Today we're going to look at Ecclesiastes chapter 2, verses 12 to 26. We'll get there in just a minute as we have been doing so far in this series. If you have questions, we'd love to try to answer them. We've gotten several questions along the way, and we either respond directly to that person or incorporate it into a future sermon, but we try to answer those questions if we can. Now, a couple of weeks ago, our staff and elders did something. For the first time, we did a combined retreat. For the past number of years, we've typically done our staff retreat in the late spring or early summer, and we've done an elders retreat at the end of the summer, early fall. This year, we combined the two groups. There was a time where the staff came first, and then there was an overlap between the two groups, and then the staff left. the next morning, and then the elders continued it. We accomplished a lot of things, I think. If you were here last Sunday, you heard Pastor Corey talk about our playing a game, and he just happened to mention that he won that game. It had nothing to do with the sermon, of course. But that wasn't the only game we played. We also played a game called Up and Down the Mountain. And this is the actual score sheet of that. And I really don't understand. I mean, I have the score sheet right here with me, the physical one. uh, where I have 120 points, uh, and Corey has 88, uh, but my sheet does not have any red marks on it. I don't, I was just, you know, we're going to, I was going to talk about this, so I don't know. Our wonderful admin assistant, Nikki Powers, prepared that, but I, those red circles, I didn't, I didn't put those red circles on there to point out the fact that Corey finished, you know, much, much lower, um, But all I'll say is, Nikki, you did exactly as you were asked to do. And there's a trump, right? Many card games have a trump and there's a different suit. So, so, for example, let's, let's just say in this hand that what is leading is the diamonds. Okay. But the trump for that, for that hand happens to be club. So you might play a card and then the second person would play another one and then a third person. Oh, they've got the highest card. So it looks like they're going to take the hand. They've got here comes the eight and the six, but the last person Trump's it. They put a clubs down in the Trump takes everything. Now, if that is the case, it doesn't matter what card is played before that time. Because trumps take everything. Now, life is not a game. But there is a similarity in this sense. There is something that trumps everything in life. And what trumps everything in life is death. A person might have all kind of experiences in life. It doesn't matter how many friends they have, how much family they have, how much money they have, how great their career is, the life that a person has here is going to be trumped by death. There is no way to escape that. It's very real. It's always real. It's very real to me this week as Two harvesters who have not been able to be with us for quite some time both got to the point of being very near this point and in fact yesterday one of them did go to heaven and the other one is very close. Now the writer of Ecclesiastes wrestles with this issue in Ecclesiastes chapter 2. So I want to invite your attention there Ecclesiastes 2 We're gonna work through verses 12 to the end of the chapter, which is verse 26. Let me establish the context first. Now the teacher, if you're new to Ecclesiastes, there's a narrator who started the book and concludes the book, but most of the book of Ecclesiastes, there's this person called the preacher or the teacher who's making observations, and it's wisdom literature. They're just making their observations, not everything they say matches up with the rest of the scripture. And we are careful to understand that and point that out. Just like. Job's friends in the book of Job some of the things they said to him. It's recorded in Scripture. So it's part of God's word. But what they said is not necessarily what God intends for everybody. So we're we're being careful to point those things out. The teacher has reflected on the various things pleasure money projects all kind of things including wisdom. Hey, maybe wisdom is the answer. And earlier in the book, in chapter 1, verses 12 to 18, he considered wisdom. And now the teacher returns to the topic of wisdom. There was an interlude with some other things, but now the teacher adds something to the occasion, what I am calling the trump card of death. I invite you to stand with me as we're going to read Ecclesiastes 2, 12 to 26. And then I turned to consider madness and darkness, yet I also knew that one fate comes to them both. So I said to myself, what happens to the fool will also happen to me. Why then have I been overly wise? And I said to myself that this is also futile. For just like the fool, there is no lasting remembrance of the wise, since in the days to come, both will be forgotten. How is it that the wise person dies just like the fool? Therefore, I hated life. Because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for everything is futile in a pursuit of the wind. I hated all my work that I labored at under the sun, because I must leave it to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will take over all my work that I labored at skillfully under the sun. This too is futile. So I began to give myself over to despair concerning all my work that I had labored at under the sun. When there is a person whose work was done with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and