We're going to continue today in the book of Ecclesiastes. I want to open up by pointing back to 1980. How many of you were alive in 1980? Can I see your hand? Okay. How many of you were not yet alive in 1980? All right. There was a musical drama film called Fame that was set in New York. It followed four teenagers in their journey in the New York Performing Arts School and it followed them through their high school and it dealt with typical adolescent topics, friends, homework. It also dealt with some heavy topics of sexuality, of homosexuality, abortion, and things like that. I actually did not see the movie, so I can't endorse it or not. I know there's some darkness in it as it traced this, but a lot of people watched it. In fact, received 16 nominations and won eight awards, including 1981 Best Music, a Grammy for the, I mean, the Academy, yeah, the Grammy for the Best Music and the Academy Award in 81, the Golden Globe Award for the Best Actress, Debbie Allen. So they did it in 1980. Then in 2009, they did a remake of it. almost 30 years later. That one didn't do quite as well. It received three nominations but got no awards. But the key line, the key line in it was, I'm going to fame, I'm going to live forever. I'm going to live forever, right? So between 1980 In 2009, only one actress appeared in both movies. That was Debbie Allen. The rest of them are either out of show business or they're not alive anymore. So the big line, I'm going to live forever, didn't come true. We learn from that and other things. One of the most fundamental truths about life is this, we are not in control. We are not in control. We do not have the ability to control things. We look around in the world and we see things that bother us, that we don't like. We see things that are unjust and we're not in control. We look around and we see that we and everybody we care about is either going to get sick or die. We see it. We're not in control. We can't explain why everything happens the way it does in the world. But here's what's interesting. People start to come to realize this at different ages in their life and to different degrees in their life. They don't have to be able to even philosophically write it all out. to feel that angst, but there are one of two responses that people take. And the first one is escapism. When people come to start realizing these types of things, they try different things to escape, and these things range on the spectrum. Some of them that maybe are innocuous, maybe there's nothing wrong with them versus things that we know in themselves would be wrong, but it could be any number of things that people try to do to escape pain, like overuse of alcohol. Party as much as you can. Laugh as hard as you can. Use illicit drugs. Scroll social media endlessly. Watch streaming over and over and over shows and movies. Sports and fantasy sports. Pornography. It's just a number of different ways that we are trying to escape. That's one approach. The other approach is the approach of wisdom. It's to live in the middle of a broken world based on God's principles and God's wisdom. And that is what Ecclesiastes is really all about learning how to live wisely in the middle of a broken world. And Ecclesiastes 7 in particular is about this. And it's interesting that part of wisdom is coming to understand that as we grow wise, we realize that we're not going to be able to have all the answers we want right now. I want to invite you to turn to Ecclesiastes 7. I'd like you to stand. We're going to set the stage for Ecclesiastes chapter 7. We're going to talk about a life well-lived. At the end of Ecclesiastes 6, the teacher here, Ask this question, who knows what is good for anyone in life in the few days of his futile life that he spends like a shadow? And now, at the beginning of chapter seven, we start getting the answer to that question. He starts answering that question for us. So I want to read, I'm just going to read the first six verses. We're going to look at the whole chapter this morning, but right now we're only going to read the first six verses. A good name is better than fine perfume. And the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, since that is the end of all mankind and the living should take it to heart. Grief is better than laughter. For when a face is sad, a heart may be glad. The heart of the wise is in a house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in a house of pleasure. It is better to listen to rebuke from a wise person than to listen to the song of fools. For like the crackling of burning thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of the fool. This too is futile. This is the word of God. You can be seated. Now I'm breaking this chapter up into two major sections. It is all about wisdom, but you can put it in two major movements that give us different aspects of a life well lived. And the first one is this, learn to live wisely in the circumstances of life. Learn to live wisely in the circumstances of life. Let's start walking through. There's this word that keeps coming back over and over and over again. It's better. This is better. This is better. This is better. Better, better, better. Key word. A good name is better than fine perfume. And the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. Now, There's gonna be a lot in this chapter that we really have to be careful to explain. There are a lot of statements that we'll read and we'll go, I will scratch her head. I've scratched my head a lot this week and wrestled a lot. The teacher is not claiming that it is better to die than to be born. Notice the language. Better is the day of your birth than the day of your death. It doesn't teach anyone anything. The day of one's death can teach us a lot. Death is a better teacher for us. Watch this. If today, Hopefully this doesn't happen to anybody. Let's say we go out tomorrow and we have a doctor's appointment and the doctor says you have a terminal illness. You have three months to live. Do you think your priorities are going to stay the same over the next three months? I've seen it. I've watched it. I've watched it in my family. I've