If you take your Bibles and turn to Ecclesiastes 9, this session is going to be how to put death to shame. And we'll start reading it at verse 1, so Ecclesiastes 9 and verse 1. For I've taken all this to my heart and explain it that righteous men, wise men and their deeds are in the hand of God. Man does not know whether it will be love or hatred, anything awaits him. It's the same for all. There's one fate for the righteous and for the wicked, for the good, for the clean, for the unclean, for the man who offers a sacrifice and for the one who does not sacrifice. As the good man is, so is the sinner. As the swearer is, so is the one who is afraid to swear. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all men. Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterward, they go to the dead. For whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope. Surely a dead dog or surely a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die, but the dead don't know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. Indeed, their love, their hate, and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun. Go then, eat your bread in happiness, drink your wine with a cheerful heart, For God has already approved your works. Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life, which He has given to you under the sun. For this is your reward in life and in your toil, in which you have labored under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there's no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going. Well, let's pray and ask for the Lord's help. Father, as we come to you this morning, we are mindful that our bodies and our minds could be weary. We pray for your help. And we pray, Father, for the help of your Holy Spirit to drive your word home to our hearts. And we commit this time to you and we pray that you would sanctify us in the truth. Your word is truth. Amen. So, where's Warren? What time? We just need to be able to get back in there and say, aim for 10.30. 10.30. Aim for 10.30? Okay, I can aim for 10.30. So God created the world and He made it good. But to be sure, sin has stained this world. Sin has obscured the glory of God and sin has spoiled God's good gifts. And to be sure, the devil himself has twisted this life and the things of earth so that we worship what we ought to enjoy and then destroy it in the process. Let me say that again. We live in such a twisted world, we ourselves being twisted, that we worship what we ought to simply enjoy and we destroy it in the process. Now, the church has often, in a sense, responded to the reality of a fallen world almost with a disdain for it. For instance, Isaac Watts, who I love his hymns, but here's one of those hymns that just has this utter disdain for the world. It's called, How Vain Are All the Things Here Below. How vain are all the things here below. How false and yet how fair. Each pleasure has its poison too, and every sweet a snare. So here's the way that I want us to start thinking about the passage we're about to dive into. Solomon says back in chapter 8 and verse 15, so I commended pleasure. So what is it? Is everything here below, every pleasure, every sweet thing, simply a poison and a snare? Or is joy good, really good, and even required? I think that the message of the Bible is that enjoying God's good gifts glorifies God. Now let me quickly qualify that. Enjoying, not worshiping. The things of earth helps us to worship God. David Gibson in his book Living Life Backwards says, God takes pleasure in your pleasure. He's given it to you. So as we dive into Ecclesiastes 9, we come to a passage, which I think in some ways is somewhat of a nutshell of the message of Ecclesiastes, because it gives us a perspective on life, it gives us a perspective on death, it gives us a perspective on God, and it gives us a perspective on joy, and it teaches us something profound, and I would put it like this, it teaches us how to put death to shame. Now, I wish we had time to actually spend some substantial time in verses 1 to 6, but we have to move kind of quickly. It's easy for me to get bogged down, so I've got to try to keep it moving. So, Solomon starts in chapter 9 and verse 1 by reminding us that everything is in the hand of God. Now, he's already told us this. He's told us this in the passage we looked at last night, chapter 7 and verse 15. He's reiterated it again in chapter 8 and verse 14. Solomon has repeatedly affirmed the sovereignty of God, and he's also repeatedly affirmed to us that things don't always work out the way that we expect them to, whether you are righteous or wicked. He actually says it in chapter 8, which is a passage we haven't been able to look at. But now in chapter 9, he explicitly tells us that he's taken this to heart, he's tried to explain it, and here's what he concludes, is that the deeds of the righteous and of the wicked are in the hand of God. Then he adds this interesting little phrase, and man does not know whether it will be love or hatred, anything awaits him, or that is, both are before him. And so here's what Solomon's getting at. He says, the righteous and the wise have absolutely no guarantees that their deeds will produce a smiling providence from God. You do know it's possible to go to work and be upright and do all the right things, and not have things turn out the way you think. It is possible to actually stand and to do the right