So we are continuing this morning in our series through the book of Ecclesiastes. And we come to Ecclesiastes chapter four, verses four through 16. So I'll ask you to please turn with me in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter four. Beginning in verse four. Hear now the word of the living God. Then I saw that all toil and all skill and work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after win. The fool folds his hand and eats his own flesh. Better is a handful of quietness than two handful of toil and a striving after win. Again I saw vanity under the sun. One person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there's no end to all his toil. And his eyes are never satisfied with riches so that he never asks, for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure? This also is vanity in an unhappy business. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice. For he went from prison to the throne, though in his own kingdom he had been born poor. I saw all the living who move about under the sun along with that youth who was to stand in the king's place. There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord endures forever. I've been a, high school teacher and a sports coach, various levels for 20 years. And one thing you learn, especially coaching sports for so long, is how difficult it is to get people to work together. People struggle to work together, mainly because of selfishness. Working together is better than working alone. There's all kinds of benefits of working with others, so people do it. But sin is always getting in the way. The legendary NBA coach Pat Riley called it the disease of me. Selfishness often derails our best efforts to work together. But trying to do things on your own doesn't work very well either. Not only will you be lonely, you're not nearly as productive on your own. You have no one to help you with your work when you're on your own. So working together is really difficult, but working alone doesn't quite cut it. But you can't just not work either. There is work to be done. You have to work in this world. And this creates a dilemma about how to go about working in this world. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the preacher, who is Solomon, is on a quest to find eternal meaning, eternal value or gain from the things of this world. And he's looking at life from an earthly perspective, from the perspective under the sun, but he's searching for eternity. And he concludes right in the beginning of the book that all is vanity, which means that everything is fleeting, worthless, and frustrating because there's nothing in this world that lasts, not even our own lives. So no matter what you do, no matter which road you take, you end up with nothing that will last from the things of this world. In our passage this morning, the preacher once again looks at work. And he once again sees that it is vanity. Because our motivation for work, he says, is really just comparing ourselves to others. We work to be seen as better than others. But we have to work in this world and we need others to work with. But the vanity of work in this world and the dilemma of how to go about it is what he comes to. And all of this points us to the God who is restoring all things. The preacher's perspective is to look at life without God. It's a look at life without God's redeeming work of the gospel. And in this broken world, you have hope not only in your personal salvation, but you have hope in that you are called to a community of believers in Jesus Christ that you work together with for the glory of God. Our passage comes after the preacher has just lamented the injustices that occur in our human justice systems. He observed that despite all our hard work and accomplishments, that people die just like animals. And that oppression is a given in this broken, sinful world. So he concluded that it's better to not have been born at all. And now he continues his quest and he moves his focus back to the topic of toil. He does this often throughout the book where he circles back to topics he has already discussed and he adds new insights, new conclusions each time. And this time he says, I saw that all toil and all skill and work comes from a man's envy of his neighbor. He's speaking to the motivation behind our work and our skill in this world. And he says it's envy of neighbor. There's something in the human heart that desires to be seen as better, smarter, stronger, faster than others. He's saying we work so hard so we can be seen as the best. Now it's not the only reason people work. People work for other reasons. There's a truth to this point. The desire to be better than others is the motivation for much of the hard work that goes on in this world. It's a self-seeking glory to be put on a pedestal so that others will see how great you are. It's a desire to not be seen as less than other people, but to be seen as more. And he says this, too, is vanity, a striving after the win, expending all this energy after all is a waste of time because eventually you and anyone you could possibly be jealous of will die. And it doesn't gain you anything in eternity. But it's our natural state to compare ourselves to others. There will always be people you feel are doing, you're doing better than, or people you feel that you're not doing good as. I once heard a story about a man who was unhappy with his life, and this was an extremely successful man. He was more successful than most people. He built a company that taught entrepreneurs around the world, and there were hundreds of schools doing this. But he just couldn't be happy because he compared himself to his