We bless you, our Lord and our God, the great God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We recognize, Lord, that you are pure and holy and that you are all light. We ask, Lord, that you would purify us, sanctify us by your word. We ask, Lord, that your word would be to us a wellspring of wisdom. and that it would come to us as your word. May we hear it, guard us by it, O Lord. We pray these things through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. May we be seated. Well, I called this planning for the future, and I do these titles and everything weeks and months prior to me actually getting up here. And I don't really think much about them because they're done and I send them off. But I realized that it sounds like your financial planner called. He wants to have a little chit chat with you about your 401k. What are you going to plan for the future? That's not quite the intent that I had in mind. But to the point, Covelette here, the preacher, is actually going to commend maybe giving your financial planner a call. as a means of wise living, although he has more to say than just that. But more than just simply the idea of making a plan, if you will, for the future, Colouette really wants us to understand what it means to live and live well and godly before him on the face of the earth. And so he's gonna turn now and have us consider and think a little bit about investment in ourselves, if you will, for the future, but also to recognize that all of these things take place within the providence of God, and that even within that, not everything will blossom in ways that we think. And so he, again, he's gonna hold now the tension for us, and he wants us to grab a hold of that tension, and he wants us to accept that tension, and he wants us to recognize where it is that we are to live our godly lives. Now, we're at the very cusp of the conclusion of this book. We don't have much left. I believe there's gonna be two more sermons in the book itself, the rest of this chapter and then chapter 12. We're gonna kind of round it out. I think that's what's gonna happen here. But we recognize that he's going to, if you will, begin to land this plane and begin to conclude. And he wants to now begin to summarize a little bit of what he's been saying all along. And here he wants us to think about wise planning and wise planning for the future. And so that's what he exhorts us to do, plan wisely in this very present time. for a couple of reasons. One, it's a theme that he has brought to us over and over again, and that is that we do not know the future, we can't see into the future, but also that from our perspective these things are uncontrollable to us. They are uncontrollable to us. And so he's going to say, well, we need to act wisely. We need to plan. And we need to do this in trusting ourselves to the Lord. But we recognize that there are things that we still don't know. And that is just the future generally, but also that we have no ability to control it. That's when he gets up with the futility of life, that this idea that these things are there, but we can't grasp them fully like we would like. So two points again, just to kind of think about this. First one is going to be to plan wisely in the present. That's going to be the first point. We're going to talk about verses one and two mainly there. And then secondly, no one knows nor is capable of controlling the future. No one knows it, no one's capable of controlling it. That's going to be the second point. We're going to look at that basically in verses three through six. So let's begin planning and acting wisely in the present. These are famous verses. These might be some of the more famous verses that you maybe have heard from Ecclesiastes. When I was a kid in a not-reformed church, we sang a song on Ecclesiastes 1, cast your bread upon the waters. It was a catchy little tune. I don't remember much of it, but it was on this, and it was like one of those things where I grew up and the only thing I knew about Ecclesiastes maybe was chapter 11, verse 1, because we sang it in some song. And it's catchy and it's good and probably if you know it, you know it by this idea of casting your bread upon the waters. But now I'm gonna burst your bubble. It's a translation that catches and sticks but isn't accurate. The word is more like send or release. So, there's something intentional about it. The idea of casting seems to be just like, you kind of just whip it out there and whatever, almost like fatalism. That's not what the Koalas is getting at. He's saying, we want to send these things out onto the waters, because with the boomerang effect, they're going to come back and return to us, and they're going to blossom into some kind of investment. They're going to return well for us in many days. And verse two actually furthers this thought by speaking towards the idea of diversification. So you can see distributing to seven or eight. It's a poetic way of saying to just kind of don't put all your eggs in one basket. We can think of it that way, but that's our saying. He says it by you give to seven or to eight. Why? Well, because when disaster strikes, it doesn't harm everything, it may only harm a part. It's almost like as if there was a real financial advisor sitting down with Killelet and saying, like, this is a good way to do things. And he is kind of getting into that, although they didn't have monetary investments quite