Our first is from Ecclesiastes 11, 5-10. This is our sermon text also, so it's printed for you. As you do not know the way the Spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all, but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity. Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please join me in prayer. Our Lord, opening up Your Word would be entirely puzzling and confusing to us. Our eyes clouded over with scales, our ears plugged and filled, our hearts made of stone. All of this would be true if You had not sent Your Spirit to awaken us, to open our ears and our eyes. It is not a matter of the quality of the translation, the moral stature of the hearer or the ability of the preacher. Lord, the ability to hear and understand and to love Your Word comes from You. It comes directly. It comes from Your Spirit working these things in our minds and hearts. So we beg You, Lord, that again You would send Your Spirit, that we would hear You, that we would know that You are speaking, that Your Word would be made plain to us, that we would understand what is before us from the oldest among us to the youngest children. that Your Word would take root in our hearts and that we would live according to what You have said. We would love those things that You hold out for us to love and that we would be transformed for Your glory, for the sake of Your kingdom, for the furtherance of all that is good and against that waning kingdom of the enemy. His gates will not stand against the power of Your Word going forth. And so we trust in You, Lord, not in ourselves, our knowledge, our interpretive abilities, our speaking abilities, our history or our theology. We trust in You. We trust that You will give us those things that are needful and those things that are not, You would let pass by. Accomplish this by Your power, for Your glory. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen. Please be seated. Well, good morning. I don't know if you can see it from where you're sitting, but there's this kind of seating gap over here. If this were a ship, I would have to tell several of you to move over to the other side because we'd be listing. There's a Jewish folktale. You may have heard it or some variation of it. I've heard it several different times from several sources. It's always a little different. Folktales tend to be shaped to the mouth of the teller, but it's always the same story in essence. King Solomon had a minister in his court, Benjamin son of Jehoiada. This minister was wise, but also in Solomon's view, he was very proud. And so Solomon, in his own great wisdom, thought it would be good to humble his minister with an impossible task. So he summoned him, and he said, Benjamin, you have been a faithful and wise servant, and now I must entrust you with a task that I am sure no one else could manage. Whatever that task is, sire, it shall be accomplished by your most faithful servant, replied Benjamin. I have heard that there is a ring of great power. It has the power to take the smile from the face of a joyous man. It must be the most vile thing, Your Highness. I shall retrieve it. No, no, there is more. For this same ring also has the power to give gladness to any man who feels sorrow in his heart. Find me this ring by the Passover nine months from now. It shall be as my king commands," replied the minister. But Benjamin Bar Jehoiada didn't know where to begin. A ring that could make a happy man sad and a sad man happy? He went to every goldsmith and silversmith, every jewelry maker he could find in all of Jerusalem, but to no effect. No one knew of such a ring. No one had even heard of it. Of course, they hadn't heard of it. Solomon just made it up. But the months passed, and so Benjamin began to travel seeking out the ring, asking merchants, jewelers, and eventually he made his way to foreign courts seeking after this ring. Some laughed, recognizing that this was like what we would call today looking for the board stretcher or the water density multiplier. He even made his way to the royal jewelers' workshops, but the men who had the greatest access to wealth, able to buy the finest gold and jewels to shape them into magnificent pieces. He would find either jewelry of excellent quality that would bring joy to anyone who saw it, or poor quality that would make someone disappointed to see how poor it was done, but nothing that could turn one mood to the other, happiness to sadness and the other way around. He felt defeated and so he made his way home again, empty handed. There was no ring that could make a sad man happy and a happy man sad. On his way back, a windstorm caused him to take the longer, more narrow road around the other side of a mountain. Deep in the path, they found a village that was so small it wasn't on any map. Most small villages had only the basic merchants, traders, blacksmiths, granaries, so on. But this blacksmith also happened to make jewelry. And so he made one last vain effort, if for nothing, then to convince himself it truly was an impossible task. The blacksmith was all covered with soot and ash. He had strong arms, but he had quick and nimble fingers. Benjamin asked him about the ring, if he had ever heard of it. The blacksmith held out several gold and silver rings, implausibly bright in his blackened and burnt hands, but none of them were the ring he was searching for. They were just ordinary rings. "'No, no,' said Benjamin. "'It must bring joy to the sorrowful and sorrow to the joyful.'" The blacksmith stopped. He inhaled deeply and looked into the minister's eyes, studying them and