Let's pray. Blessed You are, our Lord and our God. We find our delight, our joy, in all of the beauty that we understand is in You. We continue to ask as we do each week that You would pour upon us Your Holy Spirit. We would ask, Lord, that as we have and receive Your Spirit, that we would have the enlightenment that comes with knowing and understanding Your Word. May we not misunderstand it. May we understand it and apply it well and walk in it. You've given it to us. May we take quite advantage of it. Bless us in our study this morning. We commit this to you when we pray all these things through Christ. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we have come to the end of our study of Ecclesiastes, and for some of you, including me, it's been quite a journey. I've enjoyed it. As I have argued, to the chagrin of maybe a couple, I don't think that Solomon was the author of the book, but that there was a different guy, a preacher, this guy that's called the preacher, who did it, and then an editor who kind of put it all together, assembled it. We see something similar in the book of Proverbs, that there was others besides Solomon, and that there was an editor that compiles and puts together. I don't think that needs to be anything more than just simply acknowledgment, but I'm saying that to the end that I think now we come to the one part that an editor does, and that's this last section, these last verses, in which he gives a summation of what the preacher has told us. He also tells us a little bit about the guy, who he is, and then he exhorts us to hear these words. And as I mentioned earlier, the idea of hearing is not so much just simply letting the sounds roll around in your brain, but actually to do them. And that was the idea of hearing. And so we have this very beautiful summary. I fear sometimes, though, that we treat the scriptures and the Word kind of like a, I don't know, like a dieting book or any kind of self-help book or stuff like that, where we read it, we like it, we even agree to it. Oh yeah, it's all good stuff. and we stick it on our shelf and we just go about our business. Whatever that is, we don't organize, we don't diet, we don't, we don't, you know, whatever, be efficient or productive or whatever the book was, we just, but it's there and if you said like, oh yeah, hey, do you, have you read, oh yes, great book, awesome. Tell you all about it. This book here tells you all about how to be productive, but are you? I'm not saying it's all of you. I'm just pointing out that we tend to do this. Hence, I think the continued warnings of hear and listen, hear and listen, hear and listen, or listen and hear these words. Because our tendency is to go, these were nice. And then we just go about our business. And Ecclesiastes has covered a wide range of topics in terms of just the basic good life, in which he talked about marriage and family and community and eating and drinking and working and all those kinds of things. He covered it more than one time. as well as a whole bunch of other stuff that he warned us of, like the covetous man who tramples his children, or the one who tramples people or hates his children, and just accumulates for its own sake. He told us all of these kinds of things. He gave us big perspectives, the time for everything. He told us all about the big things of the world and some of the small things. and he wants us to understand this way of life. So he tells us then that the end of the matter is to know God. and to walk in the truth, to know God and to walk in the truth. And so for the first time, I think, I'm actually gonna give you three points. I've just been kind of putting it under two, but three, in this case, just to end on something a little bit different. Verses nine and 10, the first point is gonna be the wisdom of the author. This is, we get a little bit of understanding of the author, the wisdom of the author, verses nine and 10. Verses 11 and 12, the source of the wise words. The source of the wise words. And then the third, the last two verses, 13 and 14, the end of the matter itself. So let's think about this, the wisdom of the author. I want to begin with something that I have been engaged in over the weekend. This man, whoever this preacher is, was ordained and installed to a purpose. The editor notes very clearly that this man is a wise man who was also a teacher, and he taught in certain ways. Now, particularly under the Old Covenant, this was not just anybody. There was an office of teacher. Some of the priests were, if they were not serving in the temple, were to go into the, they were spread throughout all Israel, and they were to instruct. The king himself was one who was to read God's word, this is in Deuteronomy 12, and that they were to know it. They were to keep a copy next to them. So there was this idea that certain people were to be teachers and they were to be wise. But these were people called particularly to office, all of us were to be wise, but they were called to a particular office, whether it was king or priest who was the teacher, and he was to carefully study, and he was to give fitting words. Fitting words meaning words that were instructional for the purposes of the building up of the people of Israel. He was not to give flattering words, but he was to give fitting words. And if you see throughout the book, the fitting words were such that they were both instruction, but they were calls to repentance. There were times when if