Please remain standing now and please read with me from Ecclesiastes chapter 5 starting at verse 1. Ecclesiastes 5 verse 1. Walk prudently when you go to the house of God and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools for they do not know that they do evil. Do not be rash with your mouth, and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God, for God is in heaven and you on earth. Therefore, let your words be few, for a dream comes through much activity, and a fool's voice is known by his many words. When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed. Better not to vow than to vow and not pay. Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger of God that it was an error. Why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy the work of your hands? For in the multitude of dreams and many words, there is also vanity. but fear God. If you see the oppression of the poor and the violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province, do not marvel at the matter. For high official watches over high official, and higher officials are over them. Moreover, the profit of the land is for all. Even the king is served from the field. He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver, nor he who loves abundance with increase. This also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them. So what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes? The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much. But the abundance of the rich will not daze. He also eats in darkness, and he has much sorrow and sickness and anger. Here is what I have seen. It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him, for it is his heritage. As for every man, to whom God has given riches and wealth and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor, this is the gift of God. For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart. You may be seated. Alright, so last time we looked at this and we saw the hypocrisy in the church as a danger and destruction that causes men to think that there is ultimately no justice in the world. It causes them to despise the holy things. And so this idea of hypocrisy in the church We are warned to walk prudently when you go to the house of God, and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil." Remember, a sacrifice of a fool is offering a sacrifice without knowledge. Offering a sacrifice without knowing what is good and acceptable and perfect to the Lord. And so the law of God is that which instructs us that we might offer sacrifices wisely. Any element of worship offered to God is a sort of sacrifice. It is something put before him, given to him, and we are giving up something, giving up our time, our energy, our efforts, and trying to devote it to God. The sacrifice of the fool is to offer something to God that he has not commanded, or to do something that he has commanded without understanding. And so what we want to do is we want to approach with wisdom. Now, one of the sacrifices of a fool is to do this not only just without knowledge, but even worse, to do so hypocritically against what you believe to be true, and to do it for favor, to do it for the favor of men. And so we can worship God with the things that he has appointed with a wrong attitude, which is a breaking of the third commandment. Or we can worship God with wrong elements of worship, which is a breaking of the second commandment. Or we can worship a false god, which is a breaking of the first commandment. But so what's being talked about here is even in the place where you have the true God being acknowledged, right worship being done, and even perhaps some sort of attitude of wanting to do it to please God, to do it without understanding. And so there's a duty to strive to get wisdom that your sacrifices would not be in vain. Verse 2. Do not be rash with your mouth, and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God." Okay, so the external mouth and the internal. You can swear to God with the mouth. You can swear to God in the heart. You can offer prayers with the mouth. You can offer prayers with the heart. These things should be done thoughtfully. Why? Because God is in heaven and you're on earth. He is enthroned on high in majesty and glory. He has all power, all authority. We approach him as a great king. How thoughtful would you be if you came before President Trump in the words that you speak? Do you think the Lord God of heaven is due less honor than the President of the United States? God is in heaven and you on earth. Therefore, let your words be few. We should pray frequently, but we should pray carefully. Words should be few until we learn them. The Lord's Prayer is a form of prayer that trains up the ignorant and teaches them how to pray. As you learn its meaning, as you understand it, you are able to move beyond the mere forms and to offer petitions in a way that is with greater understanding and applies more and more to emergent occasions as things arise in life. And so the offering of prayers, the offering of vows, the offering of praise, We have all of these things to be careful about, the ways that we speak to God. Now, the context is focused upon vowing. And so when we vow, when we swear, we recognize that when we swear to do a thing, there's a blessing for keeping the oath and a curse for breaking the oath. And we should