You may be seated. Our text today is from Ecclesiastes 6.10 as we've read through 7.22. If you have a Bible, You likely have a chapter heading that has been inserted by the editors in the ESV. It's way back in 5.8. And then you have another one in chapter 7, verse 1. Of course, those are added later and not original to the text. This is a longer text. It doesn't divide particularly well anyway that you slice it, so we'll have to deal with the whole long text at one time. So in this text, let me, well, let me orient us a little bit. It's not hard these days to hear opinions. We have a lot of different opinions from a lot of different people, right? Professional athletes have opinions about how politicians should do their jobs, and politicians have lots of opinions about how athletes should do their jobs. I don't yet understand why Congress had Professional baseball players testify before Congress, but they did, and the two seem intermingled quite commonly. Actors and musicians in popular culture have no end of opinions about the things that they see and the observations they make about our political and social life. They have no more or less training on those things than anybody else. Their opinion is no better informed than that of any random person you might find on the street. But everybody listens to them because we recognize their faces and name. Even the professional pundits on the radio and TV shows whose job it is to form opinions typically don't have much more background or knowledge than you do. They've read some articles that their handlers have prepared for them, and they've got a pretty face or a cunning wit and the willingness to go to extremes that would have made previous generations blush. It's one of the ironies of modern life. The more wise someone is, Solomon says, the more humble they will be. And thus, in our modern world, the less likely we are to hear from them. Now, like all wisdom literature, our selection from Ecclesiastes today is designed to make you a wise man or a wise woman. He's already shown us in Ecclesiastes that wisdom is of great gain and greatly to be desired. But of course, knowing God is the higher value still. We know God through his son, Jesus Christ, of course. And as people following the Lord Jesus, we want to be wise people. A wise person can do more for the Lord than a fool. He can live his life in a more fruitful way, not only producing more, but having a better testimony. Wise people make the land peaceful so the gospel can be preached. They recognize the difference between good and evil, and so they promote holiness. They pursue what is good and make the world a better place for their neighbors, for those around them. The Lord Jesus, in His grace, has made us a part of His kingdom. He graciously allows us to serve Him, so we must become wise. And today we learn that we become wise through humility. I want you to look at verse 10 of chapter 6. It's printed in your bulletin there. This is the first line of today's text. As I said, it is a complicated text, so I'm going to try to walk you through it. As I said before, wisdom literature assumes that you have some prior knowledge of what has come before, not only before in the text itself, the book of Ecclesiastes, but also what has come previously in biblical history. Second thing you have to remember about Ecclesiastes is that it is particularly concerned with life under the sun, not the afterlife, not the resurrection, but life that we live here as a people that will walk outside and the sun will shine down on us. We hope that it'll last at least to the end of the service. 610 states that a man is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. Now, if you have been here in our Ecclesiastes series, let me ask you, what is the indisputable force that is more powerful than any man under the sun? It's kind of like a Sphinx's riddle, isn't it? What is more powerful? The answer, of course, is death. Death is the great power that we all face in life. It's the very thing that ends our lives. Every human being on earth has been overcome or will be overcome by death. The great military generals, the dictators, it doesn't matter how fantastically rich you might be, everyone dies. And eventually, most, so many, such a high percentage we could almost say all, are entirely forgotten. Who were the top 20 richest people in ancient Egypt? You know King Tut and Ramses and Liam Neeson. That's about it. That's all you know. Their names are forgotten. They were well-known at the time. Nobody knows now. Now, move on to verse 12. Let's piece this text together. Who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life? Oftentimes people think, oh, that's a rhetorical question. They think that Solomon is being cynical because they have approached Ecclesiastes as if the preacher here is being hopeless. Well, he's not. It's not a rhetorical question. No one knows, the fool proclaims. Good or bad, who can say? Well, that's foolishness. We've studied six chapters of this answer already. Who can say what is good for man? We know the answer, the wise. A wise person can say what is good for man. The wise knows what is good for man. It's not an impossible question. The teacher, Solomon, is wise. And the answer that he has given us, how should we spend our days? Spend our days in wise living, enjoying our work, receiving all things as a gift from God. That's the answer. So now look again, who can tell man what will be after him under the sun? Another good question with another obvious answer. What's going to happen here on earth after you die? To that, nobody knows. What will this country be like 100 years from now? What will Portland be like when Julianna Sturtevant or Gabriel Van Gelder, our two newest babies, have grown and they are the oldest people that they know? We