Well, that was an awkward approach. It's usually from this way. No problem. Well, we've not been for a while in Ecclesiastes, and this is in our regular succession. We're returning. We had completed or I had preached sermons through the end of Chapter 10. So we're on Ecclesiastes 11 now. Our text for this evening is just the first verse. I'm going to read the first four verses, but we will be looking only at the first verse. Here now, God's holy word. Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a serving to seven and also to eight, for you do not know what evil will be on the earth. If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth. And if a tree falls to the south of the north and the place where the tree falls, there it shall lie. He who observes the wind will not sow and he who regards the clouds will not reap. Thus far, God's holy word. Let's pray, Lord, in heaven. Will you not revive us that your people may rejoice in you? Father, we thank you for the evidences of that refreshing, even this day, Lord's Day by Lord's Day, we experience such and Lord, we pray. We pray that our Lord's days. will come more and more to shape the whole rest of our weeks, that we would be more concerned to challenge a priority for you on those other six days, that we would be more concerned to bring this day into the other six than any of the other six into this day. So, Lord, help us and guide us by your spirit. Bless us now as we hear your word. In Jesus name. Amen. Well, the wisdom, beloved of the Lord, the wisdom of proverbial literature, such as we have here in Ecclesiastes. This is proverbial literature, wisdom literature. The wisdom of such is sometimes rather patent, obvious, and other times it's somewhat obscure. And our text tonight, may it first blush, be a bit of one of those obscure sayings, cast your bread upon the water. upon the waters, for you will find it after many days." It sounds maybe a bit perplexing, perhaps contrary to common sense. After all, who wants soggy bread? But a bit of reflection clears up any such misunderstanding and discovers that this command is actually a call to faith and obedience. A call, first of all, to venture out. To venture out. We sang about that this morning in the last hymn. Venture on him. Venture wholly. Let no other trust intrude. To venture out. And secondly, to reap a great harvest. So then let us draw near to attend to this call to venture out and reap a great harvest that comes from the preacher, from Kohelet, from the great wise one. This call to cast your bread upon the waters is a call, I would maintain, to venture out in faith, to trust the Lord in the face of daunting circumstances. And of course, the hymns that we've sung tonight have set us up for this. May I say, we've grown as a congregation in some of our spiritual understanding, and that's evident through our hymn choices. Please don't misunderstand me. But you might say, well, aren't all the hymns equally good? No, all the word of God is, but all the hymns are not. And our choices of hymns have gotten better. They've gotten deeper. They've gotten more spiritually informed. And that shows something good about what God is doing in us and doing in our hearts here. And I think that particularly the fact that we sing a lot about we're going to follow the Lord. We want to walk by not sight, but by faith. We want to live for him. Whatever may happen. Come what may. He's sovereign. We're his subjects and we're grateful and thankful to him. And we want to walk with him. Well, this call is a call, this call to cast your bread upon the waters. It's a call to venture out in faith, to trust the Lord in the face of daunting circumstances. Now, you might well wonder, what is the historical circumstance of this? What does it have specific reference to? It should be noted that commentators differ. They're all over the board on what's the specific reference here, cast your bread upon the waters. Some see this, this command to cast your bread upon the waters, as a sort of charitable sending forth of one's wealth. There's quite a bit that's been written about that. You ought to take what God has given to you, what you have, and you ought to properly share it. You ought to give to others freely some of the targums, which are comments of rabbis on this, talk about this, talk about sharing and giving what you have. Some see it particularly as the expected return from the maritime trade in spite of clear risks. In other words, you load your goods in ships, you send it out, your wealth, you send it out on the water, and it's risky. More so then, even than now, in terms of maritime, what happens with ships. But you send it out and you look for a good return, though there are risks. Some see it as a kind of call to spiritual extravagance. And, of course, what's attractive about any of those is they all have some truth in them. They point to right things. I take a bit of a different view of this. I think here that the metaphor, and there are several that I have in support of this, that the metaphor is agricultural and can be seen in something like the annual planting cycle of the Egyptians. The Nile floods yearly, and as several note, Teddy notes, for example, the time for sowing seeds in the Nile Delta in the years before controlled irrigation was to wait until this annual inundation, this annual flood, to wait until that annual flood receded and as the waters went down to cast the seed onto the water. And of course it would settle down and they would enter the rich loam and there be planted. So you would cast the seed, this was a common practice, on the receding floodwaters it would be deeply, or not deeply, but to planting level