watched it with my mother and my father. I've watched it as a pastor through the years. I've seen many people live and die. And when somebody gets a terminal diagnosis, when they're very near death, so many things that we thought mattered all along the way don't matter anymore. When you get to that point, if you get to that point, some people pass away suddenly and don't have a chance to reflect. But if you get to that point and you're able to reflect, the only things that are going to matter is your love for God, Your love for other people, and did you invest in others and use your gift for God and others? That's about all. Those relationships, that giving, that's what's gonna matter on the deathbed. That's why I think he can say the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. And we might wanna connect The two parts of this verse together in this sense, if a person dies with a good name or a good reputation because of their life, their reputation is sweeter than perfume. It's very similar over the next few verses. So we're still talking about that same topic. We're just wording it, he's wording it a little bit different. It's better to go to a house of mourning than a house of feasting. since that is the end of all mankind and the living should take it to heart. Now, in a similar way, all of us would rather feast or party than mourn. There's no question. If we're asked, had you rather go to a party this week or would you rather mourn this week? But mourning is a better teacher. Brian Davis, Wrote a book called living life backwards and in it he says, you know, there are two kind of people that show up at a funeral There's the foolish person that sits there and they experience some degree of sadness They think it's sad and this and that and the other and and the way he puts it is they do that And then that night they're right back at the pub Then there's the wise person who looks at that coffin and says hmm, that's going to be me one day. And they reflect on their life and they analyze their life and make changes if necessary so that they'll be ready for that day. On Wednesday this week, we held the graveside service of Basil Watkins, 95 years of life. Basil was Very instrumental he and his wife Martha early on at harvest. They were some of the first harvesters to come She passed away 25 years ago. So he's been a widower for 25 years Most of you do not know him because he and you heard those things being said about him He had a good name it's sweeter than perfume as opposed to some instances think about maybe do you want it only to be said that she really enjoyed her gardening, he was an avid tennis player, he loved to travel, she was well advanced in her career in law. I mean all of those, nothing wrong with saying any of those things at that time, but the question is, is that all that's going to be able to be said? I'm thankful that we were able to say those kind of things about Basil. There was a man, I'd heard Basil say his name so many times to me through the years. I had never met him named Glenn Price that worked in ministry. He was a missionary years ago on the Mercy Ship. Now he works for YWAM, Youth with a Mission. And Glenn came to, Glenn drove 965 miles on Tuesday to get here. to be at that gravesite service. And he told us the story that 40 years, almost 40 years to the day of Basil's passing, his father passed away. And before that time, when he was a college student, Basil and Martha had him come in and live with them in their home. And when his dad passed away, Basil, who had no biological children of his own, looked at Glenn and said, I can never replace your dad. I would never try to, but I want you to know, I'm always gonna be there for you. That's the way we could say, if there's a life lived like this, that it is better to go to the house of mourning. The house of mourning teaches us. These other things are fine, but they don't teach us anything. Verse three, grief is better than laughter. For when a face is sad, a heart may be glad. The heart of the wise is in a house of mourning, but the heart of fools in a house of pleasure. Laughter and pleasure are not wrong. I love them, and more importantly, God loves them. He designed them. But these verses are giving us a wisdom perspective, and I hope you don't think this is morbid. It's not morbid, but it's serious. There's a difference. Having this approach towards life is different. but it shows depth rather than just superficiality. I mean, people who just laugh and have a good time and move through life and don't really deal with substantive issues, that's foolish. That's where the house of pleasure is. Verse five, it is better to listen to rebuke from a wise person than to listen to the song of fools. For like the crackling of burning thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of the fool. This too is futile." All right, let me ask you a question. Raise your hand. Who likes to be rebuked? No, it's not. I mean, none of us want to be told by somebody, hey, you're messing up here. You need to change your course here. Hey, think about this. But the question is, it's better to listen to a rebuke that comes from a wise person than a song of fools. Notice that pointless sound that comes over and over and over in foolish people's talk and music. And the last phrase of this verse, this too is futile. There it is again, futile. That key word in Ecclesiastes, futile, empty, meaningless, vain. My pastor growing up said so many times, you become like the people you associate with. This verse is telling us we become like the people we listen to. Verse seven, surely the practice of extortion turns a wise person into a fool and a bribe corrupts the mind. Unfortunately, even wise people can listen to the wrong things. People who are going down a certain course in their life and then they listen to the wrong thing. Maybe it's extortion and they're tempted to gain more money through extortion or bribery and it corrupts them. Verse eight, the end of a matter is better than its beginning. A patient spirit is better than a proud spirit. How many of you have ever run a race, either on foot or swimming or