Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

Ecclesiastes — iconic scene

Service recording Sunday 9th August looking at Ecclesiastes.

Watch the service — 9 August 2026

▶ Jump to the sermon (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12) — 0:47:38

Chapters

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

Scripture Readings

We’re here to open God’s Word, so why don’t we do that now? Hebrews, in chapter 11. If you haven’t got your own Bibles or devices, just cast your eyes to the front. This is our New Testament reading. We’re continuing on in our series, The Measure of a Man, from Ecclesiastes. We’ll be in chapter 9, verses 11 and 12. But here is the New Testament reading for the day, Hebrews 11:32-38. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of God endures forever. We will be dead soon, but the Word of God will live on.

And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, men of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.

Paul says to Timothy, all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the people of God will be equipped for all that He gives us to do, for His glory and for His honour. This, we believe, is God’s Word. Ecclesiastes 9:11-12.

I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favour to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all. Moreover, man does not know his time: like fish caught in a treacherous net and birds trapped in a snare, so the sons of men are ensnared at an evil time when it suddenly falls on them.

Good, sobering words, aren’t they, from Solomon?

Opening Prayer

Father, again, we thank You that, because Your mercies are new every morning and Your steadfast love never ceases, no matter how bad we’ve been, no matter what sins we have committed, if we will come and we will confess our sins, that You are faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that we can begin again at whatever time and know that You still love us.

Lord, we’re the prodigals. But we are the prodigals who would desire to return. Many of us have tasted pig food. Many of us have tasted the world. But yet You have called us back to Yourself, to Your love and Your care. We have responded to it, and so we would desire to return to You and look for Your open arms on our return.

Bless us as we open Your Word again this morning, and create in us, Lord, a clean heart; renew a right spirit within us. But more than that, help us to grow in grace and in love for the Lord Jesus Christ, and to be overcomers in this life rather than to be overcome. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The Series So Far

Just for those who haven’t been with us on a regular basis, we are working through a series of what we’ve called The Measure of a Man. And we’ve been at various places, but predominantly we’ve been working through the book of Ecclesiastes to establish the measure of a man. Of course, when I say the measure of a man, I don’t just mean a man; I mean a woman as well. All believers. Man embraces woman in the sense that we’re using it. So ladies, please forgive me if I’m just saying the measure of a man, not the measure of a woman as well. But you know what I mean.

And so what we’ve been doing is we’ve been working our way through Ecclesiastes, and we’ve found different ways that we might measure ourselves and, Lord willing, make improvements in the way we think and what we do, and also the change in character that we need to be constantly making as believers.

Our constant prayer together, is it not, is that the Lord wouldn’t leave us as we are today. We need change, all of us. Wherever you’re at today, you might be a very righteous person compared with me, and I’m sure many of you are. But nevertheless, you’re still not like the Lord Jesus Christ. Or you might be like me, and you might be starting on the bottom rung. And if that’s the case, well, we certainly need to make improvements, so that it’s not such a fright to us when we enter into heaven by God’s grace. And so really, we want to please God in all we do; not only please Him personally in what we do, but in the motives that are driving us from day to day.

Looking Back: Diligence and Excellence

Last time, which was two weeks ago, because we took a week out to do a devotional as we took the wine and the bread. And so, two weeks ago, I would just remind you of where we were at, in Ecclesiastes in chapter 9. We said there that a good man, while he is able, exhibits diligence and excellence in all that he does. The expectation that the Lord has of us as believers is that we are good, diligent, and excellent in what we do. As believers we should be striving to do that, and we should accept nothing less.

Such a person, such a believer, presents his body as a living sacrifice. I reminded you of Romans 12:1, that our spiritual worship is to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. Not sacrifices that are less than what they ought to be. The sacrifices that we offer to God in all that we do should be without blemish or without defect.

Not only that, but speaking perhaps less practically and more spiritually, such a person works hard at his salvation. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, the apostle says. And so it’s not enough for us to say, oh, I’m a Christian, and just go through the motions of being a Christian. It’s that we need to work hard together, and that’s why we need one another in the church. We need to work hard together to make improvements in our lives, and also in our understanding of the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s not enough. It’s not enough that we just be pew sitters and just go through the motions of what it means to be a Christian. Not enough. And the Lord calls us to work out our salvation, the Apostle Paul says, with fear and trembling.

