So you can go ahead and start us. Or did you, Charlie? Thank you. Ecclesiastes chapter 8, we're going to go through verses 8, 16 through 9, 10. We're going to read together. Chapter 8, verse 16 to 9, 10. See, we've got Bibles in every seat now. So that's provision. Let's pray before we look to the Scripture. Father, we thank you for this night and for the opportunity we have to have a chance to come and to be with your people and to open up a Bible and to read. Lord, we know that there are many people in this world, many saints who are persecuted and very, very badly mistreated because they believe in you. And we thank you for this country, this great country that we have. And I do pray, Lord, for our leaders. I pray that you would work in the hearts of the people who leave this country to do what is right so that we can continue to enjoy the blessings that we have had. We thank you for the time that we have right now to open a Bible and to seek your face. And we're asking that your Holy Spirit We'll move in our hearts and give us understanding of who you are, to give us understanding of this world that we live in, and to help us to be able to live for you as we go through our life day by day. We thank you for this and we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to read chapter 8 verse 16 up through chapter 9 verse 10. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 8 verse 16, When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to seek the task which has been done on the earth, even though one should never sleep day or night, and I saw every work of God, I concluded that man cannot discover the work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover. And though the wise man should say, I know, he cannot discover. For I have taken all this to my heart and explained it, that the righteous men and that the righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God. Man does not know whether it will be love or hatred. Anything awaits him. It is the same for all. There is one fate for the righteous and one for the wicked, for the good and for the clean and for the unclean, for the man who offers a sacrifice and for the one who does not sacrifice. As the good man, so is the sinner. As the swearer, so is the one who is afraid to swear. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all men. Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterwards, they go to the dead. For whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope. Surely a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die, but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. Indeed, their love, their hate, their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun. Go then, eat your bread in happiness, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart. For God has already approved your works. Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the woman whom you love, all the days of your fleeting life which he has given to you under the sun. For this is your reward in life, and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun. Whatever you do, whatever your hand finds to do, Verily, do it with all your might, for there is no activity or planning or wisdom in Sheol where you are going." Solomon here is dealing with this issue of a cursed world, and the basic message is, how can you get the most out of a cursed world? I like, Morgan, what you said. I don't know if you caught that, Deborah, when you asked Morgan how he's doing. He says, mostly without. How do you get the most out of the world that we live in? We're all lacking in certain things. We don't have infinite supplies of everything. It's easy sometimes to get anxious about life. And it's easy to sometimes become fearful of the future, or become anxious of the future, or to say, gee, how are things going to work out? Remember what Jesus said? Jesus had good words of advice in Matthew chapter 6. He said, why are you being anxious about something that you can't change? Matthew chapter 6 and verse 25 in particular, he gives instructions about not worrying about things that you can't change. He says, don't be anxious for your life as what you shall eat or drink or for your body as what you shall put on. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing? Why are you being anxious about things like that? He says, look at the birds. They don't sow. They don't reap. They don't gather in two barns. And he says, but your father feeds them. You know, we were over at Costco on Monday, and these birds at Costco, man, that must be bird heaven over there. You know where they have the food court outside? Oh, man, these guys, you know, put it this way, here's birds that are so fat that when I threw bread down on the ground, they just kind of looked down at me from the roof and they wouldn't even move. You know, that's pretty, that's pretty pathetic when a bird doesn't even want to go after food, you know? And so we were sitting there throwing little pieces of bread to the birds and stuff, and And, you know, these birds are sitting there. Well, that's what Jesus said. You know, your father feeds the birds, but you know what? They don't have to go out and labor 60 hours a week, do they? And they don't have to, you know, go out and, you know, you know, open IRAs or worry about their investments or all these other things, but God feeds them. So what Jesus is saying here As he's saying, don't be worried about things that you can't change. And he says in verse 27, which of you, by being anxious, can add a single cubit to his lifespan? Hello, Mija. Hello. He said, he said, which of you can add A cubit, now a cubit is basically one arm's length right here, about from your fingertip to your elbow. That's 18 inches. Jesus isn't saying who can add 18 inches to your height. He's talking about 18 inches to your lifespan. You know, can anybody add an extra second on, aside from what God has already ordained? Cannot do it, okay? So if you can't change certain things, why worry about them? Jesus says down here in verse, now this is interesting. If you look in it's Matthew six, you don't have to turn there, but he says, why are you anxious? He says, look at the lilies. He says, they don't toil, they don't spin. And yet he says, and yet Solomon, and notice this, Solomon in all of his glory was not clothed like one of these flowers. And it's interesting that Jesus uses Solomon as the illustration, because what he is doing there is he is making the point that that you should not be distraught and worried about things that you can't change. Who does he point to as an example? Solomon, who wrote Ecclesiastes. Because Solomon spent his life really kind of worrying about lots of things. Now, Solomon's problem was not so much that he was worried about having enough food to eat. You know, the guy had, you know, money flowing out of the ears. But Solomon did spend his lifetime worrying and trying to figure out the problems of life. You know, when you look at different kinds of people, you can see some people who are very easygoing, they don't have cares, they don't worry, they don't think about things. You know anybody like that? You know, in other words, they just go down to the beach, you know, or they just go and they don't have any cares. They go to their games, they do this and that. Then you look at some people and they're always worried about things. Well, maybe there's some kind of a balance, a proper balance in this, and that's what we're going to talk about tonight. But you see, Solomon saw things in the world that were not right and they bothered him. He saw oppression and it bothered him. He saw the fact that people get sick and die and have affliction and it bothered him. And so what he did here for us in this section is Solomon gave us wisdom to make the most out of life in a cursed