is fear; the second is pride; the third is lack of faith; the last is hatred and jealousy. These are the things our own hearts tell us.
When you read through the Bible without noticing when it says “in my heart”, or “my soul thirsts” (Psalms 42:2), or “my spirit is troubled” (Genesis 41:8), you miss what God is clearly saying. As a quick example, read 1 Samuel 27:1.
DAVID didn’t say that. David’s soul didn’t say that! David’s spirit didn’t say that! David’s heart said that! Does that statement show faith? Or does it show “fear of death”, which holds our beast in bondage? (Hebrews 2:15).
God had raised up David to free Israel from the Philistines, not to fight for them! (2 Samuel 3:18). Yet his heart’s lack of faith – and his soul’s inability to control it – led David to swear his sword into service to the enemies of God! (1 Samuel 27:8-12, 1 Samuel 29:1-8).
This path would have led him to fight against the armies of Saul alongside the Philistines, and prevented him from ever being king over Israel! Look at how he lamented over the death of Saul at this same battle in 2 Samuel 1:11-27. Imagine how he would have felt if HE had been the one who killed Saul, God’s anointed? 2 Samuel 1:14-16.
Yet that’s exactly what his oath would have compelled him to do, if God hadn’t manipulated the situation to get him kicked out of the battle (1 Samuel 29:9-11). But David’s lack of faith required a lesson – as he trusted in the sword of the Gentiles, God felt no need to protect him (1 Samuel 30:1-5), according to the maxim in Judges 10:14.
Does this mean David was a bad person? Of course not. On balance, he was among God’s favorite people ever. But his heart’s fear of Saul led him to trust the Philistines and swear service to the enemies of God’s people; so God manipulated events so that the Philistines would kick him out, barbarians would wreck his camp, to put him back on a path where he would have to trust God again (1 Samuel 30:6-8, 18-20).
What did David learn from this? 1 Samuel 30:23. The Philistines were God’s enemies, and David realized that now (1 Samuel 30:26,16), and went back to his rightful place in Judah, like he should have done in the first place!
But that’s just one lesson David learned from this. David later wrote a Psalm which I’ve referenced before, and this experience gives it context: Psalms 11. is clearly the soul speaking to the heart; because the heart is saying “flee to the mountains”.
Remember, “mountain” is a symbol of nations, and when David’s heart feared Saul, he fled to the other nations around him! And the rest of this Psalm is the more experienced David telling his heart what he should have said in the first place!
If David had known this answer at the time of 1 Samuel 27, he could have saved himself years of fear and stress and trouble. If his soul could have calmed his heart’s fear down, there would have been another miraculous delivery of David from Saul in 1 Samuel 27.
Instead, the heart overwhelmed the soul and spirit, causing the anointed king of Israel to flee to the Philistines with his proverbial tail between his legs, giving us an example of a great man’s all-too-human lack of faith… more specifically, his heart’s lack of faith and his soul’s lack of control over it!
THE KEY TO ECCLESIASTES
If you ignore half of what God said, you shouldn’t be surprised if half of what He wrote is a mystery to you. If you don’t pay attention to what are, let’s face it, really obvious details like “I said in my heart”, you’re going to miss the clear point of what God was trying to tell us.
It is because of ignoring this exact phrase that Ecclesiastes has been so confusing for so long. On the surface, it seems like a rather depressed prophet casting about aimlessly for meaning in life, and finally settling for what is clearly an unsatisfying answer to him: Ecclesiastes 12:8-13.
This sounds like the answer you give when you’ve scoured the world looking for the answer you wanted, but you finally had to accept that this answer was the best you were ever going to find. It sounds like that because that’s exactly what it is.
I highly recommend reading the verses in Ecclesiastes in the BBE, not the KJV. You’ll miss a lot otherwise, because the KJV translators messed this book up badly. Start in Ecclesiastes 3:10-13. Right away notice the context is the “hearts without knowledge” which means that “man is unable to see the works of God”. Blindness because of the beast!
The writer concluded that there was nothing better than to be happy, and do good, and eat drink and be merry. This is odd, because this is not what we see elsewhere in the Bible; for example, Micah 6:8. Compare that to Ecclesiastes 8:15, 9:7-10. These are not the same answer! In fact, the answer in Ecclesiastes is flat-out wrong!
Being righteous and having a good time is not the meaning of life! So why would Ecclesiastes conclude that only obedience, specifically obedience out of fear, is the WHOLE duty of man, when it simply isn’t true? (1 John 4:18).
Obedience out of fear is not the whole duty of man, it’s just the beginning of the duty of man! (Proverbs 1:7). But it was the whole duty of the writer of Ecclesiastes! Because Ecclesiastes was written by a beast! Ecclesiastes 3:16-17.