college roommate. Essentially, he was jealous of his college roommate. And it made him feel unsuccessful and unhappy because his college roommate was Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. And no matter how hard he worked, he wasn't nearly as successful as Elon Musk was. And this is an example of what the preacher is talking about. His drive to work was out of jealousy to his college roommate. He wanted to do better than him, and his happiness was contingent upon this. And wanting to be better than others is something that can affect every one of us. You and I have this motivation in our hearts. It could be siblings, old friends, neighbors, there's always people you can compare yourself to. And this is what drives the ambition of the world, people trying to be better than others. And when you see people who never seem to have enough, that's because there's always someone who has more. There's someone who's accomplished more. This can even affect us in our Christian lives. You can pursue holiness even. So you can be more holy than others. You can be motivated to obedience to God because you're comparing yourselves to others. But God has called you out of this. You still have to work and live in this world, but your motivation is to be different. God changes you. He changes your heart that you can put off this comparison, comparing yourself to others and focus on loving service of your neighbor. It's in this that you can love your neighbor as yourself. You don't need to be better than anyone. You don't need to prove yourself. You can live and love others motivated by the love of God that he has for you in your heart. Your motivation as a Christian shifts to pleasing God and you can put off impressing other people. And you see this in our Lord Jesus Christ. He had no envy of other people. He didn't work in this world to impress others with his success or his possessions. He lived a humble life, pleasing to God. He lived his life to fulfill God's plan of redemption for others. Sacrificing himself so that others may live so that you may live. And it's by the grace of Jesus Christ strengthening you that you can do this. There's a battle in every Christian between the flesh and the spirit, and it continues in you. The battle of motivations in your heart. The battle between being motivated by envy of others versus being motivated by glorifying and pleasing God. And one drives you to work so that you can be better than other people, and one drives you to lovingly serve others in loving service of God. But the preacher doesn't stop there with work that is motivated by envy. He then gives a proverb in verse five to consider another extreme involving work. The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. The folding of hands is referring to someone who doesn't work. In the book of Proverbs, there's the reoccurring theme of the slugger, which is the lazy person. And the slugger throughout the book is contrasted with the diligent, the hard worker. In Proverbs 6 it says, how long will you lie there, oh slugger? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. So to fold your hands means to refrain from working. And the preacher says, the fool who doesn't work will eat his own flesh. This is an extreme image of the self-destruction of someone who doesn't work. Your desire won't go away because you don't work. You still need things in this world. God has made us to work. Adam and Eve were to work in the garden. But after the fall, after the sin of Adam and Eve, work has become a burden. What was once a beautiful, glorious, God-giving blessing has become a difficult burden due to sin. This was part of the curse that God spoke to Adam in Genesis 3. He said, in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground." And the preacher's point here is that if you don't work, you won't eat, but even more than that, a person who is idle, a person who isn't doing anything each day will decay physically, emotionally, and morally. As one commentator put it, This man is the picture of complacency and unwitting self-destruction, for this comment on him points out a deeper damage than the wasting of his capital. His idleness eats away not only what he has, but what he is, eroding his self-control, his grasp of reality, his capacity for care, and in the end, his self-respect. The preacher has already mentioned in chapter 2 that work is a gift from God. Therefore, if you opt out of working altogether, you will fall apart. He's arguing against laziness. He's saying that if you sit around doing nothing, it will ultimately destroy you. And so he's given these two extremes, the person who only works out of jealousy of others, and the person who doesn't work at all. But working is the way God made this world. We weren't made to do nothing. You do have things to do. You can't simply fold your hands, as the preacher says. And he gives a solution with another proverb in verse 6. Better is a handful of quietness than two handful of toil and a striving after wind." This is the first of three, what are called, better than proverbs. It's just a comparison of two things, the first being better than the second. And here he says, one handful of quietness is better than two hands full of toil. And by quietness, he doesn't mean not speaking. He's referring to quietness of heart. It means contentment. He's saying you are to work, but you are to do so with a heart that is content with what you have, with what God is providing for you. Because if you don't, if you work your whole life without contentment in your heart, then you will have a whole lot of hard work, but it will be striving after the win. It will never be enough. In a sense, you