All right, please remain standing for the reading of the text out of Ecclesiastes 5 and 6. Ecclesiastes 5, 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 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 permit him to sleep. 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. 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. He will not think much on the days of his life. Because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun. It is common among men. A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that he lacks nothing for himself of all he desires. Yet God does not give him power to eat of it. but a foreigner consumes it. This is vanity, and it is an evil affliction. If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, But his soul is not satisfied with goodness, or indeed he has no burial. I say that a stillborn child is better than he, for it comes in vanity and departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness. Though it has not seen the sun or known anything, this has more rest than that man, even if he lives a thousand years twice, but has not seen goodness. Do not all go to one place. All the labor of a man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied. For what more has the wise man than the fool? What does the poor man have, who knows how to walk before the living? What does the poor man have, who knows how to walk before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind. Whatever one is, he has been named already, for it is known that he is man. And he cannot contend with him who is mightier than he, since there are many things that increase vanity. How is man the better? For who knows what is good for a man? Who knows what is good for man in life, all the days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow? Who can tell a man what will happen after him under the sun? You may be seated. Someone would be so kind as to give me a cup of water. I'd be grateful. All right. Restless misery. Get excited. 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. Remember, it is the ordinary state of man for people to oppress the weak. It is the ordinary state of man since the fall for high officials to pervert justice. It is the ordinary state of man, and so we should not marvel at it. At the same time, thank you, son, at the same time, We should recognize the fact that this is silly, even from the perspective of an oppressor. For one to rule in a manner that destroys the wealth of his own people, because kings should be committed to the cultivation of fields. Because they derive their own wealth and power from the number of their followers and the prosperity of their followers. What is not possessed cannot be taxed. And so, it is necessary that there be a goose that lays golden eggs in order for eggs to be taken from the goose. Verse 10. He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver, nor he who loves abundance with increase. This also is vanity. But even if you intelligently seek to make people into a tax farm, so that you can maximize what you extract from those you rule, you will find that the multiplication of gold and silver, the increase of physical possessions, for they that love physical goods will never be satisfied with those goods. The increase will never be enough. The storehouses will never be large enough or full enough. And there will not be satisfaction. Even obtaining the goal and enjoying it and seeing investment go into places where it continues to increase will not yield ultimate satisfaction and is something that you lose when you die. When goods increase, they increase who eat them. So what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes? You can watch them in your storehouses. You can watch them invested. perhaps even employing a bunch of people, watching them work and watching them do things. And even if it increases what you possess, you simply have possession that is consumed by others. You can consume it yourself. But there's only so much you can consume. And remember, we have considered already that the consumption of wealth to seek to bring about pleasure and to seek to bring enjoyment will not bring satisfaction. Pleasures are temporary. And if you die and there's nothing after, it's still meaningless. And if you die and there's a judgment, what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes? Is that the good life? To just stare at money? Staring at it go through other people's hands? Staring at it as you spend it on expensive things to consume? Then there's the issue of anxiety we talked about. 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. Anxiety. Anxiety about it. The Lord Jesus Christ talks about the lilies of the field, and they don't toil or spin, but God has clothed them with clothing that's more glorious than anything Solomon wore. We are told about the fact that sparrows of the sky do not worry about what they're going to get. The Lord provides for them. And so there is a picture for peace, the recognition of the fact that God will not allow a hair to fall from the head or a small bit of growth to occur apart from his will. And so we recognize the fact that God is the one who gives and takes away And the one who has little has less to tempt him to worry about its loss. And so the sleep of the laboring man is sweet. He's less likely to see this money as his fortress and strong tower and strength. He's less likely to see this money as his God and savior. He's less likely to find his identity in money. The temptation of wealth and power is to think the reason you matter. It's because you have wealth and power. But who matters more? Who is more significant? The wise poor man or the foolish king? We've already heard it's better to be the wise poor youth than to be the old foolish king. 