bicycle, anybody? You know the end is better than the beginning. Every half marathon I did, I did several, I was like, okay, I was really glad for the end. The end is better than the beginning. And this is especially true of people who are living according to God's ways. Obviously, it doesn't ring true for a person who sins because we know from the New Testament, James, that sin when it is conceived, lust when it's conceived, gives birth to sin and a proud spirit. Patient spirit reads in the original length of spirit. Verse nine, don't let your spirit rush to be angry, for anger abides in the hearts of fools. That goes with verse eight. It's foolish to react to a situation immediately in anger. Let's think about, think about when we get angry, it's usually something, somebody says something, somebody does something, or doesn't do something, and we react when? right then, immediately, right? Don't let your spirit rush. You know, just, I think the Hebrew says, chill. I think that's what it reads, if I remember correctly. This is interesting. This, to me, kind of comes out of nowhere. Don't say, why were the former days better than these, since it is not wise of you to ask this. Now, this is not saying it's wrong to ever think back to the past and remember good things in the past. That's good, especially around anniversaries and birthdays and family occasions and stuff like that. This is saying, don't go live back in the past. Don't put so much focus on the past that you're not able to function right now in the present. Live today for God. unhindered by yesterday's worry or yesterday's problems or tomorrow's worry. Victorian essayist Hilaire Belloc wrote, while you're dreaming of the future or regretting the past, the present, which is all you have, slips from you and is gone. 11, wisdom is as good as an inheritance and an advantage to those who see the sun, because wisdom is protection as silver is protection. But the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of its owner. So, the teacher here is recognizing that financial means do provide some level of protection in life, And like that protection, wisdom provides protection, but actually it provides better protection. Better protection. Because it says it has the advantage is that it preserves the life. So while finances can protect you in some ways, Living according to God's wisdom can give you life. That's what we're really looking for is life. But even it's interesting as we transition to the second half of the chapter, all of these different instances, learning to live wisely and all these different circumstances, that there are limitations. that even having God's wisdom is not going to answer every question for us on this side of eternity. And so I've summed up the rest of the chapter, verses 13 to 29, with this statement, learn to live with the God-given limitations of wisdom. And we're gonna see some limitations here. as we walk through this. Verse 13, consider the work of God, for who can straighten out what he has made crooked? Now, this crookedness that exists in life, it's the writer saying, hey, I look and see God's made some things change, but we can't. It might be poor health. It might be strained relationships. might be lack of opportunities that other people have that you think you should have. It could be anything in life that you wish were shaped differently. Whether it's your body, your personality, your IQ, your temperament, your boss's temperament, the teacher that whose classroom to whose classroom you got assigned. Okay, there are things that seemingly are crooked, right? Now, according to the Scottish theologian, Thomas Boston, if God is the one who has made the crook in our lot of life, we need to see that as the work of God, which is vain for us to try to change. He says, what God seems to mar we will not be able to mend. Verse 14, in the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider. God has made the one as well as the other so that no one can discover anything that will come after him. Some days things go really well for us, right? It's a good day. It's a day of prosperity. We're happy, we're healthy. Things at school are going great. Things at work are going great. Things in our relationships are going great. And then some days are the opposite. It's interesting in a church. It's interesting, this very week, I'm sure some of you had some great days. I'm sure some of you had some bad days. Maybe some of you had a little bit of both, right? So what do we do? On the days of prosperity, we're joyful. We receive it as from God, but in the day of adversity, we think about this. We remember that God made both of them, so that no one can discover anything that will come after him. We have no way of knowing what is going to come in the future. That's a huge limitation of wisdom. We want to be wise. We want to gain God's wisdom to live now, to live today. But even the wisest person in the world has no idea what's happening tomorrow. That's what this teacher is recognizing here. A strong belief in God's sovereign control can give us peace, but it also can raise questions for us. Like as we go into verse 15, we see some apparent inequities. This teacher saw some. In my futile life, I've seen everything. Someone righteous perishes in spite of his righteousness. and someone wicked lives long in spite of his evil." Have you ever seen anything like that? It seems to be unjust. It doesn't seem to be right. And look what his advice is. This is very unusual advice. If you just read the surface of it, again, hopefully you'll be scratching your head. We gotta dive into it. Look what he says. Don't be excessively righteous and don't be overly wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Don't be excessively wicked and don't be foolish. Why should you die before your time? Let me give you two possible interpretations of this because, again, you read this and you go, that doesn't sound like other stuff I read in the Bible. I think there are two different ways that we can take it. Either one of them are legitimate. Both of them could fit in with biblical revelation. The first one is this. Many people think the