be careful because it's much easier to promise a thing than to fulfill it. It's much easier to promise a thing than to fulfill it. Because a dream comes through much activity. A dream, a goal, a vision, that which you would seek to accomplish comes through much activity. And a fool's voice is known by as many words I found that very convicting for me, quickness to promise, to give things, but the reality Oftentimes, when we promise things quickly, when we promise much, what we are doing is giving away things we don't have a right to give, giving away things that we don't know that we have the ability to fulfill, making promises, making obligations that you would otherwise be free of. And so the ability to say no, the willingness to say no, it's interesting. One of the ways to rise in prosperity is to be willing to do lots of things that you don't really want to do, on their face or by themselves, but you are willing to do them for other people in service or in order to gain opportunity. And so the performance of duties through contract and the making of agreements, the promising to do things is how you start to get opportunity. Because you start with time and not resources and you start to make promises to do things But you find as you do things, as you work, as you fulfill promises, the way it consumes your life, it consumes your property in the sense that you yourself as you earn, you have to consume to use your time, right? There's a certain price to keep yourself operating. And so you give up time. And you give up some of the money to keep yourself going. And so the giving of promises is how you get a reputation for doing work. The giving of promises to fulfill things is how you get paid. The giving of promises opens up opportunity when you fulfill them, but it's costly. Much activity is necessary to fulfill goals, dreams, visions. And as you realize that over-promising and under-delivering is destructive to reputation and sets you back, makes it so you lose opportunities, you lose the ability to get more out of relationships, you have to be careful to promise properly and fulfill. And so you err on the side of under-promising and over-delivering. Over-delivering is hard. Dreams come through much activity. So I find this convicting because I want to please people, I want to bless people, I want to do things for people, I want to spend time with people. There's so many good works to do. But the fool is known by his many words. is we have to be careful about what we commit to do and commit to do the best things. There's so little time, so little resources available that we need the instruction of God's law, God's word to know what's worth chasing. Most things are grasping for the wind, the chasing after nothingness, a vanity. Those things that are profitable to chase, So go to page six. When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it. For he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed. Better not to vow than to vow and not pay. A vow that accords with God's law is a good work. A vow made and broken is a horrific sin. And so doing that which we swear to the Lord is good and brings blessing. But it's costly. It's a sacrifice. It's something offered to God. And so the swearing to do and not fulfilling is foolish, and God has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed. Better not to vow than to vow and not pay. And so you might say, I will not take the covenant of baptism. I will not take the covenant of the Lord's Supper. I will avoid all covenanting then, since it's better not to vow and to vow and not pay. God tells us the life worth living is the life of the baptized, the life of those who have sworn that they believe what God has revealed and that we'll strive to do what He commands. That's the good life. And one of the things He commands for us to do is to get baptized, to covenant with Him, take the Lord's Supper, and to re-covenant with Him. And so there is this strain I do not know how I can vow and fulfill. It's cursed to not vow. It's cursed to vow and not fulfill. And so this strain pushes us to see our need of forgiveness in Christ. Like all uses of the law, the tension of it, the highness of the conscientiousness of it, pushes us to recognize the greatness of the forgiveness that we have in Christ. The greatness of the sacrifice of Christ to pay for our covenant keeping, our vow breaking. But yet we know that The good life is the life of making right vows to God and keeping them. And so we want to be renewed, we want to have what's crooked be made straight, and we may honor the Lord in this life. And we want to avoid the hypocrisy in the church. So the thing that's being raised up here is the ugliness of hypocrisy in the church. ugliness of confessing with the mouth but then doing things that are contrary to what Christ commands. And so we must be careful to examine ourselves to avoid covenant breaking and to avoid doing things that bring dishonor to the Lord by confessing with the mouth and then doing things that contradict that confession. Verse 6, do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger of God that it was an error. We should consider carefully the meaning of covenants. We should recognize that church officers who administer covenants are called to hold us accountable, to hold us responsible, to keep our covenants. And we should not take covenants