Living Life Backward

Happy Sunday Crossway today. You have with you Jeff and Sally Terrell. When

we think of Jeff, we think of the word haircut, because he's got

the right haircut. Not haircut, we think of the word diligence. That's

true too. Jeff is an extraordinarily diligent pastor and preacher, and Jeff is

given himself to the study of God's Word in very diligent way. He presents

it in a diligent way. And I know that you'll appreciate the way that

he communicates scripture. So thank you for welcoming Jeff and Sallyan. I love

Josh and Kara, and not just because he has an awesome haircut. My

wife, Sally and I were just reflecting on when do we first get to

meet the Deaconing Brothers. We have a mutual friend that was a pastor of

a church here in Texas that we got to know in seminary and he just

kept telling us about the Daconing Brothers. I'm thinking, Okay, what's the

big deal about the Dacooning Brothers. Well, what I found out very quickly

is that the Dacooning Brothers are passionate followers of Jesus Christ. I found out

that they are dedicated to God's word. They're dedicated to the Gospel, and

they are systems and leadership people, and that's I love that. I don't

see a whole lot of that in church ministry. There's a lot of people

who dig into the doctrine and the theology, but not the leadership side.

And the Dacooning brothers do both. So Nate, praise God for you.

Love Josh and Kara. This time, though, I've got some more things

to say, just to introduce myself and to connect with you. But our

ushers will be passing out bulletins or Bibles. If you need either of those,

would you just flag them down. It's important, especially this morning,

as we turn to a passage that you might not be familiar with, to

make sure that you're following in God's word, to not only see that that's

what His word says, and to be able to study it for yourself and

apply it in your lives. But I'm grateful for you as a church.

This is the first time Sally and I have had being here at Crossway,

but we already love you because we consider you family as a fellow member of

the Great Commission Collective. We are grateful for churches all over the world.

In fact, there's nearly a hundred of them in North America, spanning to

almost two hundred across the world that are all committed to the same doctrine,

the same philosophy, and the same goal of planting churches and strengthening leaders so

that we can fulfill the Great Commission. I have the privilege of serving on

the board with GCC, and it is just a joy to be able to

see firsthand that God continues to work all across the world. I'm also grateful

to cross Way for your commitment to Josh and Karat and their family. Your

freeing them up to be on sabbatical is a gift that you may not fully

comprehend. Sally and I were able to have a sabbatical with our family last

year, and we went into it thinking our marriage and thinking ministry and our

own personal lives were in a very healthy place. But God has a way

of taking you through his own classroom, and being able to get away for

a few months is a real good venue for that. So I know God

is doing a work and Josh and Kara and their family's life that you'll be

able to benefit from as they return to you. And I know you're probably

tired already seeing other people stand up before. I watched some of the sermons

so I could get a feel for what Sunday morning looks like. You've been

blessed, and so I hope I can just at least keep it at the

same level. But then you'll be able to celebrate Josh coming back. Hey,

let's turn in our bibles two Ecclesiastes. And if you grabbed one of

those Bibles from the ushers, or you grabbed one coming in, it's page

five hundred and fifty nine. The Book of Ecclesiastes is found in a large

your book, which is the greatest story ever written. And I think sometimes

we forget that that this Bible that we study every Sunday, that I hope

you're studying every day of your life, is actually a story. And just

like any great story that we read, the author is weaving together themes.

So maybe one that you've read is the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings,

And so yeah, some of you actually have you by the way,

second service is way more enthusiastic. I try back home to not pit two

services together, but well done second service. But the Lord of the Rings

trilogy, if you've read Return of the King and in sequence, most of

you go back to Fellowship of the Ring because now it makes even more sense

and you see as the story is unfolding that there's actually themes that the author

is weaving in and you can actually see shadows of what you'll you'll experience in

Return of the King. And it just makes the story even more vibrant.