deposited in the rich loam. and a harvest come forth. Will such a procedure doubtless look foolish to the uninitiated? I mean, if you didn't know, if you're going with a farmer or something and here's this flood and the waters are going down and the guy's throwing seed on the water, what are you doing? You're wasting the seed. To the uninitiated it might look odd, to those who don't quite know about the practice, and even to those who are experienced, you can imagine what would lurk there for them. Will it work this time? In fact, anybody who does a job, particularly that is public, always has that question. Anybody in the performing arts. In the performing arts, you don't ever know. I was just watching something, unsurprising I suppose, that involved an interview with Luciano Pavarotti from some years past. And here he was getting ready for one of his great recitals in 1989. He was going to have this recital in Barcelona, Spain. Now, by 1989, he has established as one of the greatest tenors in the history of music. And he's about to have this recital. And he's saying to the interviewer, well, you can tell he's saying, well, we don't know. We don't know what the instrument will do. I don't know whether my voice will be faithful to me or not. I don't know how it will go. In other words, when you're a performer like that, every time you go out there, you don't go out there saying, I got this thing sewed up. I mean, you go out there and you hope that it goes well. And that's the way anybody in that kind of business is. It was a marvelous recital, by the way, in Barcelona. But there's this question, and you can imagine, you know, you're casting your seeds upon the water. Will it work this time? You could imagine a father explaining to the kid. The kid says, Dad, why are we doing this? You know, he's never seen it before. And he says, well, that's what we do here in the Nile Delta. And the water is going to recede. It's going to lodge there in the rich soil, and it's going to come forth. It takes faith. It takes belief of a sort. It takes trust to cast those seeds. Faith, let me just say this, faith as to its saving act is always to be distinguished from the obedience that is the prime evidence and consequence of faith. So don't think I'm just calling all of this faith. No, I'm saying that this is faith, that this is a trust, and then a following obedience, a consequence of that faith. Without faith, We will never obey and where true faith is present, obedience always follows. So there's belief and then there is the action that follows. But again, you can think of all the questions back to our planter that might occur. to the planter on such an occasion. Will the seed be properly deposited in the soil? I mean, you don't seem to have a lot of control over it when it's on the water. Of course, when you broadcast seed, I mean, the way planting used to be done, you weren't carefully dropping it anyway. You were doing this. You were broadcasting it. That's called broadcasting. So, you know, we come to radio and television and you send something out. That's broadcasting. But you can imagine the questions. Will the seed be properly deposited in the soil? Will it, in time, germinate and produce a rich harvest? Perhaps all will be lost. I mean, you can think about this at any time. You know, maybe you have a presentation to make it work and it's not that you don't know your stuff, but you shouldn't take it for granted. There's an effort that has to be made. You don't say, well, I mean, when you start saying, I could do this in my sleep, When you start doing your job with the attitude, I could do this in my sleep, that's not lost on everybody. The people that that are watching that are involved, you're putting them to sleep. Now, you need to have a there needs to be there needs to be this venture out and trust. Here's the lesson for us. Venture out in faith. Trust the Lord. The Proverbs say with all your heart, lean not to your own understanding. Acknowledge Him in all your ways, and He will direct your path. Walk by faith, not sight. This is what you must do to obey the call to die to sin and live to righteousness. That's the call that comes to us. To die to sin, to live to righteousness. This call to put off the old man, which is what we do. If we have faith, if we're trusting in the Lord, that is evidence, the fruit of that faith manifests itself in our lives by putting off the old and putting on the new. And this call to put off the old and to put on the new is daunting. It's daunting. If you're serious about it, it's most challenging. You have to venture out to do it. You have to venture to trust the Lord. You know, I know you've heard one of the illustrations that I give of this. You give illustrations about the venture aspect of faith. Remember the fellow who's climbing the sheer cliff face there and the rope breaks and he falls a couple of hundred feet and he grabs onto a branch. But the cliff floor is still a couple hundred feet below and he begins to yell out, help, help. He realizes he can't keep holding on. He's saved for the moment. Is there anybody out there? And finally, yes, I'm out here. What do you want me to do? Let go. Help, help. Is there anybody else out there? You have to trust. You have to trust. You have to trust and then obey. You have to come to him, trusting in nothing but him. And as you purpose more and more to walk with Christ, as you purpose to obey, you'll have a battle on your hands. This is sort of following up to what we talked about this morning. You'll have a battle on your hands, and the more committed you are to it, the more it intensifies. In other words, as you purpose, say we're thinking of a new