Always remember: The Bible is true. Every word in the Bible was inspired by God to be recorded for us, and every word is profitable for us… But not every word in the Bible is true!
The Bible faithfully recorded the lies, the idiocy, and the self-justifications along with the wisdom and prophecy! So just because someone did something in the Bible, doesn’t mean you should follow their example – Jezebel, for example.
Everyone knows that, but they don’t extend that thinking to words. Every word in the Bible is profitable for us, and the Bible truly records what they said… but not everything everyone said in the Bible is true!
For example, if we take David’s words as an example, David’s heart said in 1 Samuel 27 that if he stayed in Israel, Saul would kill him. This simply isn’t true, God wouldn’t have let that happen. So those words, while recorded truthfully, are not true words.
In fact, God went on to make the exact opposite point in the story that followed, which we can prove from Psalms 11. As always, you must use rest of the Bible to separate the good advice from the bad. This is why it is so important to rightly divide the word of truth! (2 Timothy 2:15).
And in Ecclesiastes, because no one has had the guts to do that, no one has seen the obvious, and I mean… OBVIOUS… fact that Solomon is not speaking! This is Solomon’s HEART speaking! (Ecclesiastes 2:15).
If the Bible recorded it, it’s useful to us. But the conclusions that the carnal heart came to are not objective truth. They are self-justifications and excuses, self-pity and whining, and they are true only from the limited perspective of the beast who was speaking!
ECCLESIASTES UNBOUND
Knowing this completely changes how we read the book. Now, rather than a rather melancholy Hebrew king talking about how “all is vanity and vexation of spirit”, whining about how life is a pointless drag, we see that this is a beast talking to his soul!
Back in Ecclesiastes 3:16-17. The heart says “I saw under the sun, in the place of the judges, that evil was there; and in the place of righteousness, that evil was there”. What is the place of the judges? Men’s souls!
And what is the place of righteousness? Men’s spirits! And this beast said “why should I follow souls or spirits? They make mistakes! They’re not perfect!! – something your own heart has no doubt told you, if you were listening.
Solomon’s beast saw that the souls of men have evil in them, as do the consciences of men. This is true. Solomon’s heart thought that it was unfair that he was expected to obey a flawed soul and a flawed conscience!
That seems reasonable… but what his heart didn’t mention, and doesn’t see, is that it is worse than they are – Jeremiah 17:9. It is more deceitful than ALL things. His beast continued to reason in Ecclesiastes 3:17 that God is going to judge all things eventually… so why should the beast be judged by its soul?
After all, it’s going to die either way (Ecclesiastes 3:19), so why not just have fun with the life it has now? (Ecclesiastes 3:22). But his beast answered itself in Ecclesiastes 3:18 that God subjected the beast to the soul “because of the sons of men”. This phrase presumably refers to souls since Jesus was called that, and He was certainly ruled by His soul.
So the beast’s conclusion was that it was set up this way so that THEY – the souls – could see that they act like beasts. This is also true! But it’s only a small part of the answer… the most self-pitying part!
By giving this portion of an answer, the beast appears as a long-suffering martyr, forced to humble itself under an unjust soul and spirit, purely for the benefit of the soul, so that the soul can see how many mistakes it makes!
Yet it was right that the evil that God allows in our souls and our consciences and our hearts, is there to help us see that we have the same selfish heart that all creatures in heaven and earth share (Ecclesiastes 3:19).
Solomon’s heart came to the right answers, but drew the wrong conclusions from them. Humans are indeed made no better than the animals, except that humans can rule their hearts and teach them faith!
Are you starting to see how this is all true, but only from a certain point of view – the point of view, as clearly stated, of a selfish heart? Ecclesiastes 3:20-22 were as far as Solomon’s heart was able to peer into this mystery.
We’ve gone much deeper than that into this particular mystery many times in this series, and will go far deeper in the future because we are not confined by the perspectives of our beasts!
LET’S WORK TOGETHER
Now I recommend shifting to the GWV Bible as it makes the next verses clearer. Read Ecclesiastes 4:1. Who are these oppressors? From the beast’s perspective, it would be the evil souls and spirits (Proverbs 18:14), which is what it said in the previous chapter.
Yet the true oppressor is the beast, whom we follow into bondage (2 Peter 2:19). God inspired the Bible so that both of these are true. One is subjectively true, to the beast; but understood correctly, the objective truth is that the oppressor is the beast!
Both senses work as you read through this chapter – it can be read as a whiny beast, or it can be read as advice for a weak soul. I’m going to focus on that, since it’s more important for us – so read Ecclesiastes 4:2.
Who are these dead? Why should they be congratulated? Because their beast is dead! It was buried with Jesus’ beast in baptism! So these souls have been FREED from their oppression, as Jesus promised they would be (Galatians 5:1).