world. And he came up with what I see right here are two basic principles in our text. This is Ecclesiastes chapter 8. verses 16 through 9, 10, have two principles, two basic principles for how we can make our life a little more bearable. And what we need to do is we need to recognize, first of all, that we're living in a cursed world, and living in a cursed world means that you have limitations. You know? It's not going to be the way it should be. That's just a fact of living in this age. There are built-in limitations, so there's limitations and we need to recognize that. But secondly, we need to recognize the rewards that God gives us as well. You see, there are limitations, there are things that just make it a real drag, but there are rewards in life as well. And what God wants you and me to do is to recognize limitations and know how to deal with them, and then to recognize the rewards and to grab on to them and latch on to the rewards so that we don't miss out on the blessings of life. You know, it is possible. It is possible to go through your life and to really miss the rewards that God has, you know. What a shame it would be to go through your life and to miss out on the rewards that God has when you had to put up with all of the curse in that whole process, you know? The curse isn't going to go away. Not until Jesus comes back. So you already have the bad. What you need to do is you need to learn how to deal with it, and then you need to know how to latch on to the good and recognize the good. So what we see, first of all, is this. Solomon tells us about the limitations of a cursed world in v. 16, all the way through chapter 9, v. 6. He talks about limitations, and the fact is that we live in a world that is locked in a system. We can't escape it, no matter where you want to go. Well, Solomon looked all around, and if you see here in verse 16, he says he was looking at this world and he was saying, I really wanted to figure things out. So he says, I gave my heart to wisdom and to see the task that has been done. Now, notice this. Notice what it says. To see the task which has been done under the sun. Notice he doesn't say he gave his heart to see the tasks which are done under the sun. or which people do under the sun, he says there's a task that has been done. It's a passive form of the verb. You know what he's talking about? Something that God did. It's called a divine passive, where you see a passive verb, but you don't see who did it. God is the one that did it. What Solomon says, I'm looking at everything that God has done, everything that has been done in the world, and I'm trying to kind of figure out, how can I figure out why things happen the way they do and how can I try to make sense of it? How can I get ahead? You know? It'd be a nice thing to get ahead a little bit, wouldn't it? A little bit at least. That's what Solomon wanted. He wanted to find the edge, you know, how to get the little edge to get further ahead in life and to try to beat the curse. Well, Solomon says, Apparently here that it was a very difficult thing because in verse 16, he says, I gave my heart to know the wisdom to see the task which has been done on the earth. And then he says, even though one should never sleep day or night, that's kind of an interesting expression. People don't really know for sure what this means. The commentators are kind of divided on that. But what he seems to be saying is that the idea is that you kind of live your life and it's labor, labor, labor. You never have rest. You know, Adam had rest before the curse. Not since that time. If you go back to chapter 2, look in verse 23. It seems to be the same idea. Chapter 2, verse 23. Back to verse 22. He says, what does a man get in all his labor and his striving? In other words, what do you get for all this work? Look at verse 23. Because all of his days his task is painful and grievous, even at night his mind doesn't rest. You work all day, you labor, you have problems. You know, I have this client, one client in Vegas, and they want to take some money out of a profit-sharing plan, and, you know, the market went down over the past couple days, and so they were ready to take the money out, but it went down. She's saying, I didn't even sleep all last night, because she's worried about it. And so people, they labor and they work, and then, you know, nighttime comes when you should just crash out and snore, but you can't sleep. because you're so worried about life. That seems to be what he's saying in chapter 8. He's saying such a messed up thing, and he says, I'm trying to figure it out, but you know, there's just a lot of activity, but nobody is getting anywhere. In a nutshell, what Solomon is saying is there's lots of occupation, but little enjoyment. Alright? Huh? That's not what vanity is. Now, are you saying back in chapter 2? Back when he says this too is vanity, That word vanity is a Hebrew word, Hebel, and it's used again and again throughout Ecclesiastes, and it has a range of translations. Vanity is kind of misunderstood. It's not a good word for translation. One common word that sometimes a good translation would be meaningless. Meaningless is a good translation. Another Empty? Yeah, now he actually uses that expression if you go back up here to like in chapter 1 in verse 14. He says, I saw all of this that it was vanity and striving after the wind. The word vanity, this word hebel, it can mean sometimes meaningless or futile. It'd be like if I said to you, hey, go down here to the beach and dig out this hole in the sand. And you know, you keep digging it out and then the sand just keeps pouring in. You go, this is a waste of time. That's what Solomon is saying about the cursed world that we live in. It's a waste of time. Now, remember, when he makes these statements and he's saying the whole thing is meaningless, he's giving you a proper evaluation of what life is like if it is not lived for the glory of God. That is what it's like if you're the unsaved person or if you're the person who is not living for God Himself. It's all a waste of time. And you can, you know, try to beat the system. But in the end, Solomon says, I've already tested all of the different possibilities. It's a waste of time. And so when he says, for example, up here in chapter two and verses 22 and 23, when he says, you know, you work, you labor, you strive and then you can't sleep. He says, basically, that's just part of the curse. This is the futility of life in a cursed world. Now, if you come back to chapter eight, what he says is this. He says that, you know, he wanted to understand, even though people never get any sleep, he sees all of the activity, there's all this work. But what he says here in verse 17 is this. He says, there are two facts that we need to accept about these limitations of life in a cursed world. OK, two facts. And one of them is this, is that in a cursed world, you have limited knowledge. You know, when we started off to do the work that we were doing here, you know, we had no clue what we wanted to do. Fortunately, we met somebody who could kind of hold our hand through the process. But you try to make decisions about, gee, what's the best thing to do? Should we do this? And you know what? We've really come through this whole building process pretty well. Very, very fortunate that we made it through without any major problems. You know, there were little things here and there, but all the way throughout this whole time, you know, we have to make decisions. Gee, what's the best way to go? Should we do this or do that? We don't have all the answers. Now, you know, this is just a little building process right here, a little building project, but what about life? Do we have answers for all of life on why the things happen the way they do? You do not. A couple of days ago, there