thing and to say the right thing and have things turn out against you, not for you. The deeds of the righteous and the wicked are in the hand of God, and when He says they don't know whether love or hate awaits them, anything awaits them, the idea is that no matter what you do in this life, there may be a bright future, there may be a gloomy future, you may have a sense of God's smile, but you may not. In other words, what Solomon's getting at is he's asking this question, how do you know who the friends of God are? Well, you can't tell by the stuff that happens to him in this life. That great Reformed theologian I mentioned last night, Mark Twain, he said that God would have more friends if he treated the ones that he had a little better. And so you never know how things are going to turn out. And Solomon has told us, you can't tell God's disposition toward you by the way things unfold in this life. Sometimes prosperity is a blessing. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes adversity is just adversity. Other times it is a blessing. In other words, there's no formula in this world that interprets life for you in a way that is foolproof or infallible. By the way, this was the problem with Job's friends, was it not? They had a formula. Job didn't fit in the formula. They concluded, Job, you must have done something wrong. The second part that Solomon now gets to, so the first part is, the deeds of the righteous and the wicked are in the hand of God. You can't tell by God's disposition whether He's favorable or disapproving by the way things turn out. And then Solomon turns around and says, death is an indiscriminate killer. You're going to die no matter how you live. David Gibson, in that excellent book, he says, If you expect good people to get a fair deal from the grim reaper, then you've got a very bitter pill to swallow. This is not the way the world is at all. And so Solomon's now going to labor to tell us what he's already told us a number of times in the book, and that is this, the same event, death, happens to the good, to the bad, to the religious, to the irreligious, to the one who makes oaths, to the one who's faithful to those oaths, to the one who doesn't do such things, And everybody dies. Whether you're good or bad or ugly, you die. I think Solomon would have actually had a really good belly laugh if he could have seen the headline of an article in a New Orleans newspaper in 2004 that read this, vitamin E actually increases the risk of dying according to new findings. And I think that Kohelet would probably say, increase the risk of dying? You've got to be kidding me. Do you know what increases your risk of dying? Living. Breathing, right? Because the statistics so far is everyone who breathes, one out of one dies. And so then Solomon says, there's this evil that's done under the sun, the same event happens to all. You have to understand that that seems profoundly unfair to Kohelet. The fact that the righteous and the wicked, they both die, they both go back to the ground. And even knowing that, even knowing that they're going to go back into the ground, they're going to die, man still lives a life full of evil. We saw yesterday in the passage in chapter 3 that man is barely above the beast, and it's his passions that make him, in a sense, a spiritually insane beast. He doesn't operate according to logic. He doesn't operate according to truth. He doesn't operate according to reality. How does man in his beastly state operate? He wants what he wants, and that's what he does. And this pattern that goes throughout the life comes to a screeching halt when? When he dies. Now Solomon is all about living. Alright? And in verses 4 to 6, he's going to tell us the advantage of being alive. So, since you're all alive, you don't keep any corpses in here, right Scott? Okay, so since you're all alive, you need to listen to the advantage of being alive. Now, Solomon is not making a statement inferring that there's no hope in the life to come, but what he is doing is he's giving a perspective of life from this side of the grave. In fact, when you read passages like this one, and there are some that are in the Psalms, you have to remember that the perspective is the perspective of the living who's now looking at the dead. And so, Solomon says that life is to be preferred over death. Hope in this life is actually a continued hope of being able to enjoy the good gifts of God before time and opportunity are no more. Then Kohelet says this, he says, surely a live dog is better than a dead lion. And you think to yourself, that seems to be like dissing dogs. No Israelite, in their right mind, would have domesticated the dog, let alone taken him to the groomers or taught them to fetch their slippers. Dogs were held in contempt among Israelites. In fact, the proof of that is that the Gentiles pick up a moniker from the Jewish perspective, and that is Gentile dogs. So dogs were held in contempt. But a lion, now there's a beast to be admired, right? Strong, fierce, regal. And Solomon says, I'm so committed to breathing, I would rather be a live dog than a dead lion. But here's the reality, is that even the living know that they're going to die. And so the point is, the living still have time to reckon with their impending death, They still have opportunity to do what? They still have opportunity to live life from the perspective of one of these days I'm