something the favor of the Lord is, is loving kindness to us. Let's praise him for that as we go to prayer. Father, we do ask, as we reflect on the nature of your everlasting love towards us that will never end, that you would help us to be people that live in light of that wisdom, that we would not live for temporal things, but rather that we would live with an eternal mindset, that we would not be fools in this world, but that we would seek to follow the wisdom of our God. Father, we do thank you that your favor has no end to our lives, that your loving kindness will extend to those who have put their trust in our living in a relationship with you, that your favor on them will continue forevermore. We do ask that you would give us the wisdom to be able to live in that reality, even in the midst of difficulty and suffering, and Father, when life doesn't go the way we feel it should, when the expectations of life are not met, we ask that you would help us to realize that you are the God who meets every expectation. That not one of our expectations will go unmet because you are our everlasting God. So we ask that you would help our faith here this morning that our minds will be geared toward your word. In Jesus name, in Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. You turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 7 again. We introduced this chapter last time. So Ecclesiastes chapter 7. We're working our way through this book, this memoir of the great King Solomon, And he is toward the end of his life. He was the wisest man who ever lived. And this morning, we're going to be diving into some proverbs that describe for us the characteristics of a wise man. Last time, we saw that tragedy and death remind us that life is fleeting, that this world has not yet been renewed, and that we need to put our hope in the Lord, not in the fleeting pleasures Jerry Bridges wrote, if our father takes away our all, does he not give us his all, infinitely richer and more enduring? Many people come to this life, and they're looking around them, and they think to themselves, well, is God really in control out there? Why is my life so challenging? And the book of Ecclesiastes really tries to deal with that question. And today, we're going to be answering That question in this form, the way you deal with the unexpected challenges of life is to embrace the wisdom of God. And that is to really be a wise person. and embrace those characteristics of those who are wise. And Solomon is going through chapter 7, and he's using this word better. He's saying to do this is better than to do that. To think this way is better than to think that way. And so as he does this, he's going to talk about the fact that Wisdom is better than foolishness. Even though wisdom in and of itself, even a wise man also faces the limitations of being under the sun. In other words, even he succumbs to the pressures of life as we face the frailty of living in the flesh and still fighting our sin nature here on this earth. Jeffrey Bull. was an Englishman sent as a missionary to Tibet by a brethren assembly in the outskirts of London. And Jeffrey was saved as a youth. He was baptized at the age of 15. He originally planned to go into banking. His plan was to live a comfortable life there in England. But Buhlfeldt called to God to take the gospel to Central Asia. And he spent a number of years initially in Asia, but then went over to Tibet. And he ended up going there right after the Chinese communists annexed Tibet. And he got really caught in the middle of that and ended up spending three years in a communist Chinese prison. And he wrote this. He said, as he experienced this, he said, all had moved forward so perfectly, and then suddenly, in a moment, all seemed reversed. What had transpired in the heavenlies? Could he who had fallen as lightning from heaven, the devil, contend with the one who writheth upon the heavens by his name Yahweh, Yah? I could find no answer. Satan was striking at the very root of my faith and calling." He wrote this in a book he wrote. And he was dealing with his suffering during this time that he spent these years in this Chinese prison. And they tried to brainwash him, treated him very, very poorly. Sometimes we feel like Jeffrey did. We feel that we don't understand what God is doing. We feel that we can find no answer and that literally it feels like Satan is striking at the very root of our faith and our calling as believers in Christ. Solomon calls us to really trust in God by choosing that even in the midst of life difficulties that we can live in God's wisdom, that we can have the characteristics of a wise man and even find purpose and dare to say even joy.