Not only that, though, such a person desires to be diligent and excellent, not for their own sake, but for Jesus’ sake. And this touches on our very motivation. What’s driving us from the inside to do better? Is it just to look good? Is it just to impress the world? Is it just to impress our brothers and sisters in Christ? Well, that would be maybe somewhat advantageous, but nevertheless it shouldn’t be the prime motivation for each of us in our hearts. Our prime motivation ought to be our love for God and our desire to please God in every way.

Success Can Still Be Elusive

Enough of last week. Today I want to concentrate, as I said, on these verses that we’ve read today. Because we’ve said that it’s important that a man exhibits diligence and excellence, or that a believer exhibits excellence. Today it’s a little bit more sobering, and it goes something like this: that no matter how excellently we do in this life, no matter how diligent we are in this life, even to do with our Christian faith, no matter how excellent, no matter how diligent, a man’s success can still be elusive.

Success in this life can still be elusive. Our text says the race is not necessarily to the swift. The battle is not to the warriors, neither is bread to the wise, nor wealth to the discerning, nor favour to men of ability, for time and chance overtake them all. In other words, doing your best does not always guarantee success.

That’s a biblical fact. That’s something that we have to wear. Doing your best, and you might be doing your best, and I doubt that you are, but even if you were doing your best, it doesn’t guarantee success in life. And that’s just a fact of life. And that’s what we’re being taught here by the preacher in Ecclesiastes.

I remember years ago, I shared from time to time the wisdom of my dad. Growing up in a Christian home, a mother who prayed for me, a dad who prayed with me constantly and taught me to learn, to read and to memorise the Scriptures at the earliest age. What he had was a son in me who was extremely competitive. Extremely competitive. In fact, there are only two places on a sports field or anywhere: there’s what we call first and there’s what we call last. Second was never good enough. And so if I entered into a sporting situation, or whatever situation it was, if I came second, or things didn’t turn out as well as they might, I went into a great rage sometimes.

And my old dad would say something like, as long as you’ve done your best, as long as you’ve done your best, the Lord does not care. And so there’s a truth to that, isn’t there? That even though your best might not bring absolute success in everything, as long as you’ve done your best. See, it touches on your motivation. It touches on what’s driving us. What’s really at the heart of where we are at?

Chance and Providence

Now, when we talk about the word chance, I don’t know if you’ve been around long enough in Christian circles like me, you know, hang around. It used to be quite fashionable that if somebody talked about chance, you would reply something like, I don’t believe in chance, I’m a Christian. Because chance is something like what we believe in Lotto. You know, if you were to take out a Lotto ticket, and I know none of you have ever done that because you’re too righteous. I’ve never taken out a Lotto ticket, so I don’t suppose I’m ever going to win Lotto, which is a great pity, isn’t it? It would be good to win Lotto if you didn’t have to take out the ticket.

But anyway, we talk about, if you take out a Lotto ticket, you’ve got a chance to win, say, a million dollars. Or the other day, a neighbour of ours down in our old hometown won 27 million dollars. What a prize. What are the chances? Well, brothers and sisters, you’ve got more chance of being struck by lightning. But if you don’t take your ticket out, you’ll never win, I assure you. But at any rate, as Christians, of course, we don’t believe in chance, do we?

Nevertheless, from the perspective of men, and the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes speaks from the perspective of a man, from the perspective of a man, or as beings that don’t know what’s going to happen, we can legitimately speak about chance. Of course, as believers, we don’t believe in chance; we believe in providence. For chance presents an opportunity, not a guarantee, from man’s perspective, but providence is suggestive of a God who is in control over all things.

And that is what we believe as Christians, is it not? All things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. Of course, again, from God’s eternal perspective, He is sovereign. And His sovereign will determines the course of providence; He works all things out after the counsel of His will.