teacher here is advocating for kind of a middle-of-the-road approach to life, not being overly good or bad. Now, if he's doing that, this is another instance in which he is speaking under the sun, right? A lot of Ecclesiastes is, he's looking at life under the sun from his perspective. He's omitting God from it. And we get a lot of that in the book of Ecclesiastes, and we have to wait till we get to the end of the book to see how it all wraps together. We have to wait till we get to the rest of Scripture to see how it helps inform us of that. That is possible for this. I think that's possible. I'm not, that's not my favorite interpretation, but it's possible. The original Hebrew words here or they convey the idea of a reflexive action, right? We don't tend to have those kind of words in English that much. We have active and passive, right? And that you act, some verbs act on things and some get passively acted on. You know, I hit the ball or the ball hit me. But some of these languages have these reflexive tenses and moods where it's kind of action that happens in and of yourself. And that's what's happening here. And that leads us to what I think is probably the better option. Verse 16 might refer to someone who is only pretending to be righteous. Or like they're self-righteous. So the warnings of verse 16 and 17 are against like hypocritical self-righteousness on the one hand, and then unrighteousness on the other. Now, we know the Bible would never advocate for, quote, just a little bit of evil, just be a little bit bad, right? These things do lead to destruction and death. In fact, verse 18 says, it is good that you grasp the one and do not let the other slip from your hand. And here we're getting a hint of the truth that's really going to come at the end of the book, for the one who fears God will end up with both of them. The way to walk in wisdom is to fear God, to respect Him, to stand humbly before Him and listen to His Word and His teaching. And the person who does that, verse 18 says, will end up with both of them. I think that's Devotion to God and wisdom on the one hand and enjoyment of life on the other in the context. Verse 19 wisdom makes the wise person stronger than 10 rulers of a city. And then the next few verses go through the kind of situations that that could apply and it shows us things that we're going to face. we have to contend with to overcome. The first one is sin. There's certainly no one righteous on the earth who does good and never sins. But wisdom helps us see the schemes of the evil one and fear God to help us with that. The next one is what people say about us. Verse 21, don't pay attention to everything people say. Or you may hear your servant cursing you, for in your heart you know that many times you yourself have cursed others. We have too much to accomplish for God than to be paralyzed worrying about what people are saying about us. Charles Spurgeon told his pastoral students that every minister should have one blind eye and one deaf ear. You can't stop people's tongues and therefore the best thing to do is stop your own ears and never mind what is spoken. The next thing we face is our own ability to grasp the meaning of what God is doing or allowing in the world. Verse 23, I've tested all this by wisdom. I resolved I will be wise, but it was beyond me. What exists is beyond reach and very deep. Who can discover it? I alluded to this earlier. It's a great paradox. Answer them completely. But we know where wisdom resides. wisdom resides with God. And then there's the sinfulness of people, the next several verses. Verse 25, I turn my thoughts to know, explore, and examine wisdom and explanation for things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity and folly is madness. And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a trap. Her heart is a net and her hands change. The one who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her. Now, who is this woman he's talking about? And is the writer misogynistic? Right? I mean, is that what's happening here? Again, we read stuff like this and we go, wait a minute. Well, Again, I'm gonna give you some options here, okay? I think there's some options of how we can understand that. First option is, well, before I say the option, let me definitely say, that God has no desire for men and women to look down on each other. He desires that we respect and love each other and build each other up. Okay, let's let's state that we're looking. We have the benefit of the whole Bible. But one option is that this is just a record of this one person's experience, right? This is wisdom literature. This is poetry. He's looking around saying I saw this or I experienced this. These are his findings under the Sun. We know that God honors women that God values them highly and that husband and wife are actually called to submit husband is to lead. The wife is to submit but there that's all in the context of mutual submission to each other as they're filled with the Holy Spirit. So that's one option second related to that. Is In terms of applying this, this could really be applied to either female or male. This teacher was a male and he was writing to a male audience from a male perspective. But if it had been a woman, she could have written the same thing about a man who tempted her, who trapped her, right? Sometimes women trap men and sometimes men trap women. Right? We're just getting his perspective of it, but the application would be to either gender. Far too often women have been mistreated by men. It happens in the fallen world that we live in, whether it's emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. So there's definitely, the Bible would never support that at all. So, if a woman had written it, she might have turned the tables around and said this about a man. Now, there's a third option that's intriguing to me. I'm not 100% sure. I know it's possible. I'm just not sure, frankly. And that's this. In the book of Proverbs, you have some personifications, right? metaphorical language in poetry, and Ecclesiastes is in that wisdom genre. So, for instance, wisdom is personified in Proverbs as