the same way that we do. But the idea was investing, if you will, in yourself, your own gifts and talents. We'll talk about what that means in a minute. But it works as well for our economic system of investing into that which then would produce results in the future. So you compound your interest and you get something good in return, and then you diversify it. So there is an interesting thought, though, that older commentators and some current ones, they think of this as almsgiving. And so it's almost like a quid pro quo on that. You do something good for someone here, and then later on, I don't know, somebody has paid it forward, and you get something good in return. And that seemed to be the idea. Other commentators really think it has to do with economics, particularly the maritime trade, because of the use of the water sending out onto the waters. I think given the nature of the book, that Colette has already addressed the issue of money multiple times, I think he's actually getting at more of the idea of the maritime trade and sending your ships out into the water, something more economic that would be applicable than almsgiving, although almsgiving is a good thing. And so what he's saying is that you should consider your life and plan accordingly. we don't want to reject the idea of making a plan, we do so recognizing that all of it is within God's providential care. So in other words, Proverbs actually tells us this, that we could make plans, but God brings about the results, and so there's a sense in which we do so in and within the systems with which he's created that we live in, And then we recognize, as Colette will tell us, that there are in fact times when, as we generally consider it, disaster strikes and something harmful happens to us. It's not always because we didn't plan properly, but it often has to do with things outside of our direct control. This is getting at that uncontrollable part of it. But we recognize that within our plan we do so under God's providential care, and His providential care is for us as Heavenly Father who sustains the world and cares for His people, giving to us our daily bread. And so we do so with faith as we recognize these kind of plans that we talk about and make. And we shouldn't think of this kind of planning as ungodly. I mean, among other things, Kovalev is actually telling us this. He is saying, this is what you ought to do. Send these things out to the waters, and then in due time, they will return to us. And if you do so in this sort of diversified way, that when disaster strikes here, it may not happen here. So it's this kind of general counsel. And part of this is that he is encouraging us to live to live well and properly, and to live within the providence that God has created for us to live. Now, what I mean by that is this, that having read through the book, one could become cynical. Or, having read through the book, one could become afraid. And we see these kinds of responses and results today that, oh, there's a big, bad world out there, so I'm going to retreat to my commune over here and just not interact with. I'm gonna live this way and not this way. And Cohen is kind of putting us out there and saying, no, a proper godly living is living within the world that God has created. So that sometimes can be a challenge for some of us, but it is in fact, this is what he has given us to do. And I wanna make another point about this, and that's the wise use of money in the Bible. The reason I wanna make this point is because I wanna connect it to 10 things we've been talking about, but something he had said earlier about covetousness in chapter five. Because he's now commending to us investment. In some senses, it's a monetary kind of investment. For some people, that gets us a little bit under the collar in a way that we don't like. Why is he talking about money like this or something like that? Most economic systems rely on money. It's simply a medium of exchange, right? Most of you do not make all of your own stuff and are completely independent. In fact, for the most part, we've gotten away from that, and most of us live better, right? We live higher standards of living because we're not dirt farmers making our own clothes. At least I think. So that's my opinion at this point, but generally we all live a higher and better life. I think most of us would rather not be living in a feudal system in 1025 in England, and we'd rather be living here. That's my thought. But this is what I think he's getting at, that we use money, and it's not simply that we just stack it up in our closet and say, here's a good thing, but we're using it as a medium of exchange, and we generally desire it. We generally desire it because it helps to improve our lifestyles. In fact, I don't know of any people that deny raises. Like, we'd give you a raise. No, no, no. I'm good. I just don't know the people who, if you are, I commend you, but I don't know anybody that's actually like that. And so we actually think of it in a good way, that we desire it, because it purchases for us things like house and transportation and clothes and food and all that kind of stuff, so that in this kind of system that we have, we can improve our lives in a good way. In a way that I think is reflective of the way the scriptures would want us to live. And as a general rule, it's been a good profit for mankind. I mean, you know, missionaries need money. They can't