he must give his portion to a person who has not worked for it, this too is futile and a great wrong. For what else does a person get with all his work and all his efforts that he labors at under the sun. For all his days are filled with grief, and his occupation is sorrowful. Even at night, his mind does not rest. This too is futile. There's nothing better for a person than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work. I have sight. He gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy. but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and accumulating in order to give to the one who is pleasing in God's sight. This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind." This is the Word of God. You can be seated. Now we're going to work through this passage this morning, and then I'm just going to make some observations and challenges based on it. It's very difficult to outline it. And again, a wisdom writer doesn't write things like most modern preachers do in terms of thinking of an outline. So I'm just gonna lay out, this is the flow of the passage, and we'll walk through it. So in verses 12 to 14, he starts with a basic truth. There is a basic truth. Wisdom is better than folly. He's gonna say, is it better to be wise, or is it better to be foolish? And he establishes this basic truth. But then, at the second part of verse 14, through verse 16, he mentions two unavoidable realities, death and legacy. And then the rest of the verses deal with this tension in 17 to 25. Now the chapter goes all the way to verse 26, but there's this tension between the emotions he feels and shares in the first few verses, as opposed to the convictions that he rests on. And that's the way the chapter's laid out. Let's walk through it, and let's start with this basic truth in verse 12. Then I turn to consider wisdom, madness, and folly, for what will the king's successor be like? He will do what has already been done. I've considered pleasure, I've considered projects, I've considered other things. Let's look at wisdom one more time. Is it better to be wise? Is it better to be foolish? And what's gonna happen to the one that succeeds the king? He's gonna probably do the same things. Verse 13, I realized that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness. The wise person has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. This is a basic affirmation. It is true that it's better to be wise than it is to be foolish and there's a he throws in an analogy just like light is better than darkness it's better to be able to see now i know it's a first world problem but i have a problem in my garage you know if you have a garage door opener and you come in at night you know there's that little light up there those two little lights and they they automatically turn on Mine don't automatically turn on. I mean, they did. And then I would go and replace them with another bulb. And then two days later, it stopped. So I have become used to driving in to a dark garage. It's not fun because there are many things in my garage that could get in the way of my getting into the house safely. To me, light is much better than darkness. So now I come in, I've kind of given up. get my phone and put my flashlight in and work my way in through the garage. Light is better than darkness. This phrase that wisdom is better than follies sounds very much like what you might read in the book of Proverbs. It might, it does indeed match up with the rest of biblical wisdom. Surely everybody's going to agree with that. But then If you keep going in verse 14, you find something else about that. And he gives us some realities. The first reality that you cannot avoid is death. We don't think about it that much. Most of us probably don't think about it hardly at all. unless someone passes or someone's very ill or whatever, but it is an unavoidable reality. Yet I also knew that one fate comes to them both. So I said to myself, what happens to the fool will also happen to me. Why then have I been overly wise? And I said to myself that this is also futile. Now think about it. Is it better to be foolish or wise? Oh yes, better to be wise. But wait a minute, I've invested all of this energy in being wise, and I'm gonna die. And this person over here, who's invested no energy in being wise, and they've lived a very foolish life, they're gonna die. In other words, we all are coming to the same fate. That's what these verses, that's an unavoidable reality. And you know, many people in our generation live with that motto, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die, right? You only go around once in life, grab all the gusto you can get. Remember, the teacher is telling us what he sees. There's not much hope here so far. He's not grounded in the hope that we will find in the rest of the Bible. So he's just observing. There's not much hope. It's like one commentator put very memorably, and this is probably what inspired me to make the title of this sermon, The Trump Card. If every card in our hand will be trumped, does it matter how we play? And yet there are a lot of people that feel that way. There are a lot of people without Christ and without the hope that God gives that feel that way. Like, does it really matter? Well, he continues with a second unavoidable reality in verse 16, and that's a surrounding legacy. For just like the fool, There's no lasting remembrance of the wise since in the days to come both will be forgotten. How is it that the wise person dies just like the fool? Now not only does he know he is going to