"Working for What?" Ecclesiastes 4 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Good morning, Emmanuel.

Let me invite you to take your Bibles and open to Ecclesiastes in chapter 4.

Ecclesiastes chapter 4 is our text for this morning.

Ecclesiastes 4 · chapter mention

You can open your Bibles right to the middle, find Psalms Proverbs, and turn right a couple pages.

Stumble upon this little book called Ecclesiastes.

We're going to look at chapter 4 this morning before Jesse comes back next week and we re-engage with the Lord's Prayer.

Well, I quizzed a couple folks this week and asked them, what is Ecclesiastes chapter 4 about?

Ecclesiastes 4 · chapter mention

Currently, shooting percentage on that question is right at zero.

I'm hoping to improve the average after this morning.

It's one of these little passages tucked away in our Bibles that is just waiting for us to study it and see the ways in which the Lord would use it to minister to us, and I trust that's what he will do this morning as we look into his word.

So look down at your Bibles.

Let's begin by reading the entirety of the chapter.

Ecclesiastes chapter 4, beginning in verse 1.

Ecclesiastes 4 · chapter mention

Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had none to comfort them.

On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was none to comfort them.

And I thought, the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive.

But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil that's done under the sun.

Then I saw the toil and skill and work come from a man's envy of his neighbor.

This also is vanity and is striving after wind.

The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and striving after wind.

Again I saw vanity under the sun, one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?

This also is vanity and an unhappy business.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil, for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls, and has no other to lift him up.

Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?

And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him.

A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice.

For he went from the prison to the throne, though in his own kingdom he had been born poor.

I saw all the living who move about under the sun, along with that youth who was to stand in the king's place.

There was no end of all the people of whom he led, yet those who come later will not rejoice in him.

Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

This is the word of God.

Let me begin this morning by asking you a question, and as I ask it, think in your mind what is a one-word response that you could give to this question?

Here's the question.

What is it that would make you happy in this life?

You're thinking through one-word responses.

I imagine that some of you stumbled upon the same answer that the most famous study on happiness stumbled upon itself.

There is by now a very famous study that's often called the Harvard Happiness Study.

It's a study that's lasted nine decades, in which Harvard researchers surveyed hundreds of participants who, every single year, the conductors of this survey of this study would ask the participants a whole battery of questions on every f aspect of their life, and they were trying to find the factors that correlate with people saying that my life is satisfying and I'm a happy person.

And again, this has become a very famous study.

The director of it has written a best-selling book, and one of the things that has become most interesting about the study is that they are resolutely zeroed in on one factor, one factor that correlates by far most strongly with happiness in this life.

Relationships.

People who have strong, good, lasting relationships are the people who find that they are happy in this life.

And there's a certain sense in which that study really shouldn't surprise Christians.

Based on our Christian worldview, we understand that at the core of who we are as human beings in the image of God is that we're relational creatures.

We believe in a Trinitarian God.

There is the God who made us, the God who made the world, is a God of relationships.

That is being, who he is, is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, He's a relational God.

For all of eternity, Father, Son, and Spirit, the one God has existed in perfect relationship.

Jesus says in John 17, before the foundation of the world, Father and Son are sharing love and glory.

And out of the overflow of the happiness that Father, Son, and Spirit have in this eternal relationship, they create human beings in their own image, creatures in their own likeness, relational beings capable of sharing in their relational joy.

Human beings capable of knowing God and experiencing the love that God has experienced in his own fellowship forever.

That's who we are as human beings.

We're relational beings.

We're made to relate to God.

And as relational beings, fundamentally we're made to relate to one another.

We're made for relationships.

And yet we also know that sin has corrupted everything in the world, including relationships, so that often our relationships naturally are characterized by strife, bitterness, jealousy, envy, pride.

Yet in the gospel, when a person is renewed through believing in the message that God sent his son, was crucified on our behalf, resurrected from the dead, and offers forgiveness and adoption into the fellowship with God and the family of God through believing in the gospel, the Spirit takes residence in our life and begins to conform us to the image of our Creator and renew our relationships and enable us to partake in deep and satisfying relationships that matter, not just in this life, but in the life to come.

And so the scripture is replete with relational teaching, advice, truth on how to experience deep and satisfying relationships.

