from the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 4. Ecclesiastes chapter 4 reading verses 1 to 8. And we should always remember when we are reading these early chapters of Ecclesiastes that the writer at this point is writing from the point of view of unbeliever and he is examining life from the eyes of an unbeliever, an unconverted person. One of the key phrases in the book is under the Sun and that phrase means in a world where there is no God, no supernatural, no heaven or hell or eternity and he's saying to himself if that is the case What can we make of human life? So let us read verses 1 to 8, Ecclesiastes 4. Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed and they have no comforter. Power was on the side of their oppressors, and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead who had already died are happier than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not yet seen the evil that is done, unto the sun. And I saw that all labour and all achievement spring from man's envy of his neighbour. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. The fool folds his hands and ruins himself. Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind. Again, I saw something meaningless under the sun. There was a man all alone. He had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. For whom am I toiling, he asked, and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? This too is meaningless, a miserable business. May God bless this reading from his own holy and infallible word. letter to the Colossians. Colossians chapter 3 verse 18. We read to chapter 4 verse 1. Colossians 3 18. Wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged. Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything and do it not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward, it is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong and there is no favoritism. Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair because you know that you also have a master in heaven. Amen. May God bless his word. Fourth of our 20th century idols or isms is capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system which has been dominant in the Western world for a number of hundred of years, ever since the feudal system of the Middle Ages broke up. Capitalism is about the relationships between employers and workers. There are certain people in a nation who possess capital. Capital is the means of production. It may be money, it might be land, it might be mines or factories or businesses. All these are referred to as capital. And there are businessmen, there are people who own these means of production. And then on the other side there are workers or labourers who don't own any means of production. And these two sides make a bargain. The workers sell their labour. That's what they have to sell. Their bodies, their minds, their skills, themselves. They sell their labour to those who own the means of production, and they work for them in return for a wage or a salary. And the decisions about production are made by the owners, by the businessmen, and the motive is profit. The workers are compelled by economic necessity to offer their services. One of the great laws of capitalism is supply and demand. If workers are in short supply, they can obtain more money from those who own the means of production. If workers are in very great supply, then the employers can pay them correspondingly less. The rule is what the market will bear. It is the relationship between these two classes, the capitalists who own capital, the means of production, and operate on the basis of private profit, and the workers who enter into a contract with the capitalists. We, of course, do not live in a purely capitalistic society because many of the important economic decisions in our society are not made by private businessmen, but they are made by government. And the government has, over the years, taken into its control and into its possession a number of the means of production. And part of the capital of the country is in the hands of the government. And it was quite interesting in the last few years in what is called Thatcherism to see how the government was moving back towards a more purely capitalist position. You remember the word privatisation and a lot of the different means of production that were in the hands of the state or the government were being sold or returned to companies, to businessmen who would now operate on the basis of profit. So at the minute, for example, there is quite a row about the selling of water. It is owned now not by the state but by different boards or companies and they are making a profit from selling water, the law of supply and demand. It will be interesting to see what this present government does, whether it reverses Thatcherism and moves away from pure capitalism or whether it continues in a capitalistic direction. This is the economic substructure of our lives. It will be obvious to some of you already that I am not an economist, and I don't propose to argue this evening either for or against capitalism. I have met Reformed Christians who have argued passionately that capitalism is the economic system of the Bible and should be in every country. And I've met equally reformed Christians who have argued the very reverse, that capitalism is of the devil and should be abolished right away. So I don't propose to enter into that argument tonight. I'm not going to speak for capitalism or against capitalism because I don't know enough about it. Where I do criticize it is when it is treated as a god. And that's what we want to look at this evening. When capitalism or any economic system is treated as a god, when people put their hopes in the economic system, when human life is controlled not by God's values but by economics, when the hope is entertained that the economic system itself will be our saviour and lead us all to a good life. And my friends, that is what is happening today. And this system under which we live is becoming a false and a terrible idol. As I've said to you before, all of our life is being looked at in economic terms. The political debate in our generation is no longer about morality. It's about economics. The government does not talk. Politicians don't talk about what is morally right. They talk about what is advantageous for prosperity. The talk is of greater productivity, increased capital investment, technological training, We can all talk about the rate of inflation and so on, things that we knew nothing about twenty years ago. There is a general hope that somehow our economic system is to be our saviour and to give us the good life. And that, of course, must fail and it will fail because God