Everything Is Meaningless - Sovereignty Amid Chaos

If you have your Bibles or you have your phones with your Bibles on.

I'd like to ask you to turn to Ecclesiastes, chapter 8.

Ecclesiastes 8 · chapter mention

We're going to jump right in the message.

Ecclesiastes, chapter 8,.

Ecclesiastes 8 · chapter mention

I have the whole chapter of chapter 8 and it's really an interesting chapter.

Let's go ahead and read through it, starting at verse 1, how wonderful to be wise, to analyze and interpret things.

Wisdom lights up a person's face, softening its harshness.

Verse 2, obey the king, since you vowed to God that you would.

Don't try to avoid doing your duty and don't stand with those who plot evil, for the king can do whatever he wants.

His command is backed by great power.

No one can resist or question it.

Those who obey him will not be punished.

Those who are wise will find a time and a way to do what is right, for there is a time and a way for everything, even when a person is in trouble.

Verse 7, indeed, how can people avoid what they don't know was going to happen?

None of us can hold back our spirit from departing.

None of us has the power to prevent the day of our death.

There is no escaping the obligation that dark battle.

And in the face of death, wickedness will certainly not rescue the wicked.

I have thought deeply about all that goes on here under the sun, where people have the power to hurt each other.

I have seen wicked people buried with honor, yet they were the very ones who frequented the temple and are now praised in the same city where they committed their crimes.

This, too, is meaningless.

When a crime is not punished quickly, people feel it is safe to do wrong.

But even though a person sins a hundred times and still lives a long time, I know that those who fear God will be better off.

The wicked will not prosper, for they do not fear God.

Their days will never grow long like the evening shadows.

And this is not all that is meaningless in our world.

In this life, good people are often treated as though they were wicked, and wicked people are often treated as though they were good.

This is so meaningless.

So I recommend having fun, because there is nothing better for people in this world than to eat, drink and enjoy life.

Sermons over here.

Let's go, Okay.

That way they will experience some happiness, along with all the hard work God gives them under the sun.

In my search for wisdom and in my observation of people's burdens here on earth.

I discovered that there is ceaseless activity, day and night.

I realized that no one can discover everything God is doing under the sun.

Not even the wisest person discovers everything, no matter what they claim.

This is the word of God.

Father, we are thankful for this book of Ecclesiastes.

We know that over the years that have gone by, we know that this book has been preserved for us and, father, we pray that today, that we would take out of this word, what you have for us today.

We thank you for it and we thank you for blessing on everything that's said in.

Our hearts are open to receive your word in Jesus' name.

Amen, all right.

Well, we're continuing our sermon series.

Life is meaningless.

We did that specifically to increase attendance and, as you can probably tell from this chapter, there's some tough stuff.

In this chapter, there's three primary topics that the preacher, of course, a lot of us believe was Solomon, says, and there were three obedience, injustice and then he turns the right corner and he talks about the enjoyment of life Obedience, injustice and the enjoyment of life, and within each of these topics, solomon makes some very profound and yet disturbing observations.

Remember, he was wiser than any one of us and on the surface.

Although some of these topics are a little tough, there is one theme that weaves it all together, and that is the sovereignty of God.

And I won't be the first person, nor will it be the last person, that gets up here and talks about and preaches on the book of Ecclesiastes and talks about the sovereignty of God, because from Genesis to Revelation, god's sovereignty is on display through all of Scripture.

So the title of today's message and I want to thank my friend Tim Shutz for this Sovereignty and Mid-Crisis and Chaos.

Crisis, chaos, kind of the same thing Sovereignty amid chaos.

We're going to do two things.

We're going to look at what Solomon writes about obedience, injustice and enjoying life.

We're going to see how we can apply that today to us, and then we're going to look how Solomon weaves this overarching theme of sovereignty and how we should gain so much comfort from that.

So let's jump straight into it.

Theme number one starts in.