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. Verse 13, there is a severe evil which I have seen under the sun. So this is under the sun worldview. This is not under the heaven worldview, under the sun. Riches kept for their owner to his hurt, but those riches perish through bad business. When he begets a son, there is nothing in his hand. As he came from his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came. And he shall take nothing from his labor, which he may carry away in his hand. Remember, wisdom cannot be taken from you. The knowledge of God cannot be lost. Salvation is a thing that God preserves us in and preserves our possession of. But money is lost by every dead man and by many living men. There is the prospect of having sons but nothing to give them in terms of property. If you have wisdom, you have an inheritance and a heritage to give them. Verse 16, and this also is a severe evil. Just exactly as he came, so shall he go. What you start with and what you leave with in terms of property, you came with none, you leave with none. In terms of wisdom, you come with none, but if you gain it, you leave with wisdom, and you leave into the accelerated space of the glorified condition where you will grow in wisdom forever at a speed that is unimaginable to you now. What profit has he who has labored for discern what's worth taking in? and he has much sorrow and sickness and anger. Wisdom gives joy, and even if it does not heal you in this life, though there is much physical health that comes from wisdom and a connection between the state of your mind and the condition of your body, and though wisdom helps you to care for your body better and gives you the discipline to control your body better, Though all those things be true, even if you are wise and yet sick in this life, you will have everlasting good health in the resurrection if you have wisdom. To be angry, to desire the harm of others, to have a wrath or hatred for enemies that is unable to be dealt with, The Christian man knows that God will judge and vengeance is his. The Christian man looks to God not only in his providential judgments, but in the last judgment. The Christian man is able to say either this person will suffer for this sin in hell forever or Christ has paid for it or the time of Solomon will pay for it. In any case, he has a place for his anger. and a place for his guilt. He has a way to resolve all those difficulties of mind, and all those things that would cause the mind to be turbulent, all the frustrations that come forth, and recognize that there's meaning behind them. Suffering becomes meaningful, and rather than being angry with God, Knowing who God is and what He has done and how He has saved you allows you to look upon all of the things that God brings into your life as things for your good. So rather than raging against the storm, you can be calm in it. A meaningless life for property, eating in darkness with sorrow, sickness, and anger is nothing compared to the glories of the Christian life, even in poverty. Go to page 5, verse 18. Here is what I have seen. It is good and fitting. 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 all the days of his life which God gives him. For it is his heritage. Is it good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of your labor under the sun without recognition of the rule of heaven, without recognition of the glory of God, without recognition of the law of God, without giving thanks to God? No, this is the perspective. He is defining for you the presuppositions of this worldview that he's deconstructing. So, do you think it's good to eat and drink and to enjoy good of your labor, the fruits of your labor? in which you toil under the sun all the days of this life. In other words, work hard, play hard. Is that the good life? That's what you got. That's your portion. That's your heritage. That's what you receive in life. Is there really anything else? 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. I mean, not everybody gets to work hard, get the fruits of their labor, enjoy the fruits of their labor, and play hard. Not everybody gets that. So that seems like a pretty good condition. Some people would say that's the American dream. I don't think it's the American dream. I think the American dream was to come to a wilderness, to subdue it, to convert the natives, to make them go from savages to civilized, and to see the whole of the continent filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. That was the American dream of the pilgrims. That was what their compact, forming their own government, said. Their purpose was to glorify God and to see the gospel advanced. But there is a lie that people pretend is the American dream, which is materialistic consumerism. That's what's here. Materialistic consumerism. The enjoyment of property in its consumption. As for every man 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 think much. He won't dwell unduly. He won't remember much. He won't name much. He won't call to mind much. The days of His life. Beloved, Moses commanded us to number our days. Why? Because you live 70 years. If you're strong, 80 years. but a breath, but a vapor. It's a passing moment, a blinking of the eye. And if you don't number your days, the finitude of them will come upon you like a semi-truck. It will lay you flat out. Your youth will pass. The vigor of your days will be gone, and you'll have spent them on vanity. And you will look in your hand to see what you have, and you will find the wind. It is a curse to not think much on the days of your life because you're kept so busy and so satisfied with the temporary