go without being paid to go, or travel paid, or something like that. So this is what I'm kind of getting at. In itself, an increase in wealth is not a sin. And this is what the tension that Colette is wanting us to feel. because earlier he had talked about covetousness in chapter five. But he described covetousness as desiring more just for his own sake. But he described obtaining it or practicing covetousness as that which harmed others. In fact, he gives a whole chapter on two things, harming others and ignoring your family and he mentions those two things specifically as that which is the covetous man who was the unbeliever and I mentioned all of that at the time when we were in that chapter but that he describes a man who is unwise because he's covetous he's a sinful man and the two things that described him and it wasn't the same man doing two things it was you know could be different men but it was a man who ignored his family. So he simply lived, and if you remember, it says something like, he lived to be a hundred years old and didn't know his children. So in other words, he had lived his entire life obtaining, but never interacting with his family, which Cohen has commended all through the book that this was a very normal and good practice, which is that we were to interact well with our families, whether spouses or children or something like that. And then the second thing he said was it was harming to others, that basically you would bring harm by crushing people on your way to the top. there are ways to obtain wealth that's legal and moral, just simply working and earning a paycheck, inheritances, you know, things like that. I mean, there's all kinds of legal and moral ways that we obtain wealth that can improve ourselves without being covetousness, so that we need to kind of separate the two that just because you have more, that doesn't mean that you're covetous to get it. It doesn't mean that if you have less that you're not covetous at all if you're simply desiring it for its own sake. So I want to put that out there to you because he's commending here something that all of us probably ought to be doing in one way or another, whether it's developing our own talents and gifts to use for benefit for ourselves and others, or whether it's simply making that kind of financial investment. But he's kind of getting at and aiming at both or maybe all of those things. And so in the whole, I think the Bible, and specifically here, Koholet, calls you to a wise living through a very proper use of money. So we need to separate out that covetous aspect and the proper aspect and then live well in that way. In fact, I think Jesus tells two parables that help us here. Neither of them are getting at the point that is directly related, but within them you hear it. The first one is the parable of dishonest manager in Luke chapter 16. If you remember that parable, there's this dishonest manager and he falls out of favor with his employer And he calls up all the people that owe his employer, oil and wheat and all this stuff. And he says, oh, you owe 100 barrels of oil, cut it down to 80. Oh, you owe 100 bushels of wheat, cut it down to 60. And then at the end of the parable, he's commended as being wise and shrewd. And then Jesus actually says, so you wanna make friends with earthly wealth, because in the day of disaster, you're gonna be commended in this way. And part of the point of that parable was that this man was shrewd because he built in his pay by padding the account. So the guy didn't really owe $100, he only owed $60, but $40 of that was going to go to the guy that was doing all the work. And so he was shrewd because he recognized, well, if I put myself in favor with the people, then maybe when I lose my job, these guys will pick me up, something like that. And so there was this idea of the shrewdness by the use of it, and Jesus commends this. Matthew 25, the parable of the talents. You know, the 10 to 5, the 1, or the 2 and the 1, it's told different ways in Luke and Matthew. But the two servants who go and invest, they're commended. the one who buries, not commended. In fact, he's only not commended, but in Matthew, like everything else, Matthew kind of has a weird ending to parables, Jesus and Matthew, where the guy is condemned. He's not just simply like, well, you didn't do a good thing. No, he's actually condemned. because he's condemned as one who's fearful of his master, refusing to live his life and bear fruit in the open market. Now again, the parable's lending itself towards something else, but towards the way that Koa'let is teaching us, he is saying that there is a sense in which the Lord has put us out into this world, and he wants us to live, and he wants us to develop ourselves, and he wants us to increase our skills, and he wants us to increase in that way. In other words, that there is something wise about living in this way, the world. And we see it commended in several different places. So the overall effect is that you're not merely defensively living, but you're living with a divine generosity, exuberant living. This is what I think Kovalet is commending to us. so that we can look at the world in a couple of particular ways. That one, we can recognize that the Lord commends us for putting ourselves out there, using and developing the things that we have to his glory, increasing them in some way. But it accepts at times the good, the fruit, as well as