Well, I'm going to read verse number one.

But the theme number one is obedience.

It's really interesting.

You know, when you have a sermon you're going to preach, you have a section of Scripture.

As a teacher, you tend to look for patterns.

For some reason, solomon just makes this.

Verse one is just this statement about wisdom.

He simply says this how wonderful to be wise and to analyze and interpret things.

Wisdom lights up a person's face, softening its harshness.

You know what I think that means?

I think if you are confused about something, you're like this what, what.

But if you're wise you're like ah, that softens the face, doesn't it?

I know you're like it's got nothing softening your face, but you get the idea, okay.

But I think what Solomon is doing from the very beginning is he's prefacing everything he's about to say about obedience and justice.

He's prefacing it all, saying this is all filtered through wisdom.

Okay, this is filtered through wisdom, not the wisdom Solomon earned himself, but the wisdom that God gave him supernaturally, all right.

So he's kind of prefacing that.

So let's pick up verse two.

Obey the king, since you vowed to God that you would don't try to avoid doing your duty and don't stand with those who plot evil, for the king can do whatever he wants.

His command is backed by great power.

No one can resist or question it.

Okay, a little self-serving time here.

Solomon.

Who was he?

It was the king of Israel, right?

Well, it sounds a little self-serving, right?

But if you think about it.

Solomon has a real interesting perspective that we sometimes forget.

If you go back to 2 Samuel 15 and read chapters 15 through 18, you read something that is basically the equivalent of a movie script, and it's about David, king David's son, absalom, who was trying to usurp and actually literally drove his father off the throne and out of Jerusalem.

And it's a long and shorted tale.

He eventually gets his.

He's riding his horse.

He gets caught in this branch.

Joab comes along, who's the leader of David's army, and even though David said don't kill him, he's gone, he's killed.

Well, when David and his household left Jerusalem in fear of their lives, in fear of Absalom, guess who was with him?

A 12-year-old named Solomon.

Solomon was 12 years old when all this happened.

He saw what happens when you put your hand against God's anointed.

He saw it right up front.

He saw the fear in his dad's face.

He saw all that went on.

He saw the disruption.

He heard the weeping.

He saw all of this firsthand.

But, more importantly, he saw and he had perspective because he knew what happened.

He knew that God dealt with Absalom and his other brother that tried it again, by the way, I mean King David was under attack by his own family.

But King Solomon had all this.

He understood it and he understood that a king, when he's placed in the position, is placed there by God and you are not the one that you serve that.

You can't take that away.

Now you might say where are you going with this, scott?

Where are you going?

Well, let's first.

When we talk about applying this today, we got to make a few clear delineations here.

First off, israel was a theocracy.

A theocracy and a theocracy is when those who govern or rule over a state or a nation do so by divine guidance and they're placed there and appointed there by God himself.

Solomon would know this more than anybody because I'm sure he heard his stories from his dad about being called by God to be the next king and then running from Saul for all those years.

I'm sure he had that perspective.

But remember, god spoke directly to Solomon.

Remember he asked him what do you want?

And that's when Solomon says I need wisdom.

So he understood that he was placed there.

So a theocracy is God's placing someone directly in that position, even speaking to them.

But we live in a democracy.

You know.

What's different there, of course, is on the surface.

We, as the people of the country, we elect rulers.

So I'm just going to identify up front there's a difference there.

However, this is where God's sovereignty comes into play.

This is where God's sovereignty comes into play because there's these irritating little scriptures.

One's in Daniel, chapter two, verses 20 and 21.

Daniel answered and said blessed be the name of God forever and ever.

To whom belong wisdom and might?

He changes times and seasons that's not talking about daylight savings time, by the way.

He removes kings and sets up kings.

He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.

Now you might say, well, yes, god, but that's Old Testament stuff.

Well then, there's another irritating little scripture by the apostle Paul, in Romans 13 and verse one and two.

He says everyone must submit himself to governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which is from God.