delights of this life. This describes America. America is a land dominated by people who are delighted to the point of distraction, who have abundance and who die having never thought. Some old wag said many would sooner die than think, and many do. That's the danger, amusing ourselves to death. So much prosperity, so little existential threat, so little concern for death, so much expectation of longevity, So much ease of getting property to amuse ourselves with. If you want to evangelize, you need to help people to understand the dissatisfaction of this condition of life. This is a condition of life that people sometimes are able to amuse themselves for many years or decades, and to make themselves believe, it's not that bad, it's not that miserable, Typically, I fall asleep fast enough because I exhaust myself in my amusements. I don't have to sit in bed too long thinking about how miserable I am. And while I'm pursuing my amusements, I'm pretty well distracted. And while I'm working, I'm looking forward to being amused. That treadmill of amusement seeking. Recognizing that it's a meaningless life. That it doesn't profit. That you lose it. And that there is death and there is a judgment. So that life is a life that's a cursed life. And it is a life that many, many, many Americans live. Chapter 6, verse 1. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men. A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that he lacks nothing for himself of all he desires, yet God does not give him power to eat of it, but a foreigner consumes it. This is vanity, and it is an evil affliction. So think about this. We talked about the best case scenario. Okay, property. good life of ease and amusement. This is the best you can hope for seeking to have your money and your leisure. But let's be real for just a minute. The best laid plans of mice and men often work out less than what is intended. You plan to be able to work and then enjoy the leisure and problems happen. I'll solve this problem and then I can get the leisure. Okay, another problem comes up. I'll solve that problem and then I can enjoy it. The next problem comes up. I'll solve this problem and then I can enjoy it. And then your life is spent and somebody else gets what you worked for. Many Americans live in this life. The man who works and works and works and ignores his family and fails to put any effort in to nurture and care for the soul of his wife or of his children. And as a result, the property he gets is inherited by a fool or a foreigner where he has no children. That's more and more common now. Many who are affluent, who avoid ever having children, who will inherit their wealth? Well, most of it will go to the government in tax-inefficient ways. And the Chinese, who own our debt, will get paid back, and the foreigner will enjoy it. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men. A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor, so he lacks nothing for himself of all he desires. Yet God does not give him power to eat of it, but a foreigner consumes it. This is vanity, and it is an evil affliction. If a man begets a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with goodness, or indeed he has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better than he. For it comes in vanity and departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness. So the scenario we talked about back in chapter 5, you succeed, you get lots of money, you enjoy consuming the money, you distract yourself until you die. What happens then? What dreams may come when you pass over the bourne of that river over which no man returns except Christ and Lazarus and a few other people that have been resurrected. But aside from that, Dunny, you were coming back until the resurrection generally. At that point, the judgment is what you're facing. You live until you're distracted, and then you die, and then you're judged. What kind of a life is that? This other life is the life of not getting any satisfaction. Not being satisfied. Not enjoying. Wisdom itself is satisfying. The enjoyment of God is something that gives satisfaction. It allows for the blessings of this life to be interpreted in the perspective of the blessings of God and for gratitude to flow forth. It allows us to recognize that temporary and temporal troubles are passing afflictions to develop and train us. These presuppositions allow us to interpret things so that our joys are higher, and our sufferings are not as low. If you're one who lives a long, long, long, long, long, long time, but you're not satisfied with receiving goodness, then it would be better if you had lived the minimum possible time. A stillborn child. Sometimes it's translated as a miscarriage. The idea of someone who has lived so little time that he has known not the Son. He who has no burial is talking about one who doesn't have a place of honor, doesn't have a name worth remembering, hasn't lived a life where there's anybody to recall him or care about him when he dies. The selfish consumer, the selfish consumer who has no one to bury him and yet he also didn't get to enjoy or be satisfied. It would be better to be a stillborn child than to be he. The stillborn child comes in vanity or meaninglessness and departs in darkness or meaninglessness and its name is covered with darkness. There's no bad reputation. There's no calumny. There's nothing that he has to suffer at the hands of other men. He comes in meaninglessness, he departs in meaninglessness, and his name is meaningless. But it all got done fast. Because from an under-the-sun perspective, you come with meaninglessness, you live a long time, And you depart in meaninglessness. And eventually everybody forgets your