Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 10. And then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God. There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity and I commend joy for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun. When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out. But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know. Both are before him. It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner. And he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun. Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white, let not oil be lacking on your head, Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going. The text for this morning's sermon is Ecclesiastes 9 verse 10. We'll read that again together and after the sermon we'll sing Psalm 90 verses 5 to 8. The text, verse 10, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, if you walk through a cemetery and you look at the gravestones, every gravestone tells the same story. There is a birth date and there is a death date and there's just a little dash in between. And that tiny dash is someone's whole life, their work, their family, their laughter and their tears, their choices for or against the Lord. It looks so small, but it's a whole life. And the end date comes, the dash is over, and you don't get to go back and add anything more. Now, that is a sobering truth that our text, Ecclesiastes 9, verse 10, confronts us with. There is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going. The dash is brief, and once it ends, well, there are no more chances. Now, that's a little bit heavy, isn't it, to begin a service and a new year with? But look at the context in which the preacher, or as he's called in Hebrew, Kohelet, says it. Look at verses 7, 8, and 9. What does he say there? He says, go eat your bread with joy. Drink your wine with a merry heart. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love. that's the context in which this stark truth is driven home to us. In those verses 7, 8 and 9, just before our text, there are images of festivity and blessing. They echo the life that God intended from the beginning of creation. They sound like Psalm 128, which we're going to sing at the end of the service. They are talking about enjoying the fruit of your labor, feasting with food and drink, rejoicing in fruitful marriage and family life under God's blessing. So he says all these gloriously joyful things until he adds at the end of verse nine, all the days of your vain life. Well, that's a bit of a gut punch there. All the days of your vain life? Vain? We need to understand that the word vain, as it's used in Ecclesiastes, is very, very specific. Vain in the Scriptures is usually another Hebrew word and it refers to something which is empty or light or useless. But the word vain that's used in Ecclesiastes is the Hebrew word havel. And that word means not useless, but it means vapour or breath or mist. It has the idea of something fragile and fleeting, something quickly gone. So the preacher is not saying life is meaningless, useless or empty, but he's saying that life is short and elusive. It's impossible to grasp and to keep hold of. And that's why the preacher says, enjoy God's good gifts while you have them under the sun. And that's why here in verse 10, our text, he presses the urgency. Your life is a vapor. The life of man is fleeting like the grasses. So keep that in mind and respond appropriately to that truth. The life of man is fleeting like the grasses. Now, there are bad ways to respond to that truth. You could say, well, life's short, life is a mist which soon passes, so I'm just going to give up. It's not worth it. I'm just going to sit there depressed and wait for the end. Or I'm going to give myself over to mindless, never-ending, repeating routines as I just grind away, trying to survive and kind of get to the end. or you could throw yourself into pleasure seeking. Let us eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, as you rush around in a useless attempt to find some happiness while you can. But brothers and sisters, we receive this truth that life is short, it is fleeting. We receive it as children of God. We rejoice in covenant life, feasting and marriage and family and children, the fruit of the labor of our hands. And as we rejoice in God's good gifts, we remember that this time, on this earth, in this life, is very short. There's a small window of opportunity and it is in that context that comes the command of God through the Holy Spirit in our text. His command, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. And so I'm going to be working through this text with three points. The first point is, do what God gives you now The second point is, do it with all your might. And the third point is, do it before forever comes. So do what God gives you now. Whatever your hand finds to do, the word hand here is not just referring to the physical hand, it's a figure of speech. It means the whole of you, all your faculties, your abilities and energies. Whatever your hand finds to do, the tasks that God himself places before you. This is a Hebrew way of talking about opportunities. It's not talking about random busy work, it's talking about the things that God has placed in your path and given you the capacity to do. And as children of God, we understand that everything that God gives us has meaning. In marriage and evangelism, he calls us to be fruitful, to multiply, filling the earth with men, women and children who worship him. And in our daily work, our studies and our business ventures, he calls us to exercise dominion as stewards of creation, developing its resources and using them for the advancement of his kingdom. Everything God gives us to do in this life has meaning. And a preacher has just reminded us of that in verses 7, 8 and 9. And he reminded us that God blesses the fruit of our hands, as Psalm 128 puts it. He gives us bread and wine to enjoy, garments and oil for gladness, marriage and family for companionship. These