Hello, this is Pastor Michael Spatz, and what you're about to listen to is the evening sermon presented for March 29, 2020. We regret that, due to a number of limitations, we're unable to provide a full video service for this week, but we do trust that the Lord is going to bless you, as well as those you're gathered with, for a study and the hearing of the word from Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verses 10 through 14. We want to give a special greeting not only to the members of Phoenix United Reformed Church, but any guests that are listening from home this evening. We can see from our website that there are many people gathering, in fact, more than we would usually have in the building for an evening service. And the Lord is clearly using these circumstances to draw people to his word. We trust that he'll bless it to you. That is our prayer for you. God be with you. I wonder if you've gone fishing before. I've gone fishing. And when you hook a fish, you're reeling it in, then you may let it go back out, and then you reel it in again, and you're tiring out the fish so that you don't break the line. There's a sense sometimes where I have felt like I've gotten away from the Lord. Maybe you've felt that way. You feel like you've gotten off the line, you're a free fish. And then the Lord reels you back in. Then you go out and you think, oh, now surely the Lord is done with me. And then he reels you back in. And he's wearing you down. The true strength of a Christian is weakness. It's weakness because then we rely on the Lord. And the Lord will use different circumstances to wear you down and prepare you to receive his word and his will. And really to receive the good news that he is enough for you. Maybe that's you tonight. He sets before you his word. Let's hear it together. beginning at verse 10, "'Say not, why were the former days better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.' Consider the work of God. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity, be joyful. And in the day of adversity, consider, God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. Let's ask God's special blessing upon our consideration tonight. Heavenly Father, it is you who make both days of prosperity and days of adversity. We ask, Lord, that you would make this evening to be a time of prosperous learning. Lord, that you, by your Holy Spirit and for the sake of Christ's glory, would mercifully soften our hearts and quicken our minds to receive and to respond as you desire to all that you would say. Preserve us from error. Fill us with joy from you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Why were former days better than these? If you haven't asked that question, almost certainly you're going to at some point. It's not at all uncommon, especially as people get older, to wonder why the past was more prosperous, more peaceful. Perhaps you look back and you think back then people were more virtuous than now. How did it get to be the way that it is now? You can think of that individually, perhaps, that in your own life, say a decade ago, things were more to your liking and your prospects for the future were headed in a direction that excited you and you may not feel that way now. Or if not today, perhaps that's how you'll feel 10 years from now. And then on a much larger scale, we may think of that concerning our present culture or the church in our time. Why were the former times better? If there has ever been a people to ask that question, it's certainly God's people. We see that throughout the Old Testament. In our passage here, you have the word inheritance. Wisdom is good with an inheritance. The literal word is possession. And that word is all throughout the Old Testament. I wonder if you're familiar with the way that it gets used. God tells his people as he brings them out of Egypt that he is providing an inheritance for them. This beautiful land flowing with milk and honey is a gift to them and a picture, a foretaste of heavenly life and of the riches in Christ. He's given them this inheritance. It says that under Solomon, silver was so abundant that it was like stones. They were fat times, rich times, and people were worshiping in the temple. They were good times. Now, as Ecclesiastes is addressing God's people throughout all ages, the Holy Spirit anticipates different times. Times of scarcity, of poverty, of oppression. You think of Nehemiah, where it says in that book that the older men looked upon the new temple, and yet they had remembrance of the original temple and they began to weep. See the tears flowing down the faces of these old men saying exactly what we read here. Why were the former days better than these? If you haven't asked that question, you will. And yet tonight, through Ecclesiastes, the Holy Spirit is setting before you wisdom. He's calling you not to pine unwisely for the past. Rather, he's calling you to seek wisdom to act in the present. and also to patiently wait towards the future, the future that you have secured to you in Christ. We're going to look at this under three main headings tonight. I'll announce them as we go. But for now, look at me at verse 10. Verse 10, Ecclesiastes says, "'Say not, why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. He doesn't dispute about whether in some sense the past was better than the present. In certain respects, certainly it may have been. But he says, say not, why were the former days better than these? It's not from wisdom that you ask this. If it's not from wisdom, where is this question coming from? You have to answer that for yourself. When you have had that longing feeling, when you're reminiscing on the past, and you have a certain amount of grief even for the change that has been wrought over time, where is it coming from if it's not wisdom? Consider with me five unwise reasons that you pine for the past. The first of these is that the question often comes from forgetfulness. Sheer forgetfulness. One writer, Franklin Adams, says, nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory. There is truth in that. We see it illustrated in Scripture. You have the Jews in Egypt