a beautiful lady, right? But folly or foolishness is also personified in Proverbs as a woman. So it, look what he says, look how he personifies foolishness. Folly is a rowdy woman, she's gullible and knows nothing. She sits by the doorway of her house on a seat on the highest point of the city, calling to those who pass by, who go straight onto their paths. Whoever is inexperienced, enter here. To the one who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten secretly is tasty, He doesn't know that the departed spirits are there that are guests are in the depth of Sheol. So it's a personification. And that might be what the writer of Ecclesiastes, he might not be speaking entirely or only or at all of just female entrapment of him. I've said early on, I don't really believe Solomon wrote this book. He could have written it, and certainly we know Solomon had bad experiences where women he loved that didn't love God drew his heart away from God. So again, kind of three possibilities here. It might be a record of his experience. It might be something we just apply to male or female. Or it might be the personification Back to Ecclesiastes 7, verse 27, as we wrap up the last few verses. Look, says the teacher, I've discovered this by adding one thing to another to find out the explanation which my soul continually searches for, but does not find. I found one person in a thousand, but none of those was one. Again, it's figurative language, and it's the same issue that we just dealt with. Only see this. Only see this. I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes. All of these ways that we entrap each other and hurt each other and oppress each other, and look what he says. Look at the wisdom that is coming out of his mouth in verse 29. This is the highlight of it. God made people upright. When God created Adam and Eve and put them in the garden, they were perfect. And he gave them all the trees they could eat of except for one. And it says, but they pursued many schemes. This is undoubtedly a reference to Genesis 2 and 3, when God put man and woman in the garden and they sinned against God. And it's what we call the fall. They fell. And as a result of fall, so many things happened. God spoke curse on the serpent, on the woman, on the man. And then they were actually removed from the garden. Verse 22, Genesis 3, the Lord God said, since the man has become one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat and live forever. So the Lord God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming whirling sword east of the garden of Eden. to guard the way to the tree of life. And think about the downward spiral that happened after that. Cain murders Abel. Cain is murdered by Lamech. And then the world gets so evil that God goes to Noah and says, I'm going to do what I'm going to do because the thought of humans, thoughts are constantly evil. So here in Ecclesiastes is a world of sin, and he's stating it, it's because God created us upright, but we pursued many schemes. And frankly, when you get to the end of Ecclesiastes chapter 7, you don't have all the answers yet. Because that's what we're left with. We've blown it and we've messed up. But thankfully, today, we live thousands of years later. And we know what has happened since this book was written. We know that God, the perfect holy God, that created people upright to begin with, We know that He decided to intervene in human history. We know that He sent His own Son, Jesus, to live the life we could not live of perfection, to die a death that we could never do. It's a sacrificial death to pay for our sins. To be buried and to rise again from the grave to prove that He is Lord of all. and our sins are forgiven. Romans chapter 3 verse 22, the righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ all believe since there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are justified freely by His grace Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, God presented Him as the mercy seat by His blood through faith to demonstrate His righteousness. Are you willing to let your own death instruct you right now for eternity? Number two, rather than letting a broken world discourage or distract you, start living for God and loving neighbors in a fresh new way today. I confess as I've looked out at society in the last five and ten years, I've gotten discouraged by it. all the brokenness, all the craziness, and sometimes it just gets me discouraged, and I feel like I think too much about it. I don't know if anybody's like me. Maybe we need to just not be overwhelmed by it or over-occupied by it, and just say, you know what, I'm gonna serve God with an abandon today. And then number three. Let brokenness and sin lead you to the cross of Jesus. Let brokenness and sin lead you to the cross of Jesus. You know, there are a lot of things that are a little bit different about this service than what we planned earlier in the week. We planned for, to have different people on stage, we planned for Liz to be with TJ singing, but their baby got sick. We planned for Faith to play the keyboard and she got sick. Before that, we had planned for communion to be before the sermon. But as I was working on the sermon and where we were going in the end of Ecclesiastes 7, that God's made us perfect, we've pursued many schemes, I thought, that's the fall, that's sin, we gotta go to the cross. This leads us to the cross. 1 Corinthians 1, where is the one who is wise? Where's the teacher of the law? Where's the debater of this age? Hasn't God made the world's wisdom foolish? For since in God's wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached. For the Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. We are going to the cross today. We have elements, four tables, two in the back, two in the front, that have bread and cups on them, that bread stands for the broken body of Christ, that blood, that those cups stand for the blood that he shed. And we're gonna realize today that though our world is messed up, that we've pursued schemes as a society and we've pursued schemes, sins as individuals, Jesus paid it all. All to Him I odd.