pondering them. "'Come back tomorrow.'" you shall have this ring." The next morning, with little expectation at all, Benjamin went to the blacksmith's forge. Ah, you came, good. He held out his hand with a small ring in the middle of it. Expecting another failure, Benjamin took the ring in his hand, looked at it, a small silver ring, nothing special. He handed it back with thanks. No, no, no, look, look, said the blacksmith. Benjamin looked carefully at the ring and the disappointment on his face faded away. He chuckled and then he laughed. This is the ring. He paid the jeweler a thousand times the asking price and began his journey back to Jerusalem. Now, today's text. Today's text lays before us, again, some of the basic realities of life. Life is a mystery. We have a general sense of the shape of many people's lives. Often it's typical that someone would be born and get an education, get a job, get married, have children, raise children and perhaps career, get old, die. But if we look a little bit closer Every life is, in fact, different. The job for this person over here is not satisfying, but it pays well. This job over here pays terribly, but he loves what he does. In one family, one child is lonely but kind. In another, the child is cruel but has many friends. And no one can account for this. Why are things like that? What are the rules in life? Why would it be like this? Shouldn't all kind people have friends and all cruel people be isolated? That's not what it's like. There's so many lives that don't fit inside that general sense as well. Many people never get married. Some lose their spouse early. Sometimes people are incarcerated or they go to war and they're killed. Or they slip on an icy step and their brain never heals. Some people get everything that they wanted. They get the spouse, and the children, and the house, and the career, and yet, they're not happy. Others have nothing of what they planned. The career didn't work out, the family never happened, and yet, they have all the joy that one could hope for. What is God doing in the world, and why is he doing it? We just don't know. It's likely that some of you kids who have been to OMSI know significantly more about fetal development than Solomon ever did. But neither the theologian nor the prenatal doctor knows how it is exactly that a human is made or his soul quickened. How many pairs of DNA must be combined before we have a person? When that process has just started and one single base pair, the guanine over here with the taurine here, when they have combined, is that a person? To get to the unknown, we say life begins at conception. Very well, but if you look close enough with a slow motion camera, that process of conception itself is very long. The strands of DNA combine with one another. When does that being have a soul? When is it alive? It's more like a train going into a tunnel. We know before it enters, it is not alive. We know at the end, it is. And something happens in the tunnel and no one knows what. When you look closer and closer and closer, all you have to do is look more closely and eventually you run out of answers. God has a secret counsel. It's private knowledge that he doesn't share with us. It's not made for us. Our confession of faith actually says that seeking out God's secret counsel is a violation of the first commandment. The evangelistic message that I heard in college, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Well, that's true. in a sense, but it implied that I might know what that plan is. The fact is you only know what God's plan for your life is in retrospect. But here's something better. You don't know what the plan is, but you know who has made the plan and you know the end of the plan. And in fact, with the eyes of faith, you can be grateful you don't have to carry around the burden of knowing the future. It would be a terrible burden if you did. Think about that. We are not built for that kind of knowledge. How could you act if you knew that every small action that you do has implications throughout all of history? The fact that you take a right and not a left means that the person behind you has one more car in front of them waiting for the light. That slight delay could be the very delay that changes their life and you would never know about it. We could not handle living with that kind of knowledge. And thankfully, God maintains it Himself and neither requires nor reveals it to us. We've seen this throughout the book of Ecclesiastes. You've heard this before. We see it again today in verse five. If you look down at the page, it cannot be known. So instead of trying to know and to understand the depths of what God is doing. Go ahead and do your work in the morning. He says in verse six, that's what makes the morning light sweet. In verse seven, someone who is committed to doing the work that God has given them to do, they see the sun come up and they say, great, a new day to serve the Lord. I don't know what he's going to do with this work that I offer him today. I don't know how he's going to work my life out. I don't know how these certain problems are going to be resolved. I don't need to. I trust in Him and I look forward to what this new day brings. When you know that God controls and rules and supervises and administrates every detail of your life, you don't have to live for the future anymore. Now, please understand, I'm not saying live each day as if it were your last. You shouldn't literally do that. You get what people mean when they say that, right? But you don't actually want to do that. If today, or let's say if tomorrow was your last day on earth, gentlemen, I hope you would take the day off, right? Don't, well, honey, I got to go to work, but it's your last day. Well, I know, duty calls. No, no, you're supposed to take the day off if it's your last day. It doesn't mean that you don't plan for your future. It means that you fulfill today's responsibilities today and you leave the results up to the Lord. Do what He has given you the responsibility to do today. Today He may have given you the responsibility to save some money, to fill out an application, to plan for the future in some way. That's your responsibility today. The future and what it brings is the Lord's. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. And remember this also from Deuteronomy 29.29, that the secret things belong to the Lord our God. Rest in that. The Lord who is kind, He's merciful, He's infinitely wise. He is the one who establishes your steps, even if you're sick. It is from the hand of your kind and loving Father. If you suffer loss, it is from the hand of your kind and loving Father. You don't know why He does what He does. You don't know the implications of everything that is happening. You probably never will. I don't know if He reveals these things to us in glory or not. but you can know that whatever you have is from His hand and you can rejoice in whatever He gives you. The New Testament says the same thing for the same reasons. Paul tells the Thessalonians, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. That's in chapter 5. In chapter 4, you know what he says? Live quietly, mind your own affairs, and work with your hands. Do you see how this all comes together? Do you see what's happening here? Paul says, pray to God and rejoice in the midst of your circumstances, knowing that He has heard your prayer. Keep steady at your work, keep your eyes straight ahead. Solomon says essentially the same thing. What God is doing is a complete mystery. You don't know what it is, so do your work with joy. In fact, rejoice in everything in all the years that He gives you, verse eight. Life is a mystery, and in the face of that mystery, we rejoice. I want you to understand this, that rejoicing, that experiencing joy, is actually the foundation for every other emotional experience that you might have. Only joy can support all those other feelings that you have as a person. Despair cannot support joy. Marilla Cuthbert was right. To despair is to turn your back on God. So this doesn't mean always be happy. You don't have to be the person who's like, doesn't matter. Oh yes, my whole family died in a fire, but I'm just thankful to God. I find the story about the man sitting down to write a hymn after he finds out that his whole family has drowned in a horrible accident on the ocean, I find that unbelievable. I don't know the reality of it, but it doesn't mean you never feel sad. Rejoicing is something that happens deep in your heart. Joy creates a deep foundation in your life that will support lament without self-destruction. It will hold up concern without anxiety. It will let you be sad without falling into self-harm. You can experience loss without despair. Rejoicing is the foundation of a healthy experience of the full range of human emotions. Think about it, you can't build joy on a life of sorrow, but if knowing God is the great joy of our lives, what could move us into sorrow from that? If you experience joy from knowing God, what can take that away from you? nothing. And so on that foundation, you can actually grieve. You can actually lament. You can actually mourn. The whole world of the human experience opens before you. If you're trying to paste on happiness onto despair, it never holds. So what Solomon says here? Surrender yourself to God, rest in Him, acknowledge His goodness and His care. But remember two things. Remember two things. They're there not to eliminate your joy, but to bring you into sobriety. Solomon knows the human heart. He knows that someone given to joy can kind of become drunk on that, can make that their only fixation. This is what tells us that Solomon is talking about a joy that is deeper than a simple plastered on happiness. So this isn't so much, I'm not saying, and I don't think Solomon is saying here, feel less joy. He's saying, experience the right kind of joy, experience the right kind of rejoicing. You're called to a sober joy, and this is what he says. Solomon says, remember that dark days are coming. They're always coming, and they can't be stopped. One of the worst ways to live is to think that you always have to be happy. The human experience is so much richer and deeper than just being happy all the time. When you are experiencing happiness and joy, take it. May your life be full of it. But verse eight, sad times are bound to arrive one day or another. Be prepared for those sad days by knowing that they are coming. It seems like morose advice, but it's actually, it's incredibly wise. We live in a beautiful place here in the Pacific Northwest. I don't know how many thousands of people come from around the world to visit Portland. They just come to see the place. They go on hikes. They go up to Mount St. Helens. They head out to the coast. But you don't appreciate your time here because you live here. Knowing that you have all the time in the world to enjoy the place where you live, it makes you put it off. My first time living in a city of any national significance was when I moved from New Hampshire, which has no cities that you have ever heard of, to San Francisco. I know you can conquer the