be extinguished, his life is going to be extinguished, he knows that his memory will be extinguished. And I ask this question, this is only I guess the fourth sermon maybe in the series, I ask this question at the very first one. How many of us know anything about our great, great, great, great, great grandmother or grandfather? were the people that were they were alive with knew them and then their children and but the longer things go the more memory gets extinguished and so there's this sense you know that he's saying nobody's going to remember. People are going to be forgotten. Wise people are going to die. Foolish people are going to be divine. Now, his train of thought here does not match biblical wisdom, such as found in Proverbs 10, 7. The remembrance of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot. Or Psalm 49, 15. But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead. He will surely take me to himself. So that's why we always need to be asking, are the things he's saying, is he giving us this perspective under the sun? And does it match with the rest of scripture? And this leads to his conclusion in verse 17. And in the next section, we have tension. There's a lot of tension in the book of Ecclesiastes, but here's the tension. He feels things because of this. I've evaluated life. I've looked at it. Wisdom is better than foolishness. But then on the other hand, everybody dies anyway, and nobody's going to remember you. So what's the use? And so he starts pouring out his emotions. Verse 17, therefore, that's the conclusion. Therefore, I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me for everything is futile in a pursuit of the wind. The conclusion he reached under the sun was that the work under the sun was evil. And he hated life because it was all futile. And so he leads to him making this expression. So I hated life. seemingly he cannot bear this endless chasing after that I labored at under the sun, because I must leave it to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool, yet he will take over all my work that I labored at skillfully under the sun. This too is futile." This is probably not the normal sense of inheritance in the Old Testament, because the inheritance would always go to the eldest son, or half of it would, and then that it would be split otherwise for others. And he doesn't mention a son, it's just the idea that somehow it's just gone to somebody else and we don't know. We don't know if the people that follow are going to really invest with integrity and hard work in the same way that We did, and that's what he is sharing right here. This phrase at verse 19 is going to be a fairly common phrase in Ecclesiastes. Who knows? Who knows? Some things we don't know. Who knows? Maybe you work hard to build a business. Maybe you accomplish a lot of things, but you can't control what happens after you die. Your successor might squander it all. You might have been wise but he or she might be foolish. This too is futile and if you go down that track without understanding it in the context of eternity, you might feel what the teacher felt. So I began to give myself over to despair concerning all my work that I had labored at under the sun. When there is a person whose work was done with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and he must give his portion to a person who has not worked for it, this too is futile and a great wrong. He's going over the same thing, right? He's expressing it. Verse 22, for what does a person get with all his work? and his efforts that he labors at under the sun. For all his days are filled with grief, and his occupation is sorrowful. Even at night, his mind does not rest. This, too, is futile. Work is challenging. Work is hard. And some people work so much, and their minds are so much into it that when they get home, rather than just relaxing and being refreshed for the next day, their mind doesn't stop. This, too, is futile. Well, how many of you have been to Carowinds or a theme park on a very hot day? Raise your hand if you've been to a theme park on a hot day. All right. And how many of you have had the pleasure on that hot day of finding one of those cooling stations? Raise your hand. You know what I'm talking about where they blow the cold air on you. Well to me when we get to verse 24, it's like this is we've get a little refreshment finally. If you've read Ecclesiastes up to now. The words of verse 24 to 26 will come to you something as a surprise because everything's been futility so far. This futile, this futile, this futile. Now we're going to get something else. There are at least seven places in the book of Ecclesiastes that a positive view of life is set forth. And this is one of them. Others that we will come to Chapter 3, verses 12 to 14 and 22. Chapter 5, 18 to 20. Chapter 8, verse 15. Chapter 9, 7 to 10 and 11, 7 to 10. There are places in the book of Ecclesiastes that life is viewed as positive. And now here in verses 24 to 26, for the first time in the book, The teacher gives an alternate answer to this question. The question that started it in chapter 1 verse 3, is there any gain? Is there anything after it's all said and done? Now he's going to give us an answer that has God in the center of the picture. Up to this point, he's just been recounting his own wisdom under the sun. from chapter 1, 14 to 2, 23, God has not been named. God has not been at the center. But now, in the next three verses, God is mentioned three times. So, this now, now he's not talking about just his emotions as he did from verses 17 to 23. Now, he's