going into the grave. And to live in the light of knowing that one day you're going to die, to live in the light of being prepared to meet God, gives you the opportunity to not only know God, but to live this life as a gift from God. Death brings an end to those opportunities. He says, the dead know nothing. No more reward. Their memory is forgotten. And again, it's not as if Solomon is giving us some sort of fully developed view of the afterlife, but he's talking again as the one who's standing at somebody else's grave. And so as he looks at the dead, what does that look like? No more chance to learn wisdom. No more ability to enjoy the things of this life and death. that terrible enemy causes their memory to fade. That just is the truth of it. One of these days I'm going to be put in the ground and my kids will be sad and my grandkids will be sad, but their kids won't have a memory of me. And in fact their kids may one day be at a family reunion saying, didn't we have like a great great grandpa that was, wasn't he like a preacher or something? Yeah, what was his name? Brad? Brett? Brent? No, I think it was Brian, right? That's what's going to happen to all of us here, okay? And if you think naming a street after you is going to somehow prolong your memory, I want to tell you, we drive down streets all the time and we're like, who was McCarran? Right? It's just the way it is. And so Solomon said, I'm so committed to living, I want you to understand that when somebody dies, there's no longer an opportunity to hug them, there's no longer an opportunity to speak to them, there's no longer an opportunity to make new memories or to relive old memories. Death is an enemy that robs us of this life. The Bible does not actually romanticize death. Herman Bovink, the old Dutch theologian, says, death breaks the varied and wonderful bonds of life relations in this world. In comparison with life, this side of the grave, death results in non-being, the disturbing negation of the rich and joyful experience of life on earth. So Solomon doesn't romanticize death, and he's pained by the fact that this life, which is a breath, is over so quickly because we die. So death is just a fact. And the reality is that every single one of us, even if you're a child, you have to come and reckon with the reality that one of these days you're going to breathe for the last time. And your heart's going to beat for the last time. and then your soul or your spirit is going to be separated from your body, and they're going to take that body, and they're going to take it out to a cemetery somewhere, and they're going to stick it in the ground. That is the end of all of us. At Boot Hill in Tombstone, Arizona, there is a headstone that simply reads this, As you are, I once was. as I am, you soon shall be." You're not ready to live until you've reckoned with the fact that one of these days your body's going to be put in the ground to be eaten by worms. That's your happy prospect. Now, it's important The real question then is for Solomon, is not, are you going to die? The answer is, of course you are. But how do you live knowing you're going to die? This is really important, right? Solomon is not going to let death rob him of God's gifts and he's not going to be swindled out of joy. Solomon is now going to give us, and this is the way that I see it, he's going to give us four ways to sort of kick death in the teeth. Now the ultimate way, and I'm just going to get to the end of the sermon right now, the ultimate way to kick death in the teeth is to believe in the One who is the resurrection and the life. Alright? That's the benefit of when you die. To live is Christ, to die is gain. To die is gain if you know Christ, okay? But you have to live before you get to that gain, right? And so, Solomon's now going to tell us, here's how you pull the fangs out of death. You live well. You live well. You embrace joy. You love the gift. And so, in verses 7 through 10, This is not like some sort of resignation, oh well, life stinks, life is meaningless, live for a little bit of pleasure. But rather, He's going to give us a four-fold prescription for a life of joy, and it's living a life of joy that actually does what? It taunts death. Are you ready for the first prescription of how to put death to shame? You ready? Enjoy food. Okay? You go, you know, I've been here, this is the sixth sermon I've heard from you, and you keep talking about food. Amen and amen, all right? Now listen, here's the reality. Food is actually... Did I do something? Oh, yeah, that's bad. Unless what I was about to say was bad, then it was good. So verse 7, go then, notice this, eat your bread. He doesn't just grab a loaf of wonder bread. He's talking about your food. Go then, eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart. Oh my goodness, Scott, he wasn't a Southern Baptist. For God has already approved your works. So one commentator puts it like this, he says, when men understand the futility of earthly existence and they understand it in the way that Solomon presents it to us, they're then equipped to eat their bread perhaps for the first time with gladness. And so food is a gift from God. And good tasting food is a good gift from God. And God takes delight when we enjoy His gifts. And so, if you want to put death to shame, light up the barbecue, marinate some steaks, bake some potatoes, and for goodness sakes, use butter and sour cream Don't forget the salad, okay, for conscience sake, and then eat to the glory of God. And as that food delights the taste buds, give thanks. It's a good gift. And it's even better when you're eating it with other people, not like the guy in chapter 6 that's eating all by himself. Now, to be sure, don't overeat, don't abuse God's gifts, but enjoy the food that He's given. 