blessings are not empty. They're not meaningless. They are the fruit of our labour under God's favour. This is what we were made to do, to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, to subdue it as stewards of creation, developing and working with it for God's glory. And part of God's glory here is our feasting and our enjoyment and our delight in his good gifts and blessings upon the work of our hands. Now, False religions and philosophies and ideologies see life as a continual system of cycles repeated over and over and over and all these cycles are within a massively overarching cycle which is a so-called coming into the being of the universe of its own accord until the heat death of the universe when everything comes back to where it began. Back, in other words, to nothing. That's the mindset of those in the world around us who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything is just another cycle. And in the end, it all comes to nothing. But the truth of God says different. The truth of God tells us that life has meaning. That life is a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That life is going somewhere. There's a line from creation to redemption to consummation to glory and that line goes onwards and upwards forever into eternity. And so life for the children of God is about the kingdom and the power and the glory of God. It's not just an endless mindless grind. If that's what your life has become, give your head a shake and listen to God speaking to you today. That's not what life is. It's not an endless, mindless grind. God has given you your life under the sun. God has already approved what you do, says the preacher. So do it. But as you do it, remember that life is short. The psalmist says in Psalm 103 that the life of man is fleeting like the grasses. It is here today, it is gone tomorrow. It is Havel. It is a vapor, a mist. And that means while we have it, we need to use it well. We need to focus and be deliberate on taking this little dash that we've got and using it well. If you're running the 100-meter dash, every move, every action, every thought is focused on the goal of moving from this point to that point. You don't stop halfway to buy an ice cream. You focus on what you're doing. Everything in you focuses on taking the next step to get you to the finish line. Well, what has God given you to do in the dash between your birth and your death? What has God given you to do? Has your hand found it to do it? Or are you coasting along? Are you just kind of floating? Have you lost sight of the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus? No one is exempt brothers and sisters, no one is excluded from this call. The sick, the old, the suffering, you are here for a reason. You at home who are listening in online because you're shut in, you are here for a reason. God has given you things to do for his kingdom. If you're healthy and young and life is good, don't get distracted with the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Don't waste yourself on the vanities of this world. Whoever you are, whatever your circumstances, God is giving you things to do. God is giving you things for your hands to do, for blessing, for life, for refreshment, for joy, for eternal glory. And so whatever God sets before you, do it. That's the first point. And do it with all your might. That's the second point which we're going to begin right now. Do it with your might, says the preacher. Now might here is not just physical effort, it is the full strength of your being. It is vigour, resolve, steadfastness, every faculty that God has given you. This is a call against apathy, mediocrity or half-heartedness. A son, a daughter of the living God cannot live a life of apathy and mediocrity and half-heartedness. The preacher is calling us, pour yourself into what God has given with everything you've got. Now this is not a call to be frantic and to be anxious, anxiously toiling away and never sleeping and always stressed. That's not what the call is here. Psalm 127 says, it is in vain. And the word vain there is not havel. It's the other word for vain, which means useless. It's useless, it's empty, to rise up early and go late to rest. Eating the bread of anxious toil, that's useless, a waste of time. The preacher isn't calling us to that kind of hamster running in the wheel forever kind of life. He is calling us to a life of joyful diligence. And that means at the most fundamental level, brothers and sisters, that we live in the love of God. That's the overarching theme of our lives, that we love the Lord with all our hearts and with all our soul and with all our might, with all our might. You can't serve God half-heartedly. It's all or nothing. Just like you can't get half on a plane to fly to Sydney and half not. That doesn't work. It's all or nothing. Let it be said of you what was said of King Josiah before him. There was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might. How do you want to be remembered by your friends, by your community, your colleagues, your family, your children, your grandchildren, not by the amount of numbers in your bank account or the number of things you have, but that you would be remembered as someone who turned to the Lord with all your heart and your soul and your might, serving God, living life, the life of the obedience of faith, It is total. It is unreserved. It is unconditional. It is a 24-7 full-on focus on serving, on obeying, seeking, knowing, following, loving, praising and worshipping Him. And in that context, brothers and sisters, whatever your hand finds to do, whatever, do it with all your might. As the Apostle Paul says to the Colossians, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. And that means that you're on the job and you're not working in the first place for the customer, or for the boss, or for the foreman, or even for your own paycheck. You're working for God. So we don't drag our feet. We don't show up late. We don't cut corners. We're not satisfied with a bare minimum. We do it with all our might for Him. And at school, Whether primary, middle school, high school, university, college or other studies, you're not studying to please teachers or parents or for your own satisfaction in the first place. You're studying your learning for God. which means that a Christian child in a classroom never ever will accept an environment of rebellion or disrespect or an attempt to derail the lesson. A Christian child will strive in their own life and in the life of their class to study and to learn in such a way that God is honored. It's for God. And if it's for God, nothing short of your very best effort and total dedication is acceptable. Paul says to the Romans in Romans 12, do not be slothful in zeal. Don't be lazy. Don't just kind of float along. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord, whatever your hand finds to do. Work, school, marriage, do it with all your might. You get married and you're all excited. Remember, and the years pass and you just kind of get into this routine. You can get to this point where it's just two people that got used to living together under the same roof. You've forgotten to water the plant. It's just kind of withered there. Do it with all your might. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. Your spouse is co-heir to eternal life. God has given you the most precious and beloved person in the universe to you after the Lord Jesus himself. He's given you to each other to reflect the fierce love between him and the church. It's a high calling. He's given you to each other to help one another grow in sanctification together. Marriage cannot become just a humdrum routine. Marriage cannot become an afterthought. Marriage cannot be two solitudes living in the same house. God calls us to a deliberate focus on being the best, the most Christ-like husband or wife, to invest time and energy and attention, to nourish, to build, to be growing in the Lord in our marriage. And if your marriage has become not that, then men, especially men, step up and lead and start today. Don't start tomorrow. Deal with it. Parenting. What has God given your hand to do? He's given you children of God and trusted into your care for a time. They are eternal beings. They were created to glorify and praise God with infinite worship. There is no project, no work, no duty that has greater and more long-lasting consequences than the raising of your children. God has given them to you to prepare them, to teach them, to start doing that right now, to praise God. Don't leave that to the school. Definitely don't leave that to the government. Don't leave it to social media. Don't leave it to their friends to bring them up, to form their character. Instead, focus, plan, pay attention, parent with all your might. Whatever your hand finds to do, that includes self-care and rest. We've just come through a time of Christmas vacation for many of us. And there's also, of course, the weekly rhythm of work and rest. We take care of ourselves with all our might. We rest with all our might because we are not our own. We have been bought with a price. Our bodies belong to the Lord, so we invest time and effort to seek as much as possible strong, healthy bodies, strong, healthy minds. We go to bed on time, especially on Saturday night, right, young people, as we prepare for worship. We observe the weekly Sabbath rest. We take breaks and holidays with all our might to seek rest and refreshment so we can get back to work for God, so we have more strength to do everything we do for God with all our might. Well, we could multiply the examples, but you get the point. Whatever God sets before you, don't do it half-heartedly. Don't just pay it lip service. Throw yourself into it. Evangelism, worship, the knowledge of scripture, prayer, fellowship, acts of service, the communion of saints, but also suffering and affliction. If God has given you in your life suffering and affliction, do it with all your might. If God has given you the task of a terminal illness in which you glorify God, die for God with all your might. Now, this sounds like a hard thing. It sounds like hard work. All your might, straining and striving. Sounds a bit much. But how can I do this? How much might do I have? I don't have a lot of might. I don't have a lot of strength. Brother and sister, as always, what God commands, for that he will equip us. Isaiah 41 verse 10, fear not for I am with you. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Philippians 4, 13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Ephesians 6, 10, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. and to a people that felt totally incapable in Nehemiah 8 verse 10, the Spirit of the Lord declares, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. The joy of the Lord is your strength. And Moses sings after Exodus, the Lord is my strength and my song. And that's why we can throw our hearts into our life and our work and into a new year, because we rest in the Lord with all our might. Brothers and sisters, the Christian life is not a dour and a sour and a defeated and a self-flagellating life of misery, where we're always feeling bad because we're not doing enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. Not a good enough dad. Not a good enough mum. not a good enough this or that. That's not the Christian life. In the strength of the Lord, we exalt, we seize the day, we feast, we rejoice and delight in our labor and the fruit of our labor with all our might, for we do it in the strength of God and that is our joy. And so we've seen in point one, do what God gives you now. Point two, do it with all your might. And the third place, do it before forever comes, because now is the time to do it. Life's day is ending. The darkness of death is rushing towards all of us. For there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going, says the preacher. Now, Sheol here is the Old Testament way of describing the realm of the dead from the viewpoint of the living. It is simply the grave, the place of silence where earthly activity ends. So from the point of view of being on this earth, being alive, that's when the life on this earth ends. That's all the word means in this context. And the preacher, Kohelet, piles up four nouns to stress the comprehensive finality that this has got to be the end for this life under the sun. There's no work, there's no thought, no knowledge or wisdom. There's no work. There are no more deeds to do when you are in the grave. No more hammering of nails, no more sowing of seeds, No more raising children. It's done. There's no more thought. You think of Psalm 146, which speaks about man dying. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth. On that very day, his plans perish. The grave comes. All our plans and all our projects and all our ideas for this life, they come to an end. There's no knowledge in the grave. There's no more growth or learning as we have it available to us under the sun. There's no more of those glorious lessons learned through the deepest pain and suffering. We don't get those ever again, only here. And those who have suffered greatly, those who are suffering greatly, they know what I'm talking about. That in the greatest suffering and affliction is when we often see the sweetest vision of God's love and God's goodness and God's faithfulness. So much so that the Christian who has suffered greatly often says, I wouldn't want it any other way. It has been good, so good. But death has ended that kind of learning. And there's no wisdom. There's no more daily practice of godly living under the sun. No more of the practice of choosing to do right in a world which offers all kinds of wrong choices. Death ends every earthly opportunity. It is the total negation of human activity under the sun. Now, for the Old Testament hearer, this would have landed as a thunderclap. Live the life that God gives you now because Sheol is coming. The grave is coming, and that ends all opportunity. But already in the book of Ecclesiastes, the preacher hints that death cannot have the last word. Look at chapter 12, verse 14. God will bring every deed into judgment. What does that mean? That means that your deeds are not forgotten. They are remembered by God. And here is the seed of the gospel, hope, right there in Ecclesiastes. And in Christ, that hope is fulfilled. Sheol is conquered. Jesus entered into death. He broke its gates. He rose victorious. And his resurrection intensifies the urgency to live well, to do whatever our hand finds to do with all our might. Because all our sins and all the failures to do what God has given us to do, they have been nailed to that cross. And because all the work of our hands is sanctified, it is made holy by the power of his resurrection. That is why what you do now in Christ is not swallowed up by death, but it is carried forward into eternity. This embodied life is our one unique season to marry and to raise children and grow families in Christ, to share the gospel with unbelievers, to lead spiritual children, to know and follow the Lord Jesus, to grow in wisdom and sanctification through struggle and through suffering and through affliction. Only here, in this life, on this earth, and that makes this present life uniquely precious. It is the one season to labor, to sow, to live wisely in ways that will echo into eternity. What does the Bible say? Revelations 14, verse 13. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, their deeds follow them. The deeds that they did with all their might, they follow them. What does Paul say to the Corinthians? 1 Corinthians 15, after he's talked about the power of Christ's death and resurrection, he says, because Jesus is raised from the dead, your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Vain in the sense of useless or empty, so your labor in the Lord is not useless. So what is God calling us to do, brothers and sisters? He's calling us to take life seriously. God gives you things to do right now. And these are now or never tasks. You cannot marry after death. You cannot raise children after you die. You cannot evangelize after death. You can no longer use the resources of this world to advance the coming of the kingdom after death. You can no longer use the resources of this world to win friends who will welcome you into everlasting habitations. You cannot suffer for God's glory after death. and you cannot repent after death. And if you're here this morning and you have not yet repented and put all your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you in the name of God to repent and to believe and to be saved because after death you can't anymore. Now is the time. So what will you do with your little dash? You know that little dash on your gravestone between the beginning and the end date? Looks so small, but it's so very, very weighty. That dash, that dash is all the time you have on this earth to work, to plan, to learn, to live wisely before the Lord. And once it's over, it's over. There are no re-dos. There are no repeats. But here is the hope of the gospel in Christ. In Christ, that little dash is not wasted. It is a seed sown for eternity. And what you do now for him, raising your children in Christ, speaking his name to your neighbor, serving his church, advancing the cause of his kingdom, living wisely day by day. What you do with all your might right now is gathered by God into the eternal harvest of righteousness. The dash is short, but in Christ its fruit is eternal. So as we begin a new year, don't waste your dash on trivial things. Receive the life that God places in your hands and do it. Do it with all your might. Do it now. Living today forever, this is how we live. This is how we live in our fleeting lives in this world of mist. We put on our festal garments. We sit at the table. We enjoy the wife of our youth. We rejoice in our daily bread and wine because these are gifts from our father's hand. So go from here, ready to work valiantly and to feast joyfully with a heart of faith and thanksgiving until the day. that our Lord Jesus Christ gathers the fruit of your dash into eternity. Amen.