name. So your name's covered in darkness too. Isn't that what Solomon has said about living under the sun? Even if you're a great king. Remember earlier on there was the example of who's better? The old king who will not be corrected, or the wise youth? The wise youth. Someday he'll come out and be a king. He'll leave his prison. of the oppression of foolishness, of poverty, of having no reputation. The young man, the youth with the wisdom, he rises. But even if he gathers to himself all the peoples of the earth, someday he will die and be forgotten. Do you remember that from earlier on? So the name, no matter how great you rise in this life, if this life is all you have, It doesn't matter. It passes. And so how do you avoid a meaninglessness here? Verse 5, though it has not seen the Son or known anything. This stillborn child, he hasn't seen the Son and he hasn't obtained true knowledge. This has more rest than that man. That stillborn child has more rest than the man who lived long, had honor, had riches. He had all the things, but he couldn't enjoy it. He wasn't satisfied with goodness. Though it has not seen the sun or known anything, that has more rest than that man. Even if he lives 1,000 years twice. Living 2,000 years. Now, by the way, why a reference to 2,000 years? The oldest men. live to be about a thousand. Right after the fall, leading up to the flood, you find men living about a thousand years. Long life. To live 2,000 years would be to live twice the time of Methuselah, twice the time of Adam, twice the time of the oldest men. You can have twice that time, and if you do not have satisfaction with goodness, then your life is worse than the life of the stillborn. Even if he lives 2,000 years but has not seen goodness. Now, this seeing of goodness, you might go, oh, isn't that enjoying the property? The idea is, no, the property is not a good that is sufficient. What's the definition of good? If you don't understand how God is the good, and you don't understand how knowing Him is how you obtain what is good, then you are stuck with having nothing that's ultimately satisfying. So if you don't see God, if you do not see who He is, what He is, if you do not know the true and living God, then living 2,000 years is nothing but a hell on earth waiting for a worse hell. And then there's this statement, do not all go to the one place. Remember, this is the perspective. This is the under the sun perspective. If men ultimately do not live under the throne of heaven, then no matter how long you live, if it has an ending, It still ends, and therefore it's meaningless. And even if you could have longevity that lasts forever, even if you could accomplish transhumanism and be a ghost in the machine, even if you could manage to have your consciousness transferred through USB 5.0, in whatever of these scenarios you happen to have, you still would simply be without satisfaction and it would be hell. So without the knowledge of God, you can live forever not having what's good, not having satisfaction. And the only difference between that and hell is that hell adds physical torment to the resurrected. Do not all go to one place. No. And that, Solomon, is why in this portion of the thinking, there is no value, no meaning. If we deny the judgment, if we deny the judgment seat, if we deny the resurrection and the judgment that will differentiate the righteous from the wicked, we destroy all meaning. Christianity, having a day of judgment, is necessary for meaning in life and the distinction between meaningful action and meaningless action. Solomon goes here over and over again. Our culture has made it so that nobody talks about the judgment. In general, you can't bring up the judgment. If you're talking about why should we do this action versus another thing, in a corporate boardroom if you say because the Lord Jesus Christ will judge us one day. If in the floor of Congress you say because the Lord Jesus Christ will judge us one day. Most of the time, the response is a yawn or a laughter to scorn. The cackles of hyenas and stupid men. And now, so often of stupid women, even in Congress. The ability to differentiate between what is good and what is evil and to be able to rely upon the judgment to provide meaning is important. And so as a Christian, you should bear witness to the judgment. You should bear witness to the reality that Christ will judge. You should bear witness to the resurrection. You should bear witness to the fact that good and evil matter and that there is a difference even for believers, that there are rewards for good works. And we give up opportunity for everlasting reward when we squander a test. Verse 7 tells us what happens if we come back to under the sun perspective. All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied. All you're left with is what should we spend our money on, guns or butter? That's the discussion in government circles, right? Often you just kind of go, should we have social welfare and give butter? Or should we have defense spending and buy guns? That's all there is. Guns to defend your butter or butter to consume. That's the perspective. There's just stuff to eat and stuff to protect what we eat and maybe take other people's stuff that they eat. If that's the only thing, if all there is is laboring to consume with the mouth, We've already considered how pleasure is not sufficient to make life meaningful. The soul is not satisfied. You can work and consume and not be satisfied. Food, money, pleasures are not sufficient to bear the weight of existence. So we've stuck with Can I use my money to get honor, or authority, or power, or pleasure, or property, or reputation? These are the things that are considered. How do I know that those