And that's what we find here in the book of Ecclesiastes in chapter 4.

And in fact, it's interesting to note where this little teaching about relationships in the chapter we just read falls in the book of Ecclesiastes.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a book about meaning.

What is this life all about?

It's the book that we give to all of our college freshmen and tell them, you need to read this book when you're asking, what is the point of all of this?

Finals, uh, why am I doing this?

You need to read Ecclesiastes, because it is the book that God has given us to answer that question.

What's this all about?

And when you open it, Ecclesiastes chapter 1, you find that Solomon, the author of the book, the man who had experienced everything there is to experience in life, concludes that if this world is all there is, it doesn't matter what you do or who you are, where you've been, vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 1 · chapter mention

All of life ultimately is just empty and meaningless if this is all there is.

Because the nature of all of human life is you can gather all the possessions, the power, the prestige that you possibly can accumulate, and Solomon did, but at the end of it, you'll have to conclude with him what he concludes in chapter 2, verse 16.

The wise and the fool, the rich and the poor, of all of them there's no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come, all will have been long forgotten.

The wise dies just like the fool.

Everybody's going to the same place.

You're all gonna die, and you'll all be gone, and it'll be as though it never happened.

And in fact, one day the sun will implode, all of human life will cease to exist, like a candle that was snuffed out, and as though all of human existence had never even happened.

That's the inevitable conclusion you have to draw if this is all there is.

And yet Solomon says, we know that we were made for more than this.

We know that when we grieve our loved ones, when we bury them, that they were not just accidental collocations of atoms that came from nowhere and are going nowhere.

We know there's more to this.

There is a reality that the scripture declares, and Solomon tells us here, that God will judge the righteous and the unrighteous alike.

There is a God who made this world, who will hold this world accountable, who when we die will judge us, and there will be a life to come.

And because of the reality that God made us in his image for eternity and he will judge us, everything that we do in this life matters.

The reality of God's coming judgment and the eternity that we will enter into when we fall off the precipice of this life submerges every moment in this life with meaning.

Everything that we do in this life matters is the message of the book of Ecclesiastes.

So then you have to ask the question once you get your mind around this truth that Solomon teaches us in chapters 1, 2, and 3, if everything I do in this life matters, how do I make the most of it?

How do I make sure that my brief time on this planet matters?

And the first thing that Solomon teaches us is that you need to have good relationships.

You want to live in God's way, in God's world.

You want to live a life that matters for eternity in this brief journey that you have here on earth, you need to have good and godly relationships.

So Ecclesiastes chapter 4, as we study it this morning, I think what we see here are four obstacles to those kinds of good relationships that make life meaningful, not just in this life, but in the life to come, that make it satisfying in this life, but also store up treasure in the next.

Ecclesiastes 4 · chapter mention

There are four obstacles that we'll encounter, and this text will alert us to them, and then teach us four ways to overcome those obstacles.

Let's begin by looking at verse one, and we encounter the first obstacle.

Let's just call it oppression.

Look down at your Bibles at verse one.

Solomon says again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them.

On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them.

And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive, but better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

Solomon says, When you look into the world, you will discover that the world is a mess.

It's unfair, it's unjust, there's oppression, there's unmet expectations.

And if this world is all there is, then all of us would conclude it would be better to be dead because this world is hard.

And the reason that I say this is part of Solomon's teaching about relationships, and this is an obstacle to relationships, is that when you look out in the world and you discover that the world is difficult and full of pain and disappointment, it becomes natural that you don't want to give yourself to those kinds of relationships.

Naturally, we don't like discomfort, we like comfort.

And the surest way we think naturally, the surest way to secure our own comfort is to wall ourselves off and to take care of my life and make sure that my life is nice and neat and tidy, and my house is how I want it, my job's how I want it, my life is what I want.

And you look into the world and you see that if I'm gonna get involved in other people's lives, other people's lives are kind of a mess.

And that's gonna be hard, and it's gonna make my life a mess, and you don't want that.

Solomon says that if you're going to engage in deep relationships, you have to be willing to engage in the mess of difficult things in the world by getting involved in difficult people.

And this is what he says in verse one.

Here's what we're missing.

This is the way to overcome this obstacle is comfort.

Look at verse one.

Again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had none to comfort them.