And that's what this book that we hold in our hands is. It's the

story of Jesus Christ is really what it is, even more so than us,

even more so than the Church, even more so than the song that

we sang about the kingdom that we will be able to experience someday, hopefully

soon. It is about Jesus Christ. And so every page that you turn

to, every paragraph that you study, every verse that you read, has

as its opportunity the roadmap to get to Jesus Christ. And so when we

study an Old Testament book like Ecclesiastes, it's once again that opportunity to realize

that this is found in this great story that is ultimately about Jesus. I'm

going to read the passage, and then I'll explain to you what it is,

and then we'll study it together. Ecclesiastic Is twelve, beginning in verse

eight. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity. Besides

being why as the preacher also taught the people knowledge. Weighing and studying and

arranging many proverbs with great care, the preacher sought to find words of delight,

and uprightly he wrote words of truth. The words of the wise are

like goads, and like nails. Firmly fixed are the collected sayings. They

are given by one shepherd, my son. Beware of anything beyond these.

Of making many books, there is no end, and much study is a

weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter all has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing,

whether good or evil. Now, I hope you're familiar with expository preaching that

term, and that is when you not just preach verse by verse through a

book, but you actually study it to understand the original author's intent to the

original audience. And once we understand that then we can apply it to our

twenty first century. And I'm creating and actually violating a rule of expository preaching,

and that has I'm preaching the end of the book. So we have

to understand that there's a whole argument that the author is providing, there's a

whole development that he is working through to come to these last verses. And

the imagery that I'll put before you is that the author, whom I believe

is Solomon, is unpacking what would be described as a courtroom. He's actually

going through his entire life and weighing his experiences, weighing his education, and

he's going back and forth and ultimately coming to a conclusion that is found in

these verses. And when you're in a court room, if you've ever experienced

one, or you've watched court proceedings on TV or on a movie, you

understand that when the gabble of the judge falls, that's the end. All

of the witnesses have stated their case, all of the experts have given their

expertise, the arguments have been made, but the judge says this is the

end, and then everyone goes out and lives according to the verdict. The

gabble falls in these verses of Solomon. And Solomon has written a book that

has been widely misunderstood. I misunderstood it before I preached through it. Many

times people come to the Book of the Ecclesiastes and conclude that it is an

old man writing cynically about his life. But the fact is, I believe

the exact opposite. I believe it is an old man writing to equip us

to be able to live life backwards. In fact, I'll commend a book

to you that has changed my life, and it is the book by David

Gibson entitled Living Life Backwards. And what the Journey of Ecclesiastes will do for

us, as Solomon intended, is to let us know the end, so

that we live today in light of the end. It is a gift,

especially in the twenty first century. And to that end, see the big

idea in your notes. It all comes down to this delight moves knowledge into

application. And I've had the privilege listening to several of Josh's sermons Josh preach

back in Kansas City on our sabbatical, and I know Josh preaches knowledge.

I know he preaches truth, but he also preaches application, and really where

the needle of knowledge and truth moves to application is this concept of delight.

And I hope you'll see it in the text as we unpack it, because

this is what we need and this is the secret for us as we live

life under the sun or here on earth. There's four ways to live that

I would invite you to take notes. And what I'm gonna do is I'm

going to actually ask you to circle some words in your Bibles. For me,

it took me years to be able to do that. I grew up

in a very conservative environment where you don't write in your Bibles, and so

if you are still working through that, I respect that. But for those

of you who have the freedom in Christ to write in your Bibles, I'm

going to give you some words because I hope it will allow you to be

able to see this is not just my musings about the text, it's what

the text means, and then be able to study it for yourself. So

let's look at the first way to live, which is found in verses eight

and nine. Live intentionally, Live intentionally. Would you underline these three words

vanity in verse eight, and you can take your pick between three of them.

Verse nine, would you circle the word wise? And then verse nine,

will you circle the word knowledge. If you've studied Ecclesiastes, you know

that word translated vanity occurs many times, and you might even notice in this

verse eight that he repeats it three times. Therefore, the author wants to

draw our attention to the importance of the word. The word vanity translates the

Hebrew term habell. We use that at a sin church back in Kansas City,

and everybody knows what it means. But I want to unpack this for

you a little bit more. You'll see you in your bibles, perhaps a

footnote or maybe a translation that it says a vapor or a mist. But

I think that's been an opportunity for us, through an English translation, to

misunderstand what Solomon is communicating. What Solomon is communicating is that life offers habell.