you did this, you were to stop doing it. It was a sin, it was wrong, something like that. Or there were times when you were to live in a particular way. And this is how Christ operates in the church, that he gives to his church men filled with the Spirit that they might be ordained and installed to a particular task. This is something that goes all the way back to the Old Testament. We see this with the elders in Numbers 11. They were called to a spiritual task and filled with the Spirit. We see this in Acts chapter 6, where men were set apart, men of good repute, and they were ordained unto this office of serving. We saw this with Timothy, who had hands laid on him, and he had a gift given to him, and Paul tells him to stir up that gift and use it. But the idea here is that men were set apart. Ephesians 4 tells us this, that Christ gives to his church gifts. and that they are set apart for the use of, and then particularly to instruct. We further say in our, when I'm giving the instructions on what we do when we ordain and install, we actually note to the congregation, these words were probably read here 11 years ago, that there's a primacy of office to the minister because he has the word of God, which is God's means of calling men to repentance and faith. And so it gives primacy to the idea that what God does primarily is he has men proclaim and that we as his people are to hear and receive. This is something that is typical of the way things work within the church all the way back to its inception, at least in terms of its institutional inception with Israel. And it didn't stop in the New Testament. It continues on even to today. Koholat, whoever he is, fits the bill. The description of him is that he was a spirit-filled man who was given wisdom, one who studied, and then one who was in some teaching office. That's why that Israel was to listen to him. He wasn't some rando guy on the street corner just yapping away or something like that. That's where we have, that's where we live is that it's just like everyone has equal say about everything. The Bible does not present it that way. It does present it as there are certain men who are called to and then there to give heed to, you're to give heed to. I am to hear God speaking through the voice of, all right? So I'm saying that because this is what we're told here in verses nine and 10, because then the words are fitting as words of truth. And this word truth is not just, again, we tend to use our words loosely. Truth is a serious biblical word. and we're gonna see why in a minute. But wisdom, wisdom living, this is what we're being told here, that we are to live wisely, can be distinguished from other ways of Christian living, and I'll make some distinctions in a minute. But the goal of wisdom teaching is for believers to be wise. Well, that seems self-evident, but there is a sense in which wisdom is something that is characteristic of a thing or a person that is just not normal about them necessarily, and no one's born wise. But you can achieve wisdom. You are to grow into maturity. You are to grow into wisdom. And, you know, there's that old saying, at least in English, right? There's no fool like an old fool. At least when you're 15 and a fool, that can be kind of driven from you. If you're 75 and a fool, yeah, there's probably not much hope for you, right? Because you've sort of passed the point where anyone can bring you correction. And so this is where we all lie. We lie in this place where we all have to regularly hear the Word of God that both instructs us and corrects us, and as people who claim to be wise or want to be wise, we need to hear it. Because these are words of truth. He has given to us Through his own observations, he says that repeatedly, instruction, sometimes grand, as I mentioned earlier, big perspective, sometimes small things. He doesn't give us imperatives necessarily, because that's not generally what wisdom literature does, but it does tend to tell us how it is that we are to operate, how the world operates generally. And because it's grounded in nature over and over again, what we see is that conformity to the creation order that is in its created, I'm sorry, its ideal state in Genesis 1. We've noted that, that he referenced Genesis 1 pretty often, that the conformity of goodness was to the standard that God made in the goodness of creation itself. And so Koalath, this preacher, carefully considered and studied all things before instructing. So that what he gives to us is not just simply pieces of counsel or advice. It's not poor Richard's almanac. but it's actually a coherent one piece of instruction from the beginning to the end. In other words, there were parts, but all the parts fit together into a whole, so that as a wise teacher, he is instructing, in this case, it sounds like maybe his son, or the editor is saying, this is how my son, you should live, that there is an idea here that he is instructing in a whole, not in parts, all right? Nothing wrong with poor Richard's almanac in terms of what it is, but that it's not this. But we recognize that you and I as believers are united to Christ who is the truth. Truth is an important word in the scriptures. It's not a throwaway word. Why? Well, because Christ himself claims to be. In fact, it's one of those attributes of God, there's only a few of them, in which they're particularly identified for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and God is the God of truth, and