do have to work, but a life spent trying to outgain your neighbor rather than enjoying what you have and being content with what God has given you will be a life of stress and toil. You'll never be content. You won't be able to enjoy what you have because you'll always want more. But true contentment comes from trusting in the providence of God. It's not idleness, it's not laziness, laying around doing nothing. The preacher makes that clear. But it is working hard, trusting in God and His provision. and has the element of gratitude for what you had. If you are grateful for what God has provided, then you will be content. You won't concern yourself with what other people have. You will rejoice and be glad in what you do have. You will work to provide for yourself, for your family, with a quiet heart of contentment and gratitude. But without contentment, it's a life of hard work and toil that never ends, and you're never happy with what you have. And the preacher gives an illustration of the person who is committed only to their work. He says in verse eight, he saw one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil. And his eyes are never satisfied with riches so that he never asks, for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure? This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Our culture puts on a pedestal those who are financially successful. If you think about the business magnates, the high-earning CEOs and how they're thought of, people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook from Apple. They're looked at like the pinnacle of success. People actually ask their opinions on all kinds of things. But what people don't realize is that men who are highly successful CEOs like this often work 80 to 100 hours or more this week. They have to do this in order to manage these multiple companies and oversee international operations. They're constantly in meetings, traveling, dealing with these big picture strategies. They work weekends, nights, holidays. Elon Musk just tweeted the other day about how he loves working on the weekends. Living with these highly demanding, packed schedules year in, year out. They sacrifice everything. Their marriages usually fall apart. They don't have time with their children or their friends. All at the altar. of success. And the preacher is painting the same picture, the lonely person. who works at nothing else, pursuing money and success over everything. But this also is vanity. It is fleeting, worthless, frustrating in the end. It only leads to loneliness and unhappiness. The cure to being a lonely workaholic is a quiet heart of contentment. You work to provide and you work to enjoy the blessings and the gifts God has given you, including your work itself. But you weren't made to work alone. You weren't made for a life of loneliness, toiling away in envy of others. You were made to work with others. The preacher teaches this in another proverb. He says, two are better than one. He's talking about two people working together for the same goal is better than one person working for that goal. And he even gives several reasons. For starters, the results are better. They have good reward for their toil, he says. You will accomplish more if you work with someone else than by yourself. Next, he says, for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. Two people working together not only accomplish more, but they help each other when something goes wrong. The preacher is referring to a literal fall. In ancient times, it was a matter of life and death if you fell, and having someone with you could save your life. And he says, woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. But this could mean any difficulty. Two people working together can help each other in their time of need. He says they could keep each other warm, which would have been something needed during that time. But this simply means you can support each other. There's many ways you can protect each other, not only from physical harm, but from various sorts of attacks. If you have a partner working with you, you have someone to help you, guide you, a witness to all that is going on, someone to validate or verify whether something you say or do is true or not. And he closes this statement, with a threefold cord is not quickly broken. This is often quoted, I've heard it more than once quoted by a pastor to mean that marriage that involves God is stronger because you now have three instead of two. And now while I do believe that is true, they have a point that a marriage between two believers in Christ is stronger than one without him. I don't believe that's what Solomon is saying here. It simply means that if two are better than one, then three are even stronger than two. If you have three people working in harmony, working towards the same goal, this multiplies all the benefits you would get if you have two people. And all this brings out the fact that God has called you to a people. He's called you to a community of believers so that in your work for the kingdom of God, you don't have to work alone. You have all the support of a loving church family, both the local church and the greater church. We here at Third have a church family who love each other and help each other in our times of need to support each other in the work for the kingdom. If two is better than one and three is stronger than two, you have plenty of help at your church. And there's the additional element of being believers. If it's helpful for even two unbelievers to work together, how much greater is the help from those who have been saved by grace through faith? The help from those who have been born