was a bunch of kids, they were doing a car wash up here on the corner of Prairie and 182nd. Free car wash. And the reason why they were doing it was because of these five high school students that got killed, I guess, about two weeks ago. I don't know, were they driving drunk or something? I don't know. But you know, you look at something like that. I had two friends, George and Aurora Lucassini, back in high school, and they both got struck by a drunk driver and killed. And it wasn't their fault. A drunk driver killed them. Killed both of their parents' children, you know. You talk about bitterness, you know. And you say, why? Why is this kind of stuff? This is what Solomon really wanted to know. He said, I wanted to find answers. Now, what we find out is this, is that you don't have all the answers. You have finite knowledge. You don't have all of the facts in a cursed world. And you can try as hard as you want You know, you can become a PhD in philosophy and you can study world history. Now, Solomon was well qualified to tell us about life. Turn with me back to Kings for just a minute. I want to show you a little bit about Solomon. Turn to 1 Kings. That's going back in your Bible. Going back in your Bible to 1 Kings chapter 4. Because when you look at Solomon, this guy knew all about life. How many wives did Solomon have? Do you remember? 700 wives and 300 porcupines. And they made life miserable for him. 300 concubine. Concubine. Half-wife. Yeah. A concubine was basically like a second class wife. Yeah. She was a wife, but really kind of did not have a full legal status. So he had 700 wives and 300 concubine. So, you know, the guy knew all about, you know, marriage, you know, blew it. But he knew all about, you know, living with other women, not the way they should have been. But what I want, what I'm getting to is this. Solomon knew about life. Look, look at, for example, if you look here in chapter four, verse 20, he had prosperity. It says in chapter four, verse 20, that Judah and Israel were like sand on the seashore and they were eating and drinking and rejoicing. You know what you had? You kind of had the whole nation just riding the crest of a wave in terms of prosperity. Verse 21, he had rulership. It says he ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River all the way down to Egypt. He had feasting in verses 22 and 23. It says that, look at this, the provision for one day was 30 cores of flour, 60 cores of meal, 10 fat oxen, 20 pasture fed oxen, 100 sheep, deer, gazelles, robux, that was all for one day. They figured that, I believe if I remember to figure correctly, that it was enough to feed about 33,000 people a day. Now that was just for his palace. Enough to feed about 33,000 people a day. Solomon had dominion over the world. It says in verse 24, he had dominion over everything west of the river, west of the Euphrates. Verse 25 says that he had peace on every side. Every man sat under his vine and his fig tree. Verses 26 to 28 tell us that he had military strength. Verse 29 and 30 tells us that he had wisdom. Look at this. Verse 29, now God gave Solomon wisdom. very great discernment and breadth of mind like the sand is on the seashore. And Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the sons of the East and all the sons of the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all the wise men, than Ethan, the Ezraite, and Heman, and Kalkol, and Dara. People that I don't even know who they are, but apparently these guys were like, you know, You know Aristotle and Socrates kinds of minds and it says Solomon was smarter than all these guys put together So he was a he was a brilliant man And he had all of these opportunities and furthermore if you look in verse 33 in verse 34 It says that people came from all over the world He had all this exposure because he traveled to other empires and saw other places so he had all of this knowledge and wisdom and insight and exposure to everything the you and I would never see and And guess what Solomon says? Come back here to chapter eight, Ecclesiastes. He says, I saw every work of God, and I concluded that man cannot discover the work that has been done under the sun. You cannot figure out this world that we live in. Go ahead. I thought somebody was going to say something. You can't figure out the process. Now, Solomon, if you remember back from chapter 1, Solomon was basically going through life to do an investigation. It was an investigation for him. In chapter 1, in verse 3, one of his main questions was, what advantage does a man have in all his work? How can you really beat the system? And if you go down to chapter 1 and verse 12, he says, I, the preacher, have been king over Israel, and I set my mind to seek and to explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under the heaven. He says, I wanted to know the meaning of life. And you know what he says over here in chapter 8? He says, you simply cannot find the answer. I like what he says in chapter 1 and verse 15. He says, what is crooked cannot be straightened. You know, Lords, if you take, you know, something, a piece of metal, you bend the thing up, you're not going to ever get it back to the way it was. What is crooked cannot be straightened out. And he says, what is lacking cannot be counted. Be like if I gave you a bag of money and I said, here, somebody already stole some. Count it. Tell me how much there was there before. I said, I can't. You know, there's something lacking. Solomon says, what is lacking cannot be counted. When you look at this world and you say, what's the problem here? Guess what? All the pieces aren't here. It's not the way it's supposed to be. It's twisted. What is crooked cannot be straightened out. We cannot fix it. All right, now listen, what I'm getting to, and this is a major point in all of this section, what God wants you and me to do is to realize that you've got to live with anomalies in a cursed world. You have to live with road bumps. You have to live with problems. You know, I kind of blew it a couple of days ago. I was driving down the road to pick up Heather. I wasn't paying attention. And I looked down at the radio and then I drifted and actually the road kind of turned and I was going about 45 miles an hour and there was a median in the middle and I hit the median going about 45 miles an hour. Boom! And I don't know, I took the van in today and they realigned the front end. It didn't hit the van itself but it was on the tire, you know, I hit the curb. But it hit it really hard and then there was some kind of a noise. You know what, it would have been really easy to just kind of like get really bummed out about it. What good, you know? I mean, I blew it. It was a stupid thing. I wasn't paying attention like I should have. Can't change it. It's already done. You see, and that's the way life is. We need to look at the things that go wrong and just kind of accept some of these things without really, really letting it get to us and get us down. So Solomon says, first of all, back there in verse 16, he says, actually in verse 17 rather, he says that you cannot discover. Then he kind of keeps building on this same idea. He says, man cannot discover the work that has been done under the sun. Even if man should seek laboriously, he will not discover. In other words, you could go out and get your doctorate in philosophy, get your PhD and become a philosopher because you really want to understand the problems of life. You could become a politician. the ones who are there that are going to solve our problems. The politicians who know that it takes a village to raise your children. And the politicians who know how to discern all the problems of our society and they have the solution for us. And you can think that you've come up with all the answers, but you