Continuing in Ecclesiastes 4:3, Solomon’s heart reasons that those in the second resurrection – those not “born” yet – are better than either of them. Because they won’t have to deal with the level of evil we have to confront!
There will be more help then to rule your beast – and it will be much easier to free your soul from the shackles that bind it. And that’s all true… from a selfish, OC beast’s perspective. But it misses the big picture (Romans 8:18). But can the beast see those things? 1 Corinthians 2:14.
Now back to Ecclesiastes 4:4-6. Many times I’ve heard “Man, it’s so hard to rule your beast”, or “is it a waste of time keeping the commandments if I’m not baptized?”, which Jesus’ own beast asked in Psalms 73:13.
It is this rivalry between the beast and spirit and soul which cause most of life’s stress. And that’s absolutely true! But the heart takes it for granted that it’s the soul who needs to relax… not the heart which needs to be less selfish!
Solomon’s heart was trying to reason with its soul, saying that struggling against selfishness was an endless struggle, a constant rivalry, and what’s the point… we all die anyway? So why can’t we just get along?
And that, too, is a good point; it’s just that it forgets the fact that the heart started the fight in Genesis 3:6; and it conveniently overlooks the fact that the heart could give in just as easily as the soul!
VEXATION OF SPIRIT
In Ecclesiastes 4, Solomon uses the phrase “vexation of spirit” in the KJV, which is a very odd phrase. To us, it implies frustration, banging one’s head against a wall, and getting nowhere. But the GWV rendered it even more strangely as “trying to catch the wind”.
This is where comparing different translations pays off, for the BBE casts a very different light on this last verse, saying “This again is to no purpose and a desire for wind”. Now remember, “wind” comes from the same Hebrew word as “spirit”.
Do you see what that means? Ecclesiastes is not, as it seems to most, the story of a frustrated soul complaining about how hard it is to rule the beast! It’s the story of a beast frustrated by its soul’s silly desire for God’s spirit!!
We all know how hard it is to rule the beast, such as Paul’s comments in Romans 7:22-24, but that’s only half the story! Ecclesiastes tells us the other side of the story, the story no one tells – the selfish heart’s point of view!
Ecclesiastes relates to us how annoying it is for a beast to be distracted from the important things in life! It is annoyed to be pulled away from “eating, drinking, and being merry”, and frankly confused by the soul’s irrational desire for something it can’t see, feel, or touch – and which brings no tangible benefits of any kind!
It is frustrated by the soul’s persistent desire for WIND, for the SPIRIT OF GOD! A desire which makes no sense to the natural mind! The beast continues arguing in Ecclesiastes 4:5, to paraphrase, “What sort of man eats the flesh of his own body?”
Now think about that… why would it make that argument… unless its soul had been trying to “…crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts”? (Galatians 5:24). The beast is pushing back against the soul’s desire to “mortify the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13).
But again, the literal argument the beast makes is true also from a spiritual point of view; the beast believes that it will die eventually for its own sins, so what’s the point of dying sooner? (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10).
And a wise soul would counter “yes… why should a soul die for its sins when you can kill your beast for them?” (Romans 6:3-8). Or “why die for your own sins when Jesus died for you?”
What sort of man lets his own soul perish, wasting away in its own corruption, and eating the sacrifice of its own flesh when he could eat the flesh of Jesus’ beast instead? (John 6:54-56).
TAKE THINE EASE
Back to Ecclesiastes 4:6, the beast continues bargaining with the soul; isn’t it better to settle for a regular portion of life in the second resurrection – after God’s rest – than to receive a double portion of WIND and struggle so hard in this life to get it?
As all beasts believe, “if you didn’t want so much you wouldn’t have to work so hard”. The lazy heart thinks “so what if the work doesn’t get done today… we’ll just do it mañana!” This is a point the beast thinks is very persuasive, as it brings it up later in Ecclesiastes 5:16.
This argument rages throughout the Bible, we just haven’t had eyes to see it until now. Take Luke 12:15-20. This clearly is not the soul speaking, for there is an “I” speaking to “my soul” inEcclesiastes 5:19!
It takes no guessing to see who is speaking, from the words it says “take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry” – exactly the same bad advice Solomon’s heart gave him in Ecclesiastes 8:15!
But here we have a BETTER soul than Solomon to answer it! (Luke 11:31). Jesus’ soul wasn’t dissuaded by the arguments of His heart that we should take it easy, and not struggle so hard for the spirit of God!
For He knew that the night came, when no soul could work (John 9:4), and that He dare not stop working until He had fully overcome His heart! (Luke 12:20-21). These were answers that Solomon simply didn’t have, and that is why Jesus was greater than Solomon!