know that the kingdom of God will continue to grow. We know that someday we will rise again to the resurrection, to new life through the power of Christ. But all we know under the sun is that we will surely die. Knowledge of your death is the ultimate wisdom. And if you think about your funeral, what will they say? That's what we're being invited to in 7.1. And what I've been very surprised by this week is how often the Bible tells us to think about the day of our death. We're Christians, we often think, yes, I'm going to die and go to heaven. We think of the day of our death onward. But what the Bible often says, as Moses did way back in Psalm 90, he says, teach us to number our days so that we may get a heart of wisdom. Teach us to know that our time from now until death is limited. And in light of that, make us wise. Your death is coming. And when you know this, you can make that day the best day of your life. Your good name reflected in the words with which you are remembered, that's the ultimate goal of life under the sun. There are greater goals beyond that go well beyond the sun, but under the sun, that's the goal. and wise living is how we get that good name. So our task today is to live our lives so that the day of our funeral will be a blessing for many. Now, one writer contrasted these different sorts of funerals that he had been to. The first type, people said things like this. She loved her bingo. He was clever, boy. He could cut you apart with just a word. He really spent his time, you know, he was always in the garage making the most beautiful restored cars or fire hydrants or whatever. And then the other type of funeral, she loved her family and she loved strangers almost as much. He was so caring and thoughtful, he could build you up with just a word. His favorite thing to do was to disciple young men while they worked on cars together. So how do we get a good funeral? How do we ensure our obsequy, O-B-S-E-Q-U-Y, is a good one? This is a widely varied list that Solomon gives us here, but I think That if we're going to string this all together, what's going through Solomon's mind? Humility. Humility. Let me show this to you. Humility recognizes the very thing that Solomon has been saying for six chapters. We will die and eventually we will be forgotten. Learning to make peace with that. in the face of your impending end makes your life worthwhile. It's easy to despair with a faux peace that gives up on having any meaning in life whatsoever and simply resigns itself to death. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. That's not the hope that Solomon is talking about. It's also easy to try and create meaning in one's life by pretending that death will never come. But the statue of Lady Wisdom would hold meaning in one hand and death in the other and embraces both equally. So the teacher begins with advice that we don't typically consider. It is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting. If you would be wise, skip the party and attend the funeral. Verse 4, the heart of the wise is found in the funeral parlor, the heart of the fool is found in the comedy club. Now, America is the land of comedy clubs. Jerry Seinfeld said that, you know, if anybody who comes from another country to America to practice comedy, they've got to be crazy. That's like saying, I'm going to start a car company. I'm going to go to Germany and build cars. Or I'm going to go to France to make wine. Or I'm going to become a pasta maker in Italy. You might be the best pasta maker in Jacksonville, Florida, but you're not ever going to be the best pasta maker in Naples. Well, America is the land of stand-up comedy. In fact, other countries mock us for this. In France, Stand-up comedy doesn't exist. They do kind of variety shows where they'll tell jokes and funny stories, and then they'll bring out musicians and bands and skits. And the idea of just one man with a microphone and a water bottle, that doesn't make sense to them. Strictly American. We're a funny people. We like to laugh. We've got comedies aplenty. And here Solomon says, go to the funeral. This theme is found, in fact, throughout the Bible. It's not just in Ecclesiastes. Isaiah says in Isaiah 22 that the Lord God of hosts called for weeping and mourning, for baldness and wearing sackcloth, both signs of repentance. But instead what resulted, Isaiah says, was joy and gladness, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. The Apostle Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians. If the dead are not raised, he says, hinging everything in the Christian life on the resurrection, then let's do what Isaiah said. Then let's eat and drink for tomorrow we die. James, in the same vein, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Now, I want you to see what James just did there. He says, turn your laughter into mourning, and he calls that humbling yourself. To mourn, to grieve, is to enter into humility. It's to know your limitations on earth. You won't live forever. In fact, verse three of our text commands lament. Better to be sorrowful than to be full of laughter. The people who are always joking, always laughing, who never ponder or meditate on the brevity of life or the seriousness, the weightiness of our experience here on earth, this brief hundred years, typically less between the day of your birth and the day of your death. These are people who can never. Understand depth, they never grow wise because life for someone who just laughs and laughs and laughs is just about self satisfaction. Get to the next thrill, the next movie, the next TV show party, the next chance to get drunk or high or play a video game or waste time with the next entertainment or distraction. But I know that so many of you know. that life is more serious than that. A lot of