is left out of the picture. and the nations of the West are living, in the words of Ecclesiastes, under the sun. They're living as if there were no God. God is left out of account in the councils of the nations. And this must mean that life will be reduced to meaninglessness and chaos. And I want us this evening for a few moments to turn to Ecclesiastes 4, verses 4-6 for a superbly penetrating and startlingly relevant expose of the mentality of capitalism, the boardroom and the shop floor in modern industry, and we shall see how God's word lays bare the sickness and the sin at the heart of our economy. And then we shall look briefly at the Christian answer to the problem. So we'll start with the capitalist, we'll go on to the worker, and then we'll finish with the Christian. First of all, the capitalist, verse four, I've called this anxiety in the boardroom. The wise man says, and I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man's envy of his neighbor. This is the great motivating driving force, he says, behind economics and industry, man's envy of his neighbor. All labour and all achievement. And the second doesn't come without the first. You don't get achievement without labour. To get anywhere, you have to work. But what's the motive for work? The motive for work in our Western society is compulsive competition. The survival of the fittest. the rat race. A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin taught the theory of the survival of the fittest. And that's what we have in our western world today. Economic Darwinism. Man's envy of his neighbor. The tenth commandment is, you shall not covet. You shall not covet. And at the heart of our society is a breaking and a disregarding of that commandment. And our society is saying to us today, you shall covet. The government tells us, government ministers have recently told us, that the economy will not start to turn up, to improve, until people spend more money. and their task is to get us into the shops buying things. The world of advertising stimulates people to have not only as much as others, but more than others, and that is quite candidly and openly expressed. Within companies, the stress is on striving for promotion and recognition and advancement. There's a very powerful onward motivating force. And between companies, it's a state of war. I was talking to a businessman recently who described to me how their company deliberately set about destroying their only rival in one particular field. They sat down, the executives sat down and planned how to put the smaller and weaker company out of business. They decided that they were going to undercut them on various contracts, they were going to do the contracts at a loss, and they developed a definite strategy to wipe this other company off the face of the map and to make all its workers unemployed. These were respectable, I presume, many of them God-fearing, decent businessmen, and this was good business practice. This was what they wanted to do. Tremendous pressure. The capitalistic world is a very cruel and savage world. There is very little Christian about modern capitalism. We have the pressures on the businessman, the endless hours of work, the families neglected, the ulcers, the heart attacks, the stress, the life wasted, and always looking over their shoulder, terrified of slipping back. As Ecclesiastes 4 says, this is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Anxiety in the boardroom, Then in verses five and six you have apathy on the shop floor. We move now from the capitalist to the worker. The fool folds his hands and ruins himself. Better one handful, this is what he says, better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind. Here this man has introduced a fool, and the Hebrew word means a sluggard, a stupid fellow. He looks at the bosses with all their problems and he folds his hands. He has no ambition. He has no pride in his work. He tends to do the absolute minimum He's familiar with long meal breaks and frequent sickness leave and low productivity. And we know that these cancers are eating away at all the economies of the Western world. You only need to read the quality papers and magazines to see them being discussed. The worker is simply saying, why bother? Who wants all that stress? His attitude is expressed in verse six. Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after wind. He is enough. He's enough to live on. His pay is adequate, his life is comfortable, and the welfare state will fill any gaps. Why should he exhaust himself with hard work? Who wants responsibility? Who wants overtime? I'm not paid to work, to worry. The tragedy the scripture says is that he ruins himself. He ruins himself. The Hebrew says he eats his own flesh. For you see, apathy and idleness and irresponsibility destroy people. They destroy people. Man has been made with the opposite qualities. People's self-respect is corroded and destroyed. And they become stupid, zombie-like, irresponsible figures, futile and tragic. Worse even than their harried employers. It's a pretty grim picture. The writer pictures a driven man on one side, a driven man, forcing himself on and on and on. And on the other side, an apathetic man, idle and careless, shrugging his shoulders. And the basic problem in both cases is the same. There is an emptiness. There's a gap. There's no answer to the question, why? The employer says, what am I doing this for? He doesn't know. There's no answer. Eventually he says, it's meaningless. And the employee has said, what would I kill myself for? There's no answer. It's meaningless. This is industry without God. The economic base of the Western world is being undermined, eroded and destroyed, and some Christian economists warn us that we may face a very, very grim future. The spirit of apathy has gripped sections of the workforce, and the whole social fabric is coming under an intense strain, and the government and the employers may urge greater productivity, but they can't give any reason. In the late 60s and early 70s in America, a whole generation of young people dropped out of society. Their parents were saying to them, work hard, go to college, get a good degree, make plenty of money, get a good job. And the young people looked at their parents and said, why? So that I could be like you. So that I can get a new lawn mower to cut the front grass. So that I can join the golf club down the road. I look at your life. and it's empty, and it's meaningless. And a whole generation of young people folded their arms and dropped out. And that is now spreading down into society. You talk to young people, talk to them about a better standard of living, talk about the good of society, they will laugh. If you