capital. I know you know the capitals. I moved from New Hampshire to San Francisco. It was my first time ever living in anything like a world-class city. I had eaten rice-a-roni before, but I had never even been to California. And I knew that I only had one year. I would not live there beyond that. And so because I knew my time was limited, I stayed very busy. I biked around the city. I rode the trolleys and the streetcars, you know, the ones that go up the big hills. I saw the street performers. I went to the Japanese gardens. I saw Shakespeare in the park. I got involved with my church. And in 11 and a half months, established relationships that are still maintained to this day. But honestly, there are a lot of tourists who have seen more of Portland in a week than I do in a year because I live here. I have never seen the Japanese gardens in Portland, nor have I seen Shakespeare in the park. I don't know if they offer it, but I think everybody does. They probably do, but I haven't seen it. I live here. I'll see you next year. I'll get to it. You see how wise Solomon is? You see what he's doing here? He says, remember, you're a tourist. in happiness. If things are good, you're just visiting. So enjoy it while you can. It's not going to last. In our next chapter, he'll explain why it can't last. It's because we get old. But that's true for anyone's life, even if old age is a long ways off. Dark times always arrive in one way or another if you're paying attention. And then in verse 9, this is Solomon's second word of temperance. In verse 9, he reminds us that at the end of all things, there is a day of judgment. Now, I want to be really, really careful about what I say here because this is dangerous ground. It's very easy to get the wrong impression. And if you think, by the end of the service today, if you think the apple cart has been entirely tossed upside down, you better come and talk to me because this is a little bit dangerous. Judgment at the end of all things. Now why would we even think twice about judgment? What does that have to do with us? We are saved by the work of Christ. Isn't that right? Indeed we are. So what's Solomon talking about? I'll be quoting and paraphrasing quite a bit here because I want to be entirely clear and accurate, very, very careful with my words here. Many churches will never teach this. Many churches will never teach this, although it is undisputed in Scripture and in Reformed theology. The Bible consistently represents the final judgment as a judgment of works, and the Bible consistently tells us that there are rewards for faithful living. We also teach that we are justified by faith alone, apart from the works of the law, and also that the final judgment is according to works, just like we read in 2 Corinthians 5. These points do not contradict one another. John Murray wrote very, very precisely on this, so pay very close attention here, especially, I see some of you, you're like, whoa, it's a Presbyterian revival, I've got my pen out. Pay careful attention here. John Murray said, we must maintain justification complete and irrevocable by grace, through faith, apart from works. At the same time, future reward according to works. He gives us four points that you have to be absolutely clear on in your mind. First, the future reward is not justification and contributes nothing to our justification. Justification is where God pardons our sins and declares us righteous for the sake of Christ. So this future reward, this future judgment is not about our justification. Second thing, this future reward is not salvation. Salvation is by grace. Salvation is not a reward for works. Third, the reward is about the experience that a person has in glory, not whether they are in glory. And fourth, this reward is not given because good works earn a reward. but because God is gracious, and in His grace, it pleases Him to reward those good works. It is a reward of grace. So maybe the best way to think about it is like this. My mom, you know, I went to public school. That explains why my spelling is so bad. My mom was a substitute teacher. She worked four days a week, so on Fridays, she signed up to be a sub. Many of you have your parents as your teachers and have your whole life. But for those of you who went to public school at one point, you can imagine it's a little weird. But I had my mom as a substitute teacher on occasion. And if she had to give a test that day, I don't think this ever happened, but you can imagine. If she gave a test that day and then had to grade it, I might wanna make sure to do extra well because I love my mom and I wanna do well by her. I wanna make her proud. I want to reflect well on her and demonstrate to her that all the love that she's put into me has actually produced something. That I appreciate what you've done for me, mom, and so I'm working hard as a student. She was there as a sub, of course, but you can imagine if she was a regular teacher, I would wanna show her, out of love, that I had been paying attention. to what she had been teaching, that I had been working hard. And, of course, a lot of you are in that position because your moms are your teachers, in fact, so you can relate. Isn't this great when the five-year-olds get to relate to the sermon? Cool. Now, my desire to do well in class, or your desire to do well in class, it wasn't because I was afraid that if I messed up I wouldn't be her son anymore. It never crossed my mind that maybe she will disown me. Well, you failed the test. I disown you as my child. That had never occurred to me, right? You kids who