see, God's Word says, sorry guys, even though you should seek laboriously, you are not going to discover the answer. These guys think that they have answers for our society. And guess what? They're part of the problem. And they're, you know, they're basically, you know, chalking the steam engine to move straight ahead with, you know, all of the problems that we have. You cannot solve it. And Solomon says, even though a wise man, in other words, your philosopher should say, aha, I have the answer. You know, it's Buddha sitting there under his tree. You know, you heard, you know, about how Buddha, what he did is he kind of ran away. Buddha was almost like a Solomon. Buddha was a rich prince, right? And he basically ran away from it all, and then he went and sat under a tree and said, oh, I've got the answer here. Yeah, so he did. I've got the answer here, and I've discovered it. It's looking inside. That's where the answer is, and you've got to do these things. No, what God says is that you cannot discover the answer to these problems. You simply aren't going to find them. Well, Solomon comes up with another conclusion over here in verse 1. He says, for I have taken all of this to my heart and to explain, and he says, and I explain it, that the righteous men, wise men in their deeds are in the hand of God. That's an interesting twist, because what he is doing here is he's kind of shifting gears and he's saying, you know what? All these problems, all these messed up things. Now what he's going to do is he's going to inject the sovereignty of God and he's going to say, I don't have all the answers, but guess what? God does. You see, when bad things happen in your life, God is still in control. If something bad happens, God is still in control of this world. And what he says in verse 1 is that righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God. This is an affirmation of the fact that God is sovereign. This is a very, very major point. You see, we don't know wisdom. Job chapter 28, verse 13, Job said, man does not know the way to wisdom. And Job 28, 23, he says, only God understands the way. You don't have the answers, but God does. Now, an unsaved person or a person who does not know their Bible well will say, well, that's just a cop out, you know. That's not a cop out. It is not a cop-out. God does have control. He knows the answers. And don't you dare point your finger at Him when something goes wrong and say it's His fault, because the Bible shows us that the problems are not His fault. He is sovereign, and yet He is not the one who is causing the problems that we have. Well, the conclusion that Solomon comes to here is this. He says it is all in the hand of God. God is sovereign over all of this, okay? The Bible has taught that doctrine all the way from the beginning of Genesis. I mean, if God could say, let there be light, and he created the universe, and if God could say, let there be, and the whole universe existed because God spoke, obviously the guy has pretty good power, right? I mean, it's all power. And guess what? I don't believe it is proper to say that God is the author of evil. I don't really think that's quite right. I don't think that's... Now, some people would say that. Not too many, but some people would. God is not the one who is the author of evil, but is God still sovereign over evil? Listen to what he says in Exodus 4. When Moses kept resisting God's call, God said, Moses, go. I'm sending you to Pharaoh. Moses said, no, no, God, I can't. I can't. I can't do it. God said in Exodus 4.11, who has made man's mouth? Or who made him dumb or deaf? Who made the seeing or the blind? Is it not I, the Lord? God says, look, I'm still sovereign over a person if he's deaf, blind. God has control over everything. And the Jews understood this. In Deuteronomy 33, verse 3, it says, indeed, God loves the people. All of thy holy ones are in your hand, O God. Job 12, 10, in whose hand is the life of every living thing. God's people knew that He's a sovereign God, so that's why they could trust Him. Alright, now bring it back here to verse 1. Solomon says that all of man's deeds, the righteous, the wise, their deeds are in the hand of God. So he says, God is in control, but man, he says, does not know whether it will be love or hatred. That's an interesting expression too. What does he mean? Man doesn't know if it's going to be love or hatred? He's probably talking about What's going to happen in your life? He's looking at the way that God is going to deal with you in your life. Are good things going to happen tomorrow? Or is it going to be hatred? Are you going to get that job? Is it going to be God's favor upon you? in a positive way or will it be hatred? In other words, something bad. It very well is probably talking here about divine response or divine initiative towards human beings. We don't have the answers, Solomon says, but God does. And we simply don't know what tomorrow will bring. We might have a flat tire on the way and it'll be bad news or we might get a bonus or find, you know, a hundred dollars on the sidewalk and say, wow, you know, this is pretty good. Yeah, I wouldn't mind finding a hundred dollars. I wouldn't mind finding a couple of them. What Solomon is saying, though, is this, okay, is that God is in control of the whole thing. And what we need to do is we need to trust Him. So, if you have had something happen to you and you say, this is not good, I don't like Remember the words of Job in Job 1, verse 21. Job said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I returned. He said, Blessed be the Lord. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job understood that I shouldn't curse God. By the way, listen to what Job 1, verse 21 says. And in all of this evil, Job did not sin, nor did he blame God. Now that's a very interesting expression. Because the book of Job and Ecclesiastes are very, very similar in terms of what God is trying to teach us. Job had all of these things happen, and yet what Job said is, I came into the world naked. I'm going back to God naked. I didn't bring anything in. I won't take anything out. God has taken away all that I have, but blessed be God's name. And it says, in all of this, He did not Say evil. Job, it says, did not sin, nor did he blame God. Also, if you look in chapter 2, verse 10 of Job, remember how Job's wife came to him and she says, you know what? You're miserable. Why don't you just curse God and die? And Job said, you're a fool, you're speaking like a fool. But it says also in Job 2.10, he says, shall we indeed accept the good from God and not accept the adversity? And it says, in all this, Job did not sin with his lips. What God wants us to understand is this, is that you and I have an inclination to sin by blaming God when things go wrong. We look at things that go wrong and we say, Maybe not with our lips, and maybe it's not even very pronounced, but we have an inclination to say it's God's fault, or to blame God for the problems, or to say that God somehow caused the evil. What Solomon is telling us here in Ecclesiastes is this. Don't do that. God is sovereign, but, he says, you simply don't know how the whole thing is going to work, and that's what Solomon is saying in this whole situation. He's saying, look, nobody can figure out what God has ordained. And you know, this issue about comparing, you know, God's sovereignty and human responsibility and kind of trying to figure it all out. Nobody can figure that out. You know, these people that think that they have it all figured out, they don't have it figured out. There is no figuring it out. We can say, here's what God says about the whole thing, but we don't have all the answers. All right, how do we sum it all up? Number one, You have to recognize the limitations of life in a cursed world, and that means