sometimes that there are things that are unfruitful or disastrous, as he tells us here. And it's also good to emphasize that there's wise action in the present because the future is not known. So I think that these verses are very helpful to us in the overall way that we want to think about living. Now, in the second part, number two, no one knows nor controls the future. We kind of have a sense then of the tempering of this, that just because we invest doesn't mean that it's all going to come back to us well. It doesn't mean that because we use our talents well that they're all going to be developed and used well. It's going to temper it a little bit. And so he tells us actually several things to do. First, in the general sense, he tells us to stop attempting to decipher God's ways. This is in verses three through five. So this is something that he has told us over and over again, that the futility of life is that man knows certain things exist, but we have no ability to control them, not even the weather. Contrary to popular opinion, not even the weather. That's what Kovalet says. And so these observations are about nature, that the inability to actually control nature, that when clouds are full, they empty themselves. When trees fall, they fall. The idea here is, I mean, the way it's written for us, it sounds dumb. You know, like, where a tree falls, it lies. No duh. That's not what it's getting at. It's getting at the idea that it's directional. What it really should say is, whether a tree falls to the north or whether a tree falls to the south, so in other words, kind of getting at directions, that it's saying that no matter where this happens, It happens on its own, if you will, under God's providence, and that man does not have the ability to stop these things from happening. That's what's getting, but it's the direction that's the important thing, not the fact that it falls. He also tells us that paying too much attention to things that you cannot control leads to paralysis. This is verse 4. It's the analysis of paralysis, as they say. He just simply says sitting and observing things and never working is not godly. I mean, he just says it. So just the idea that we're just going to sit and not do anything and analyze and critique, that's not a good thing to do. And so he tells us that sitting and observing too much is wrong. its analysis without any real work. And then thirdly, the thing he tells us in verse five, there's a great deal that even the wisest man does not know. Now, he's either making two comparisons or one, whether he's speaking of the breath of life coming into a woman with child, whether when we know, we talked about this, right? When does the soul come into existence? When does it come alive? We talked about that. That's possibly what he's getting at. Or he's actually making two comparisons, how a baby forms within the womb, and then the other one, how the wind blows and where it goes. Jesus talks about that. We know where the wind blows, but we don't, we know that the wind blows, but we don't know where and how and, you know, those kind of things. So we could be making two. The point is the same, whether it's two or one, that we ourselves don't really have the ability to know the way that things work, particularly within nature. Even though we've advanced, if you will, I'm not always convinced it's an advance, but we've advanced ourselves in such a way that we can look at babies forming in the womb, and we can have radar satellite things that are telling us how big hurricanes are, but we have no ability to do anything about it, to stop it. Even up to the last hurricane, it's going to be here. No, here. No, here. Wait, no, it's going to be here, up to the point of making landfall that it was not precise. That's not to say anything about the people affected. It's just to simply say that even up to the very moment, they just weren't sure exactly what was going to happen. And this is what he's getting at, that we think that we can control it, and we can't. We think that we have all things under our thumb, but we do not. God does, but you do not. And there's this humility that comes with recognizing this in our lives, that we ourselves do not have that ability to oversee nature in a way that God oversees it. And so there's a humility that comes with that. And so the antidote in this section is verse six, to do what your hand finds to do. What it finds to do, go and do it. So it's making the case for work. I think I've said this from the pulpit before. Again, I shouldn't make humble opinions, but I would just, in this case, say work would solve a lot of things for a lot of people. It just would occupy you in a way that would take your mind off of other stuff. But this is what he says, to go and to work. Now, I understand there's retirement, there's inability to work for physical or health reasons. So this is a general rule. So don't take it as anything more than this is the general thing. But this is what he's saying, that living in this earth in a pleasing way to God, is really the most mundane of things that we can do, and it's not the thing that we're generally told in the popular media, where, you know, we're to do big things, and we're to, you know, conquer, you know, dragons, and we are to slay this and improve that, and yet, over and over again, he's bringing us back to the mundane parts of life. It's not the parts that we're generally wanting to do, but