you have lost babies before they were born, as have we. It's very common. It's something that you ought to mourn and ought to be able to mourn. When we lost our first baby, appallingly, the pastor didn't want to do a memorial service. And thankfully, the assistant pastor insisted that that would, in fact, take place. And that's entirely right. There is a place for a funeral or for a memorial service in the life of an unborn baby no matter how young when the baby was lost. And we will do that even if it's just a private service in your backyard. Simply taking a vacation to get over it or binging on movies or TV shows to try to forget the hurt might be helpful in the short term, but it won't make you wise. It won't make you a person of depth or understanding. It won't bring you into the real comfort with which you can comfort others, as Paul says. And as terrible an experience it is, God will bring good out of it if you wisely pursue that good. But it takes humility. It takes humility to mourn. A refusal to grieve is really from a place of pride, isn't it? I'm too strong. I'm too secure in myself. I've got faith, I don't need these petty emotions." The Lord Jesus certainly didn't say that. The Lord Jesus was about to raise Lazarus to new life, and there he wept. Don't tell me that your lack of weeping is your strength. In the same way, it takes more humility to receive the rebuke of a wise man than it does to hear fools singing your praises. This is still the path to wisdom. People don't like to be rebuked. Who are you? Right? There's a sharp disapproval and a correction of your actions. It tells us that we're wrong, that we make mistakes, that we've been foolish. It reminds us of our weakness. It is inherently humbling. It's not necessarily humbling to hear a rebuke, but it's humbling to actually take it to heart. I don't know if Solomon had the content even of the rebuke in mind. It might not be the words of the rebuke that are the helpful thing. That's not what he says. Even wise people are not infallible and might rebuke you for something you shouldn't ought to be rebuked for. The words can be better or worse, but the person who grows in wisdom in this verse is not the one who can tell the difference between a worthwhile rebuke and a bad one. It's the person who can humble himself to be able to receive that rebuke and can turn his back on receiving praise. Better to be corrected than celebrated in psalm. So humility means facing death, it means to mourn, receiving rebukes, and there's another element of humility that makes us wise and that is to accept our limitations. This is sort of a sub-theme that runs through the rest of this text, the next several verses. It's expressed in several ways, but if you consider that pride in some form or another is typically, I think we could say that pride is at the root of all sin in one way or another, it would make sense that humility would be at the root of all virtue. And so our next section deals with our limitations. Look at verse 7, we are limited in what we own and what others are obligated to give us. We are due some things and not others. Specifically, we are not due the subservience of others. Therefore, we don't oppress them. A despotic king, a king under a pure monarchy, a king who has no standard of the law but a king who is himself the law. He can't oppress anyone. He can do whatever he wants. And in that system of government, he can do it legally. But oppression is to humble yourself under a higher standard. What oppression is, is to take something from someone that isn't rightfully yours. It's the height of pride. Humility says, I have limitations. So let's explain it like this. Let's say that you're having some work done on your house by a contractor. And, you know, you've been taught it's just been him working on your house, putting in a wall or flooring or whatever, and so you've been talking to him. And you figured out that you have legally 90 days before you have to pay him, before he could go to a collections agency, even though the bill is due when the work is done. You've also figured out, because he's been talking, that it would be too expensive for him to hire a lawyer and take you to court over a non-payment. Sure, he would earn the money back in the end, but the cash flow of his small business can't stand to put $5,000 into another legal process because he happened to mention that he's already putting a bunch of money into a legal dispute with someone who didn't pay. You know I can get away with a non-payment and there's nothing that he can do. In fact, someone here told me that in their business, they routinely have people who don't pay. And sometimes they take them to court and sometimes they don't because they figure this is just going to be too much of a cash outlay to hire the lawyers or it's going to be damaging to our reputation because then this person will go around and say that we took them to court. Money owed ought to be paid. And more than anything, we ought to remember Psalm 9, the Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in time of trouble. And oppression applies not only to financial matters, but also to social matters, to ways that people are included or excluded, especially when they want to be in. It's as simple as excluding someone from a conversation or from a playgroup. Oppression warps your own mind. You end up thinking that you're more powerful than you are. You're not. You're not. I'm not. The Lord is powerful. Don't let your mind become warped by thinking that your slight ability to disadvantage your neighbor is a form of personal power. It's not going to work out well for you in the end. Bribes work in the same way. They make you believe that you're entitled to something by virtue of a position that you're not really entitled to. You haven't earned the money. It's just a manner of using your power to take advantage of others. We don't have a lot of cash bribes in this country, fortunately. There are lots of bribes of favors. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. But thankfully, as a matter of fact, interestingly what we see, in the world index of corruption, the top 19 countries with the lowest corruption levels all have a long history of prominent Christian ethics. The church was a foundation of these countries for many, many years. Then you have Japan, and then you have another six countries. On the bottom end, you have to go up 27. Starting from the most corrupt and working your way lesser and lesser, you have to go up 27 to find a corrupt country with a Christian background, with the exception of Venezuela, which is, of course, in the midst of a crisis right now. In verses 8 and 9, Solomon calls us to patience and long-suffering. Interestingly, he contrasts patience with pride. You're either patient or you're proud. He tells us that anger lodges in the heart of fools. Anger and impatience are further ways of demanding that everyone would bow to your will. Husbands, who are typically heads of the household, are especially prone to this. anger, frustration, impatience. But this is the difference between servant leadership and dictatorial leadership. Servant leadership humbly seeks the best for the people being led. The dictator says, I'm the important one here. Why aren't you obeying my commands? In the end, things are what they are. Water will boil at the rate at which God desires it to boil. Humble yourself and submit to that. And the kids will get into the car at the rate at which they're going to get into the car, even though they should have been in the car five minutes ago. Getting angry will not get them into the car faster. It will get them into the car more scared and more miserable. Yes, you have to instruct your children. Yes, you have to discipline your children. but without anger. I just read yet another study that complains about spanking and how spanking will ruin your children and spanking will make them horrible people and they will grow up to be sociopaths and probably you should just send them right to prison if you're going to spank them. Well, the distinction that these studies never seem to make is the difference between a calm parent applying corporal punishment to their child and a parent who lashes out in anger and frustration, swatting and striking their child. I'll take their studies seriously when they take discipline seriously. Interestingly, nostalgia, Solomon says, is another form of demanding what is not yours. It's a form of pride. Wasn't it better back when things were simpler? When children respected their parents? The teacher says, this is not wise thinking. It's right there in the text. The former days were better in some ways than they are today. In other regards, they were worse than they are today. From this point forward, things will get better in some respects and worse in others. The gospel will continue to grow. Overall, things are actually getting better. What can we say about such things? You know the answer. God controls all things, and whether the fortunes of our society, our country, or our family are going to get better or worse, these are in His hands. There's an acknowledgement in verse 11, an inheritance is an advantage. Previously, the teacher decried the vanity of wealth. Here he reveals it to us as worthwhile, but limited. Verse 12, money brings protection as does wisdom. It can preserve life, as indeed it does every time you buy groceries, but it has its limits. Most importantly, though, verse 13, we're always to remember that what God makes crooked, no one can make straight. You can't protect yourself from God. You can't straighten what He has made crooked. Only God can do that. You can't bend what He has made straight. There are many things that we suffer in this life that neither wisdom nor money can prevent or get us out of. It's to God alone. So, verse 14, be joyful when prosperity comes. When you have it, there's no need to act dour. when you receive a blessing. And that's why we shouldn't understand the commands to be mournful and weep as exhaustive. That doesn't mean there's never a time to celebrate. That doesn't mean there's never a time to be joyful. It means that your demeanor should have some balance. It means there should be space in your life for mourning as well as celebration. Be joyful when prosperity comes, but also remember that God has brought about the day of adversity as well. Think of the contrast between Charles Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge and his former employer, Fezziwig. Remember Fezziwig? Played by Fozzie Bear, right? Scrooge would hardly buy coal in the counting house. Bob Cratchit was, of course, freezing over there. In the Mickey version, he's got little icicles coming off of his nose and ears. But Scrooge thinks back to his wealthy former employer, who was jovial, friendly, and generous, and always kept the counting house warm and well-lit. Yo-ho, my boys, said Fezziwig. No more work tonight, Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let's have the shutters up, cried old Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands, before a man can say Jack Robinson. Scrooge recalled, he had the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Remember that God has made the hard days and he has made the joyful ones as well. It's not poverty or wealth that will give you joy or sorrow. Be humble enough to recognize that God has given both to you. Don't despair in poverty and don't put your hope in wealth. The last one that we'll be able to treat today, verses 16 and 17, be not overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise. Who