we know that Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and then I will send the Spirit of truth. And so you get this sense in which truth, all the attributes of God apply to all the persons of the Trinity, but there's a few that are called out, like truth. So when Koanlet here is telling us, or the editor is telling us, that what we are given was truth, well, what we want to recognize is that this is the truth of God himself, from God's word, he breathed it out, to the one who speaks it, to the one who writes it, carried along by the Holy Spirit, that these are words to live by. Literally. Why? Because you yourself, as a believer, have received Christ. And you rest in Him alone for your salvation, but it's not simply some external thing. No, you're brought into Christ Himself. You're united to Him. So that as we understand a different form of Christian living, this idea of union with Christ, we understand that in that conformity to Christ himself, it is because we're united to him that, if you will, the communicable attributes, in this case, truth, that because he is truth, we are to be people of truth. We are to speak the truth and believe the truth and walk in the truth, even to the point where we can't give ourselves over to falsehood. And so we are to be people of truth. In this case, we are to hear the truth. Because this is God's word breathed out. right, that God himself speaks it. As Paul tells us, he breathes out this word, that the spirit carries along men who write it, but that we understand that Christ himself is that word that is spoken, as we see it in Genesis 1, as we see it in other places, that he is the word. So here again, we have this idea that the act of scripture itself, or the writing of it, or the truth of it, is not tied to the men who wrote it, but it's tied to the God who spoke it. and that the scriptures themselves are an act of the triune God to give to you his will. This is what he's getting at here. This isn't some book that was by some jaded guy that, oh, well, I guess we can find some nice nuggets of wisdom throughout the jadedness of this person. No, he was instructing us in life. And it's incumbent upon us not to simply let this pass you by as if, you know, pick on Benjamin Franklin, right? It was poor Richard's almanac. Oh, I like that proverb. That's a nice one. I don't like that one. I mean, think about what he's spoken to marriages. You hear me say this all the time, I am always on this, because this is something that is spoken of in almost every single book of the Bible. We can widen it a bit to community, not all of us are married, but the idea here that we would think that this is simply some subcategory is irrelevant, except in crisis time, there's something like this, it's not the case. He speaks words of truth and life. and speaks to the very things of our lives that are here a part of us. You know, marriage, and family, and children, and work, and eating and drinking, and all of that. He has spoken to us. I'm not gonna rehearse all of those, but just, that's what he has spoken to us, and it's incumbent upon us to listen to what he has to say. It's a fitting word for you. It's appropriate for you. but it's not appropriate for you to act like you're some modern person who simply gets to pick and choose what you like and throw the rest away. It doesn't work that way. We take it all, even the parts that make us choke, because those are the parts that should make us repent and turn. But wisdom living is the long journey. It's not the thing that's immediate. It doesn't help you. Proverbs don't always help you to make a decision left or right, but they do set a guide for you for your whole entire life. And this is what Ecclesiastes has done. He set out the journey. Let's walk. You want a good life? Let's think about Ecclesiastes. The second thing is the source of this wisdom, verses 11 and 12. I want to take a moment and distinguish wisdom living from other patterns. Last year or earlier this year, I don't remember which, T. David Gordon, a former professor at Grave City College, who's written extensively. Don't tell anybody. I like to read him, but I don't usually tell people I like to read him. But he's wonderful. I wish he were still teaching. But he wrote a book on ethics. It's a little book on ethics. But he points out that there are these five models of Christian living and decision-making. Now, he doesn't say they're mutually exclusive, but he does say that they are different in both their approaches, and that we can't just live by one of them. We actually need all of them together, but they are different. So he lists them out as imitation, which is union with Christ, law, which is obedience, which Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are not really, but we tend to, given our proclivities in the Westminster Standards, to lend itself towards law. That's our big one. Communion, which is fellowship, warfare, which is spiritual, and then wisdom, which is application. I'm saying this because it's going to sound sometimes like I'm not liking the other ones or something like that. That's not the case. It's just that wisdom does something different than the other ones do. it emphasizes this kind of godly living that is formative and shaped by the big picture first and the conformity to the standard of creation. That is, you're created and fit for the thing that you were created for. Your model is the perfectness of the goodness of creation. That's kind