being whipped, and they're being forced to make bricks without straw, so it's just goopy mud. And they're being told that they have to work double time now. God, deliver us. The Lord in mercy comes, he delivers them, brings them into the wilderness on a path to the land of blessing, their inheritance. Pretty quick they forget the lash. All they remember is the meat, the flesh pots, it says in Exodus 16. Oh, the good old days in Egypt. The good old days when they were whipping me. We don't remember that stuff. Often it's sheer forgetfulness of the reality of our own past. We look at it with rose-tinted glasses. And so it's not always a wise thing to wish for those days. Sometimes it arises from a romantic ignorance of the past. You see this with people who are yearning to turn back the clock, and maybe that's you. You want to bring things back maybe to the 1950s, or maybe the 1750s. Those were the halcyon days. Let's go back there. If you could go back then and ask somebody, they'd say, no, these are not the good days. Maybe it's simply the 50s, when the apostles are alive. And yet the reality that we get from the epistles is that as long as there have been God's people, there have been God's enemies. And the Lord is never going to go easy on his children. He wants them to grow. So there have always been struggles. As Brooks Atkinson says, in every age, the good old days were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them. On the other hand, maybe for yourself in some respects, they really were better days, at least outwardly speaking, materially or in terms of your health or your happiness. And so you ask, why were the former days better? Here we need to recognize that often this question is motivated by self-interest rather than concern for others. You're thinking about your life, not the life of somebody else. Again, this may be individual or it may be on a broad scale. Individually, you say, I don't like the disease that I'm dealing with now. I don't like the job that I'm dealing with now. I don't like the school that I'm in now. I want to turn it back. But if you turn it back for yourself, you turn it back for everybody. Are you thinking simply about yourself? On a broader scale, perhaps you think with a certain wistful fondness of the Reagan era. People are flush with cash and there's a semblance of morality on TV. But to turn the world back to the Reagan era is to really turn the world back to the apartheid era, too. Things are good in one place and bad in another. In every age, people are suffering. We often think primarily about ourselves when we ask that question. We're saying, why can't I have things the way I want them, rather than how do I assist people here and now? Fourth, this question can reflect a lack of humility towards God's providence. It's not a simple observation. It's not just, former days were better. It's why were the former days better? And you can imagine that there is some amount of fist raising deep inside of that question. Look with me at verse 13. Consider the work of God. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? And this work here, it calls to mind the illustration in Romans and Isaiah of the potter at work. And he's got that malleable clay there. And here it is forming up straight, and then he says, nope, and he bends it. Who can make straight what he makes crooked? As it says in Romans 9, who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? Well, what is molded say to its molder? Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? I say it gravely, but I say it as one who is just as much under it. I'm not better than you in this respect, but we all have to fear the fact that God is not a big human. God took on human flesh in Christ, but that word, that little one-syllable word, God, is us describing an incomprehensible being of eternal origin. You can't scrutinize with something that can invent DNA out of whole cloth. who can make all of our world and define upon it the morality by which you are going to be judged. From his own being, he assigns rules and order and structure. And then we raise our fist and say, God, why did I lose my job? There's a pettiness to it. I'm not above it. You're not above it. And yet in the power of the Spirit, we are called to grow beyond it. And it is indeed possible. The Lord calls us to be submitted, submitted to his wisdom. The only way we can do that is by faith, believing he's good. That's the fifth place. The unwise reason that you may pine for the past is a lack of belief that God's rule for the present originates from his good intention for you. In Zechariah's day, the prophet mentions that people were despising the day of small things. They had a smaller temple. They were under the rule of foreign occupiers. God, why have you allowed us to be in these times? And yet, they don't realize that in Zechariah's generation, they were closer to the coming of Messiah than any of their forefathers had ever been. And they had more revelation at their disposal than any of the prophets before them. It's so easy to forget that in the present moment, God is filling you up for the future. He's readying you for the work that he has for you. And so we have to look into this question. It's not always coming from evil, but we need to ask why we ask that question. We need to prepare to act. I imagine almost everyone here has played the video game Tetris. And you've got the different blocks coming down. And as you form complete lines, a line disappears, and then the pieces begin to accelerate. And they're coming down. And now imagine you see somebody playing this for the first time. We have some very young children here. They will have their day. And they're playing this game. Now, imagine they get to level three or four. The pieces are really starting to rush. And they start pining for the past. Why does it have to get so hard? Why is it speeding up? I want to go back to that level. Do you go back to that level by losing? No, it's unwise in that sense to long to go back. What you ought to be doing is focusing on how to develop skills to make the right choices. Pining for the past is a way of distracting