that you have a finite amount of knowledge. Secondly, a second fact that you have to accept is this. Not only do you have a finite source of knowledge, but you also have a finite life. Finite meaning that it doesn't go on forever and ever and ever. You've got a finite life. That's something that you have to live with. Now, you may go out here and you may see some kind of a wicked guy, you know, murder, bank robber, rapist, you know, something like that. You may know a guy that's a thief and a crook and a liar. And, you know, maybe they are even a politician. Maybe they even hold the highest office in the land. I won't say any names because that's not right. Okay. But, or what's that? So, what I'm getting to is this. But you see people prosper. And you say, look at that. That guy's getting away with murder. It happens. Alright? And guess what? When you die, and you've been trying to be a good person all your life, when you die, now here's the real thing that changes you. You're going to end up in the same place that guy does, in the grave. You're going to end up in the grave. Both of you are going to come to the same end. And so, if you all end up six feet under the ground, what good is it to live a life that is devoted to striving to do good? This is something that Solomon looked at. Now, we're going to explain what Solomon is saying. He's looking at life from a temporal perspective, from the perspective of life in this world. And he says, hey guys, we died just like that evil criminal. And this really bothered him. Now what he does in verses 2-6 is he makes two observations that help to teach us about how we can deal with this in our life. First of all, if you look over here in verses 2 and 3, he makes this observation that no matter what you do in this life, you're going to end up in the same place. He says in verse 2, it is the same for all. Same destiny, same end result. He says there is one fate for the righteous, and he says for the righteous, There is one faith for the righteous and for the wicked. Hey, y'all go to the grave. One for the righteous, one for the wicked. Now notice there's five contrasting pairs. He's got five contrasting pairs. He says there's one for the righteous, and for the wicked, for the good and the clean. The first one, the righteous and the wicked, would be looking at your ethical character. Because a righteous man is the one that obeys the law. The wicked man, the word rasha, it means criminal. So here's the guy that basically is ethical and upright as far as law abiding, and here's the guy that's a criminal. Guess what? You're going to end up in the same place as the mass murderer. You're going to die. How about this? How about in terms of, if you talk about here, about the person who is very religious, he says, there is one faith for the clean and for the unclean man. This would be the person, the clean person is the one who obeys all of the religious rituals and laws. The unclean man is the one who is very immoral. Guess what? The immoral man and the good man, they both die and they go to the grave. How about the other one? He says here that you've got here the guy that sacrifices, then there's the one that does not sacrifice. The one that sacrifices is the one that's a true worshipper. He would go and he would offer the sacrifices. There were other people that never even went to Jerusalem to sacrifice. Nobody compelled them to do that. He was impious. He was irreligious. He was an unbeliever. Guess what? The guy that doesn't offer sacrifice is going to end up in the grave, but so is the guy that does every year. So Solomon is saying, what's the advantage? Okay, look down here as well. He says that you have the good man. He says, and then there's the sinner. This is the man who is overall good compared to the one who is overall bad. And then he also mentions here in verse 2, he says, it is the same for all. There is one fate for the righteous. I'm sorry, verse 3. Down at the bottom part of verse 2, beginning of verse 3. He says, it's the same for the swearer as for the one who is afraid to swear. By the way, the swearer right here is probably the person who is irreligious, even though if you look at those first four examples, it was all the good people first. Probably here, the one who swears is the one who basically is very impious towards using God's name. If you go back to chapter five, I'll show you what I mean. In chapter five, in verse He says, when you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it, for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. But here's a person that doesn't think anything about making an oath. He just swears. He just uses oaths all the time. Because he doesn't care. He doesn't plan on fulfilling it. It would be like if somebody says, well, I'll abide by the results. I don't know if you've heard the news yet. That was Al Gore. He says, well, he says, you know, here, he gave a challenge to the Republicans said, well, we'll do it this way. And then I'll abide by the results if, you know, we do it this way. And what's that? Yeah. Anyhow, Jesus said, you know, in Matthew chapter seven, Matthew chapter six, rather, He said, he said, let your no be no and let your yes be yes. And anything beyond this is evil. In other words, don't be a person that's always trying to use God's name and, you know, swear, especially when you don't plan on keeping it. OK, now, the sad fact is this. Verse three, he says, this is an evil that is done under the sun. There's one fate for all men. You're all going to die and go to the grave. And he says to make matters even worse. Verse three there. He says the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil. And he says that You have insanity in their hearts throughout all their life. You've got all these evil people who live this way, and I'm going to end up in the same with that guy. Doesn't it bother you a little bit? Did Solomon. It bothered him to think that he could live a certain way, and the real raunchy criminal would end up in the same place. Okay, now this is what we're showing here, is that we have a finite life, and you've got to accept that. When your time is up, That's it. Your time is up. You've got to accept that. Now, you come down here, and what Solomon does in verses 4 and 6 is give us a second observation about the limitations of this life that we have. And what he says here is this, even though all men share the same faith, and even though the good man ends up in the same place as the criminal, The fact of the matter is this. Life is still good. Life is still good. And regardless of what may befall you in this life, life is better than death. Susie said this earlier. I thought it was so fascinating that she said this when we were driving. She said, well, it's better than death. And that's exactly what Solomon is saying right here. Notice what he says. Solomon says, hey guys, even though you're going to end up dying and you're going to go into grave just like the bad man, Life is still good. Okay, life is still good. And verse four, this is what he says, for whoever now, my translation says for whoever is joined, but probably a better way is to make it an assertive. Indeed, whoever is joined with all living, there is hope. That's a better probably indeed in Hebrew grammar. Indeed, whoever is joined with the living, in other words, whoever is still living, you've got some hope. Why is there hope? Well, because you can think about the future. You can plan. You can make changes in the way that you're living. Think about Ebenezer Scrooge, right? You know, they came and they told him, hey, Ebenezer, you know, your time's up, buddy. We're going to take you home. And then you're going to, you know, be judged forever. And, you know, they gave him a second chance, right? Ebeneezer Scrooge got his second chance, and so