And then he emphasizes that again at the end of verse one.

On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them.

And Solomon is not saying that we don't have any business trying to confront oppression and injustice.

The Bible roundly condemns oppression and injustice, and Christians should be people who stand against it certainly.

But here he's speaking on an individual, relational level.

What you can do for people who are experiencing difficulties in life is you can offer them comfort.

You can offer them strength.

You can engage in the difficulties that they're experiencing in their life and bring them comfort in the difficult situations of life.

But do you know how you're gonna be able to do that?

Is you're gonna have to get out of the nice, tidy walls that you make in your own life, and you're gonna have to be willing to get involved in the mess of other people's lives in order to bring them comfort.

And certainly the way that we are able to do that is we're a people who have encountered the gospel for ourselves.

Do you know the scripture calls it the gospel of all comfort?

You believe in the Bible, you believe the God revealed in the Bible, you believe in a God who had his life nice and walled off and all tidy for all of eternity, before the foundation of the world, Father, Son, Spirit, infinite joy, infinite glory, overflowing happiness, nothing there to mess it up.

And then he makes a world in which everything's messed up, and he chooses to come out of his walls and come into the world and to experience affliction and disappointment and heartache, and then ultimately the wrath that should fall upon all of the sin that's in the world.

He chooses to get up underneath it and endure it himself.

He's a God who's experienced oppression and pain and torture so that ultimately we wouldn't, so that ultimately his riches would become ours, so that his joy would become ours.

He's a God who has experienced affliction so that he can extend to us eternal comfort.

If you know that God and you can bank your life on the reality that there is a God who has endured torment for me to offer me eternal joy, then you're freed up to come out of the nice glass walls of your tidy life and to get involved in the mess of people and offer them comfort when they're experiencing difficulty in life.

You are freed up to experience real relationships in the mess of the real world.

Paul says it like this in 2 Corinthians and chapter 1.

He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we have ourselves been comforted by God.

That's what the gospel does.

It enables us to extend ourselves to others in meaningful relationships to bring comfort to them in the midst of their afflictions.

One of the truths that we particularly strengthen one another is this reality that if you are a Christian, you are going towards another Christian to comfort them in their affliction.

You help to strengthen them, to assure up their roots on this great reality, that one day the God you believe in is going to swallow up death forever.

And the Lord God, who you believe in, will wipe away the tears from your face.

And you'll say on that day, Behold, this is our God.

We've waited for him that he might save us.

This is the Lord, we've waited for him.

Let us be glad and rejoice in our salvation.

That's the God you believe in if you believe in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

That reality is more sure than the pure pew you're sitting in.

That truth anchors your life and enables you to extend your life to people, to comfort them in their affliction, to engage in real relationships in the real world.

And I think the reason the Solomon starts here is because this is probably obstacle number one is that getting involved in relationships is messy and it's hard.

But if it's grounded in the reality that the God of all eternity brings me comfort and has secured my eternal salvation, then I can extend myself to others and to bring them the comfort with which I've been comforted by God.

Solomon wants to move on then to a second obstacle to good relationships, and that's what he brings up in verse 4.

Let's call it envy.

Look down to your Bibles at verse 4.

Solomon says, Then I saw all the toil and skill and work come from a man's envy of his neighbor.

And this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

He says that the reason that most people work so hard is because they're envious and they want things that they don't have, and so they'll work hard to get them.

And we live in DC.

Isn't this just kind of the woven into the fabric of society?

We see nice houses and we see retirement plans and vacations, and people have these nice, bubbly, happy, wonderful lives, and we want them.

Solomon says, you need to be very careful because the natural course for many of us is that envy begins to take over our life.

And before I move any further, I think I should ask one question Envy is one of those invisible sins.

It's in the heart.

It's not blasted on TV.

And so, in order to see it, you have to look into your own heart.

And if you look into your own heart, let me ask the question: are you going to be serious about it?

Are you s as serious about your envy as God is?

You know, the famous author Christopher Hitchens in the early 21st century, he was famous for being kind of an evangelistic atheist.

He he said, I don't think envy is all that bad.

In fact, it just drives good capitalism.

So we should ask, well, what does God think about it?