you from making your present move. That's the mistake of it. Not thinking, how do I go from here? So, I've got that L piece, it's coming, what do I do? Ecclesiastes, it drives you to seek wisdom to act now. It's not wrong to remember the past, to analyze it, to think about how do we go from a place like that to a place like this and a place like that. But the point is that we are planning to act and seeking wisdom. Look with me at verse 11. This is our second main heading about pursuing wisdom for the present. Verse 11 says, wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. In Hebrew, this could as readily be translated. In fact, maybe your translation says it this way. Wisdom is as good as an inheritance. Remember that the inheritance that the Jews had under the Old Testament economy was certified to them. At the year of Jubilee, every 50 years, even if you had sold your property, it came back into your possession. Once they were under foreign occupiers, that went out the window. They no longer have their assurance of the possession of their inheritance. In a sense, bringing it into our time, you could say that wisdom is better than having a trust fund. Verse 12, look with me, it says, for the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money. When you have money, you can buy your way out of all kinds of problems. But wisdom is like that too. It can show you a path of deliverance that someone else would not have even seen. For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it." Now, what is wisdom? What is this thing he's calling you to pursue? When I say pursue, think of the great extent that many people have gone to obtain an inheritance. And do you seek wisdom like that? When we think about wisdom, one short definition of it you can think of is a habitual skill for living well. A habitual skill for living well. That's basically what we mean when we talk about biblical wisdom. It's much more than simply knowing alternative paths and being aware of the way that you should go. It's the habitual skill to live well. It's acquired in the doing, not simply in the knowing. The wise are able through insight and experience to discern the best course among multiple acceptable alternatives and are habitually disciplined to take it. Part of wisdom that's inescapable is character, and character comes by acting consistently in a certain way. Even that word character comes from the idea of the stamp pressing down into an engraving. Say you have a metal imprint, and you push it into the wood, and it leaves a mark. It leaves a character. And even so, we're being compelled through ecclesiastes to seek wisdom. Wisdom is good with an inheritance. In fact, your inheritance without wisdom is your destruction. To have lots of money and foolishness is just to accelerate how quickly you remove yourself from us. How do you acquire this wisdom? Turn with me over to Proverbs 9. In Proverbs 9, verse 10, we read, Where do you begin? You begin at a reverent submission to God's wisdom. Acknowledging He knows better than me what is good for me. We may say that with our mouths, but that's not the same as living it, as embracing it. We demonstrate that we believe that when we begin to walk in his path to do the things he calls us to do. And as it says, the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. To know God in this sense means intimacy. It means communion. You have to answer for yourself how much communion you actually have with God. I have friends that I speak to maybe once every six months, or every year, several years. I know them, I know much about them, but communion is meant to be a lived intimacy. And it's through union and communion with the Lord that we grow in this wisdom, this knowledge of how to live, as we pray, as we study his word. Turn with me over to Proverbs 4, verse 7. Here we see the Lord calls you to be intentional in your pursuit of wisdom. Proverbs 4, verse 7, the beginning of wisdom is this. Acquire wisdom. And with all your acquiring, get understanding. Prize her and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. Think about those words there. Ask yourself, are you this way toward wisdom? Acquire. Get. Prize. Embrace. Does that describe your life of pursuing the Lord through his word, through books about his word, through fellowship, through disciplines of a godly life? Are you showing that you prize? Are you seeking to have? If not, you're depriving yourself. The Lord doesn't tell you these things simply because they're the right thing to do. The right things to do are all the things that are good for you. The Lord desires you to flourish like every good father desires their children to flourish. I remember being 10 years old when I first received a copy of the Bible. And after the book of Judges, the next thing I read was the book of Proverbs. And there was a cross-reference over to Solomon asking for wisdom, and the Lord was so pleased that he gave Solomon not only wisdom, but all these other blessings. I remember thinking as a 10-year-old, wisdom is really what you want. Now, I cannot say, unfortunately, that I've pursued it as diligently as I ought to have. And yet I can say, by God's grace, to the extent that I have sought to know God in his word, he has blessed and caused that to flourish in my life. I say to you children in particular, Do not be discouraged when inevitably some who are older than you tell you that it's pointless. That things are so bad that all of our efforts will really come to nothing. As individual believers, as a church, as the Christian people in the world. Do not be persuaded of that. Sometimes those who are older sin greatly, laying a stumbling block in the steps of the youth, making them feel that there's really no point. Your children hear you griping about the political system. They hear you griping about this and that. It's one thing to acknowledge flaws in the world. It's a different thing to take on a tone of defeatism. No, God calls you to act. to get wisdom, to be preparing. You children especially, you have a short window of time to maximize your ability to act in the world. You aren't going to have more free time