And incidentally, now that we actually UNDERSTAND Ecclesiastes, we see that Jesus also understood it this way – and now we can see that this parable was crafted specifically to refute Ecclesiastes 8:15!
TEAMWORK
Picking up the thread of the argument in Ecclesiastes 4:7-8, one of the most salient features of all beasts everywhere is that they hate to be alone. And the life of a true Christian is a lonely one.
It is scary to stand against your friend, your family, your church. And your beast doesn’t want you to – why should you be righteous alone? Isn’t it better to stay in your church, where you can do some good, than to lock yourself away from fellowship?
And Solomon’s beast was telling him how pointless it was to try and find the spirit of God on your own; it’s a bitter work to be a lonely beast – one with no family, no church, no herd.
You work and work and work, and what’s the point? No one else loves the truth, no one cares, and you’ll die alone in the end. You’ll never get enough wind, and you’ll have no one to bequeath your understanding to when you inevitably die.
So the beast reasons they could keep on fighting each other, living alone, and growing increasingly embittered as death nears… or the soul could compromise and work WITH his beast!Ecclesiastes 4:9-11.
The beast makes a compelling argument to its soul, one we’ve all heard from our own beast – that we just need to settle down; not fight so much. Take it easy, little by little; and that if we work together – and the soul gives up this silly struggle for the spirit of God – life will be better for everyone! (Ecclesiastes 4:12).
And it makes a point that’s absolutely true. A lone beast is cold; a lone soul is cold. A lone spirit is cold. But a soul and a conscience together can conquer an evil beast, or a beast and a conscience together can put a spine into a weak soul. But a THREEFOLD cord is not easily broken!
It’s just that the beast is wrong about who needs to compromise. And a good soul would judge it by its own words. The heart is the one who said “it’s so easy for us to get what we want if we have a threefold cord, all working together”. That’s absolutely true! So why doesn’t the BEAST just yield to the soul?
Wouldn’t that be easier than a pointless “chasing after selfishness”? Why not make this threefold cord work by humbling the beast, rather than softening the soul? Rather than giving up on the desire for wind, why not give up on the desire for ease, for pride?
THE OPPRESSED SOUL
Solomon’s soul was the wisest ever to live, and his beast gave us some great advice – the key, really, to overcoming it. Because if the oppressed soul can find a conscience – say, the conscience of Christ – to help him “stay warm”, then together they can overpower the oppressive beast!
Overpower, yes, and tame; for as it said itself, two people overwhelm one opponent, creating a three-fold rope that is not easily broken! A soul, spirit, and beast who work TOGETHER!
Read James 1:5-8. This was a man whose soul was in a continual battle with his beast, as Solomon just described, and that made him double-minded – his mind literally had two divergent opinions!
This is the same problem Paul discussed at length in Romans 7; there was a war in his members which kept both his heart and his soul unhappy! NEITHER were getting their way!
And just as a nation experiencing a civil war is easily conquered by invaders, so a man with a war in his members is double-minded and unstable in everything he does. It makes him “unstable as water” and he “shalt not excel”! Genesis 49:4.
So what is James’ advice for people who are at war with their hearts? James 4:7-8. You have to conquer your heart and have ONE ruler in your mind! For it is precisely to purify our hearts, and become single-mindedly righteous, whole-heartedly righteous, EQUALLY YOKED in a three-fold cord, that we are here!
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
I’ve taught you that you should rule your beast; humble it; teach it to trust you. But with this lesson you see there is another thing you have to learn to do… listen. Yes, you can make the beast shut up. But should you?
Your beast needs to be, not just your subject, but your ally. Not your equal – but on your side, not against it. You can never become a three-fold cord if two of your fractions have to keep the third bound and gagged, whomever that is – whether it’s the soul, the spirit, or the heart!
In Psalms 15, David asks the question “LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?”, and answers with, among other things, “he that… speaketh the truth in his heart” (Psalms 15:1-2).
Like any enemy-cum-ally, the only way to convert him to your side is to convince him that your side IS his side. That what you are trying to accomplish is the same thing he is trying to accomplish. And that requires that you listen to your heart.
The righteous man cares for the life of his beast, and once you’ve established dominance you have to convince the beast that you care about it. And like with any friend, that means you have to listen to their complaints; hear their arguments, and make good decisions that take their feelings into account.
All of this is of course summed up in a single verse in Psalms 77:6. You must commune with your heart. Ask it what it wants. Don’t yell at it and hate it for being what it is – for if you do that, it will never tell you the truth!
Listen to it, and hear it out… and then answer it. Do what Solomon never could, and show it why its arguments aren’t valid; show it that chasing after the wind will be good for both of you. Show it why what it said is selfish, and foolish, and that things like that are what will get all of you killed when your soul is required of you “this night”.
Do that, and you too will be greater than Solomon.