are the things worth chasing? Well, the law of God points to them. Fifth commandment, honor. Sixth commandment, power. Seventh commandment, pleasure. Eighth commandment, property. Ninth commandment, reputation. These are the things that matter. When we try to love our neighbor, we care about those things with each other. But ultimately, with our neighbor, if he doesn't know God, none of those things are of any use to him. And it's true for you. And if he doesn't know how to use any of that to get what's good, then he's just stuck in a tailspin. What does the poor man have who knows how to walk before the living? He doesn't have property, but he has wisdom. He knows the life worth living. And we already talked about it's better to be the poor, wise youth. than to be the old king who will not receive correction. Do you see how the book of Ecclesiastes constantly alludes back to things it's already answered? The questions are meant to make you think about it, to go, hey, we've actually deconstructed this already. Why is that? When you are dealing with apologetics with yourself, your doubts are the same doubts that rise over and over again. How many times have you asked yourself, am I really saved? How many times have you asked yourself, is this thing really true? Is this book really the Word of God? Is this life really the life worth living? So many people disagree. Can this really be the right view? These questions are the same questions that haunt you over and over again. The issue is not that you need a million answers. The issue is you need a few really good answers. And you have to deal with them over and over again. That's how you strengthen your soul and stabilize. And each time you wrestle yourself down out of your own tizzy about the thing you're worried about and you hammer down the answer in your soul and you use the words of the wise and those of the masters of assemblies. And you take the words of God and you argue with yourself and you nail down the answer so that you have a habit of thought. You answer the same objections and the same questions over and over again in your own mind so that you are stable. So that your soul is stable. So that you're not blown about by every wind of doctrine. But you're able to stand firm in the trial and tribulation. And when fires come, you are not burnt up. Being able to answer the same thing and go back and to go through the process is what you need for you and it makes it so that you are able to answer with the words of the wise to others. On an airplane, you know, they talk about how, you know, if the oxygen bag drops, put yours on first before helping other people. Because if you try to help other people first, then they're going to get knocked out, you're going to get knocked out, and everybody dies. You can't help other people with apologetics. until you have answered the doubts in your own soul. The things that trouble you at night, the things that you're worried about, the things that bother you, the doubts that arise that you don't have answers to, you do not have the conviction to witness well until those things are nailed down. Now, beloved, you should still witness. You can be flapping in the wind like a reed and speak the truth and God can convert nations. Ordinarily, the way this works is you seek to see your own faith grow and then your ability to speak powerful words of life increases. What more has the wise man than the fool? He has the truth and he knows what's good and how to get it. What does the poor man have who knows how to walk before the living? He might not have property, but he knows the good life. And he will get profit. He's not stuck grasping for the wind. He can distinguish between what's good and what's evil. The poor man who knows how to... Is this saying it's better to get what you can look at than to just keep looking for something you can never find? You see how that would be a really worldly answer to this? Just stop trying to find meaning. Stop trying to get the answers to all this stuff. Just enjoy what you can get your hands on. The physical, material world. The stuff you can get. Be satisfied with that. Well, you can't be satisfied with something that's dissatisfying. Better is the sight of the eyes and the wandering of desire. This is not merely saying that. The word for desire there is literally soul. The human soul will wander until it finds a place worth staying. If you think that the good in life is honor and authority, once you get it, you will find it to be a poor god. The anxieties of it, the responsibility of it, the burden of it, the ability to lose it. The fact that you can't get everything done you want to get done. You can't make everybody do what you want them to do. So then you start to think, maybe power. Maybe power is the answer. I'll just force everybody to do what I want. But you can't. You can't control it enough. You can't see in enough. You can try to observe everything. You can be the NSA and try to track everything. How many agents are listening to how many of our phones right now? Right? And you go, dirty bomb. And all of a sudden, all of them, all of the agents are listening to all of our phones. So that whole thing right there, you have this issue of governments trying to control people and to pay attention to everything. They can't. They can't control it. They can't track it all. There are limits on power and your ability to coerce people to do things is limited. And so, you get frustrated with power. Even if you seek and obtain the heights of power, they are frustrating. And so you seek pleasure to dull it, and it doesn't satisfy. And you seek property, and it doesn't satisfy. And you seek reputation, and it doesn't satisfy. And so, what do you do? You