he changed his ways, and then he went out and he made things right. That's what Solomon is saying, you know, this is the exact idea. Solomon says, as long as you are joined with the living, as long as you're in this world, you've got an opportunity to do something positive that will have a positive benefit on this life, and a positive benefit on the life to come. That's what his point is in verse four. Indeed, whoever is joined with the living, there is hope. Many kind of support that by saying for a live dog is better than a dead lion. Now, you know, we like dogs. Does anybody here have a dog right now? You guys don't have dogs, do you? We've had dogs. We might get a dog again. I had to get rid of mine because he kept chewing up other dogs. But, you know, dogs can be pretty fun, you know, cute little puppy dogs. You get them in your house and you can play with them. But dogs were not like that back then. Back then, dogs were mangy scoundrels. They would come and they would run in packs and they would often attack human beings. They would eat all kinds of things. One commentator by the name of Longman says, while modern Western cultures prize their canines, the Old Testament imbibes the ancient Near Eastern attitude that they are dirty, horrible animals. They are wild, they live on garbage, and they will eat cadavers if given an opportunity." Dogs were not man's best friend back in the ancient culture. They were vicious, hyena-like kinds of scavengers. Now, you see, if you compare that and you say, well, here's this mangy, you know, hyena, coyote, then you look at this majestic lion. Solomon says, hey, the live dog is still better than the dead lion. At least he has an ability to think and the dog can do something because he's still alive. The point of the matter is this. Life is good. Don't despise life. Don't despise it, because as long as you are living, you have an opportunity to do something for good. And God wants you to use your life for good purposes. And so what Solomon does is, says in verses 4, is he gives you a proof to say that life is still good. You have an opportunity. Now, in verses 5 and 6, he gives a second proof of the fact that life is good. He says that even though the living must live in a cursed world, And even though living in this world means that you must suffer the same fate as the evil person, nevertheless, you have an awareness of your future and you can do something about it. Look what Daniel down here in verses five and six. He says, For the living know they will die. When you're dead, that's it, you know, lights out. Right now, you have an opportunity to think ahead. You can contemplate the future and say, you know what, one day I'm going to die and stand before the Creator. You can do something about it. You die, that's it. He says, for the living know they will die, but the dead do not know anything, nor do they have any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. Now, I want to tell you something. Be careful about using this verse the way that some people do, like the Jehovah Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists. Because the Jehovah Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists like to use verses like this. As a matter of fact, this is the one that they often go to. to say that there is no such thing as eternal punishment, and to say that there is something called soul sleep. And they will say, well, you know what, when you die, they say your soul doesn't go into hell if you're an unbeliever. The Seventh-day Adventists say that your soul basically sleeps, and there is no consciousness. And then, you know, that's it. Lights are out. Not true. Okay? What is Solomon dealing with in all of his discussion? Solomon is dealing with life in this world. The whole thing is centering around life in this world. By the way, notice what he says here. He says, in verse 5, he says, they don't have any memory. He says, they don't know anything. They don't have any reward. Their memory is forgotten. Verse 6, Indeed, their love, their hate, their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done. Where? Under the sun. He's talking about life in this world right now. Solomon is not saying that when dead people go into the grave, that their soul ceases to exist. It does not say that. No, Paul said, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. He said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Luke chapter 16, guess what? That rich man, he was in Hades, in torment. So when a soul goes in the ground, the soul is still alive. But as far as this world is considered, as far as this life is considered, when you die, guys, light's out. The show's over. And that's what he's saying here in verse 5. He says, they don't know anything. They can't plan. They can't try to change their life. They can't try to do anything good. They don't have any reward. In other words, there's no kind of benefit coming to them from this world. Their memory is forgotten. Basically, they were here, they were gone, that's it. Solomon's point is this, ok, is that life gives you an opportunity to do something good. It's a Wonderful Life. Uncle Billy, where's the money? Have you ever seen that movie? It's a Wonderful Life, Mija? Oh, you have to see it. My wife watches it probably 20 times every Christmas. It's a Wonderful Life. So here's George Bailey, right? He wants to end his life because he says, ah, it's a waste of time. And then remember how the angel comes back and Clarence comes and he says, oh, you've seen it, right? You have never seen It's a Wonderful Life? Wow. So what happens is that Stuart, James Stuart, Jimmy Stuart, he wants to take his life because he thinks, ah, life is a waste of time. And then the angel comes and says, no, wait a minute, look at all the good that you did. Look at all the things that happened because you were alive. And so he ends up, you know, kind of repenting it in the end. Yeah, and that's biblical. And that's what Solomon's point. He says, as long as you're here, you can touch people's lives. You can have an impact on lives. So, life is something good. Now, on the other hand, for the dead, look at verse 6. Their love, their hate, their zeal. Their love, their hate, their zeal. Here you're talking about human thinking. Even something that's kind of bad, even zeal or jealousy, it's still something you can feel. But when you die, the love, the hate, the zeal, it's gone. And you will no longer, verse 6 says, have a share. And this is a key word. You will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun. The word share means a lot. Like you would cast lots for something. It's the word helek. So, and this is a big part of Solomon's kind of thinking is, where can you get the advantage? Where is the reward for this life? And he says, when you die, as far as this life is concerned, it's all over. Well, his whole point as he goes through this discussion here is this, okay? Even though life has its pains, it's still better than death. That's why people cling to it so strongly. A couple days ago, you know, in Arizona, was it where they executed two murderers? Did you read about this? There were two German citizens that committed murder here years ago, and cold-blooded murder, and so they executed these two people, and over in Germany, they're throwing a tissy fit because we executed these people. Oh yeah, they're throwing a fit and saying, you know, trying to call us on the carpet for doing this. You know, people, they don't want to lose life. They'll say, let them rot in a prison, but don't take their life. Well, when you die, that's it. There's a point of finality. The point is that death ends every opportunity to make a difference. So Solomon, as he pulls all this together, what he's saying is, you have to accept limitations. Number one, you have a limitation