year, coming into a new year, controlling appetites, checking your greed, reigning in lust, dying to pride, killing deceitfulness, gossip and slander, determining not to waste time or money. As you do these things, as you say this, I'm going to spend my time and my money, I'm going to use the resources God has given me, my time, treasure and talent wisely for Him. The more you purpose to do that, the more you'll see your need of grace, the more you'll see the battle that you have on your hands. Dying to the flesh is a hard, necessary, sweet and glorious work. Think of this not only on the personal level, but the corporate level. How can the church best do this? And how do we do this? Think of it that way. Cast your bread upon the waters. That's what we do when we preach. That's what we do when we preach. Everything we do in the church. In the work of the local church, in the support of the home missionaries and the support of the foreign missionaries, we're casting our bread upon the water. We preach the gospel here and we support home and foreign missionaries with our prayers in our pocketbooks. We're going to be having one of our foreign missionaries here in a couple of weeks. Be in prayer for him. Be attentive as he speaks. You'll know better how to pray for him when he leaves, to pray and support him. Also, being a witness wherever you go, cast your seeds among the family, friends at work. Think about that. How can I do this? Lord, help me to do this. Cast your bread upon the waters. And you say, well, tell me precisely how to do this at work. No, you figure it out. I'm telling you, you need to do it. You've got to figure it out. I can't. I mean, if you need to counsel with me and talk about your particulars and how you can, but love finds a way. You see, sort of like what we were talking about this morning. If you love somebody, think about when you're first in love for your wife. You don't go around, the love moves you. You don't go around like you're engaged, you're in love, and you don't go around saying to people, I love this woman, but I don't have any idea. Excuse me, sir, can you tell me what you do when you really care for somebody when you love them? I have no idea. I love this woman, but I don't know what to do. Should I be nice to her? Should I say nice things to her? Should I buy her some gifts? And the person will be like, what kind of idiot are you? Don't you know? I mean, doesn't love instruct you? Doesn't love move you? You don't have to have a manual to be told. You know, sometimes after people are married, they have to be reminded about these things, and then they have to be told. And you have to deepen in this, and it gets a lot deeper than that. But there's a certain momentum that comes from that. And if you love your family, if you love your friends and neighbors, if you love your colleagues, your co-workers, You'll be in prayer. You'll be looking for opportunities. You need to make the most of every opportunity. This is just an Old Testament way. This is just a wisdom way of saying make the most of every opportunity. Cast your bread upon the waters. Sow those seeds. Purpose to walk in such faith and obedience to venture on the Lord. We can come back to say this and the devil, the flesh and the world will fight you. They'll fight you. Are you crazy? That unholy trinity says, you can't give of your time, treasure and talent to the kingdom. You need it for yourself and your family. That's when you purpose to give to the church, when you purpose to give to God's work, to support the gospel ministry, as we all ought to be in support here of the gospel ministry. You're saying, are you talking about giving money? Yes, that's part of it. Giving money. If God has you, as the old preacher said, he has your pocketbook. Yes, giving to support the work. But we're told, well, you need it for yourself and your family. You need to seek first His kingdom and all these things will be added. You can't speak to that relative or co-worker who's asking questions that deserve a gospel answer. Is that the case? You can't speak to them? We're asked things all the time that we could give a gospel answer to. But we're not in the right frame. We're not prepared to do so. Well, we need to get prepared. You can. Venture out. Cast your bread, your seed upon the receding waters. Of course, you'll never do this unless you're responding in faith to the word as you hear it preached. The word says come. The spirit says come. The enemy says you've got to be kidding. This stuff doesn't work. Venture out. Cast your bread upon the waters and reap a great harvest. As the second part of our verse says, you will find it after many days. Cast your bread upon the waters for you will find it after many days. Historically, again, let's go back to our our illustration, our agricultural picture of Egypt. The waters of the flooded Nile Basin recede. The seed is deposited in the rich loam of the delta. It takes root, it germinates, it sprouts forth and it produces a bountiful harvest. Yes, it does work. It does work. A bountiful harvest produced from unpromising beginnings is the story of our faith. Think of that. Think of that. A bountiful harvest produced from unpromising beginnings is the story of our faith. Did things look hopeful? In Jesus' life, think about what we've just been thinking about. A lowly, humble birth. A hard life. A hard life. They're saying, if not this, the carpenter's son? We know he's from Nazareth. Who does he think he is? Telling us these things. Who does he think he is? and the death that he died on a shameful cross. This doesn't look good. It doesn't look hopeful. You know, all the disciples at the time of his arrest didn't go