The world system offers habell. But what bell is As all asked the

team to put a quote up on the screen, it is something that is

real and it lasts for a bit, but it never delivers ultimate satisfaction.

I think if we can take this is our understanding of vanity in Solomon's book

Ecclesiastes. It helps us understand what he's saying is that life offers many things

that do have value. The illustration I've come up with is the smoke that

lingers after you blow out a birthday candle. When you see that smoke lingering,

you can actually touch it, you can actually smell it. You can

actually I wouldn't recommend this, but you can taste it. Not that I've

ever tried that, but the fact is it doesn't last. If you put

it in your pocket, if you try to hold onto it for the next

day, it will not last. And that's the picture that the word habell

that's trained inslated vanity communicates that the career that you're pursuing, there's a certain

measure of value and enjoyment to it. The car that you drive, the

relationship status, the education, the degree that you have, these have value,

and they are intended to convey value, but never deliver ultimate satisfaction.

Another way to put it is this enjoy habelle for what it was meant to

deliver and nothing more. You see, I think there's so many things in

our life that we expect something out of it more than what God intended to

it. Have it deliver. Marriage is something that I think falls into this

category when you look at what the apostle Paul says in Ephesians five, and

that great passage about a husband loving his wife is Christ loved the Church,

a wife submitting to her husband. He ends that passage by quoting Genesis too,

by saying, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and will

hold fast to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. But

then he says, I'm telling you a mystery. I'm telling you something that

has been hidden for generations, and that is that marriage is ultimately pointing us

to Christ in the Church. Marriage was never intended to deliver ultimate satisfaction,

and I think there's a lot of couples out there believing that that's what it

was supposed to do. So then when a wife doesn't deliver ultimate satisfaction to

her husband or vice versa, then we feel like marriage has messed up,

or somehow marriage hasn't been delivering, or even that God hasn't delivered. The

marriage was always intended to be habel. There's value to it. We enjoy

it, but it's always intended to point us beyond under the sun. To

the vertical, which brings me to the next two words. How do we

continue to build on this understanding of what vanity is well by knowledge? First

of all, knowledge are the facts of truth. It is what we find

in God's Word. When you study the Bible, you will find facts,

we will find truth. But ultimately listen to this you will find God.

The ultimate point of God's Word is God. I think a lot of times

we read the Bible trying to find ourselves. Where am I in the text?

What does it mean to me? But that's that's secondary. That's down

the road of studying the knowledge of God's word. God's word is intended to

reveal himself his character, and the more that we see him, the more

the awe of Him should grow in our hearts. We gain this knowledge,

but it's not intended to just stay there. The other word, I asked

you to circle as in verse nine wise being a person who is characterized by

wisdom. The word wisdom means to practically apply God's knowledge to everyday life.

You see. I think when we do this, then we can actually apply

living life backwards in our lives. I'll give you an example of this in

my own life. I had a dream growing up of playing major league baseball.

The reason probably for this is my dad was a major leaguer, and

so as a two year old, I have a home video of me running

up and down the hill behind our apartment with my dad's hat on and doing

a hook slide. You can ask me what that's actually is after the service.

I won't show you, but it's it's pretty cool. So from my

earliest recollections, I wanted to be a major league baseball player. Everything in

my life that I did, from from practice to tea work to going out

early before the game and taking extra reps, was designed to get me to

the major leagues. And I was on a good path. I got to

play Division One baseball. Some of you have been watching the College World Series,

and I just remember we played against so many of those teams and I

had an amazing experience. And then I got a chance to play minor league

baseball in the Phillies organization, and everything was just falling into place. In

fact, in two thousand and one, in spring training, I went to

the main stadium and got to talk to some people in the front office of

Philadelphia and they said, Jeff, we hear you're having a great spring training,

and we hear you might be in Philadelphia in the fall, and we

can't wait to see you. And I'm thinking, yes, it's all happening.

And then the next day I was released, the dream was done.

That was when I was twenty six years old. And I'll tell you,

for years and years, I have struggled with the pain of that unrealized experience.