of how this works because a lot of it comes out of the observational things of nature. And so it kind of lends itself not so much to crisis decisions or culture-making or warring, but to understanding how I might set about to live a good life in a general sense. It's a long approach, and it seeks counsel from natural revelation, natural law. Now, all five are biblical, and we need all five, but we've been looking at just kind of one of them. But here we have the need to listen. We're told that these words are like goads and nails. Now, the nails here are actually good things in the sense that they are solid things that we can hang our information on. That seems to be what he's getting at. Like we've received this teaching and this wisdom, this instruction itself, the big stuff is that which are hooks. You know, like when you walk into our house, we have, you know, a coat rack, a coat hook, you know, a bunch of hooks. And I think we have one in the nursery back there, right? There's a bunch of hooks. That's what he's getting at with these nails. Here's this thing, and I have this piece of information, and I can stick it over here on this, okay, it's not going to go anywhere, it's there. Or here's this other piece of information, I can stick it on this hook, and it's not going to go anywhere, it's not going to fall, you know, it's connected. That's what he's getting at. But they're goads as well, those things that kind of prick you along the way. You know, they were the thing that sometimes you would hit a horse or something with, you know, to kind of make them go. You know, kind of stick them a little bit. It might hurt. And he says, it's just like that. Hence the need to listen even to the instruction that we don't like. In fact, it harkens back to chapter five, verse one of Ecclesiastes, when he says, and I said that the primary reason, this is my whole sermon, the primary reason that we all gather together is to hear the word of the Lord. We're not here to do anything else. All other things are secondary. So if you serve, that's great, thank you. But it's completely secondary too. So if you say, I'm only here to serve, you've actually broken this command, it's a sin. But Ecclesiastes says, to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know they are doing evil. Understand what he's saying, that we are here to hear and listen, that's the only reason. There's no other one. And I'm emphasizing that because as he comes to the end of the book, he's reiterating the same thing that he has said over and over again. We need to hear God's Word. And if we don't, we're rebelling. This shepherd, it capitalizes in the ESV, it's not capitalized in the Hebrew. They're probably trying to make the case, and I would agree with them, that the shepherd who is giving it is the Lord Jesus Christ. But the shepherd was a very common metaphor for a king. You find this all throughout the ancient Near East. They understood their kings as shepherds. And so when you think of Psalm 23, you would think that this was, in some sense, a common metaphor that they would see the king is doing these things, giving them food or something like that. leading them to battle. This is how they thought of their king, as a father, as a shepherd. And so it was more than just simply a legal political entity, but that he was also relational in some way. I'm not saying that's the right way, but that was the way. So when he uses this word shepherd, he's driving at that, that the shepherd is probably a king, and that it was given by one. So some king somewhere, possibly. But then he says, the making of many books. This is like my favorite thing, right? Who doesn't like books? I like books. He actually doesn't get at what we normally think this means. He doesn't mean like, oh, this is a terrible thing that more books are made. What he's probably saying is this, that there's a lot of false teaching out there. The book that I've given to you, this instruction I've given to you, hear it. Because as you study, you're going to read a whole lot of other stuff. And it's going to become very wearisome, but it's going to be counter to what I've taught you. That's probably what he's getting at. Because you and I serve the great wise shepherd, right? That the Lord Jesus Christ is the great shepherd of the sheep. We read a little bit of that today. We see it at the end of Hebrews as well, that he himself was the one who has a flock of people and he calls them. Again, it's that listening idea. He calls them to himself. so that we as God's people are the flock. But remember, because I'm a sheep too, even though I serve as an under shepherd, sheep are not really all that bright. So when we're called to be wise, it's from the place of not being all that bright. Some of you have seen the little memes and the little videos of sheep running into a crevice and being pulled out and then turning around and running back into it and being pulled out. So it is indicative of that. But we ourselves are those for whom Christ died. We are those for whom Christ calls to himself into his own sheepfold or his pen. Unlike the hireling, the great shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. He does not let them go astray. But think of all he does as well, that he gives them the food and the nourishment they need, the still waters for nourishment and the green pastures. and the walking through the valley of the shadow of death, he is the leader in all of those circumstances to, in