into a prayer meeting thanking God that his purposes were being fulfilled. They forsook him and fled. They couldn't see the end of this. This had all come to nothing. The Jesus movement, as you might speak of it, as far as the disciples were concerned at that point, was bust. They didn't know what was going to happen. They were confused. They were perplexed. And yet the resurrection, as we saw this morning, truth springing forth from the ground, the resurrection and all that followed made clear that the venture was not misguided and that which appeared insignificant or likely to come to nothing, can and has and will conquer. You think even of Christianity in its early days, it looked bleak often, and there were 10 waves of persecution in the early church until it became clear, as I mentioned recently in a sermon, That there were so many more and more becoming Christians, and it became clear that this thing called Christianity wasn't going away and that this thing called Christianity wasn't. This horrible thing that had been said to be there, haters of mankind, they're atheists, they're they're incestuous, they're cannibals, they're all of these things that they were charged with. If you're confused, you can go back and hear that sermon. That there are all these things. No, it became clear. until the point where Constantine himself, the emperor, is converted and he becomes a Christian. And the Roman Empire, Augustine writes in the City of God, the Roman Empire, that mighty empire of a thousand years. Empires come and empires go. That empire was falling. People were saying, how can it be falling when we've become Christian? And Augustine says it's not in the earthly empire that's guaranteed an eternal lease on life. It's the city of God. It's that kingdom of Jesus Christ, which shall never fail. Which shall never end. And so we've seen it grow, we've seen it grow and grow and grow. And yes, as we said this morning. Broader evangelicalism and even within our own narrower form circles, we see the need for revival. We see that those out there who aren't doctrinally correct have nothing, oftentimes, and those of us who are doctrinally correct need life, truly so. Well, what does this mean for us personally and corporately? That if we cast our bread upon the waters, we'll find it after many days, personally in our lives and those of our family and friends. Trust and obey and you will reap spiritual blessings. You'll know the joy and peace of the kingdom. You will bring forth a harvest of the fruit of the Spirit. Not the works of the flesh, but walk with the Lord. Walk with Him. Trust Him and obey. There's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey. Walk with Him and you'll bring forth love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, the fruit of the Spirit. This is what you need now. This is what you need in the coming year. To wait on the Lord to seek this, to to seek to seek his revival and to bring us into a greater place of spiritual richness. So we need this personally. We need it corporately in our church here and throughout the world. A rich harvest awaits the needed revival looms in which we're sanctified corporately and which we proclaim the gospel with greater clarity and power. I was talking to a fellow minister. recently, who was very encouraged that as he preached the gospel. As he preached, in fact, while it was interesting, he was let me just hold off on a second on where he was preaching from, but he said he was preaching the gospel and this fellow who this is a church plant and the church plant comes from a larger established church, which has an elder in it. He'd been praying for years for this nephew. And this nephew of this elder in the mother church was in the church plant and had been coming a few times to the church plant and had not been in church. I don't know if ever. I'm not clear on that. But he's in the church plant. He's apparently this huge, tall, big guy. And he's there in the church plant and the fellow's preaching the gospel. And he says, he said, I've never seen anything like it before. As I preached, This man was converted in front of my face. You could see it. You could see his coming to understand the truth. You could see his coming to Christ. He said he came up to me afterwards. He was weeping and he said, now I understand. I understand. I understand the gospel. I'm trusting in Christ. I mean, he said it was just a wonderful thing to sort of seeing it in front of your eyes. And this is what's going on. And I said to him, I said, what were and we sort of both said it at the same time. I said, what passage were you preaching from? And then before he could answer, we both said, well, not that it mattered. Didn't matter. It didn't matter what passage he was preaching from. It's the word of God. It's the spirit of God who does the work. I mean, it wasn't. And he was saying, I've never felt so helpless in a sense. And so the sense of being along for the ride, like I'm not doing this in this man. I couldn't do it. And, you know, this is happening to this man. And Joe Blow over here is taking a nap. You know, this guy looks like he's bored out of his skull. I'm not pointing at anybody over here. I would be pointing this way. This fellow over here, theoretically, hypothetically, is bored out of his skull. And this guy is coming to Christ. That's that's what we have before us, brothers and sisters. He was casting his bread upon the water. You say you're saying, well, well, you mean we have to do it a certain way? No, you have to do it. God is pleased to take our little paltry, failing, faltering. Miserable efforts and make wonderful things out of them. But he does want us to trust