Well, in Romans chapter 1, Paul says that God looks out on the face of humanity and sees that naturally human beings are filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

And I underline there covetousness and envy, which are two ways of saying the same thing, just to notice that God doubles down on this.

God takes it really seriously, and if he does, so should I.

I should be willing to look into my heart and see if what's driving me is just envy.

If we go a little further, we see Mark chapter 15, envy is what caused the Jewish leaders to hand Jesus over for crucifixion.

Mark 15 · chapter mention

Colossians chapter 3 says that envy earns God's wrath.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

God takes this seriously, and so should we.

But it's not just in the next life where envy has consequences.

It's also in this life, Solomon wants to point out.

Look at verse 7.

In verse 7 of our text, Solomon says, again, I saw vanity under the sun.

One person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there's no end to all his toils.

His eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?

This also is vanity and an unhappy business.

You know, even in this life's event envy eventually disconnects you from everybody around you.

Because you want more and you're willing to work for it, and you're willing to step on people in order to get it, and then when you get it, you'll spend it on yourself.

Envy is accruing wrath in the next life, and it's separating you from people in this life.

So, what's the solution to it?

Well, it's rather simple, and it's right there in the text.

It's contentment.

Look at verse 5.

The f first, before giving us the solution, verse 5, Solomon gives us a false solution.

Verse 5, the fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

So just giving up and not working, that's not the solution.

Sloth is its own sin, but the solution is in verse 6.

Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and striving after wind.

The solution is contentment.

The comparison here is one handful with contentment, with peace, with relationships that are fruitful, or two hands full, but your life is characterized by strife, and I need more, and I need more, and I need more, and I need more.

One handful is better.

So then the question becomes how do I become content?

How do I become more of a content person?

And if you look into the world, there's basically two solutions.

What solution number one, path number one is just get more stuff.

And then you'll be content because you'll have more stuff.

And we know that doesn't work because once you get more stuff, then you need more stuff.

You've popped that balloon and so you chase another and another and another.

So let's not go down that road.

The other road, and I think this is kind of the religious answer, and it even seems like the metaphor is saying, two hands, no good.

Just have one hand.

So the solution to contentment is just want less.

So if you want to be content, just shrink your desires.

Now let me ask you the question.

If I just told you, go out this door and stop wanting so much, just don't want anything.

Shrink your desires.

No more hunger, just stop it.

How many of you think you could do that?

In fact, that's not the point of the metaphor, and when you look through the rest of scripture, the solution to contentment, the pathway to the contentment, is not to shrink your desires, it's to reorient them, it's to redirect them, it's to make a new pathway and chart them towards a different goal.

Let me say it this way.

In Psalm 4, David says this.

He says of the Lord, Lord, you have put more joy in my heart than they have when they're grain and white abound.

The way to contentment is to reorient your heart towards what will ultimately give you deeper and better and higher and wider satisfaction, to redirect your heart towards God.

The reason that you have hunger and desire in your heart for joy and satisfaction and contentment and fulfillment and peace isn't because those things aren't out there and God's just playing a dirty trick on you.

The reason that those things are in your heart is because it's there, but it's not found in the stuff that God made.

It's found in God.

The way to find contentment isn't just to shrink your desires, and it's not to get more and more stuff in this world, it's to go to the God that made this world.

It's to go deeper into Christ.

It's to come to drink from the fountain of living waters.

Jeremiah chapter 2, when God chastises his people, he says, You've been drinking from broken cisterns, you've been drinking from bowls that have holes in the bottom of them, and it's just draining out.

Jeremiah 2 · chapter mention

And then you're trying to go by another one and another one and another one and another one.

And he doesn't say, just stop being thirsty.

Instead, what he says is, Come to me, the fountain of living waters.

I will never run dry, I will never disappoint, I will never run out, I will quench your thirst forever.

The pathway to contentment is to reorient your life and direct it towards the one who made you, direct it towards Christ.

Now, the reason that this is taught to us in the context of relationships is that if you are a person who is pursuing satisfaction in Jesus Christ, you will be empowered to be a person who's leading other people to the fountain of living waters to drink likewise.

That's the kind of relationship that will bring you satisfaction in this life and in the next.

The kind of relationship where you're bringing people, and people are bringing you to drink from the fountain that will really satisfy, to drink of Christ.

There's a third obstacle to relationships in this text.

