13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
— Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, ESV

A YouTube comedian looked at it this way, citing wisdom gained from his grandmother:

There are only two things in life to worry about, whether you’re healthy, or whether you’re sick.  If you’re healthy, you got nothing to worry about.  If you’re sick, you have two things to worry about, whether you get better, or get worse.  If you get better, you’ve got nothing to worry about.  If you get worse, you’ve got two things to worry about, whether you live, or whether you die.  If you live, you got nothing to worry about.  If you die, you have two things to worry about, whether you go to heaven, or whether you go to hell.  If you go to heaven, you got nothing to worry about.  If you go to hell, you have two things to worry about, whether you will be original recipe or extra crispy. 

Granny used humor to try to steer her grandson away from hell.  Jesus used fear.  He said:

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. 
Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
— Matthew 10:28

Turn to God, Jesus said, or face the burn of His judgment.  

The original “turn or burn” preacher may well have been King Solomon, in his ending to the enduring book of Ecclesiastes.  He evoked the fear of God for the fourth time (ref. 3:14, 5:7, 8:12, 12:13), then concluded with a word about the judgment of God.  Either turn your life over to the God who gave it to you in the first place, says the Preacher, or face the fiery burn of His judgment at the end of the line. 

Solomon’s Turn

It has been my consistent conviction that Ecclesiastes is the journal of a wayward king who found his way back to God.  Twists and turns took Solomon from being an early devotee to the God of Israel, to a midlife playboy plunged into debauchery and idolatry, to a remorseful, repentant, senior statesman and scribe of Holy Scripture.

“The end of the matter, all has been heard,” Solomon writes at the beginning of the ending of Ecclesiastes.  In other words, “I’ve been there and done that.”  He had experienced all God had to give: grace, faith, wisdom, blessing, and honor.  He had experienced all the world had to offer: sexual pleasure, political power, monetary might, and shame.  At the end of the day, when it matters most, he decidedly preferred one over the other.  He turned, to God.  

“Fear God” is his final advice, with the added explanation of what the fear of God sounds and looks like, “and keep His commandments.”  

“Fear” is not to be understood in the terse, terrifying, cold connotation of the English word.  But rather the warm, inviting, reverence and respect a humble inferior gives to a merciful superior.  “God” is that superior.  “Yaré Elohim,” wrote Solomon, love, trust, and follow the true and living God, and prove it by loving, trusting, and following His “mitzvah,” His scriptural commandments.  

This is Solomon’s turn to invite you to take Solomon’s turn.  Take this road less traveled, with all of its twists and ultimate turns.  Though the Preacher took it so long ago, it has a striking parallel to the path taken by the sons and daughters of the American South. 

Like Solomon, we are all born into privilege and pleasure.  You may not have been brought home from the hospital to a castle, but if you grew up around here you are richer than ninety percent of the people in the rest of the world.  Count your blessings, don’t squander them.

Like Solomon, we are all born into a culture of faith.  Eighty percent of us believe in God, the Christian God, and there is a church of one stripe or another on almost every corner.  By the time you graduate from high school, you’ve heard the gospel a hundred and seventy-seven times, and probably walked the aisle at least three times to ask Jesus to come into your heart.  

Like Solomon, we are all prodigals.  We listen to the lure of sex or money or power or, worse, sinful pride, and turn away from God for all the world has to offer.  Unlike the happy ending in Luke’s Gospel, most prodigals don’t turn back.  They live in the sin of the younger brother, or are blinded by the legalism of the older brother, and never find their way to the Father.  

Like Solomon, though, I pray you have or you will turn.  Consider your life, like he did.  At the end of the day, when you look at it all, do you “Fear God?”  Have you truly turned to the Father, accepting the sacrifice of the Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit?  Have you repented, believed, and truly turned your life over to God?

How can you know?  It is certainly not by how many prayers you’ve prayed or aisles you’ve walked.  Listen to the Apostle John’s commentary on King Solomon’s admonition:

By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
— 1 John 2:3-6

Take Solomon’s turn, to God.  Or, suffer Solomon’s burn, from God.

Solomon’s Burn

Solomon’s closing words are a friendly invitation and a fiery warning.  Turn your life over to the loving and forgiving God, come over to His side.  Or, you will have to face Him on the wrong side of judgement.  

The ESV perhaps makes too much of the end of verse 13.  It makes one Hebrew word many in English, “This is the whole duty of man.” I agree with the sentiment, but the rendering of one literal word would suffice, “Everyone.”  This pairs better with the first word of verse 14, “Everything.”

Hey “everyone,” Solomon says, “everything” you have ever done, or thought, in public, or in secret, is known to God.  And He will judge it, “whether good or evil.”  I feel like we are all getting a little uncomfortable right now.  We read Solomon’s words from the Hebrew and we hear the words from the New Testament book of Hebrews:

It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”
— Hebrews 9:27

I’ve got good news and bad news.  We will all be judged by God.  We will all face some sort of burning at the judgment.  Wait a minute, where’s the good news?

If you fear God, if you trust and obey the Lord, if you are a fully committed follower of Jesus Christ, let me show you what your burn will look like:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
— 2 Corinthians 5:10

For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
— 1 Corinthians 3:11-15

“The judgement seat of Christ” is for true believers who have truly turned to God by grace through faith in God.  It is actually a place of reward, like olympians on pedestals receiving gold, silver, and bronze.  All you have done in “good” faith will be recognized and somehow rewarded by God.

Any and all “evil” you have done, and we have all done evil, sinful things, will be burned away like “wood, hay, and straw.”  This is your certificate of debt being burned.  This is because Jesus Christ paid your debt at Calvary, and God has forgiven and forgotten and burned forever your sins.  Glory, hallelujah, turn to Jesus and let all of your sin burn away!

If you do not fear God, do not repent and trust the gospel, do not come to fully follow Christ, your judgement and burning will be quite different:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
— Revelation 20:11-15

The burn of the “lake of fire” is for everyone who refused to take Solomon’s turn to “fear God and keep His commandments.”  It may not be literal fire, for that notion comes more from Dante’s Inferno than the Holy Bible.  But it will be a fiery and final judgement, where sin is not forgotten, unbelief is not forgiven, and sinners are forlorn forever in wherever and whatever hell turns out to be.  

I don’t want to know.  I’d rather take Solomon’s turn.  Then, I won’t have to worry about Solomon’s burn.

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
— Ecclesiastes 12:13-14