in knowledge. Number two, you have a limitation in your life. You're not going to live forever. You're going to go to a grave just like everyone else. Walter Kaiser says, knowledge in this life, rewards for this life, opportunities for service, are serious challenges when viewed from the prospect of our soon to appear death. If men are going to live as if there is no tomorrow in eternity, and let their passions and their desires have free reign, they will have played the fool's role. Thus, Although death is still an enigma, men must not pretend to live as if they only go once around in this world. What he's saying is this. Don't be a fool. Don't live your life so that you kind of go through and you never really get the point. You see, Solomon is pointing us to something. He wants us to think about the future. He wants us to think about the fact that one day we're going to have to stand before the Creator. He says, you have time right now. You have time on your hand because you're still alive. Don't be a fool and don't blow your life by living a foolish life. He says, how sad it would be to have lost all opportunity to share in doing anything significant to the glory of God. Well said. So Solomon's first main principle is this. Recognize the limitations of life in this cursed world. But then there's a second principle for living our life, and it is this. Recognize the blessings that God gives to us. Recognize the blessings and know how to latch on to them. And in particular, what he does is he talks about four kinds of blessings here in verses 7-10. God says that you have one chance to live. Now on the one hand, You see, God says, hey, don't blow your life by living a foolish life. But on the other hand, God says, live it up. That's not a contradiction. God says, don't blow up by living foolishly. But on the other hand, God says, go and have a party and live it up. Now, what we can do and what we need to do as Christians is we need to say, okay, how do we do that? How do we take these two principles and then go right down the middle to do it the way that God would allow us and have us to do it? God has allowed us to do these things. So, Solomon's focus right here is upon doing God's business God's way. And what he says here in chapter 9, verse 7, he says, Go then and eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart. Drink your bread, he says, with happiness, and eat your bread with happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart. You're talking about here just two basic commodities of life, your bread and your wine. And, you know, the wine back then was not 14% alcohol like they, you know, have today. It was watered down oftentimes as much as 10 times, sometimes even 20 parts water to one part wine, because they would make the wine And then they would take, and often times they would boil it down, and they would make a thick paste, and they would store the paste inside of animal skins, goat skins. They would sometimes keep it under water where it would stay cool. Then they would take this, and they would then remix it with water, and they would mix the paste, almost like if you took concentrated grape juice, and they would mix it in with water. And that was a way that you could store the wine to reuse it for later time periods. They would oftentimes also boil the wine to help remove some of the alcoholic content. But even if you did not, you look at long-term storage where you were boiling it or storing it in paste, you would still cut the wine by anywhere 5 to 10 times with water. So when they drank wine, it was not likely to stay. But I have to say this, it was still wine. And it was probably similar to beer, probably similar to something like 3.2% alcohol beer in terms of an alcoholic content. And the Bible doesn't condemn the drinking of wine. Solomon says, go and drink. Eat your bread with happiness and drink your wine with, he says, a cheerful heart. In other words, live your life and enjoy it. Now, if you go to places like Germany, You don't have the kind of problem that you do here. People over there drink wine. People in Italy, they drink wine. It's really not a big deal. They eat their bread, they drink their wine. It's no big deal. Over here, you know, drunkenness is kind of more of an acute problem than in other places. But the point is this, Solomon says the first thing that you can do to really get the blessing of life, this is one of God's rewards for you, is to enjoy the food that He's given you to eat. I like to eat. Even though I don't eat excessively, I like to eat. I think you do too, as well. I mean, everybody likes to eat. God says that's one of your rewards in life, is to eat and enjoy your food. Now, how do we know this is okay? Here's why. Look at verse 7. Go eat your bread, drink your wine, because God has already approved your works. God has already given you a stamp of approval and said, hey, it's okay. Enjoy life. You know, if you go through life, and listen, think about this. Does it do any good to always be angry? To always be uptight and angry and upset? Is that really going to do any good? Well, you're always ticked off at somebody or something. You're mad because he did this or you're mad because she did this. What good does it get you? You're missing out, you know? Yes, there are boundaries, and we have to say there's right and wrong, and we have to get upset when people violate standards, but God doesn't want us to go through life like the Grinch. He doesn't want us to be the Grinch. And so, one of the rewards in life is to kind of lighten up. Lighten up. and enjoy life a little bit. And he says, first of all, that could be true with reference to eating. Eat your food and enjoy it. Number two, he says, just fun in general, verse eight, he says, let your clothes be white all the time and let not oil be lacking on your head. Now, I remember when I was deer hunting one time, that's probably about like 15 years ago or something, my dad and I were up in the middle of the mountains and we met these two old men. So I've got my gun and my dad has his gun and then we met these two old men. They were probably 70 years of age, you know. And my dad got talking to one of these guys and I'm talking to the other old man. He was a miner. He's missing about three of his fingers from, you know, a life of hard work in the mines. So I was talking to him, and he says, so what kind of work do you do? And I said, I'm a financial planner. And he goes, oh, white collar, huh? And that's what I did, white collar work, you know? Like Yongjin, you know, you wear a nice white shirt, you don't have to go out in the ditches, you don't have to get dirty. So what Solomon says is that you should let your clothing be white. Now, for them, unless you were rich, you couldn't always wear white clothes, right? You couldn't always wear white clothes back in those times because you'd have to go out in the field and you'd have to work all day long and get dirty and do all kinds of hard work if you weren't white collar. In other words, if you weren't an executive, a king, or if you weren't rich, you had to always get dirty. What Solomon says is that in the same way that you would put on your white clothes to go to a party, you know, your nice, fine linen, He says that's what you need to do. You need to let life be a party. Put on your white clothes and put the perfume on your head, the oil on your head. Oil was common because it kept your skin from getting dry, but also some of it was very expensive. And so he's saying that you need to enjoy your life. You need to enjoy it. Because the white robes were a time of rejoicing, of festivity. It was the party clothes. Put on your party clothes. Have a good time. Put the lotion on your head, shampoo your head, get the bro cream out, spike your hair a little bit. I saw this kid the