and then say, It was wrong. It was a wrong covenant. Why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy the work of your hands? There's this providential coming of destruction on your work when you break covenant. It's a common thing. For in the multitude of dreams or goals, in many words, there is also vanity. If you have lots of goals and you have lots of promises you make, Lots of pronouncements about the future. It's vain. It's meaningless. It's stealing the glory from God. It's a pretense. We pretend to have the power to bring things about when we don't. What should we do instead? We should fear God. And so when we look at the Westminster Confession of Faith on oaths and vows, one of the things it talks about, if you go back to page five, Go to section 7. No man may vow to do anything forbidden in the word of God. So when God says don't do a thing, vowing to do it is a sin and it's not binding. If you then try to keep the vow, the sin is in the keeping. No man may vow to do anything forbidden in the word of God or that would hinder any duty therein commanded. So if it would undermine it. So for example, let's say you have a duty to provide for yourself and for your household. And if you say, you know, I'm not going to do any work unless I have fasted for the day. You're going to go, well, if you fast every day that you work, your strength is going to be dramatically undermined to do good work. Especially if you're a physical laborer. And so to make such a vow would be contrary to your ability to do that work regularly. So you go, every day I work is a day I'm going to fast. That would be a foolish vow. It would ultimately not be binding. It was sin in making it. So what would hinder any duty therein commanded? Anything, any vow that we make that hinders our ability to do the stuff God commands is not pleasing to God. The sin was in the making, not in the breaking. to seek to keep it would be to multiply sin. The other thing is, no man may vow to do anything which is not in his own power. So, if I vow that you will give away 50% of your wealth, which is essentially what socialism is, but if I vow to give away your wealth, it's sin, It's envy. It's theft. It's something I don't have the power to keep. It's not my authority or ability to make happen. So it's sin. So the things that we have power over, the things that we have authority over, are the things about which we have a right ability to give rightful vows about. Man, no man may vow to do anything for the performance of whereof he has no promise or ability from God. Think about that. How do you know if you have a promise from God or ability from God to do a thing? The law of God is what tells you about the promises and ability from God. When God gives a promise to you or gives a command to you, you know that there's ability in Christ to do it. All commandments of God have a promise of blessing attached. All promises of blessing are associated with commandments. The law of God is sufficient to show us the things that we have a right to vow. No man may vow to do anything forbidden in the Word of God. No man may vow to do anything that would hinder his duty commanded in the Word of God. No man may vow to do anything which is not in his own power to perform. No man may vow to do anything for the performance whereof he has no promise or ability from God. It is better not to vow than to vow and not pay. You should vow to do the things that God commands and not vow to do anything else. And so when you see vows in the Bible, by the way, when you see vows in the Bible to perform a duty, that reveals to you that there's a law responsibility to do it. In one of two ways. One, it is either a requirement of law, or two, it is a good work that helps to keep some godly purpose. Okay, so vows in the Bible that you see that are approved show you either there's a commandment that's specific to do the thing, or that the thing vowed to be upheld is a thing that helps you to accomplish a purpose that God commands. Back to page 6, verse 6. Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger of God that it was an error. Why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy the work of your hands? For in the multitude of dreams and many words there is also vanity, but fear God." Now, go with me to page 10. This is about the state. Why do people go to the church, by the way, and hypocritically worship. It is about respectability. It's about respect. It's about reputation. It's about being perceived as good and holy. It's about being perceived as trustworthy. So going to church for the purpose of reputation, for the purpose of being perceived a certain way, is a taking of the Lord's name in vain. And so hypocrisy in the church is ultimately derived from a making respect the good, reputation. Hypocrisy in the state, taking office and abusing it, is about power. It's about power being the good. So verse 8, If you see the oppression of the poor and the violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province, do not marvel at the matter. For a high official watches over a high official, and higher officials are over them." In other words, injustice in the state causes men to scoff at justice just as evil in the church does. It causes men to say, there's nothing real here. This is all power games. Limited government, justice, capitalism, actually most benefit the