would believe that that would be in the Bible? And then, of course, be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? Implying that you shouldn't be overly wicked, but maybe a little wickedness is okay after all. What is happening here? Solomon isn't talking about real righteousness. He's talking about pride. When he says, be not overly righteous, he's not talking about the righteousness that comes from a heart full of gratitude in response to Christ. He's talking about the righteousness of the Pharisees, the righteousness that must be seen. Look, everyone, I'll join you for dinner, but first I must say grace. May we have silence in the room, please? Latin or English, my friends, the sort of righteousness that claps off other people's comments. You know, I remember being a new Christian and thinking, yeah, I was reading, doesn't Jesus say, blessed are the poor? And sort of the campus crusade culture that I was a part of, this is kind of a thing that they did. And you've got people who are like, Matthew 5, 6. I think that's Matthew 5, 7. Well, let's check. Sword drill. Okay. You love God. We get it. We also had this trend where people would send email, email was kind of new in those days, and they'd send emails. And somebody said, in Christ, Bob, by the blood of the Lamb, Jim. Yeah, well, here's my email. By the blood of Him who was eternal before the throne and who has purchased us with His mighty blood, Kenny. You're like, okay, we all love the Lord here. I get it. That's great. Look at everyone. I'm so pious. Even the short-term missions trip, I'm not against the short-term missions trip. It's often a great way to experience new things, to learn. to be educated, but there's a certain over-righteousness that comes when someone... I met a young lady while at Sacred Road, and she was spending two years. She'd fundraised to be a missionary, and she just does one-week missions trips or two-week missions trips, notably, mostly in exotic and wonderful locations. Yep, next up is my missions trip. It's a surfing mission in Hawaii. You're a missionary. Someday may I love the Lord as you do. And be not overly wicked. Well, does that mean you can be a little wicked? Well, what Solomon says just a few verses later, there's no one who is so wise that they don't sin. All of us are sinners. What He means here isn't that a little bit of sin is okay, kind of mix it up. What He means is, in particular, if you want to be wise, don't sin boldly. You should never excuse your sin and say, well, I know Jesus forgives sin. I commit it, so this is a pretty good arrangement. Yes, you're going to sin every day. Your heart is prone towards rebellion. and it will be all the days of your life under the sun." That doesn't mean you should pursue that. You ought to move away from that. It should be our hope that though we sin, our sins should surprise us, they should be accidental, not something that you plan out three weeks ahead of time. That's overly wicked. Both of those things are achieved by humility. The humble man doesn't want to brag in his righteousness, nor does the humble man fearing God want to pursue wickedness. And most of all, we should be wise because we have the full story. Not only do we know about life under the sun until the day of our death, but we know about life afterwards. We have the promise of the mercy of Christ there to meet us on that last day when we pass to the other side. We know that there are gates of splendor through which we will walk. The entirety of our salvation, the entirety of the resurrection of the body, the fingers that you now have They may decay and turn to dust, but you will have them again, just as the Lord Jesus Christ lives now in the body. This is the promise of the gospel. How much more does that make us want to be wise people? We're living for this life, and we're also living for the next. And so consider that day. You know, it was, and some of you maybe read A Christmas Carol or saw the movie, one of the movies, over this Christmas holiday. And, of course, that third spirit that takes Ebenezer, the ghost of Christmas future, where does he take him? What is the final nail in the coffin? Charles Dickens knew it. Charles Dickens knew the Psalms. He knew Ecclesiastes. He had the same wisdom that Solomon had. That ghost of Christmas spirit takes Ebenezer Scrooge to the day of his funeral. No one shows up. No one cares. They just want his money. So I want you to consider the day of your death. I want you to think forward beyond it, to remember that, yes, you will be received by faith in the arms of Jesus Christ, that you will await in heaven until the resurrection when your body returns to earth. But I want you to think about that day itself and even the day before. Who will be gathered with you? Will anyone want to be there? Will you be surrounded by people who love you, whose lives you have influenced for good? Will you look back with a regret? It's long been said, no one wishes on his deathbed. I wish I spent more time at the office. Maybe there are some people, maybe lazy people wish they did. I don't know. Will you wish that you spent your time the way that you have? Looking back over this last year, do you wish you could change that? And what will they say when you're gone? Consider that right here, right now, for real. What will they say about you when you have just died? Will they remember your kindness, your compassion, your patience? Or will they remember anger, frustration, harshness, judgment? It's all right before you. Maybe your funeral doesn't even look so good right now. His mercies are new every morning. And there is no reason why January 1st, 2018 can't be the first day of the rest of your life. Thanks be to God in Jesus Christ our Savior in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.