The authorities that exist have been appointed by God.

Why did he have to say that?

Consequently, whoever resists authority is opposing what God has said in place, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

Now let me just make a couple of clear statements here.

We know evil exists, right, and all you have to do is look through history and you see a lot of evil rulers, okay, and so I want to make sure, right up front, and get this.

You can write this down, make this.

This is my stance here.

I'm not saying that when evil rulers do evil things, we give it a stamp of approval.

I'm not saying when evil rulers tell us to do evil things, or even demand us to do evil things, that we just follow.

I'm not saying that at all.

I am saying, though, and God's sovereignty, they're there for a reason, sometimes a reason that we don't see, but they're there.

Remember Shadrach, meshidak and Abednego?

Remember that one, nebuchadnezzar.

Right, by the way, we know God used Nebuchadnezzar to punish Israel.

Right, we know that.

And here they are, standing in front of the image of Nebuchadnezzar, the big statue, and they say we won't bow down and even if we're burned up in your big fire, we're okay with that.

Okay, they did not comply to the evil request that would cause them to compromise their faith.

So we have to understand it.

We look at all that, but at the same time, we can't run off the rails and say we're gonna go after our government because we disagree with a stance on something.

Now, one of the things I think is beautiful in a democracy is flawed, as our democracy is.

We can vote.

We have a vote, right?

I know a lot of people say, well, I don't trust the electoral process anymore.

Understand that.

But all you have to do is look around the world at other democracies and realize our electoral process is about as good as it's gonna get right.

We can peacefully protest.

I've had the chance to march in the March for Life a couple of times.

We've done different things.

We've publicly displayed our opposition to things.

We can do all that within the law, but what we can't do is go over and above the law, and what I mean by that again is, obviously, if the law is causing us or telling us we need to disobey God, that's a different story, right?

But we have to understand that God's sovereign hand is always at work and he is allowing people to be in positions of power that do evil things.

You know I look this up.

If you take Hitler, if you take Stalin and if you take I think it's, let me see, I wrote it down here Hitler is Stalin, or this isn't the injustice part I'm gonna talk about, but there's three dictators that I looked at.

Literally, they were responsible for killing over a hundred million people.

A hundred million people, and you might say, well, god's sovereign in that.

Yeah, god's sovereign in that too.

There's a lot of things that, as you look at, we don't understand.

But we have to trust and know that God's got a purpose in place, but he's also not evil.

We just have to keep that and understand that.

And so how we respond to people that lead us and guide us, well, we have to trust that God's doing something bigger than maybe we can see.

In verses five through six, he says something really interesting.

He says those who obey him will not be punished.

Those who are wise will find a time and a way to do what is right, for there is a time and a way for everything, even when a person is in trouble.

He says this in the context of obedience.

What's he saying?

When I read this?

I read this three or four times.

I'm reading this and suddenly I thought about Nathan the prophet.

Remember Nathan?

Here's David.

He sees Bathsheba and then the ball starts rolling right.

Pretty soon he's literally signing the death warrant for Bathsheba's husband.

Now she's there, she's pregnant all this time.

Months goes by and there's Nathan the prophet watching every day, seeing the king with Bathsheba.

Knowing it was wrong, knowing what had happened the first day it happened, did he approach David?

No, he didn't.

There was a time, there was timing that had to be done and God, I believe, gave him wisdom.

So when he finally came in and confronted David with that little parable of his, that was the time and that was the right time that God anointed it.

Rather than God will give you the right time and give us the right time to do certain things like that, we have to trust him.

We have to trust that he's going to give us those times.

We are not called to be passive.

We're not called to be passive in our country.

We're called to be active in our country, in our local, in the local elections which we just had, in the national elections.

We're called to be active, but within, again, the boundaries of the law, and that's something too important to remember and it takes wisdom to know when to do that.

All right, the theme two is injustice.

So this is the tough section.