Let's call it wandering.

Wandering.

Look down at verse nine.

Verse nine in Ecclesiastes chapter four two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil, for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.

But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.

Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?

And though a man might prevail against one who is alone too, will withstand him, a threefold coal threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Notice that the advice in the text is that two are better than one.

It's good to have friends, better to have good relationships than not to have any.

Check, pretty simple advice, right?

I think we'll understand the text a little bit better if we think about the metaphor.

There really are series of images and these little aphorisms written here.

And the images all have to do with a journey.

All have to do with engaging in some task and pressing on towards some goal.

Think about it, look at verse 9.

You have a reward or a wage for toil, for work.

So you're going somewhere, you're doing something, you have a goal in mind.

Verse 10, you're on a journey, you're falling down, people are picking you up and you're pressing on.

And even verse 11, that's a journey metaphor.

Verse 11, how can if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?

That's speaking of in the ancient Near East, when you would travel overnight, nature of the geography is that often at night the temperature would plummet suddenly, and if you're all alone, it could become really dangerous really quick.

But if you're together with a partner, then you have the ability to keep one another warm and safe and secure.

You see, the metaphors are all have to do with a journey.

You're going somewhere.

You know the reason that sometimes it's hard for us in modern society to find good relationships is because we're not really going anywhere.

Sure, we're going somewhere in our careers, sure we're going upwardly mobile as best and fast as we can, but I'm talking spiritually, a kind of spiritual relationship that's helping you to drink from the fountain of living waters, that's helping you to grow in godliness, to become a mature man or a woman in the image of God.

One of the reasons it's hard to find those relationships is because we're just wandering.

We're just kind of going through life, and we kind of dip into church service and Bible studies.

Even if we do it like every single week, we're dipping in, but what's on our mind is other stuff, and then as we go through the day, we're just getting through the day, and there's so many things, and there's trying to have all of these things going on.

We're just wanting spiritually speaking, we're just wandering about.

You know the solution?

What Solomon says here, the reason he uses all these journey metaphors is the solution to finding these kinds of relationships is to actually be pursuing something, to actually have a goal, to direct your life towards, and to find people that are going to the same goal.

I think it's helpful for an illustration to seal C.S.

Lewis's illustration.

In his book, The Four Loves, he discusses different kinds of relational loves.

And he has this helpful illustration where he describes the difference between romantic love and friendship love.

He says romantic love is like two people facing one another, they're admiring one another.

Oh, you're so beautiful, you're so wonderful, I love you.

Friendship love is a little bit different.

Friendship love is more like two people shoulder to shoulder and they have a common goal.

They have some common destination thing in mind, and they are shoulder to shoulder journeying together towards the goal.

That's how friendship starts, isn't it?

Friendship always starts with the oh you two moment.

Think of the way that teenagers make friends.

They make friends because they're in school and they find out you like the same team.

Oh, you too?

Oh, you like the same band, or you hate the same teacher.

Oh, you hate him too.

Now you have something in common.

Now you're looking at the same goal.

You know, the greatest oh you two moment that you can have is to say you love Christ too.

You want to be a godly man or woman too, you want to spread the news of Jesus Christ, you want to serve the church, you want your life to matter for eternity, you want to use your time and your wealth well, you want to grow?

That's the you two moment that's gonna make a meaningful, lasting relationship.

When you have a goal, when you're pursuing Jesus Christ, when you're trying to grow in godliness, and you look left and right and you find fellow journeyers and you partner together to help each other to move closer and closer to the goal of conformity to the will of God, conformity to the person of Jesus Christ.

The solution to this is to actually pursue Jesus with abandon, with vigor, with might.

Now, before we move on to the fourth principle, and there is one more to look at, I want to answer one question that might be mingling in one or two of your minds, and that is today's Father's Day.

Hallelujah, it's Father's Day.

But this isn't particularly a Father's Day message, is it?

This is a general relationship, relationships that matter for eternity, kind of a message.

That's what I'm going for.

And at the same time, this very much is a Father's Day message.

Think about it, Father, is what kind of influence do you want to have in your kids' life?

You want to just conform to general DC culture?

You want to save up as much money as you can, get your kids into a good college so they can get a good job and make a lot of money and then die and stand before God's throne for judgment and say, Here's my degree from the University of Virginia.