just run back through them? The dissatisfaction is unavoidable. The disillusionment will come. And so people run the gamut, sometimes going back through the same things over and over and over and over again. The wandering of desire will occur until there is something worth staying on. Augustine in the Confessions, Book 1, Chapter 1 said, You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You. The resting of the soul, the resting of desire, occurs when we find what is truly good. But if we seek to just get the stuff we can see with the physical eye, and have our desire try to stay on those things, we will not be satisfied, and our desires will move along, and our lives will become unstable. If you build your whole life around chasing one thing, and then you become dissatisfied with it, and you rebuild your life to chase something else, do you see how destabilizing that would be? If you think, ah, romance will solve the problem, I just need to find the one, one, one, And when I find the one, one, one, then I'll be satisfied. And so you find the one, you get married, and you find that marriage didn't solve all of your desires. And so you think, maybe I'll try with another one, one, one. And then you find another one, and that other one is not satisfying another. And three, four marriages in, all of a sudden you realize, maybe it's not about that. Maybe it's not about the one. Maybe it's about something else. So there's this chasing of things, trying to solve it. And so if you go, instead of trying to find the best mate, now I'm going to try to make money, that's a very different life. Or power. The instability of chasing after different goods. You construct your life around what you think is worth getting. And over time, you build up so many habits and skills and resources and relationships around chasing what you think is good. And so if you change from one thing to the other as what you think is the worthy thing to chase with the life, the whole structure gets knocked over and you start building a new one. The restlessness of desire is something that increases the sense of futility and waste and exhaustion and exasperation. And so we need to find what is truly good to avoid a restless misery that destroys itself until we sleep the sleep of death. To change your desire to have the wandering of the soul from one disillusionment to another disillusionment is a vanity and a grasping for the wind. It leaves you with nothing worth having in your hand. You must know God. You must know his attributes. You must know why he is worth possessing and the greatness of the rewards of possessing him. So the scriptures are filled with the knowledge of God, and they are filled with promises of abundance, and they are filled with instruction about the life worth living, the life that causes you to increase in the possession of God. Verse 10, whatever one is, he has been named already, for it is known that he is man. God has predestined us to be what we are, and he has designed our human nature. We are named already. What we are is named already. It's identified already. And it's known that you are man. Human nature is defined by God. And your history and your future are defined by God. And man, who has been made and defined by God, and predestined in all his steps, cannot contend with God. God is mightier than he. God is mightier than you. Being angry about the commandments of God is like shaking your fist at the sun because it shines. But it's more futile than that. The sun is finite and it will go dark if it's allowed enough time. But God will never go dark. And He punishes the shakers of fists. To rage against God is to pile up wrath against yourself. The foolishness of avoiding the answer of what's good, running away from God, who defines us, is to contend with God. To fight Him. Verse 11, Since there are many things that increase vanity, how is man the better? Well, if man doesn't listen to what God has told him, man is not the better. God designed us Did He design us to live in vanity? God designed us. We need to submit to the definition of what is good, what's profitable. God has given us the one way to avoid meaninglessness. And men in their pride hate meaning, hate God, hate the definition of mean that he's given to us so much that they would rather live in meaninglessness trying to define themselves, to make themselves into whatever they want, to reinvent themselves. This nihilistic self-expression garbage that everybody tries to pretend is meaningful while being miserable is so silly that our culture is even bored with it. We've reached the point where all this effort to say, no, I can be what I want to be, and I can do what I want to do, and I can have it all, and I don't have to be bound by anything, and there are no limits to me, it's boring. People are exhausted by the platitudes of it all. It's silly, and we're in the middle of a cultural backlash against it. And so the question now, as we come out of this, we've all lived in this for decades, As we come out of this effort to define ourselves, the danger is now the attempt to impose something with a definition. And the question will be, does our culture adopt the biblical definition of what man is and what he ought to do and the God that he ought to know? Or will it seek to impose a false view of all of them? And so there are struggles now over that. That very thing is, I think, what is going to dominate the discussion for some time. Who is the God of the Bible? What is really true about him? What does his law require and how is man designed? What is man? That God is mindful of him. And so having a very clear doctrine of God and man and of the law, will be absolutely necessary to build in the rubble that is Western