gonna talk about some convictions Verse 24, there is nothing better for a person than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work. I have seen that even this is from God's hand, because who can eat and enjoy life apart from him? There indeed can be some limited enjoyment in the basics of life, eating, drinking, and work, And yet, that ability only comes from God, and He recognizes that. If you are able to eat, and drink, and work, and enjoy it, it's because God has allowed you to. And the minute you lose your job or lose your health or lose your desire, you'll find out that those things come from God. We take it for granted. Many of us rush through life without thinking this, but it is true. Simple things in life like eating and drinking and working, if you're able to enjoy that, that is a gift from God. Now remember, I think the teacher's overarching answer throughout the book is that life is futile because that word futile or meaningless or vanity appears more than 30 times. So we got the overarching answer, but we have some hope. There's still some hope. There's some alternative answers, some hints. that will point us toward the end, which we haven't gotten there yet. It is good. Life is good because life originates from a creator who is good. All creatures of our God and King lift up our voice and sing. It's appropriate to enjoy God's good gifts completely. Derek Kidner, a commentator, says that the very toil that troubled this teacher was potentially a gift from God designed to bring joy if he had possessed the grace to take it as such. And so he says this, in themselves and rightly used The basic things of life are sweet and good. What spoils them is our hunger to get out of them more than they can give. I think that's a very important observation. When we're thinking about, hey, is there meaning here? Is there real gain here? They're not evil in themselves, they're good things from God. they're not designed to give us ultimate satisfaction. If we try to get more out of them than God intends, then they are going to disappoint. Verse 26, for to the person who is pleasing in his sight he gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy. Then an interesting statement, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and accumulating in order to give to the one who is pleasing in God's sight. This too is futile in the pursuit of the wind. Now, how do we deal with that? Christopher Wright says, even when you do bring God into the picture, life still doesn't make a lot of sense some of the time. For the teacher, God is not the simple solution to all his problems. This is not a battle between atheism and faith, it is a battle within faith itself. It is the battle between what is known and believed to be good and true, and what is observed to be meaningless and baffling in the world God created, rules over, and put us in. So maybe we can picture it this way. I like seeing pictures and maybe that will help you as well. Let's think about a chasm. As Wright's words led us to. On the one side there's the apparent meaningless in life. He's talked about that a lot. And then on the other side, now he started bringing in something that matches what the rest of scripture is going to say, the sheer goodness and joy of life in God's creation. And both of those things are true. There are questions in and about life that confuse us. And if we look at it on the earthly plane, it seems like we're not maybe going to get satisfactory answers to them, that everything is meaningless and futile. And regardless of how wise you are or how much you work, how successful your work is, that you're going to come to the same fate as the foolish person, and that is death. But on the other hand, there's good. in God's creation to enjoy and to appreciate. So how do we think about these things? That's where I wanna wrap it up or start wrapping it up. Don't wanna give you too much hope too soon. How should we think about these realities? First of all, let me encourage you, first of all, to acknowledge emotions, but rest on biblical convictions. Emotions aren't bad. Emotions are good. And sometimes we have happy emotions and sometimes we have sad emotions. And this writer, I think, has given us some of these emotions like, oh, I'm hating life because of this. He acknowledged it. And it's okay to acknowledge emotions, but let's rest on biblical convictions. Second, what about questions? Sometimes teenagers have questions, and college students have questions, and adults have questions. Don't stifle questions or deny questions, but put them in a greater context. I'd like to quote Christopher Wright one more time. Having faith does not mean not having questions. And equally, having faith does not mean having nice, easy answers to those questions. I think that's a powerful statement. And I would recommend to you that you ask your questions, but you ask them in the greater context of faith. The greater context that realizes we may not see everything right now, we may not know everything right now, we may not have all the facts in front of us right now, as surely the teacher in Ecclesiastes didn't have all the facts in front of him, but let's ask them in the greater context of faith and realize that the book of Ecclesiastes obviously is recounting a journey of wrestling. Number three. Enjoy God's gifts in the way He intends, but don't seek more from them. Enjoy God's gifts. Pastor Corey last week made a good point in his sermon, in the previous passage, that we should enjoy God, the giver of the gifts, more than the gifts. That's true. That