Timing Is Everything

Not only that, we understand also from our text that timing is everything, because even if we were to do our best, our absolute best, in all that we do, or even in one thing that we do, even if we were able to, if we did it at the wrong time, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be successful either. So timing. See, time and chance overtake all of our lives and what we do.

Unexpected life or death events can also intervene or affect success. When we finish today, we’re going to sing a traditional hymn, It Is Well With My Soul, and many of you will know it. I’m not sure that many of you will know the story behind the writer of It Is Well With My Soul when you sing it, but remember this: that it is written by a man whose son has been killed and whose four daughters have drowned. And as he’s passing by on the ship, on the very spot, the very spot where his captain said his daughters had drowned, he wrote that particular hymn. Unexpected life and death events can intervene.

I used to have a sister-in-law called Anne. At 50 years old, she was going to work. And providence says that she met a truck and was killed instantly. You don’t know. None of us know what’s going to happen. I can tell you this: your days were numbered before you were even born. God knows. But I can also tell you that you don’t know it. You don’t know, and none of us do. And maybe it’s fortunate that we don’t, that we leave that in God’s hands.

Triumphant Defeats

However, also in all of this, remember this: that sometimes our failures can lead to our greatest successes. I was reminded again this week, in 480 BC, of that great march of the East towards the West under King Xerxes. And there he is, 250,000 men going to conquer Greece. And they have to pass by, don’t they? The area where they had to pass through, and to get through there they had to overcome 300 Spartans.

Two hundred and fifty thousand were held up by 300 Spartans for days. Finally the Spartans were betrayed, and they were surrounded by King Xerxes, and the Spartans sent back a message to their people: Spartans, tell the Spartans that we have behaved as we ought to have, and we are buried here. They all died. But it’s generally accepted that the whole West was born at that particular time.

And so Montaigne, the French philosopher, said this of that particular incident. He says, there are triumphant defeats that rival victories. There are triumphant defeats that rival victories. Often, of course, there is more to be learned from failure than success.

Some of you have children. If it’s not too hot, sometimes the best thing you can do is let them put their hand on the fire. Check it first so that you don’t burn them to bits or set them ablaze. But sometimes, learning by experience and by something bad that happens to us, actually we learn better in that situation, do we not? Often, learning what not to do is practically more beneficial than learning what to do.

Learning What Not to Do

There’s nearly a whole book of the Bible dedicated to that. It’s called the book of Judges. I don’t know if you’ve read it lately, but it’s a string of bad stuff. Let me just draw out a couple.

Jephthah was an idiot. He made a vow to God that he would sacrifice the first thing that would come out of his house, and his daughter did, and he ended up having to sacrifice his daughter. I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound healthy to me.

Samson. You find Samson there. What an idiot. Let’s be careful. Why was he an idiot? Well, because he said to his father and his mother, concerning one Delilah, he says, get her for me, she looks good to me. There’s a man that picks a woman by her good looks. Well, I did that. Unfortunately, I got lucky. But who knows what I could have married. It could have been a Delilah. And she could have betrayed me to some Philistines. And I might have had my eyes poked out. My hair cut. Who knows? Who knows? Just good providence that that wasn’t the case.

But what a dumbo. And not only a dumbo once, but two, three times. Samson, the Philistines are upon you. You’d think he’d learn, wouldn’t you? See, there’s as much in there about what not to do as what to do. And it’s the case, isn’t it, that learning what not to do is often practically more beneficial than learning what to do.

The Benefits of Not Coming First

Brothers and sisters, I want to point out some points to you, just for practical application, in regard to the benefits of not succeeding in everything that you do, or being first in everything that you do. Trials in life either make you bitter or better. And I pray that these trials will make you better.

Humility

The first is humility. People that win all the time in life are very vulnerable to pride. And that pride eventually will gobble them up, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. And so there is a great benefit in our lives of not succeeding in everything that we do, or becoming first in everything that we do. There’s a great benefit to it.

Trust

The second thing is this: trust. We learn, if we’re not winners all the time, to trust in God rather than ourselves. And that’s not only true on a practical day-to-day basis, but of course the fundamental truth of trusting in God rather than ourselves; at the very heart of it lies our actual salvation.