I've struggled with the questions that I know many of you have asked,

or friends in your circles have asked, why God. I mean, there

were so many reasons why this should have happened, and yet God ordained that

it wouldn't. And I remember wrestling with us, and every time I would

go to Opening Day with my dad, I would struggle. Every day i'd

watch a baseball game, I would enjoy it, but I would struggle every

day. Every time I would watch a baseball movie, I would struggle.

And it dawned on me as I was preaching through Ecclesiastes and watching one of

my favorite baseball movies, Moneyball. By the way, it's not a Christian

movie, so just go in with that expectation, but it does accurately reflect

what goes on behind the scenes of the game that I love. And there's

a scene where Chris Pratt's character is getting a second chance, and I remember

watching that and even right now I'm getting chills and just thinking, God,

why didn't you let that happen. But there's a scene where Billy Bean,

who's the character Brad Pitt plays, is being talked to by a scout,

and the scout is explaining to Billy Bean and his family that we all get

told that we can no longer play the children's game. Some of us get

told at eight, some of us get told at eighteen, some of us

at forty. Well, I listened to that and realized I was told at

twenty six. I started thinking about all of those wonderful experiences of scrape knees

from hook slides behind my parents' apartment, of traveling with my teammates, of

winning championships, of playing in front of one person, my wife back in

college when it would be snowy and rainy, I knew my wife would be

in the stands, and then tens of thousands of people. And I thought

through that and realized it was all a bell. It was never intended to

be my identity. It was never intended to provide ultimate satisfaction. And so

now I can look back on those twenty six years and say thank you,

thank you for the good God it will. It was good. I could

enjoy it, but it was never intended to satisfy. And now that gives

me the lenses to be able to live life backwards. So whether it's your

health, whether it's your wealth, the relationship status, there's good in it

from God, but it was never intended to fully satisfy. That's living life

intentionally. Number two, we live life blendedly. Verse ten. I'm going

to ask you to circle two words, the word delight and then the word

truth. Solomon understood this as a man of wisdom, as a man who

the Bible describes apart from Jesus Christ, the wisest man who ever lived.

And he understood that there's these two ingredients that we must have blended in our

lives. The first one is the word delight. The word delight is an

interesting one. Here's a quote that I've come up with to describe delight.

Delight is the eclipsing of duty based on the value we place on something.

This is what we get when there's a diet that we have to start doing.

We value our calories being at a low count. We value our health,

nutrition, the way our bodies look higher than the duty of working out

and dieting. And so because of that we do the duty. We diet

because of the value we place on the end goal. That's what the word

delight means. But it goes hand in hand with the word truth. There

is duty that we must do. There is duty that you're doing right now.

This is a duty of the Christian life. God commands us in Hebrews

ten twenty four and twenty five to not forsake what y'all are doing right now.

You see how it was a Texan right there, y'all, you're doing

a duty. God says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves, but

stir up good works in love in one another. So you're doing a duty.

But the end game isn't the duty. The end game is the light

what we hope. And I know I can speak for the worship team when

I say this that in the worship songs and in the preaching, we're wanting

you to see God. We're wanting you to see his character. More specifically,

we're wanting you to see Christ, and as you do, we're praying

that the Holy Spirit will well up within you a delight that eclipses the duty,

so that next week on Sunday, it's like I can't wait to come

to service, because the Christian life is intended to be a blend of delight

and duty. Now I say blend intentionally because I think sometimes in life we

talk about a balance, you know, a work life balance, a grace

truth balance. I don't like that word because it can tend to lead us

to think we need to be fifty fifty on those things. The Bible speaks

more about a blendedness, and it reminds me of something that I do not

very well, and that is cook So in the rare experience where I'm allowed

in the kitchen to be able to put raw ingredients together, it usually turns

into a disaster. But there was one time, one time when my wife,

against her better judgment, encouraged me to make chocolate chip cookies. And

so I got those ingredients out. I got eggs, and actually that's all

I can remember. Now, I'm just kidding. There were eggs, there

were chocolate chips, there was vanilla extract. Yeah, maybe okay. And

so as I'm putting it all together and following the recipe, I got some

on my hands and I would look at it didn't taste very good, But

when it all comes together, it tasted pretty good. That's the idea of

blending, is that blending delight and duty in our lives is the cooking of

the ingredients that will live to a life that can be lived backwards. As

if you're waiting to get up in the morning when you feel like reading the

Bible, you're not going to read the Bible. But if all you're doing

is saying it's a duty, so I read the Bible, not with the

endgame of seeing God and his character, you're not getta delight. And Matt

Chandler, a pastor that I listened to from time to time, says that

duty that's not undergirded by delight will not last. And so the Christian life

is intended to be lived backwards by blending delight and duty. And Solomon understood