gifts than they're supposed to be. Corey also mentioned last week, David Gibson, who wrote this book, Living Life Backwards. And Gibson really makes a good point here. He says, God has given the good things of this world to us, and they are their own reward. When we accept in a deep way that we are going to die, that reality can stop us expecting too much out of all the good things we pursue. We learn to pursue them for what they are in themselves rather than what we need them to be to make us happy. Instead of using these gifts as a as means to a greater end of securing ultimate gain in the world, we take the time to live inside the gifts themselves and see the hand of God in them. You see, you understand? You see that point of that? It's like take the gifts of God and thank him for them and use them for that. But don't try to establish your identity and your ultimate meaning in life on those gifts. Because none of those gifts are designed to satisfy that deep longing in your soul. I think it's as Augustine said, you've made us for yourself and we're restless. You've made us with a restlessness in our soul that will be restless until we find you. Number four, the last advice I would give this morning based on the scriptures. Don't deny the apparent futility of life, but know that with God there is more. Don't deny that there's an apparent futility in life, but there's more. Living for Christ is meaningful. Now let's think for a minute how Revelation progresses Yeah, we get this wrestling. We see it. We we see why the teacher would say what he would say, but there's more. So first Corinthians. Chapter 15, the Apostle Paul said. For I pass to you as most important what I also received. That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. That he was buried. that he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12. Then he appeared to over 500 brothers and sisters at one time. Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. That, my friends, changes everything. Jesus lived, he died, he was buried, and he rose again from the dead. And what does that mean for us? Well, Paul is going to keep going in 1 Corinthians. We'll skip down to verse 20. As it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. It's not just Jesus who rose. But in Christ, everybody in Christ is going to be made alive. And we do have resurrection hope. It may not be Easter, but we still have the same hope of resurrection from the dead. So we've got a hope that one day those that pass away, which is going to be all of us, If we're in Christ, we're gonna live forever with the Lord. That's our hope for the future, but there's hope. Gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be steadfast, unmovable, always excelling in the Lord's work because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Let's read that yellow together out loud, okay? Your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Hallelujah. What we do for Christ matters. Our labor in the Lord matters. Every prayer you pray matters. Every time you rock babies in the nursery so that adults and teens can worship, that matters. Every time you teach a child a biblical principle, that matters. Every time we serve the Lord, it matters. It is not in vain. We don't have to fall prey to the meaningless that the teacher in Ecclesiastes is struggling with. So we talked about the card game up and down the mountain. Let me give you another scenario. Remember, we're playing the card game, and diamonds is the suit that is led. And so the card to play, the 10, the 9, the queen. Oh, it looks like the queen's going to take it. Ooh, somebody comes up with trumps, clubs or trumps, and they that hand and so the next person plays the diamonds. But then there's one more card in clubs and the last person plays the ace of clubs and trumps it all. Because that is the highest card. Now, maybe my favorite card game is the game Rook. Rook also has trumps. Rook has four colors, yellow, green, red. What's the other color? It's not blue. Black, yeah. Cory plays Rook. So, and each hand there's a trump. So, think about this. Let's say red is played, red leads out, but green is Trump. So you play with partners. So the first person plays a 14, the other team plays an eight, and then this partner with a 14 plays a five, but the fourth partner doesn't have red, but they do have a Trump. Boom, they play the 12 of green, and it's Trump, so it takes the hand. All right, let me give you one more scenario with that. Fourteen starts out, eight is, that's the rook card. And that person plays the rook card and takes every single hand. Here's God's word for us this morning. The trump card to everything in life is death. But the highest trump is the resurrection of Jesus. Just like in Rook, you can have the highest trump card in one color, but the Rook is gonna trump them all. Death is gonna trump every single one of us. But Jesus played, as it were, the highest trump card, his resurrection. He rose from the dead and played that. That's why, like Paul, who wrote 1 Corinthians 15, could say in Philippians 1, as he's wrestling about his own impending death, whether to live or die, he's imprisoned at that moment. He says, my eager expectation and hope is that I'll not be ashamed about anything. But now, as always, with all courage, Christ will be highly honored in my body, whether by life or by death. for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. The trump card to everything in life is death, but the highest trump is the resurrection of Jesus. Praise his holy name. Amen. Let's bow our heads together, please.