1 Timothy 4, 4 and 5, receive it with thanksgiving. Sanctify it with prayer. Now, the next imperative is going to cause some of you to break out in hives. Drink your wine with a cheerful heart. But wine in the Bible is not seen from a prohibitionist perspective, but rather it too is the gift of God. Psalm 104 verses 14 and 15. Wine in the Bible, its connection with God's blessing is unmistakable. It is actually connected with celebration. And Solomon, again, he's not advocating abusing God's good gifts, but using God's gifts for God's glory and our enjoyment. And then Solomon makes this statement, so you eat your bread with gladness, you drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God's already accepted your works. That statement is a profound statement of liberation. because our works are in His hands. Verse 1, right? And if we live by the standard formulas and the fallible interpretations of providence, then we'll never know whether or not we're accepted by God. But if we live by revelation, if we live knowing that God has accepted us and accepted our works, and that we're not on some performance track to try to eke out some favor from God, we are now liberated knowing that we're not on the performance track, we're on the already accepted track, and therefore we have the capacity to enjoy life as God's good gift. The most miserable people in the world are the people who think that their performance is going to determine whether God is favorable to them or not. The happiest people in the world are those who say, I stand in the righteousness of Christ alone and it is because of that that God has accepted me. Nothing can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord. And so I have the approval and acceptance of God the Father because of God the Son. That liberates you. You don't have to sit there and look at the steak going, I wonder if God wants me to be a vegetarian. Of course He doesn't. That kind of assurance actually empowers us to enjoy God and to enjoy His gifts. Here's the second prescription. Be a joyful person, verse 8. Let your clothes be white all the time and let not oil be lacking on your head. Now, let your clothes be white all the time, this is the opposite of sackcloth and ashes, which is the apparel of grief. So the picture, an oil on the head is a sign of gladness, so this is celebratory. This isn't saying, hey, make sure you wear the coolest clothes and get expensive haircuts. Or use pricey gel or whatever you put in your hair these days. Scott and I don't put anything in our hair, alright? What Solomon is saying in verse 8 is this, hey, don't walk around like the sky is falling. Don't walk around as if your dog just died. Realize that even if the sky is falling, you don't have to let it rob your joy and destroy the enjoyment of this short gift which is called life. Charles Bridges, the charge of melancholy is a libel upon religion. In other words, the dour, grumpy Christian is bad advertising for the gospel. And so, John Newton puts it like this, solid joys and lasting treasure, none but Zion's children know. So, you want to kick death in the teeth? Enjoy your food and be a joyful person. Let me just say something about being a miserable person. If you're a joyless, miserable person, nobody's going to miss you when you die. But if you're a person who enjoys God's gifts, and you spread that joy to other people, you will be missed when you are gone. I want to read to you something This was from the California Times Herald, August 16, 17, 2008, and it's the obituary of a 79-year-old woman named Dolores Aguilar, and it was written by one of her daughters. Dolores Aguilar, 1929, August 7, 2008, 8, 22. Dolores Aguilar was born in 1929 in New Mexico. She left us on August 7, 2008. She will be met in the afterlife by her husband, Raymond, her son, Paul Jr., and her daughter, Ruby. Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society, and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, and very few tears will be shed, and there will be no lamenting over her passing. Her family will remember Dolores, and amongst ourselves, we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we'll think of those too, but I believe at the end of the day all of us will only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. I hope she's finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again. There will be no service, no prayers, No closure for the family that she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say for all of us here, goodbye, mom. Live in a way that when you die, you're missed. Live in a way that when you die, you don't force people to lie at your funeral. The third prescription is, enjoy your spouse, verse 9. It's my favorite verse. Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life. By the way, you see that fleeting life? You see fleeting? That's the word Havel. Alright? Which He has given you under the sun, for this is your reward in life and your toil in which you have labored under the sun. And so, Solomon actually shows us that marriage ends up being a vital ingredient in defying death's pull. Marriage is the gift of God. It's joining together a man and a woman in love. By the way, let me just say that again. It's the joining together of a man and a woman in love. Alright? And it is significant that Solomon actually adds that little phrase, enjoy life with the woman whom you love. And so Ecclesiastes 9.9, I've probably done 85 weddings over the years. And every time I write in a card, or you write on things now, they set stuff up and everybody writes something. And so I always write Ecclesiastes 9.9. Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life. And so, listen, the romance? Yes, I know. We're Baptists. Most of us are Reformed or Calvinistic. Romance is not a word that we use very often, but I want to say that you should. Okay? The romance Dare I say the sexual intimacy and the companionship of marriage are supposed to be among some of the most exquisite delights in this short blip on the screen life. When Solomon says all the days of your fleeting life, he's telling us marriage actually brings a sweetness to this short life. Think of it this way, marriage is an elixir in our death row cell. It's a part of our portion. It's a part of our reward. It's a part of the reward of the toil that God gives us. And so since that is God's design, there ought to be sanctified indulgences in the joys of marriage. Now this is where Ariel starts to get a little nervous. I'm not a carpenter. I can't even cut a straight line, seriously. But I was going to pour concrete in our backyard in a house that we lived in before the house we live in now. And so I dug these unsightly planters out and I poured, mixed the concrete, poured the concrete, smoothed it out the best I could. It looked terrible. But I took a stick and I put Brian and Ariel, Proverbs 5, 18 and 19. Ariel walks out and she says, oh, you know, she's trying to be encouraging. It doesn't look that bad. And then she sees what I wrote. She looks at me and she goes, is that the passage I think it is? I said, you better believe it's the passage you think it is. When we move, we're going to have to dig that out and take it with us. I said, there's no way we're digging that out and taking it with us. She goes, what if somebody comes and actually looks up the passage? I said, I am not ashamed of Proverbs 5, 18 and 19. And if they look it up, I pray that their marriage gets better and maybe they get saved. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. As a loving hind and a graceful doe, let her satisfy you at all times. Be exhilarated in her love. You know the word exhilarated there? Be intoxicated. You understand the Bible forbids intoxication, except right here. Be intoxicated with your wife's love. Nobody says amen. How sad! This is the gift that God gives, but He doesn't give it to everybody. And so for some, God withholds this wonderful gift and they remain single their whole lives. And if that's you, let me say, Marriage is not what completes you. It's Jesus Christ who completes you. And if God withholds the gift of marriage from you, seek contentment in Him and look to the other gifts that He's given to you to enjoy. For those of you who actually do enjoy this gift, remember that one of these days God will take it away. And when that day comes and your spouse goes into the presence of the Lord, the sadness and the sorrow will be there. But so will the joys of the gift while you had it. When Jonathan Edwards became the president of what we now know as Princeton, He took a smallpox inoculation, and it was in its developmental stages, and he died 30 days later. He was in New Jersey. His wife and family were still back at Northampton. And his dear wife, Sarah, wrote this letter to their daughter, Esther, who, by the way, Esther died before this letter could even be delivered, but this is what Sarah, Jonathan's wife, said, My dear child, what shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud. Oh, that we may kiss the rod and lay our hands on our mouths. The Lord has done it. He has made me adore His goodness that we had your father so long. But my God lives, and He has my heart. Oh, what a legacy my husband and your father has left us. We are all given to God and there I am and love to be your affectionate mother, Sarah Edwards. And so when that time comes for that gift to be taken away, rejoice that you had it while you did. Be thankful for the years that you had. There are others who have the gift But they don't enjoy it. And what I want to say to you this morning is repent. And you say, you don't know what my marriage is like. There's too much water under the bridge. I want to say, nonsense. God is the God of restoration. God is the God who makes up for the years that the locusts have eaten. And some say, well, I don't like my gift. You're like the seven-year-old on Christmas morning that opens up the present and complains because they wanted something else. And so what I want to say to you is that if you say, I don't like my gift, repent because it's God who's given it to you. Don't ruin the gift by not liking it. Don't ruin the gift by wishing that it were a different gift. So grumbling and complaining about our spouse is the heart of discontent. And so does God have some serious work to do? So let me just ask the wife, does God have some serious work to do on that man whom He has given to you? One honest soul. Take note. The answer is of course. Of course he has work to do. But he's got work to do on you too. And so what does that mean? It means that we pray for each other. It means that we pray with each other. It means that we pray for ourselves. And we pray that we get into the Word, that we start to grow together. Because, listen, we will be held accountable if we made our spouse miserable. So here's how you put death to shame. You enjoy your food. You're a joyful person. You enjoy your marriage. And then finally, you work hard. Verse 10. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there's no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom and shield where you are going. So Solomon concludes this section with the command to have a positive, robust, hearty approach to both life and work. So whatever your hand finds to do, you do it with all of your might. And that means whether it's marriage or whether it's your recreation or whether it's your work, you put yourself into it. There's nothing half-hearted about any of Solomon's instruction, right? And so, when it comes to marriage, give it your whole might. When it comes to worship, give it your whole might. When it comes to your play, give it your whole might. Earnestness is what God has given us to help us enjoy this life. Living life half-heartedly sucks the joy right out of life. And then Solomon does what? Comes back around and gives us the refrain of death. You do see it, right? Once you're in the grave, once you're gone, no more activity, no more planning, no more knowledge or wisdom to shield where you're going. Now, understand what Solomon's doing. When Solomon brings it back around to the fact that we're all going to go to the grave, he's not, in a sense, just saying, hey, look, let me give you some advice and then bum you out. It's not what he's doing. He's actually motivating us. He's not scaring us. He's motivating us. He's reminding us, listen, whether it comes to the food, whether it comes to just being a joyful, cheerful person, whether it comes to your marriage, whether it comes to your work, the fact is that there's coming a day when all of those blessings and all of those enjoyments are going to be gone. They will be over. You cannot live as if those things are what lasts forever. Because those are the things that don't last forever. They're temporary fleeting gifts. And so, give yourself wholeheartedly to a full pursuit of joy in God. Because one of these days, those opportunities are going to be gone in this world. Distorted view of worldliness. could sap the pleasures out of this life which God's called us to enjoy. There's a song that we sing all the time. And we sing the old version and then the updated Sovereign Grace version. And it's, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. And I love the hymn. And I want to say that there's a line in there. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, And you know the line, right? And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. And I want to say that there's a sense in which that's true. But I want to say that if you take Kohelet's advice, you're able to sing that song differently. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely bright in the light of his glory and grace. And so when we enjoy God's gifts as gifts from Him, we enjoy them, we don't worship them, and when we enjoy God's gifts, God is glorified. And here's the wonderful thing that we need to realize is that God's gifts to us in this life are a precursor to a new heaven and a new earth where we will enjoy all of God's gifts and blessings without the specter of death and without a fleeting life anymore. We won't have to live life backwards anymore. We won't have to live life from the perspective of the grave anymore. In fact, when we live this life and then this life ends, all of the gifts that God has given us, that we've tasted, that we've enjoyed, that now are over, what are they going to do? They are going to give way to gifts that are strangely bright, and brighter and then in that life to come all of the gifts that he has for us which are wrapped up in His Son will be enjoyed to the utmost. Are there not times where we don't enjoy life as we should, and we don't enjoy God as we should, and we don't accept the gift as we should? There's coming a day when we will actually enjoy God in the fullness without any reservation, any hesitation, no more tears, no more pain, and blessed be God, no more death. And so we sing these words. When on that day, the great I AM, the faithful and the true, the Lamb who was for sinners slain, is making all things new, behold, our God shall live with us and be our steadfast light, and we shall, e'er His people be, all glory be to Christ. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would help us to really be joyful people because we know that you love us, you've accepted us in Christ, and we're not on the performance treadmill. We pray, Father, for those that are struggling to enjoy their marriage. We pray that you would give them grace today and reinvigorate them, renew their hearts. And, Father, we pray for those who haven't reckoned with death yet. We pray that even today you would just force upon them that it's been appointed for man once to die. After that comes the judgment. And so, Father, we pray that you would cause your word to be at work in us. In Jesus' name, amen.