poor. They most benefit the poor. The quality of life of the poor is improved more than the quality of life of anybody under limited government, capitalism, liberty, just administration, because the rich can pay to influence people. The rich can use resources to guard their own interests. The poor must rely upon the public servant, must rely upon the avenger. They must rely upon the minister of God. Restraint of the powerful protects the property rights of the poor. Protection of the fruit of labor for those without means to protect themselves. does the most to improve a society's productivity. The tendency for the poor is to think, I can never escape poverty. There's a system that's built against me. My stuff, if I make it, will just be taken away. And so there's this tendency to make excuses and to live for the moment, to live hedonistically, consuming what you have, living hand to mouth. That temptation is encouraged when justice is not administered in a land. Proverbs 13.23 says, much food is in the fallow ground of the poor. Fallow ground is uncultivated ground, ground that's not being farmed. The poor who have land that aren't using the land to generate income. There's lots of productivity and fruitfulness available in what the poor possess that the poor don't use, why do they use it? And for lack of justice, there is waste. The alternate translation of this I actually think is better. The translation that's more literal is this. And for lack of justice, what is swept away? In other words, who can number what's lacking there? Who can number the number of bushels that are not grown because people are not motivated? Who can number the amount of productivity, the number of dollars that are wasted because people say, it doesn't really matter if I work. If I work, it'll just be stolen from me. Justice encourages the poor to do work because they expect to keep the fruits of their labor. So when you see oppression of the poor, don't marvel at the matter. What? I mean, it's a big deal. The oppression of the poor is a wicked thing. The point is, this is not unexpected. This is the natural tendency of things. This is the natural tendency of fallen man. The oppression of the poor is the norm. The oppression of the poor is what you should expect to see in every society. Any society that manages to protect the rights of the poor to any degree, the question you need to ask yourself is, what is happening here that the rights of the poor are respected at all? And so the glory of Western civilization is the way in which the rights of the common man have been guarded because of Protestantism. and the bringing in of written law order and constitution and the restraints on power and the decentralization of power and the system of republicanism, where you have councils of men that are elected by other men that have limited time in office before they're called to account. The protection of private property rights, the limitation on taxes, the idea that there are things that men ought not to do to other men, no matter what title they bear. This idea that magistrates are servants of the people and of God. These are doctrines from the Bible that have limited princes to protect the rights of the poor and cause the poor in Western civilization to be fat instead of starving. That reality That reality, that oppression of the poor is the norm, and that where Protestantism has prospered, there has been a flourishing of the poor, is a thing to marvel at. Don't marvel when you see oppression of the poor. That's the norm. When there's violent perversion of justice and of righteousness and of providence, don't marvel. That's the norm. I mean, think about this for a second. Why are there governors of men? There are governors of men because men are not angels. If men were angels, they would need no governors. They would not need magistrates to restrain their wickedness. The wickedness of men is what makes it necessary that there be rulers in a province to judge them. And because of the wickedness of men, those rulers need rulers over them to judge them. Do not marvel at the fact that there's the violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province. Any fool that tells you what we need is rulers who have unrestrained power and they can fix anything is an idiot who has thought nothing about the history of mankind, who has read nothing about the nature of man, and whose observations of men are naive. When you think that men should be given unrestrained power, you are saying Those who have bodies and whose souls are like demons from hell are the ones I want ruling over me with no restraints on them. The souls of fallen men who are unconverted are no greater, no better, no more righteous than the souls of demons in hell or demons that wander the earth looking for things to destroy. Do not marvel when you see a violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province. High officials watch over high officials because the men they govern are evil and the men that govern are evil. And so then we have watchers of the watchers. But who watches them? Who observes and guards against their tyranny? And so there's this need for systems that compete with each other for power to restrain the higher officials. The oppression of the poor occurs by the state, by the rich, and by the poor themselves. Tyrants are the great stealers of wealth, the