again of the Spirit, the help from those who have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them. God has called you to a people. to love and support one another as you work together for his kingdom. But there is another aspect of the work that the preacher discusses here. He tells another proverb and then follows it with a story. He says, better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice. He begins this with speaking of the importance of listening to the advice of others. And there are many Proverbs throughout the book of Proverbs on this. Proverbs 15.22 says, without counsel, plans fail. But with many advisors, they succeed. Proverbs 12.15, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. Proverbs 11.14, where there is no guidance, a people falls. But in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. And this is just a few. The importance of listening to advice and seeking counsel from others is key in working together. Working together, for some people, means getting others to execute their ideas. But genuinely listening to other people, knowing they have something valuable to say and add to the conversation, is wisdom. Shutting them out is foolishness. But then he tells the story of a man who started out poor and in prison and then became king and he rose to reign over this large kingdom. But he will soon be forgotten. It's a tale of how quickly glory and fame and power in this world fade. When you work for your own glory in this world, you're working for something that is fleeting, something temporary, something worthless from an eternal perspective. A king who rises to the top from rags to riches will soon be forgotten just like everyone else and no one will care about his story. The preacher says surely this is also his vanity and a striving after the win. Although Solomon does offer some wisdom here about not working out of envy, about not being lazy, about working together instead of alone, listening to the advice of others, and the fleeting nature of human glory, he ultimately comes to the same conclusion, that it's all vanity, a striving after the win, that it's all fleeting, worthless, frustrating, because it brings nothing to eternity. But God, has called all his people. He has called everyone who believes in his son. He has called you to a community of believers in Jesus Christ to work together for his glory. The struggle of working in this world has been set against the foolishness of not working. And working with others is better than working alone. But the preacher concludes that the vanity of fleeting glory on earth And so the solution rests once again in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because God has called you to a community of believers to work together, to help each other, to support each other, to overcome the desire to compete by loving one another, to reject the fleeting glory of this world, working together for the glory of God. The view that Solomon gives under the sun gives the option of working your whole life for a glory that will fade as fast as it comes, or just checking out altogether and giving up on work. But from the earthly perspective he provides, you can either be a workaholic or you can be a king whose glory fades as soon after his death. But from the eternal perspective of the kingdom of God, you can work with the loving Christian community God has called you to. And you can work for the eternal glory of God and his kingdom. For a kingdom and a power and a glory that will last forever. The gospel of Jesus Christ saves you as individuals through faith in Christ. But you're not saved to be an individual. God is renewing and restoring the brokenness of this world by restoring sinners one by one to himself. And he is day by day making you more and more into the image. of his son, but you are saved to a community of believers who are united to Christ by faith. You are saved to a community who live to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. The church is a community that come together with the love of Christ when things go wrong. It's a community that loves God and loves other people, a community that lives for God's eternal glory. Now we all know that we don't do this perfectly always, but we await the return of our King Jesus Christ, who upon his return will gather his people in the ultimate resolution to the brokenness of this world and to the completion of God's redemptive work where we will be made perfectly blessed in the perfect righteousness of Christ, working together in communion with God and one another, doing all things to God's glory, loving God and loving one another perfectly for the rest of eternity. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we know, Lord, the brokenness and sinfulness of this world. We know the brokenness and sinfulness in our own hearts, Lord, and how that can make so much of the trials and tribulations. But we know, Lord, that you have called us to yourself and that you are restoring us day by day to be a community that loves you, a community that is your light in this world of darkness, a community that shows the love of Christ to this world. And so we ask, Lord, that you continue to work in us, that we can put off our selfish ambition, that we can put off our jealousy of others, that we can work together with others out of love, that we can have within this church the bonds of love that can only be through Jesus Christ, that you strengthen our union with you so that it will strengthen our union with each other, and that we can continue to work out of love for your glory and your kingdom. It's in the precious name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.