bring work under the sun, if you act as if there is no God, everything is meaningless. There are only three things which will make people work. You know they are. Only three things which will make people work. The first is necessity. If you have to get enough money to live, That'll make people work. If they're told, you'll starve if you don't work, that'll make them work. Now our society has taken that motive away. If you don't work, you'll not be very comfortable, you'll not be well off, you'll have a pretty miserable time, but you won't starve. You won't starve. The second reason why people work is because they enjoy their work They find it fulfilling, they take pride in it, it brings them satisfaction. A lot of today's work is very repetitive, tedious, dehumanizing, and boring. You can't really take a lot of pride in standing pulling a lever at a machine. We've taken that second motive away. People say, why? They go into work, and they put in the hours, they take their paycheck, but they don't care. Some people do have creative and enjoyable work. They're fortunate. Many people don't. There's one other reason, and that brings us to the Christian answer. There's a God in heaven. And he has placed you and me in our jobs. And he calls us to bring glory to him there. And he is our father. And we love him dearly. And we want to please him. And he is our true master. And he sees everything we do. And when you and I go to work tomorrow morning, We are literally working for our Lord. He is our master. He is our employer. He is the one to whom we are responsible. He is the one who sees what we do. Whether you work in a factory, or on a farm, or in the home, or in school, or in hospital, or whatever, whatever it is you do, you're working for God. That is your calling. We are all in full-time Christian service. We're not just working for pay. We're not just working for necessity. We're not, I hope, working for envy. We're not just even working for the love of our work, although we're fortunate if we do love our work. But we're working for love of our Lord Jesus. You remember what Paul says to the Colossians? Whatever you do, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord. Working for the Lord, not for men. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Remember that tomorrow. It's the Lord Christ you are serving. You see friends, it was this spirit that animated the medieval stonemason. You can go into some of the great cathedrals in Europe And they can, when they're renovating the cathedral, they can erect a scaffolding to go right up to the top of the Gothic arches, right up in the height and the darkness there, where no one has been for 500 years. And they get up there and they find a stone carving of a saint or a gargoyle or something. And that carving is as perfect as the one at the front door. And the man who carved it knew that nobody would ever see it. Nobody would ever be up there. There wouldn't be no light up there. But God would see it. And he did it perfectly. He did it to the very best of his ability. Because he wasn't just working for people to see. He's working for God to see. I'm intensely moved when I read about those carvings. And I think of some humble, forgotten stonemason lying on his back on a plank with the chips falling in his face and his arms aching, his lungs filled with dust hundreds of years ago when they were building that cathedral. And that simple man going to do his best and he died and nobody ever knew what he'd done except as God. You can't pay people to do that. I've said before, it was remarked in Scotland after the Reformation, that one of the differences between Scottish society and society in Southern Europe was that when men were working in gangs on the road, making road breaking stones, There were no overseers. There were no foremen. There was no one in charge of them. And people asked why that was. The answer was they didn't need anybody in charge of them. They're Christian men. Man would out with his hammer at the side of the road. He didn't need to punch a clock. He didn't need a supervisor. God was watching. He did a good day's work. And he didn't stop until he'd finished good day's work to the best of his ability and he could look at his master's face and his master would say, well done. Only this knowledge, I believe, of an ever-present God to whom we are responsible is the ultimate and sufficient ground to give stimulus and encouragement to the worker and to take stress from the manager. And in the little that I've read of capitalism, it seems a very ingenious and effective and efficient economic system, but at the heart of it, there is no heart. There's an emptiness. There's a meaninglessness. That's why it's starting to collapse. I suppose each of us should ask ourselves the question, for whom do I work and why? Do you groan and grumble on Monday morning? Do you drag yourself out of bed and say, oh no, not another week again? Do you start focusing upon your difficult colleagues or the unpleasant people who are under you or your boss who's insensitive Do you spend your day struggling in the rap race, or snoozing in apathy, or just simply putting the hours in? Or do you give yourself to working honestly, diligently, cheerfully, remembering that thou, God, seest me? Amen. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for the blessing of work given to man before the fall, that we might subdue the earth, care for it and steward it, and bring out the full potential of creation as your under managers. And although, God, we know that in this sinful fallen world, our work is often now laborious, repetitive, and frustrating, Father, we thank you that it is not divorced from our Christianity, but it is part of our Christian life and service. So, Lord, at this moment, In our own hearts, we would each thank you for the work which in your providence you have given us to do. Help us, Lord, to be grateful for it. We pray for those who are unemployed, who are seeking work, And help us, Father, to remember always who it is we are serving, the best of all masters, the one who sees all, every piece of effort and industry, thoughtfulness and imagination. And Lord, no matter how humble our work may be, it makes no difference to you. simply that we do it well. So, Father, we do indeed thank you that you're a kind and a considerate and appreciative master, quick to say, well done. And as we look around us at an empty society and people who find no meaning in their work but who live for other things, Help us, O Lord, to show by our daily attitudes in our place of work that we do have a different perspective. And Lord, let that be a great part of our witness. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.