great stealers of rights. Governments have murdered more people than organized crime. I mean, a lot of governments are just organized crime. Governments have certainly killed more than petty criminals. We look in modern time predatory business is much talked about. Large-scale predatory business is the rich oppressing the poor. Small-scale predatory business is typically the poor oppressing the poor. Organized crime can be large like the mafia or the cartels or some governments. You can have small-scale organized crime like local neighborhood gangs. These are all mechanisms of oppression and theft. And then there's just petty crime. You've all seen in the news about people just going in. We have Soros attorneys, right, where they won't prosecute people for crimes of poverty. Where if you're poor, you can go in and steal. And if you steal, as long as it's under a certain dollar value, and they make the dollar value pretty high now, they're not going to prosecute you. And then you start to see mobs organized to go do that at the same time together. Let's all go steal from this store at the same time. You've probably seen videos of that. So that going on, that idea of the petty crime, that can become bigger and bigger and more and more organized. This type of oppression of the poor occurs from all sorts of angles. Tyrants, the rich, the fellow poor. Only States that punish oppressors, whether they hold office, or are rich, or are poor, are states that are administered justly. In history, they are rare. You should marvel when you see them administering justice. Now, the violent perversion of justice occurs when the state acts for its own interests against a people like eminent domain taking property from you in order to fulfill its own purposes against your will. The taking of benefit for yourself while you're in office using government power for your own benefit is corruption. The state acting to benefit its favorites by taking bribes or just because of favoritism using state power to give something out. These are violent perversions of justice in a province. This should not be a surprise. Hierarchical oversight is based upon the problem of governors not being uncorrupted in nature. So the corrupt nature of men should help us to understand this should be expected. Verse nine, moreover the profit of the land is for all, even the king is served from the field. Even the king is served from the field. Men who are particularly greedy use their power to steal from other people. When they use their power to steal from other people, they destroy the productivity of the people. When the poor see the rich oppressed by kings, they think, if he can oppress that rich man, how can I ever expect for any property I get to be safe? And so as you have oppression of the poor, rumors spread. If you have oppression of the rich, that example of knocking down giants terrifies the smaller. And so oppression of the people destroys productivity and reduces the available wealth for a magistrate to take. Tyranny is like a serpent that consumes its own tail. It destroys itself. The profits of the land are for all, even the king is served from the field. Now, even tyrannical governments want to increase their power and if they wanted to increase their power, the rational thing to do would be to seek economic growth of the people in order to maximize their own power. And if you're a tyrant and you're smart and you want to increase your power, you try to increase the prosperity of your people and the number of your people so that you have more power. The problem is when you increase the prosperity of your people, they have more power because having wealth is a type of power. So there's a danger of resistance against your own power. So the more tyrannical you are, the more dangerous lesser power becomes because it can resist you. So there's this temptation amongst tyrants to squash productivity because squashing productivity is squashing competing power. The problem for them is that when you destroy your internal power base, other nations still exist. And so though North Korea, a half century ago, was pretty similar to South Korea, after a half century of oppression, look at the satellite pictures, and there's a lot more lights in South Korea than in North Korea. Because there's a lot more wealth to turn the lights on. in South Korea than in North Korea. So the effort to oppress the people and maintain centralized power destroys the pie. The pie doesn't grow. There's a greater and greater possession of a smaller and smaller pie. Squeezing out the other powers ends up squeezing out the custard of the pie. You end up with less there. So pragmatically speaking, if power were the good, you would want to, as a power-hungry ruler, allow other people to have power because it increases your power ultimately. The problem is competing powers reduce your ability to do whatever you want whenever you want. And so therefore power is not something that as a finite creature that you can get all of. And so the power as the good is something that doesn't hold up logically in itself. If the good life is a life of power, it's a life where you either end up destroying yourself seeking it, or you give other people power in order to increase your own, and it makes competing powers. Pragmatically, sometimes this is referred to as the Laffer curve, what was called under