If you are saved here today because you’re a good person, if you’re saved here today because you’ve been nice to some granny, if you’re saved here today because you’ve come to church, you’re not a believer. You haven’t understood the gospel of grace. If you are saved here today because of all that Jesus Christ has done on your behalf, and you have accepted His death on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, and you have realised that you could not save yourselves, by the works of the law shall no man be justified, says the Apostle Paul. It is just by grace, by God’s grace, that you’re saved. And if that is the case, then sometimes not being number one helps us to trust in God rather than self.

Peace

There’s an element, too, where we can grow peace or rest in our lives with the information that we have before us. You see, it’s a great problem for a person that has to be first all the time, because eventually they won’t be first. There’ll be somebody faster. There’ll be somebody better. There’ll be some more amazing theologian. There’ll be some greater person. Maybe it’s an artist, or whatever. Whatever you’re doing, there’ll be somebody that’ll do better.

And if you are striving all of your life and giving all of your heart, and you don’t get to be number one in this life, and probably none of us here will, but there’s an element where we can rest and we can have peace. What does the apostle say in Philippians? He says, have no anxiety about anything, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your minds and your hearts in Christ Jesus.

Patience

Patience. I don’t know if you’ve done it lately, but I do encourage you, if you haven’t, read John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress lately. You should read it every year. It’s still good after three or four hundred years. It’s still a great allegory. But in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is being taught there by the Interpreter, and he takes him into a room, and there are two children there.

And those two children, one of them is named Passion and the other is named Patience. And Passion is one of those kids, and we’ve all got them, maybe you were one. Passion is one of those kids that wants it all and wants it all now. He knows the song: I want it all, I want it all, I want it now. That’s the song he sings. That’s Passion. Being a winner. Now, Patience, however, is a settled child and is willing to wait for the times to come for God to give him his prizes.

One of the great things about learning to be second and not achieving everything that we want to achieve in this life is that we know that the Lord sees it all. And He will attend to any injustices that you and I think that there may be in this life.

Power

And lastly, power. When we come to know our weakness, we actually tap into God’s power. While we’re trying on our own, while we’re going in our own strength from day to day, then that is the limit. How much strength, how much power, how much tenacity, how much stubbornness, how much greatness, how much ability have you got? Eventually it will end. Eventually you will come to the end, and you will be somewhere where you don’t want to be, in some place that is inhospitable.

But nevertheless, if we understand and we come to know that in our weakness we can depend upon and draw on the strength of our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, the Apostle Paul said this of himself: when I’m weak, then I’m actually strong. When I’m weak, then I’m actually strong.

Back to Hebrews 11

Anyway, to finish off, I just want to point out again Hebrews 11. Why have I come to Hebrews 11 as a New Testament reading in regard to this? Well, it is just this. Notice in Hebrews 11:32-35 it talks about what we might call winners of the faith. Some of them are not as winning as you think they are. We’ve already mentioned Samson. We’ve already mentioned Jephthah. But they were faithful men, nevertheless, in spite of the fact that we’ve learnt from them, hopefully, things that we ought not to do.

Nevertheless, they were winners. What does it say of them? It says, by faith they conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword; from weakness they were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection.

And others were tortured, though. Others were tortured. Doesn’t sound very winning. Not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others experienced mockings, scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were tempted. They were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted and ill-treated, men of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.

When I am weak, then I am strong. Sometimes we are successful in life. Praise God. At other times, we will not be as successful as we want to be. Praise God. And there’s probably far more to learn by being afflicted and sawn in two, maybe, than there is to be victorious over kingdoms and over countries.

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You again for Your Word and the encouragement it is to us. And Lord, we’ve heard today that we should be diligent and we should be excellent, and that we should present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to You, and that we should offer that sacrifice without blemish to You. Give our whole lives, our whole hearts to You, and do all that we can; be diligent about that.

But Lord, we’ve also learned that sometimes, no matter how much we do, that You are still in control, and that You would have us not to be first in all things sometimes. And if that is the case, then we pray that we would learn as much from that as from the former, we ask. Prepare us, Lord, to live this week, to think upon these things, and to make application of it in our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.