in the future. You're going to have less. Ephesians 5 verse 15 says, "'Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. That is your calling, to know God's will, to seek to do it, and to plead with him, just as Solomon pled to the Lord, give me this wisdom. If you seek it until he gives it, he will give it. Maybe not as quickly as you want, but he will. One last exhortation to those of you here who are older, we're all older, older than someone, Do not let your disappointments about the present drive a wedge between you and your desire to disciple those who are younger. Younger people may seem obnoxious because they are. I remember a 50-year-old man telling me that he had very little joy in being an older person because he was still being treated like a kid by the people who were 60 and 70. It's easy to allow age to come between us as a people. And that's an old thing. The Roman poet Horace wrote a poem about a bitter old man where he said, Morose and careless, praising former days when he was a boy, now he only ever blames the youth. No, the scripture tells us that the older people are to disciple the younger. Old men discipling young men, older women discipling younger women. That's not a pastor thing. That's not an elder thing. That's a Christian thing. To be receiving and then imparting this wisdom to act in the present to the next generation. If you want a better future, invest now. Some things will not be overcome in this time. And therefore, for our third heading, Ecclesiastes leads you to practice contentment while you wait for the future. Try as we might, everything will not be improved. Not as much as we could wish for, not until Christ comes. But look with me at 714. 714, Ecclesiastes 7. In the day of prosperity, be joyful. In the day of adversity, consider God has made the one as well as the other. Now note that he speaks of two days. There's the day of prosperity and the day of adversity. In Phoenix here, we have two lawns. Here we have two lawns. We have the summer lawn that you grow and that's Bermuda grass, generally. Very straightforward to maintain. Basically, give it water, it'll do its thing. And then we have the winter rye. Winter rye requires more specialized care. You actually have to know something about what you're doing in order for that to flourish. And that's somewhat like prosperity and adversity. As it says in the Day of Prosperity, be joyful. He doesn't even have to explain how. That's easy. That's the summer Bermuda. Add water. Done. But then in the Day of Adversity, that's your winter riot. It requires special understanding in order for us to profit in that day. Verse 14, he gives us the prescription. He says in the Day of Adversity, consider God has made the one as well as the other. In times of adversity, you are to consider that God has created this moment in your life and in the life of God's people in this culture and in the world. God has made it. And why has he made it? He's made it for your benefit so that you would lack nothing. There are things you would not have if you did not have these things. Turn with me over to James chapter 1. James 1, verse 2. Here the apostle says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. There is that summertime joy of prosperity, and yet James says that there is a winter lawn of joy as well. And that joy comes in recognizing that God is preparing you for better things. He's making sure that you're complete. Right now, maybe you can't afford that thing you want. On the other hand, God is preparing you for something much more satisfying, being able to give comfort to somebody in the future when they go through what you're going through. Maybe you don't have the health you once had. You too are being prepared to pray earnestly for those who are suffering. Maybe you're bereaved at a loss, and you too are being prepared to actually know the steps of caring for somebody who has gone through a similar loss. The Lord is preparing you. And that's the secret to a kind of wintertime joy, is recognizing God's hand is on all. He has made one as well as the other. Finally, verse 14, look with me. It says, God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, maybe good, maybe bad. That's true of life under the sun, life in this age. But Ecclesiastes isn't making reference to what we know by faith. We know what comes beyond this age. We may not know what comes tomorrow. But you know that the day of adversity, in its truest, its fullest sense, has passed for you on the cross. The most adverse thing that could ever happen would be God to look at you and say, depart from me, I never knew you. That would be your day of adversity, unlike any other. That has passed on the cross. Christ has borne the weight of your sin. And the day of joy, that is yet ahead of you. But it's assured, as surely as Christ rose, you are going to rise. There is a day of glory ahead, better than any in this life. So why do we look back so much? When you find yourself pining for the past, ask that question, why? You're not the first to have these feelings. God's people have went through it from the beginning. Through this text, the Lord does call you to keep your eye on the future. And maybe you've lost sight of that. I wonder what your thought life is like. Whether you so fixate on catastrophes as you see them now, that you've lost sight of God's hand holding the tempest. Here are the Lord's promise to you as you wonder about the past, your inheritance. The promise in Numbers 18, the Lord says, I am your inheritance. I am to you a treasured possession. He is your nourishment. He's your drink. He's your fountain of joy. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you set before us words of life and comfort. You also challenge us to grow. But there is nothing that you would ever call your people to that you would not enable them for. We ask, Lord, that you would give us the wisdom that you speak of, that you give us even more the desire to pursue it. We pray, Lord, that you would not allow our disappointments to divide us from doing the hard work of discipleship among one another. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.