Reagan, voodoo economics, that by cutting tax rates, somehow the government would collect more money. Voodoo. And so the idea there was that when Reagan entered office, some of the highest tax rates were way over 50%. And the idea was that lots of people weren't doing productive things that they might otherwise do if their tax rates were not over 50%. And so the Laffer curve, I have a footnote here for you to go look at, but here's the short version of it. If you put taxes at 100%, you'd expect to get very little in tax revenue because nobody's going to do very much to make money if they have to give 100% of the fruits of their labor to you. If you put taxes at 0%, you're not going to get a whole lot because you're not collecting anything even if people do tons of stuff. So there's some point on the bell curve where there's a maximum tax rate to maximize what you can collect. Interestingly, in Italy, for example, the tax rate, if somebody paid all the taxes, there's value-added taxes, there's income taxes, there's sales tax. If you pay all the taxes, you end up having to pay over 100% of the income you make. So every dollar you make, you owe the government 110 cents or something like that. So as a result, you'd think a lot of people would just stop doing anything. Interestingly, people in Italy are still working. Sometimes. And so when you look at what people are doing in Italy, and they're continuing to work, how does this work? Well, they just lie to the taxman. And they end up collecting about a third of the economy. In the United States, we end up in the federal government collecting about a third of the economy. In Germany, they collect about a third of the economy. So what ends up happening is the amount of taxation that you can actually collect, no matter what, is never really more than about a third. No matter how high you try to make the tax rate or whatever, you're not really able to collect more than about a third of it in terms of the government pulling in what it can get. And so that being the case, there is some sort of point at which, even as a pragmatic, godless ruler, you're going to say, this tax rate is the most ideal tax rate for me collecting money from people, to get the most power out of the state that I can get. Well, the law of God says not to go to even 10%, right? 1 Samuel 8 teaches us that 10% is tyrannically high. And so when we look at the state, there's this danger of people, even if they're just pragmatic, going too far, because there's this madness of pursuit of power. And so many times, rulers, in seeking to increase their power and wealth off of their people, end up destroying it. So you've probably heard of Aesop's fable, The Goose with the Golden Eggs. We've got a summary here for you. This is the shortest possible summary that I could imagine of this. I used multiple AIs to try to see if I could get it shorter, too. A farmer finds his goose, lays a golden egg daily, bringing him wealth. Greedy for more, he kills the goose to get all the eggs at once, only to find none inside. His short-sightedness destroys his source of prosperity. What's the lesson there? Killing the golden goose or the goose that lays the golden eggs is a way of referring to ruining a valuable resource through greed or impatience. Oftentimes, those in power kill the goose that lays the golden egg out of impatience or greed. So the biblical ethic limits the power of the state and it imposes supernatural curses for tyranny as well as natural consequences. God gives natural consequences and supernatural blessings for good government. Now, there's a tendency when you are looking at the church You say people who abuse the church are using it for respectability. People who abuse the state are using it for power. And sometimes, especially if they're trying to get wealth through the system or use the state to get wealth, they're viewing wealth as the good or money as the good. And so there's this criticism of wealth. He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver. If you make money your God, you will not be satisfied with this God. For he who loves abundance with increase, this also is vanity. As it's showing us, this is a false good. Why? You become like what you worship, and if you worship money, then there is never enough. Who can number what's lacking? Our desires are ultimately infinite, and so the need for money is infinite, and money worshiped is mammon. We will find it disappointing. Governors can abuse trying to take more than they should. The rich can seek to oppress. They can give attention to making and consuming money, and oppress the poor in order to extract more money, and it will not satisfy them. The poor can make excuses in all their troubles because of the lack of money, and they can try to steal from the rich or oppress the fellow poor. Any of these things, these are all ways of sort of making money your God. Verse 11, when goods increase, they increase who eat them. By the way, let me highlight something I just said. I want you to ask yourself this. How often do you tell yourself, if I had more money, these would all be solved? All these problems would be solved. Things would be good. If I had more money, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Be good. Things are good. If I had more money. If you ever tell yourself that, this is teaching you how to get that lie out of your soul. That's