it's the parts that we have to do. And so there's this connection to the world in which we have that before when he brought us to eating and drinking and sometimes working, now he just brings us right to working. This is where we live. This is one of the things that we do that is pleasing to God. so that the application here is to work hard and to trust God for the results. In fact, it's the antithesis to verse 4, where you're sitting around paralyzed with analysis and not actually doing anything. The antidote is to go in and to do the work and to not give in to the fear of failure. So I want to end this by saying this. This may be one of the most earthy parts of Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiastes is very earthy in that way. It's very much at the heart of wise living in the world. This might be one of the earthiest parts of it. but it's probably some of the most practical advice that all of us could follow. That is in the reverse of what we've been saying from the first moment that we entered Ecclesiastes, that one of the overriding applications is to, as the psalmist says, teach us to number our days. that over and over again we're brought back to number our days and here's a way that you could do it, or here's a part of what should be happening inside of numbering our days. And I for one, I will just tell you that I for one, I don't like the fact that we seem to live in a society that is heavily bureaucratic. The last thing I like to do is engage in administrative bureaucratic work for its own sake, and I feel like that's a good chunk of life. And so I resist it. But sometimes in that, I resist doing the very thing that God in Koaled here is telling us to do in the wise living that comes with the mundane aspects of life. And so it's for me, and it's for you. And some of you are good at this, and some of you are not good at this. And so all of us should be living in a way that we are considering our lives from beginning to end. we prayed earlier for the families of four, one woman and three men, I guess. Leo Fraley's wife, I don't know if you remembered her, but so Leo Fraley, former minister, retired minister, and then other ministers and a couple of ruling elders who have all died. And the question was, well, isn't this interesting that so many at one time within the last month in such a close cluster, I mean, just people that we interact with fairly regularly, That should, if you will, motivate us to recognize that we are to number our days. We do not know when our lives will come to an end. We don't know. And over and over again, Colette is telling us, turn your sights to God and number those days. And in this case, to do it well financially. God ordains both the ends and the means. We like to think that He ordains the ends, but then we become fathomless in thinking that whatever will be will be. That is not true. I mean, it's a catchy tune and all, but it's just not true. God has ordained the end. He's also ordained the means to get us to the end. In the same way that He's ordained for you salvation, He's ordained the means, which we mentioned already, the Word of God and prayer and the sacraments as those things that are His grace along the way that sustain you week by week and day by day and month by month and year by year, that all of those things are ordained, including this, that in numbering our days, we need our own financial resources to live, and in that we need to make that as part of numbering our days to the glory of God, that we're not squandering the resources that he has given to us, and that we're not loosely using things that we ought not to be just loosely using or just squandering in those ways. And so the wisdom of this book, it's coming to an end. It's nearing its conclusion. And we're gonna be reminded as we come to the end once more that life is futile, that it's hard to grasp and it's uncontrollable. That's what we mean by futile. But we recognize, and he's gonna remind us in the end, that it begins with fearing the Lord, remembering our Creator. But the whole book then should be read in light of that, which we've been trying to do. but that the numbering of our days points us to Christ because it points us in this way that we recognize that we only have how many ever days that we have, whether they be lengthy and like 90 or 100 years, or whether they be less, that we are to live life as numbering those days in serving our Lord Jesus Christ. because ultimately without Him, living is pointless in that sense, to live without the true hope that comes in Christ Himself. And so none of this is done as not with Christ, all of it is done as with Christ to His glory and to His end. that we too can be servants while pleasing to the Lord, good and faithful, in what he's entrusted to us, that we would serve him all the days of our lives. And so I would just commend to you that you need to wisely plan now here in the present. That future, it's unknowable, it's uncontrollable. We know the Lord and he has called us to be wise in our living. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we do give you praise and glory and honor and thanks. We do bless your holy name. Lord, we thank you that even in all of our desire to serve you, that the most mundane parts of life are part of serving you. Help us, keep us, and bless us in these ways. May you be glorified as we number our days before you. We pray these things through Christ. Amen.