Wickedness in the place of judgment; or, the mystery of providence.
I. THE PROFOUND PROBLEM. The moral disorder of the universe. "I saw under the sun in the place of judgment that wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness that wickedness was there" (verse 16).
1. The strange spectacle. What fascinated the Preacher's gaze and perplexed the Preacher's heart was not so much the existence as the triumph of sin—the fact that sin existed where and as it did. Had he always beheld sin in its naked deformity, essential loathsomeness, and abject baseness, receiving the due reward of its misdeeds, trembling as a culprit before the bar of providential judgment, and suffering the punishment its criminality merited, the mystery and perplexity would most likely have been reduced by half. What, however, he did witness was iniquity, not trembling but triumphing, not sorrowing but singing, not suffering the due recompense of her own evil deeds but snatching off the rewards and prizes that belonged to virtue. In short, what he perceived was the complete moral disorder of the world—as it were society turned topsy-turvy; the wicked up and the righteous down; bad men exalted and good men despised; vice arrayed in silks and bedizened with jewels, and virtue only half covered with tattered rags.
2. Two particular sights.
II. THE PERPLEXING MYSTERY. "I said in mine heart" (verse 17). The Preacher was troubled about it, as David (Psalms 37:1, Psalms 37:7), Job (Job 21:7), Asaph (Psalms 73:3), and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 12:1) had been. To him, as to them, it was an enigma. But why should it have been?
1. On one hypothesis it is no enigma. On the supposition that God, duty, and immortality are non-existent, it is not a mystery at all that vice should prevail and virtue have a poor time of it so long as it remains above ground, for (on the hypothesis) fleeing to a better country beyond the skies is out of the question. The mystery would be that it were otherwise.
2. On another hypothesis it is an enigma. What creates the mystery is that these things occur while God is, duty presses, and immortality awaits. Since God is, why does he suffer these things to happen? Why does he not interpose to put matters right? If right and wrong are not empty phrases, how comes it that moral distinctions are so constantly submerged? With "eternity in their hearts," how is it to be explained that men are so regardless of the future?
III. THE PROPOSED SOLUTION. This lay in three things.
1. The certainty of a future judgment. "I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time for every purpose and for every work" (verse 17). Convinced that God, duty, and immortality were no fictions but solemn realities, the Preacher saw that these implied the certainty of a judgment in the future world when all the entanglements of this world would be sorted out, its inequalities evened, and its wrongs righted; and seeing this, he discerned in it a sufficient reason why God should not be in a hurry to east down vice from its undeserved eminence and exalt virtue to its rightful renown.
2. The discrimination of human character. The Preacher saw that God allowed wickedness to triumph and righteousness to suffer, in order that he might thereby "prove them," i.e. sift and distinguish them from one another by the free development of their characters. Were God by external restraints to place a check on the ungodly or by outward helps to recompense the pious, it might come to be doubtful who were the sinful and who the virtuous; but granting free scope to both, each manifests its hidden character by its actions, according to the principle, "Every tree is known by its fruits" (Matthew 7:16-20).
3. The revelation of human depravity. Because a future judgment awaits, it is necessary that the wickedness of the wicked should be revealed. Hence God abstains from interfering prematurely with the world's disorder that men may see to what thorough inherent depravity they have really come; that, oppressing and destroying one another, they are little better than brute beasts who, without consideration or remorse, prey on each other.
LESSONS.
1. Patience.
2. Confidence.
3. Hopefulness.