what's happening right here in this text. It's teaching you how to get that, to purge that leech of a false idea, that mind virus, out of your mind. Here's the criticism for money is a good. When goods increase, when money increases, They increase who eat them. So what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes? Increased wealth leads a man either to be a miser, and thus to just die looking at his unused money, or to put the money to work, or to consume it. Think about that. You can pile it up, you can put it to work, or you can consume it. This is it. This is all you got. Pile it up, invest it, consume it. If you consume it, we've had a long section about pleasure seeking earlier on that shows you that pleasure seeking is not the good life. If you invest it and watch other people do lots of work, you remember earlier on, we had Solomon talking about making pools and orchards and all these beautiful gardens and palaces and having servants and music players, all this stuff. He had all the things. He put all this money to work and did things and had other people doing things, and he was paying money to everybody. So other people were consuming it. There were more mouths. And the goal was to make more. So what? So we could have more mouths? OK. Investing not worth it. Consuming not worth it. I will just pile up money, and I will swim around in big pools of money. The physics totally works. And so if I just have these big pools of money, and I stare at the vats full of money, that's the good life, right? Hoarding it. So there's hoarding money, there's investing the money, which makes more money when it goes well, and there's consuming the money on luxuries and pleasures. When goods increase, they increase who eat them. So what profit have the owners except to eat them, or see them, sorry, except to see them with their eyes? Investment and consumption are useful, but you have to know what they're useful for. Money is not the end. It's not the goal. It's not the thing. It's not the thing. It's not the highest good. So what is it for? It is for the glory of God. And we start to compare the life that's a life focused on money, and now I have this criticism of your anxiety when you get rich. Verse 12, the sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much. But the abundance of the rich will not permit him to sleep. People get money so they can have security, and what happens is they feel insecure about their money. There is a severe evil which I have seen under the sun. Remember, under the sun is a catch word. It reminds us we're talking about a vain perspective, an empty worldview. We're looking at the idea of life under the sun as opposed to under the throne of heaven. There's a severe evil which I've seen when people come with a non-Christian worldview. They keep riches to their own hurt. They keep riches to their own hurt. As opposed to paying their duties, Blessing people, helping people, being merciful to people, deploying money for the glory of God. They keep riches to their own hurt. They're miserly. But those riches perish through bad business. So they're hoarding, they're holding on to it. They won't pay out what they ought to pay out. They won't give when they should give. And still, by bad business, by incompetence, by laziness, by bad judgment, by just stuff happening, They lose it because money is not inalienable. Money is not something that once you get it, you're guaranteed to keep it. Wisdom, you get it, you're guaranteed to keep it. You can't lose it. You're not going to lose your salvation. You're not going to lose the knowledge of God, but money, you can lose it. There's a severe evil, which I have seen under the sun. Riches kept for their owner to his hurt. But those riches perish through bad business. When he begets a son, there's nothing in his hand. So there's nothing to give across generations. There's no heritage. Okay, wealth is your heritage. Great. What is your son getting if you lose it all? We're called with the dominion mandate to pass on a heritage of wisdom and wealth. Wisdom is the primary thing. Wisdom, you give it to your son and it makes it so that whether you have any wealth to give to him or not, he has received something that's more valuable. If he has wisdom and you give him wealth also, he can do more. If you have wisdom and you have wealth, you can do more good. If you don't have wisdom, the wealth is just more foolishness. When he begets a son, there's nothing in his hand. As he came from his mother's womb, naked shall he return. This man, his son doesn't get anything and he dies and he has nothing. You can't take it with you? Right? That's the saying. As he came from his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came. When he dies, he doesn't get to take the money with him. And he shall take nothing from his labor, which he may carry away in his hand. There's nothing to take. It doesn't last. It doesn't go with you. It can even be lost in this life. It can make it partway through one generation. People worry about wealth lasting across two or three generations. It's possible to get wealthy and lose it in your generation. Verse 16, and this also is a severe evil. Just exactly as he came, so shall he go. You know what keeps you from leaving the same way you came into the world? Wisdom. Knowledge of God. Your body goes into the ground and your