homeschool, none of you are worried that your last name will be taken away from you if you don't do well on a math quiz. That's not how it works. That would be ridiculous. This is what it means for us to face the judgment of God on the last day as believers. There is a separation of the sheep from the goats based on the work of Christ, on our justification, and based on nothing else. And then all of the sheep who have been saved by grace, who have been justified through the work of Christ, then they face judgment for their lives, for the things they did or didn't do. So I hope that makes sense. I don't want to derail. Hopefully that was clear enough, but please ask questions later if it's not clear. What is Solomon saying here? He's not saying you'll be kicked out of the covenant. He's not saying that God will cease to be your Father, but he's saying while you're enjoying life You are still accountable to God. You will still face Him on that great day. Be sure that your joy is a real joy, not a joy that comes out of rebellion. That's not actually joy in the first place, is it? That could never really be true joy. No Christian would say, I find joy in sin. That's a fake, false, and ugly substitute. So what does this mean? It means you must be walking in the light. Light is sweet and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. Solomon is talking here about the sun that comes up and the work that we do in it, but it's no coincidence that light is used as a metaphor throughout all of Scripture. Light doesn't just mean light. And what did we begin our worship with today? Jesus says, I am the light of the world. What makes the light good? The true light that came into the world so that all men could see it. This is what it means. When the light has risen, if you're going to live in that joy, If you're going to be confident of that Day of Judgment, if you're even going to look forward to it, it can only be because you know that God is your Father and that His fatherhood will not change in your life. If you're looking forward to the Day of Judgment to say, like, you know, if you're stuck like a Roman Catholic, like those poor souls who are like, well, gosh, I don't know if God's going to take me to heaven or maybe it's hell for me after, you know, a billion years in purgatory, then I'll get heaven. Who knows? You can't build on anything there. There's no joy. There's no joy there. It's just worry and anxiety. But if you know that you are secure, if you know that God is your Father and He won't stop being your Father, Then you can experience true rejoicing. Then you can experience the whole world of human emotion. Then you can remember the dark days will come. And then you can remember that judgment will arrive and you can do so without fear because you know that your joy is not based on your own life, but on the finished work of Jesus Christ. Then you can face the reality that your life will have twists and turns that you never expected. If I were to ask you right now, let's say everybody over the age of 30, if I were to ask you, has everything turned out the way that you thought it would? None of you could raise your hands. Because the fact is that every adult recognizes things have not turned out the way that I planned. And often, you recognize right away the goodness in those things. You don't know how long the joy is going to last. You don't know how long the experience of happiness and good conditions in your life is going to last. And if you're in sorrow, if you're in lament, you don't know how long that will last either. Benjamin Bar Jehoiada returned to the court. It was the beginning of the Passover and Solomon quieted the court down with a motion of his hand and he said, Benjamin Bar Jehoiada, my most faithful servant, have you accomplished the task that I set you to accomplish? Solomon said that fully expecting that his minister would have to explain in great humility that he could not accomplish the task. Benjamin bowed low, and he said, "'I have, Your Grace.'" The smile fell off of Solomon's face immediately. Without a word, he simply held out his hand in disbelief. His minister approached him and placed the ring in his hand. Solomon looked at it, and the frown on his face became a smile. And then he pondered it, and he became serious again. And he announced to the court, my faithful minister has accomplished his task. For inscribed on the ring were these words, this too shall pass. This good experience that you are in, this too shall pass. all is vanity. The sorrow and lament, the suffering that you are undergoing, all is vanity. That too shall pass. What Solomon does not identify as vanity, what he doesn't say is temporary, is the judgment of God and the life in the world to come. All is vanity under the sun, but not everything is temporary. Not everything will pass away. There is new life and resurrection and that, my friends, is eternal. When you live for that day, your joy will be complete. Please pray with me. Our Lord Jesus Christ, we beg you, grant us the mercy and the grace that we would be able to fix our eyes upon you. By grace, let us see, not your plan, Not what you're doing, because how could we even comprehend the billions, the trillions of things that you are doing? You who care for the smallest sparrow in the most remote forest on earth, a place no man has ever seen or ever will. You control all things in our lives. So we surrender ourselves to you with great joy. We pray that our rejoicing would be deep and true, and that it would be built on the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.