You know we all want to see justice done, but Solomon really gives us a reality check with this section and his reality check, basically, is say we're not promised that every person who does evil will be brought to justice in their lifetime or in our lifetime.

Okay, let's read some of this.

Verse nine I've thought deeply about all that goes on here under the sun, where people have the power to hurt each other.

Man, that verse hit me.

People have the power to hurt each other.

It is amazing if you look at people like Stalin and Edel Hitler and Mao Zedong was the other one I was trying to think about If you look at the harm, the heart of those people that caused that.

The same underpinning root of evil is in the bully in the Powell Middle School.

It's the same root cause One's just further advanced the power to hurt each other.

Mankind, from the very beginning of the fall, has been in a struggle against itself and the things that man can do to each other.

It just makes your gut churn.

A lot of you remember the book Lord of the Flies.

Lord of the Fries is the McDonald's book (audience laughing loudly in background).

Lord of the Flies whole group of British schoolboys stranded on an island and if you're familiar with it, in what happens is they start out just trying to survive and in the end they're killing each other.

It was terrible, but it's a reality check.

It really shows the heart that's there In verse 10, 11,.

I have seen wicked people buried with honor, yet they were the very ones who frequented the temple and are now praised in the same city where they committed their crimes.

This too is meaningless.

I love he keeps going back.

This is meaningless.

When a crime is not punished quickly, people feel it is safe to do wrong.

Justices rarely serve quickly.

Even if you find, like somebody goes and does a mass shooting, how long until they usually get through the trial Two, three years sometimes.

Right, it's crazy how long it takes Justice.

What is true justice, right?

The TV show Cold Case Files Anybody ever watch Cold Case Files?

Yeah, some of you don't wanna put your hand up, it's okay, I watch it too.

It starts and it has these things on there.

It says every year 100,000 cases go unsolved.

This only less than 1% are solved.

This is a story of one of those cases.

If that's true, there's a lot of cases that never get solved.

There's a lot of people that are never brought to justice.

And the reason we like to watch those shows or like the movie the Equalizer right, you know what we like about the Equalizer.

I'll tell you what we like about the Equalizer.

Justice now that's what we love, don't?

We love that?

Justice now, oh, let's love that.

Don't have to go through the legal system.

Just send Denzel and he'll take care of everything in 22 seconds.

We love that.

But he says something here that's really important.

He said because, because justice isn't served up right away, people continue to sin.

You know, I wanna talk specifically well, to all of us, but specifically to the young people.

I wanna share a story.

You know, I was a Christian kid in school and I remember now I kept my notes clean, walked the straight lines and a lot of kids at school they would go out on the weekends and they'd party, right, and they'd drink too much and there'd be sex involved and all that stuff, and you'd hear about it.

You know, whatever, I didn't hang around a lot of those kids, but you heard about it, right, the rumors that went around schools and I remember sitting there thinking, man, they're gonna get theirs.

I was really self-righteous, but it was terrible.

I wanted to get see him punished.

But you know what?

Nothing seemed to be really bad happened to him.

You know, it just seemed like you're okay.

And even now, maybe it was your parents.

Maybe it was people you know, they're in church, they're married, they're happy.

Yeah, you knew they had a pretty rough past and they did all that and you're like, okay, well, why shouldn't I go out and quote have my fun now?

Because, after all, it's they really.

Nobody's really paying the price for it.

Yeah, they are.

Yeah, they are.

Now they are.

We have scars, brethren.

I have scars for things that I've done.

Everybody has scars and it's interesting when you look at especially something like sex right, sex outside of marriage.

I heard Tim Keller listen to a great message for him the other day and he talked about.

He talks about this.

When it says to become one flesh, a lot of people think, well, that's just two people physically connecting.

Well, that's not what it is, because if it was it, he literally saying he's saying the same thing twice.

What he's really saying is there's your mind and your soul and your spirit gets connected to that person.

