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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?
Getting the Most Out of Life in a Cursed World
Series Ecclesiastes
| Sermon ID | 101404152440 |
| Duration | 1:08:06 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Ecclesiastes 8:16 |
| Language | English |
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