civilization. We are building. People might not like it, but we're building. You're doing things. Your life is being spent here. You are having friendships and building them. You are having hospitality and you are pouring into each other. You are seeking to work and build wealth and heritage. Whether they like it or not, you're doing it. And so what are you building? The knowledge of God is necessary for that. We spend so much time trying to deconstruct the false views that now that we must put forward a positive vision and a life to live, we have to have clear definitions and clear foci for ourselves. Deep understanding of who God is and what his law requires is necessary for us to avoid boredom. Rote repetition of Christian duties without increasing meaning becomes a thing where we just take vows in vain. and we become bored and we look for something else. We are building. We must have a deep knowledge of God and of His law in order for it to bear up and avoid disillusionment. If you find yourself beginning to get bored with God, that is a terrifying alarm bell. It requires you to dig in deeper, to seek to understand and believe more fully what has been revealed. God will not allow you to stand still. Verse 12, For who knows what is good for man in life, all the days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow? So, do you see how the answer to the question is embedded here already? It's presupposed. What? Who knows what's good for man in life all the days of his meaningless life? If life is meaningless, then nobody knows and there is no good. Okay, but what's the point here? Who knows what's good for man in life? God. God. God knows. God knows what is good for man. All the days of his life, beginning to end, which passes like a shadow. The shortness of life is something that makes it all the more important to look to God and His law. And the fact that we can't find meaning apart from God makes it necessary to go there. You read the existentialists, you read the nihilists, they all know this. They all go, I know, if I don't have objective meaning, I know it's all kind of meaningless, but I can distract myself for a while. Or the nihilists go, if God is dead, there's no purpose, there's no goal, but I'm just going to will to power anyways. All right, well, have fun with that until you're disillusioned. They know. They all say it. Who knows what is good for man in life? God knows. All the days of his vain life? Well, life isn't vain. It's not meaningless. It's meaningful. It's maximally meaningful. There is a judgment. And yes, it passes like a shadow, which makes it all the more important and urgent that you figure it out. Who can tell a man what will happen after him under the sun? You know, so often people want to say, we need to not do what God's law says because the consequences will be bad. If we follow God's law, the consequences will be bad. And the insanity of that. If we're thinking about consequences now, if we're looking to the future now, The only consequences that are ultimately meaningful are the consequences of judgment. Consequentialism, that does not look to God, is absurd. And furthermore, God's law describes for us the way things work in the world. And so the things that bring about the results we want temporally as well as at the end, are what God commands. If we try to use our observations of nature and history and say, let's figure out based upon what I'm looking around at and based upon what's happened in written human history, maybe Plutarch will tell us. Perhaps if we read somebody with a Greek or Roman-sounding enough name, we can convince people that we're smart enough and we've figured it out, and we can convince them to get on board with whatever the plan is. Looking at antiquity and the authors of antiquity and trying to derive from them a theory of history is to take men who have been but a vapor and observed a short time. and to ask them to tell us about the arc of history. Their observations are flawed and they're depending upon the writings of other people too. The only infallible source of history is God's word. And the only infallible judge of the way things work is God. And so we need God's word, we need his history, we need his judgments, we need his law to tell us what to do and what will bring the consequences we hope for. Who can tell a man what will happen after him? God. God has prophesied what will happen, and He's given us commandments, and He's given us promises, and He's given us threats. His threats are certain, His promises sure, His prophecies infallible, and His commandments are the way. So if we want to live life that is meaningful, and if we want to see advancement and avoid meaninglessness, we must study there. We must not look to these lesser goods. We must be ready to tear them down. And so the book of Ecclesiastes is an ethical textbook that shows us how to deal with the telos, the goal, and to show us how false goals are unworthy. and reminds us of the fact that the law of God is designed around the true good. And when we think other actions are better, it's because we have either misjudged the steps or misidentified the goal. Comments, questions, objections from the voting members and those with speaking rights? Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would bless the preaching of your word and that you would teach us from Ecclesiastes and that you would cause us to love your law. That you would help us to see the ways in which all philosophy and human endeavor apart from your revelation is vain and meaningless. And yet how infinitely meaningful you are and your law provides. We pray all this in Christ's name, amen. Psalm 33, Part 2. Please stand. Let's sing Psalm 33, Part 2. Mm-hmm.