You don't want to do that.

You want to have a spiritual impact on your kids.

You want to be an instrument in God's hands to impact your kids for eternity, to see them grow convictions that the Bible's true and Jesus satisfies, and I believe the gospel.

You want to be that kind of a father.

You know what kind of a father God uses for that kind of an influence in kids' lives is the kind of man who is pursuing these kinds of relationships.

The kind of man who loves Christ, who has convictions about the truth, and gets other men around him, and he's pursuing Jesus Christ.

Maybe I could say it this way.

I've had the privilege of being the high school pastor at Emmanuel for getting close to a decade now.

And in those eight plus years, a frequent question that gets asked to me is if I have any thoughts on the best school choice for teenagers these days.

And my answer is no, I don't.

For as long as I have been at Emmanuel Bible Church, we have had the privilege of having a student ministry that is basically more or less a third public, a third private, and a third homeschool.

It fluctuates slightly, but more or less that's the way it's been for as long as I have been here.

It's a wonderful blessing that our church is not one of these churches that has a whole bunch of people firing at one another.

You send your kids to what school?

Rather, we have a church that's characterized by the understanding that God has given wisdom to parents to make decisions that they think are best for the spiritual development of their kids.

Praise the Lord.

And do you know, as long as I have been here, I have discussed this with all of the different workers that I've served with, and we have all agreed that we cannot see an obvious correlation between school choice and spiritual outcome.

I just I can't see it.

Maybe it's there if I did some kind of scientific study, but I have it's not risen to the surface to the level of being glaringly obvious.

But do you know what has risen to the surface of being glaringly obvious to everybody who has served in the student ministry in the last eight plus years is that there is a correlating factor between kids' outcome and this one reality, kids' spiritual life after they graduate in this reality.

It's their parents' spiritual maturity.

And it's not a magic button.

There is no magic button that we can push this and then God will definitely save our kids.

God is not a robot, that's not the way salvation works.

But it is the pattern in scripture, and it has been the pattern in a manual Bible church as long as I have been here, that it tends to be that the men and women, the parents who are pursuing Jesus Christ, who have these kinds of relationships, who have convictions about the truth, they love to share the gospel, they love to talk about Christ, they want to live for Christ, they're honest about their sin, they want to grow, they're willing to be confronted, they're accountable to leadership, they're just engaged, they love Christ, they're growing.

Typically, the pattern in our church is that their kids end up following in Christ too.

You want to be a father, a spiritual father.

These are the kinds of relationships that have to characterize our lives.

We have to be the kind of men that are pursuing satisfaction in Christ, pursuing godliness and maturity as men of God, and are getting around other men, and we're strengthening one another and pursuing Christ together on this cooperative journey.

That's the kind of men that God uses in the lives of his children.

Now, there is one more obstacle to relationships that is in this text, so we need to get to it, and it's this it's pride.

Look down at verse 13 in your text.

Verse 13, Solomon says, Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice.

And the word take advice, in some of your translations would be different, might be rebuked.

That's the word here.

This king no longer knows how to be corrected.

He's right.

Everything he does is right.

I don't really need to hear it.

I've been there, I've done that, I understand.

I'm doing just fine.

I've been in church for so long.

I'm okay.

You don't need to talk to me.

Talk to that guy.

Have you seen that guy?

Solomon says that man is actually the fool.

Look at the outcome, verse 14.

He went from prison, the young man, the poor man that no everyone neglected.

And by the way, the reason that he's characterized as an old king, the reason that you contrast poor young man and an old, foolish king, the old here is not the way that we think of old in 21st century Western culture.

Western culture tends to prize youth and despise age.

That's not the way ancient culture, and not the way a lot of Middle Eastern cultures, for example, even in the modern day, look at age.

Many cultures in the modern day, no one will listen to you until you're 60, because you got nothing worth hearing.

In the ancient world, age was prized because when you were old, you were distinguished and you had something to say, and people should listen to you.

And the idea here, the contrast between this young man and the old man, is one who is dignified and distinguished and knows what's going on, and a silly little boy who no one should pay attention to.

And what happens in verse 14 is a reversal, because the old man no longer knew how to be corrected.