that, which brings me to number three. We live intentionally, we live

blendedly, but we also live responsively, meaning that we live in order to

respond to the knowledge of God's word. To respond to the truth and the

duties that we partake in virtual disciplines. And Solomon unpacks that in verses eleven

and twelve. I here's some words I would ask you to circle. Circle

the word goads. I'll explain that in the moment. Circle the word nails,

Circle the word shepherd, and then beware. I'm going to start with

beware. In the original language, the word beware means to be bright,

so as not to be missed. It's a bright flashing neon lights, so

that you cannot miss there's no excuse that you can amiss, that you can

miss something. And Solomon saying beware of something, He's saying beware of pursuing

truth in the wrong places and not pursuing truth in the right places. He

says, beware of the assembling of many books. And there are a lot

of books. My wife and I went through Barnes and Noble yesterday and we

were actually debating whether or not the world should just get rid of paper books.

I will tell you where I land on that she won. By the

way, the fact is is that there are plenty of books out there saying

truth is here or truth is there, and we live in a society that

says your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth. And Solomon

says, flash, flash, beware, beware, beware that you don't pursue

the wrong sources of truth. Make sure that you're pursuing the right sources of

truth. And how can you tell? Well, Versus eleven says, it

will be wise, it will be the practical application of God's word to everyday

life. But he also says, you can tell if you're pursuing the right

things because you will respond in a way that honors Christ. And you say,

I don't see that in the text, Well, that's why I asked

you to circle goads. The word goad was describing in the ancient context a

long stick that would have a sharp metal object at the end, and shepherds

would use it to as an animal would go to the left, poke them

so they'd come back, so the right poke them so that they'd come back,

so that they would stay on the right path. But not just that,

they would also if an animal was seated and should be moving, they

would poke them so they'd get moving. That's the imagery that I think for

us today is lost because we don't have this culture, but would have been

obvious for Solomon's readers that the word of God, that wisdom is intended to

keep us on the right path and keep us moving, but it's also intended

to be our foundation. That's the other word that I asked you to circle.

Nails. This idea of nails is important, especially with construction. I

worked in the residential construction industry, and I remember seeing houses get built from

the ground up and then going through warranty and homeowners would say, I don't

understand, why is there a hole in my drywall and nails sticking out?

And I would explain to them why it happened. But also what you need

to do. You need to hammer it back in there, mud over it,

and then paint over it, because if you don't and those nails keep

popping up, then the drywall will develop seems it will begin to crack.

Nails are important, and what Solomon is reminding us is that the word of

God and responding to the word of God is that secure fixed foundation, secure

fixed walls. But then I love this that word that I asked you to

circle in verse eleven, Shepherd, did you see it in the text.

It's something that I don't think Solomon fully comprehended, But the rest of scripture

equips us, and the translators of the English Standard version educate us by capitalizing

the s and shepherd. This book, this amazing story, the best story

ever written, was written by one author, the Holy Spirit himself. You

can write down second Peter one, twenty three, twenty two, and you

can see that the Bible claims that it was written by God himself. So

when we see all of this, when we see the value that Solomon is

providing, we understand that that it's not just the study and the duty of

God's word. We must respond to it. And when we're accurately responding in

a way that reflects Christ, we know that we are pursuing the proper truth.

So we live intentionally, we live blendedly, we live responsively. But

then number four, this is the end of the matter. We live worshipfulle

we live worshipfulee. Solomon says in verse thirteen, this is the end of

the matter. Two words that I would ask you to circle, fear and

keep. Solomon gets to the end, and I wish we had time.