other day, Charlie. It was Halloween day, and his hair was all spiked. And I said, so what do you dress up as? And he said, nothing. I said, oh. I don't know if he got the point or not. But you see, this is what you've got to enjoy your life. You know, my grandma, when she would make dinner, you know what she used to do? Whenever we'd go to my grandma's, she always got out the good China. She didn't leave us sitting in the closet. You know, whenever we had family get togethers, we used to go, my dad and I used to go up there all the time, you know, big parties, you know, family, Thanksgiving and Christmas. She got out the good dishes, the good China, you know, I can remember seeing it, you know. That's what Salma is saying. You've got to enjoy life a little bit. So, put on your party clothes. Put the oil on your head. It's just a perky munch. Yeah, it costs a lot of money. But what he's saying is that, you see, if you don't grab a hold of life to enjoy it, you're going to go through life bitter, and angry, and hostile, and then you're going to become a bitter, hostile, angry, old person. And people aren't going to want to be around you because you're going to be a bitter, angry, hostile, old person. You can get away with that when you're young and pretty. Not when you're old. People will say, hey, I don't want to be around you. That's the reality. So you have to, number one, enjoy your food, enjoy the times of festivity, and let life be something that is pleasurable to you. Number three, in verse nine, he says this, fellowship, enjoy life with the woman whom you love. And the word woman here should be properly understood as wife, as often times the word ishah means is wife. This is your wife. He says, enjoy life with the wife whom you love. God says that marriage is something that is a reward from him. Now, on the one hand, you know, Solomon said in some of the Proverbs, it is better to live on the corner of the top of your roof than in a house shared with a contentious woman. We know that marriage can be very, very difficult. Marriage can be very difficult. Solomon knew that. But you see, Solomon was not a woman-hater, he was not a misogynist who hated women, he was not a chauvinist. He recognized that marriage is a blessing from God, and he says that what you should really strive to do in your life if you want to have blessing in your life, no matter who your spouse is, strive to try to have a good, happy relationship with your spouse. Because you already have the mess of a cursed world. You've already got the mess, so try to latch on to the things that are good. Look what he says. Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life. Guess what the word fleeting is in Hebrew? Hebel. Same word. All the days of your vanity life, all the days of your meaningless life, really a good translation, fleeting is a good translation. You're here and your life is, it blows away like a vapor. You're going to be gone like that. And so, what a horrible tragedy and pity to live your life and to not enjoy your marriage. I had one client, I don't know if he's still living, it's a long time ago, but he had well over a million dollars worth of real estate, single guy. Oh, he hated women. Man, this guy really hated women from a bad marriage. He used to hate women. That's all he used to talk about when I'd see him. But Solomon says it's not supposed to be that way. Enjoy life with your wife whom you love, all the fleeting days, and then look at this, the fleeting life which He has given you under the sun. All these words that talk about the curse. Your fleeting life under the sun. By the way, you don't see this in the English translation, but actually, And if you take this in the Hebrew text, it would say something like this. Enjoy your life, enjoy, he says, life with the woman whom you love, with the woman whom you love, all of the days of your fleeting life which God has given to you under the sun, all the days of your vanity. He actually repeats it again. He repeats that word vanity again. All the days of your vanity. And he keeps repeating the idea because he's trying to say, look, it's a messed up world out there. So you've got to grab on to a few things that are good. Make it a priority to really invest yourself into your spouse. Okay, that's a good application. Don't miss out on enjoying the blessings of good food. Don't miss out on enjoying some life. And don't miss out on investing yourself into your spouse, even if they're not what you would like them to be. Try to make it a goal to bless them so that your marriage can become a blessing. And then number four, a final reward that God gives us is in verse 10. He says, and whatever you do, whatever your hand finds to do, verily do it with all your might. Does that sound like anywhere in the New Testament? The verse is Colossians 3.23. Paul said, whatever you do, do it with all your heart as for the Lord and not for men. And if you go back to Colossians 3, if you find, it's in the context of Paul's command that was given to slaves. He said, you slaves, do your work hard. Do a good job. Same context right here. It's work. Whatever you find your hand to do, whatever kind of work that you have in your laboring, Paul was making a principle application of it, but it's talking about your work. Whatever kind of work that you're doing, he says, do it with all your strength. If you're washing dishes, wash them with all your strength. If you're doing homework, Charlie, Do it with all of your might, it says, okay? Because, he says, there is no activity or planning or wisdom or knowledge in the grave. You've got a chance right now to do something. Okay? You've got a chance to do something. And so, as long as you're living, you see, this is the blessing of life. There are certain rewards and your labor is a gift from God. God gives you strength to do work. And so whatever you're doing, you want to grab on to it because this is one of the rewards that he has given to you. And so as we come to a conclusion in all of this, what God has done is God has shown us this. You cannot change the things that are already messed up. You have a vanity life that you're living under the sun. It's a cursed world. There's problems. Problems are going to come into your life. You can't ignore it. You can't be like Mary Baker Eddy and say, oh, evil does not exist. Death does not exist. I don't believe in death. She died. No, death exists. Sin exists. Sickness exists. These are realities. Solomon says though, don't let it cause you to derail. Just understand the limitations of life in this world, but then grab on to the things that are good. Number one, enjoy your food. Enjoy your Korean barbecues. I love Korean barbecues. Enjoy... Kimchi? I don't know. It's a little hot. Enjoy, he says, your times of celebration. Put on your white clothes. In other words, go over to somebody's house and have a party. Invite them out to lunch. Invite them to your house for dinner. Get off the good china, you know? Even if it's plastic forks like at our house. And paper plates. What's that? You don't have to wash them. So then you can enjoy your labor. That's right. That's why we use them. Okay, but the point is, is that God has given you life to enjoy, and so you just want to grab onto those things that are there for you, and then enjoy the blessings that God has given, because you already got the messes. You and I already have the mess, right? We already know that. By the way, these things here, we've been walking through this. Do you guys have any thoughts on this, or any other questions that kind of struck you, or thoughts, or anything that I didn't explain well, that you said, wait, I didn't understand what that meant? Yeah, Suzie. Yeah, lighten up on one another. Yeah, a lot to be said for that. Yeah, well, Morgan, why don't you close us in prayer?