So verse 14, the young man went from prison to the throne, though in his own kingdom he'd been born poor.

And I saw all the living who move about under the sun, along with that youth who was to stand in the king's place.

So he took the king's place.

Why?

Because he got people around him and he learned.

He was willing to learn.

He was a humble man.

He learned how to be humble.

He learned how to be corrected.

That's the kind of attitude that is going to facilitate good relationships.

Very simply, the Proverbs says this.

Proverbs 27, faithful are the wounds of a friend and profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

And we should ask ourselves, what kind of people are we surrounding ourselves with?

The kind of people who praise us or the kind of people who speak truth into our lives?

Am I the kind of person who's willing to have someone speak truth into my life?

That's going to enable me to have deep and meaningful relationships that cause me to grow up into maturity in Jesus Christ.

So we get to the end here, and we have these four relational principles.

The kinds of relationships that are going to matter are relationships that are characterized by extending yourself to comfort others because I'm experiencing contentment in the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm pursuing him and I'm willing to be confronted and lifted up along the way.

Now, I started with that little illustration from the Harvard study at the beginning of this morning.

Do you remember that?

And it said that people who have good relationships in this life generally just fare better.

And that shouldn't surprise us because if you live in God's world and God's way, things generally go better for you.

So if you have friends and you have actual relationships, you'll tend to be happier.

But we need to ask this question what kinds of relationships are making my life happy?

And how long will they last?

This is what Solomon ends on.

This is the note that Solomon ends on in verse 16.

He asks us to evaluate how lasting are your relationships.

Look at verse 16 in your Bibles.

There was no end of all the people.

This young man's come to the throne, and there's no end of all the people whom he led.

Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him.

Surely this also is vanity and striving after the wind.

It doesn't matter if you've got good relationships in this life, whether you're wise or foolish, rich or poor, you're still going to die.

And that's it.

The people in the Harvard survey are dropping left and right, and do you know who they are?

I don't.

Do you have the kinds of relationships that will matter in eternity?

That's the question that Solomon wants you to ask.

Do you have the kinds of relationships that are conforming you to the image of Christ and preparing you for an eternal weight of glory?

Those are the kinds of relationships that make this life really deeply meaningful.

Where do you find those relationships?

It's pretty simple.

Usually you're going to find those relationships by being involved in the church, by being involved in using your spiritual gifts to serve in the church, by pursuing Jesus Christ in the church, and you look left and right and you find men and women who are pursuing the same goal, and you start to get involved in their life.

Let me close with just a question.

Maybe we'll call it a plea.

Elders of Emmanuel Bible Church know that there are a thousand members in our church.

Those are people who are involved in the church, using their gifts, serving in the church.

They're accountable to spiritual leaders.

They have assigned shepherding elders who are responsible before God to care for them and know what's going on in their life and see that they're growing in maturity in Christ.

And yet there's a lot more than that 1,000 that come here on a Sunday morning.

And a lot of you don't know who you are.

And some of you definitely are involved and you have these kinds of relationships, but I want to plead with you to ask yourself would you say your life is characterized by these kinds of deep relationships that are helping you to mature into Jesus Christ?

Because it's very easy, as we said earlier, to come into a service or a Bible study and then check out and just go about life and just end up kind of wandering spiritually speaking.

But there's people here who are pursuing Christ and we want to pursue Christ together.

So if you are honest with yourself and you say, I am kind of wandering and I don't have really deep connections, why not now?

Why not find more of those relationships by getting more involved in serving the body of Christ and find those relationships in this church?

This is the first thing that Solomon says we need to experience deeply meaningful lives for Christ in this world.

Why not now?

This is the kind of church we want to be.

The kind of church is characterized by building one another up and preparing one another for the eternal joy ready to be unfolded for us.

Let's be that kind of a church.

Brings us into a family.

Lord, we do pray that you would build this family up in maturity and Christ-likeness and make us characterized by love for one another.

I pray for the people here who are involved in relationships, and I pray that you would give them wisdom and love to continue to serve one another and grow in their relationships.

And I pray for those who are somewhat wandering.

I pray that you would draw them into deep relationships that would help them to mature, that would help them to grow in their love for you and their convictions about the truth of your word.

I pray that you would make us and mold us and shape us a people who are characterized by love for your gospel.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.