soul, with wisdom, enters into the presence of God covered in the righteousness of Christ. And do you know what you chase while you're in the presence of God? It's not just some experiential beatific vision. The beatific vision is the idea that God illuminates your mind so that you are continuously growing in wisdom. Have you ever had the pleasure of struggling through some problem, some difficult doctrine, something that vexes your soul, some answer that you craved, something that bothered you, kept you up at night, you couldn't go to sleep because you were worried about this thing, you didn't know how to deal with it, and you got the answer. Have you ever, after much struggling, come to a conclusion where you finally got the answer you needed? Getting that wisdom is a delight and pleasure of the inward man. And one of the glories of heaven is that it will be a continuous stream of enlightenment where you are always having Problems and falsehoods that you don't believe the falsehoods anymore when you're in heaven, but you have all falsehood defeated. Ignorance being consistently removed by knowledge. Answers to questions. Eureka moments. A continuous stream of the delight of the soul in the increase of wisdom. To come into this life a fool and to go out a naked, poor fool, what a waste of a life. But no matter what clothing or what wealth you have, if you enter this world as a fool, which we all do, if you exit this world as a wise man, you take a treasury of wisdom with you. And this also is a severe evil, just exactly as he came, so shall he go. And what profit has he who has labored for the wind? That money was as good to him in his hand when he died as if he just had wind in his hand. So what profit was it? Without wisdom, there's no profit in anything. Without seeing the glory of God, there's no profit in anything. All his days he also eats in darkness. He eats but he doesn't give thanks. He doesn't rejoice in the goodness of God. He doesn't see how it glorifies God. He eats and he eats in darkness. If you eat in darkness, you don't even know what you're putting in your mouth. Whether it's rubbish or whether it's good. And your sense of taste and discernment will collapse as you put garbage into your mouth over and over and over again. A man in darkness eating whatever he can put into his mouth. That's the vision of the man who is wealthy in his life and consumes his wealth and then dies without wisdom. He's like a man eating in a dark room whatever he can shove into his mouth. This also is a severe evil, just exactly as he came, so shall he go. And what profit has he who has labored for the wind? All his days he also eats in darkness, And he has much sorrow and sickness and anger. Sorrow not joy, sickness not health, anger not love. This is what the God money will give you. So verse 18. Here's what I've seen. It's good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun. Uh oh. Which worldview is this? Which worldview is this? This is under the sun. This is a false view he's putting forward. It sounds in some ways similar to what he says elsewhere in the right view. So there's something off. This is an indicator to us to look for what's wrong here. It's good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him. Wait a second. We're talking about God. How can this be under the sun? There are many people who say they believe in God and yet live as though he did not reign from heaven. And yet live as though his law was not sufficient. And yet live as though there would be no judgment. To live, not for the glory of God, but then putting God on your lips, do you see how that goes back to the beginning of chapter 5? There are plenty in the church who vow with hypocrisy. It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life, which God gives him, for it's his heritage. His portion. As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor, this is the gift of God. God's the one that gives you the money. God's the one that gives you the ability to enjoy it. So enjoy it. For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart. You read that and you're going to go, that's nice. He's not going to think too much on his life, because God's going to make him real happy. What a blessing. It's interesting. Does the scripture typically say, you know, the problem with mankind is that he thinks too often, too deeply on important matters. That's the problem with man. If he just stopped thinking so much, stopped trying to think about God and the weighty things of the scriptures, if he just stopped thinking about wisdom so often, if he would just be distracted more by the enjoyable things of this life, then man would truly finally have the good life. Is that the message of the scriptures that you find? No, but most interpreters read this passage as somehow saying that. Beloved, here's a little bit more literal translation for you. For he will not think much on the days of his life because God keeps him busy with happiness or delight of his heart. In other words, if you live under the sun, and you get riches and power, and you get to enjoy it all, God is causing you to be distracted, to fatten you up like a pig for the slaughter. If you're wealthy and healthy and happy and care nothing for the wisdom of God, you are living a life of distraction, amusing yourself to death until you come to judgment. If you are wealthy and