the God's sovereignty, to the good of the nourishment, to the heart of the shadow of death, he leads us. So that righteousness and goodness can chase after us all the days of our lives. That's what he does for us. as our good shepherd. So when he speaks to us, we wanna hear and we wanna listen. That brings us to the third part, the end of the matter. This is what makes a man complete, verses 13 and 14. So we have the reminder again that it was given orally and then it was written, so it was heard and then written. When you hear or read God's word, you are to receive it by faith, that's what we do. And if you have God's spirit within you, Lord willing, you receive it with joy and gladness also. Fear here is equivalent to having faith in God. We understand fear not simply to be that of which we are afraid. God certainly has that quality of which, as God, we should fear him in that way. But as his children, as his sheep, that is not how we approach him, that the fear of the Lord in the Old Testament was generally considered that in which you have faith in. And so you've received God as your deliverer. He's your great shepherd. He's the one who cares for you. And so you have this reverence for him, unlike any other kind of reverence that you might have. Fearing God focuses on the saving work of Christ and produces the fruit of obedience that comes out of it. In this case, it's more like living a virtuous life, because that's the wise life, is focused on the virtue, and walking on the godly path. That's what it's more getting at here. But the whole duty of man, it makes it sound good that this is the whole duty of man, but it doesn't really lend itself. And I think if you have the ESV, you even have a footnote, and it's probably the footnote that's the better reading, which is something like, this is what makes man whole or complete. It's the conforming to the standard. That in hearing God's word and doing it, you are conformed to the standard that God has made. That makes you a complete or a whole person. Because you're living in the proper way in which you were created in conjunction to your creator. That's wholeness or completeness. And then he reminds us, this is like the out-the-door message. Oh, yeah, there is a judgment day coming. Some of the surprises I got through my study here, I've noted them along the way. This is also one of them. I've read Ecclesiastes before, but Dearest just stopped to note that some of his final words are words to remind us judgment is coming. So we need to be prepared. We can't put this off. We can't say, well, tomorrow I'll do this or something like that. No, we need to hear God's word and respond today. This life, this is part of the perspective. This life is not all there is. This is what we see. But there is an eternal life. And upon our deaths or the Lord's return, we step into this eternal life. At that point, there is judgment day when the Lord returns. And so ignoring the instruction, the warning, will have dire consequences. So I want us to conclude this way. I want us to think about submitting to Christ the King, your Shepherd King. He calls His people to Himself. And he has ordained for him an office called King, of which he rules because of his resurrection. That's Peter's argument in Acts 2. Christ was resurrected, and because he was resurrected, he is enthroned at the right hand of God, and he rules. And particularly, he rules his people, and he calls us to himself, which calls us to submission, repentance, those things. But in doing so, not as an absentee ruler, but as one who rules presently, he gives them to his church officers, particularly ruling elders and ministers, and he gives them laws and censures, and he governs you through them. He dispenses to you His evangelical graces. We think of sanctification as an evangelical grace that He continuously pours upon us in the means of grace, but He gives to you officers also. And through and in them, He corrects you as well as He supports you under temptation, ultimately ordering all these things for your good, His glory. So my final words will be these. Some books, I think, can really motivate you. Probably you like some Bible books more than others. Some you just find uninteresting or boring. You finish and ask, what's next? Jonah, for us. Christ, our preacher, has given us words of truth because he is the truth. When he speaks, he gives you words that are appropriate for you, fitting for you. They give you life and godliness. His words are to make you mature in Christ who is the head and a complete man, a whole man. My warning to you is do not, do not ignore Christ's words. Christ's judgment is coming at some point. You don't know when your last breath is. You don't know when he will break the clouds. This is a word to the wise, the end of the matter, no God. walk into truth. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the sobering words that come to us through the book of Ecclesiastes. I pray, Lord, that as we hear this instruction, that it would set us all about to live what we call the good life, the one that the preacher has laid out for us. But I pray that for those who are looking at wrong paths or other paths, that you would call them back. that you would convict them of sin. May all of us, O Lord, look to you as our shepherd as we hear the words of truth that we may receive and believe them, because they come from you. Bless us, our Lord and our God. We pray all of these things through Christ. Amen.