and obey. You see, it's sort of like if you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. Calvin at one point says, if you wait, he talks about Christians who say who are asked to serve and they say, no, I can't serve. I'm not ready to serve. Now, again, yes, we need to be ready in a proper way. But in other words, I can't do this. And he says, if you wait till you think you're ready, you're never going to serve. You need to serve. You need to serve right now. You need to serve where you are. There's that old gospel song. I don't know if you know it. My grandmother used to sing it. It's called Brighten the Corner Where You Are. This is the old Baptist roots come out probably. You know, I know the Presbyterians here, they don't know this song, but do you know it? Amen. There's a good reform man. He knows right in the corner where you are. Someone far from harbor. You may guide across the bar right in the corner where you are. And see, it's content to fill a little space is saying that it's not you're not over there. I mean, if you're in this, everybody's in their own space. We have our little spaces, but you're not content to fill a little space. I mean, that's not the contentment. It's content to fill a little space. I'm happy to brighten the corner where I am. And see, so many people want to do great things for the Lord that they don't do anything for the Lord. Give it up. Stop that. Stop. Well, when I find what? Some service worthy of me to do for the Lord, I'll do it. Cast your bread upon the waters. Venture out. Venture on Him. Venture wholly. What does it say if we're all casting our bread? For you will find it after many days. It will come back. There will be a great harvest. Personally, the fruit of the Spirit in your life. Corporately, think of the mission of the church corporately finally here. Even as we may wait long personally and in our families to see blessing, to see a return, I know this was the case with, you've heard me mention this before, with my dad's mother. We prayed for her for years. And my grandmother, she went to church. She read the Bible. But if you were to ask her, why are you going to heaven? She would say, because I'm a good person. I go to church. I read the Bible. I keep the Ten Commandments. She was one of those persons who really would say that. And most people would go, oh, OK. Well, yeah, you're right. You do. My dad was always saying, Mom, we're sinners, we can do nothing to save ourselves. And less than a year before she died in her mid 80s, she came to see it. She was converted, truly trusting in Christ, not in herself, not in all of her righteousness and good works. Now, I know that's against that's against all the statistics. You see the charts, you know, conversions, you know, if you're in the teens, you're pretty good. Twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. I mean, by the time you get to the fifties, according to the demographics, you might as well just go to hell, if I can just put it that way, because you're not going to get converted, according to the experts. It ain't going to happen. But with God, these things that are impossible with us, they're possible with God. Cast your bread upon the waters that will return after many days. Think about think about the East. Think about India and China, how long they've proven resistant. India still somewhat, but we're hearing things. We're getting bits of news about movement in India, China. We don't really know exactly what's going on in China. But from what we know and from people that I trust who have been there and have come back, things there are really wonderful things happening. But the Christian church has been laboring and praying for centuries. Japan, we still haven't seen it. But I happen to say, I'm not giving up on Japan. I'm not giving up on that great land. It hasn't happened. Think, of course, of Korea. Incredible things. You say, what's that have to do with this? This is at the corporate level. This is what the church has been doing in its history. Casting its bread upon the waters. Preaching the gospel. Some places it's taken over. Now places in the West, it appears to be withering away. But we have to keep doing, don't we? We have to keep laboring. We have to keep planting. Brothers and sisters, a great and glorious harvest personally and corporately awaits if you will only walk in faith and obedience as you've been doing, as you've been doing. But do it more and more. Do it more and more. You know, don't let don't let somebody else do it for you. Schoringa on the airplane flight, the fellow from Amsterdam. You know about this? The terrorist was going to blow the plane up coming into Detroit. And he saw a fire and he didn't call the stewardess. He didn't say, well, somebody else needs to do this. He leapt on the fellow, he put out part of the fire, a good Dutch fellow. He put out part of the fire with his hands and they got the blankets and they got the fire extinguishers. And he said, I saw this and I said, the fellow's going to blow the plane up. I have to do something. I have to act, not call, you know, Stewardess, stewardess, I have to act. And, you know, if you think of who we are and where we've come and where we've been, what a great mercy. I mean, where our society is, what we deserve. Do we think about that? You ought to be thanking God for sparing that plane. That was a wonderful thing. acting smart in the aftermath of it, I'm not going to say more than that, but we need to be thoughtful and careful. Venture out, cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father. Help us to act in the coming year in faith and obedience. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.