If we were Puritans, we'd be here for another few hours. But we're

not. I wish we had time to unpack the rest of these twelve amazing

chapters. These experiences that Solomon is working through, these experiences that we can

relate to. These experiences that he reminds us are habel. And he says

the conclusion of the matter, the gavel is falling, And he first says

we must fear God. The word fear in the original is urah. And

I say that because it's found all throughout the Wisdom's literature. I'm reading through

Psalms right now. Fear is all throughout Psalms. But it means something positive,

not negative. It means to highly value and respect the object you are

fearing. Here's a definition. It is the affectionate reverence by which the child

of God bends himself humbly and carefully to the Father's law or set a different

way. The fear of God puts God front and center in our lives.

Let me ask you this, what got you up this morning. What's the

first thing that you do when you get out of bed, when you go

to work, what's first and foremost on your mind? When you go to

school, what's first and foremost on your mind? If you are doing this

kind of fear. Your raw. You value God above everything, and he

is front and center. It's what let you go out this afternoon and not

complain about the heat before you recognize the sun that's producing it and the creator

who put that sun in the sky. That's your raw. And Solomon says,

if you want to live life backwards, you begin with uraw, you

begin with this fear. But then how can you tell your fearing God.

Well, that's the second word I asked you to circle, and that's keep

his commandments. We don't keep his commandments. That leads to salvation. We

don't keep his commandments that leads to worship. We worship God and we are

saved, and then our heart just begins to overflow. And of course I'll

keep his commandments, but not just on the outside, also in the secret

places. Verse fourteen says, because at the end of the day, this

is the whole duty of men. So as I close, here's where I

want to move it. From knowledge to application. Wherever you find yourself in

the life under the sun, whether you're getting older and you're realizing you didn't

accomplish all those things you thought you would accomplish when you were a teenager,

whether you're single a lot longer than what you had hoped you would be single,

whether you are married and you haven't been able to have kids, whether

your bills are outpacing your revenue, whatever it is in your life that you

are experiencing under the sun. Solomon gives us what we need to live life

backwards the lens. Is that we need to be able to see all of

the politics, all of the social media, all of the advertisements. It's

all habell. There is good to be had, but it was never intended

to satisfy. And so as we attempt to live worshipfully, I want us

to consider four barriers in our lives that keep us from living worshipfully. Number

one, it's a relationship with God, and the question is do you have

it. Some of you might be here today trying to live out religion,

trying to appease the God of the universe by doing good things for him,

trying to get favor from him by what you do. But that's not what

the gospel is. The gospel is simply letting go of your own pursuit and

your own work and embracing the work of Jesus Christ and So my question to

you is have you received that completed work of Christ? Are you trusting in

that for your salvation? Have you received forgiveness of your sins because of what

Christ's blood has bought you? If not, would you ask him and invite

him to save you today? But if you are saved. Sometimes there's sin

in our own lives, especially in the secret places, and you wonder why

you're not living victoriously. You wonder why these things of the earth have an

inordinate attention that you are providing for them, And a lot of times it's

because of sin. The third reason that we have barriers in our lives from

living worshipfully is that there are too many distractions in our lives. I was

listening to a podcast the other day and I was reminded that often the first

thing that people do when they get up in the morning has checked their phone

for texts or their news feeds. Before you know it, they get to

the end of the day and they lay their head on the pillow and they

think, well, I just didn't have time to be with God. Really,

And I'm preaching to myself here as well as to maybe one or two

of you. So distractions, sin not even having a relationship with God.

But number four that our belief system is is not biblically constructed. Our belief

system isn't biblically constructed. So that as you're looking at the world, as

you're evaluating what's going on in society, it's more about your emotions, it's

more about what you feel. It's more about your own intellect than it is.

That you can go from Genesis to revelation and defend your position from Genesis

to Revelations. That guides you as you think, speak, and live throughout

the day. So, friends, as you bow your heads and close your

eyes, these are the words of Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived,

and he intends for them to help us. He intends for them to

be the lenses through which we look at our lives. He intends to equip

us to be able to live life backwards, so that we can live intentionally,

we can live blendedly, we can live responsively, but most of all,

so that we can live worshipfully.