It gets connected and he's saying so, don't do that, because it's designed within those boundaries.

And you know what?

I believe in God's healing power and I know God can heal things, but I also know that it's much easier not to wound.

Take the wound, and so if you are a young person and you have kept yourself and are keeping yourself from marriage, let me just tell you it's worth every bit of resistance.

It's worth it.

It's worth it because there's scars you won't have to deal with, and I just felt like I needed to share that with you guys and for all of us all of us.

That applies in other areas, but even though a person sins a hundred times and still lives a long time, I know that those who fear God will be better off.

I love this part.

This is in verse 12.

I love the fact that he says this, and really what he's saying is those who fear God meaning they are obeying God and say they'll be better off, does that guarantee we'll never be persecuted?

Does that mean the righteous in this world will always just be patted on the head and rewarded?

Nope, you may be a righteous person.

Nope, you may lose your job, you may lose friends, you may lose family.

A lot of you could put your hands up and say I've been there, done that because of my faith.

More importantly, some people lost their lives.

They've lost their lives because of that.

When he says they will be better off, he's looking at the long tail folks, and that's what you and I need to look at.

We need to look and realize that when we follow God, we're gonna be better off eventually, because this life see if you can catch this it's that quick, that quick, and that's too much to compare to eternity.

And Solomon knew that.

He knew that.

Verse 13, the wicked will not prosper for they do not fear God.

Their days will never grow long like the evening shadows.

Listen, we know there's a lot of evil people that live a long time.

We understand that there are also a lot of evil people that don't live a long time.

And this is not all that I that is meaningless in our world, in this life.

Good people are often treated as though they were wicked and wicked people are often treated as though they were good.

This is so meaningless that sometimes I'll see a video of somebody with hold.

You know holding up.

You know the like gender discussions, right and about.

There's male, there's female and other, and people will automatically start labeling them You're misogynistic and you're this and that and there's labeling and they'll be viewed as wicked.

They'll be literally viewed because they're standing on what's truth.

They're literally labeled as being wicked.

You're holding people back.

You are judging people.

Hey, get used to it, it's not gonna get any better.

He saw that even back then.

He saw that that was gonna happen and, as, as Christians, we have to come to understand that this injustice that's all I'm just talking about it's everywhere.

You guys, and here's the temptation we have we want to take it in our own hands.

That's the first thing.

Sometimes we do it actively and it's really sad.

When you hear about that, by the way, you want to know what's more moving.

Let's say there is a woman who has a daughter that gets killed, raped and killed by some terrible person.

Right, you've seen the courtroom dramas.

Right, where she's in the courtroom saying very accurate but terrible things to this person.

I hope you rod in jail, I hope you never get in there just saying all this.

We're all like, yeah, that's how it feel.

And then you have a woman, a mother, who tears in her eyes, looks upon the person and says I forgive you, I forgive you.

How do they do that?

I'll tell you how they do that.

It's because who's inside of them that allows them to do that.

I'm not saying letting go of the injustice and realizing it's a robe that you and I have never been given to wear.

It's not, it's too big for you, it's gonna swallow you and it will destroy you.

We have to give that to Jesus and we have to realize that he's the one.

He's the one that's gonna right all those wrongs and realize that we, we have to forgive and move on.

I'm not saying this is easy, guys.

I'm saying this is the toughest thing and the wrongs that have been against me have not been that great.

A lot of you have had great, terrible injustices done towards you and your challenge is even greater.

But you can do it through God and the strength that God's gonna give you.

I guarantee that you can.

We have to trust him.

Psalms 37, 23 through 24 says the steps of a man are established by the Lord.

When he delights in his way, you know that he is literally God.

He delights in the way of the man and I always read that.

I used to think it was the other way.

Though he fall, he will not be cast headlong.

If you trust God and you obey God, he will take delight in you.

He will take delight in you and even though you trip and fall and we all do he will walk you through that you have to let go of the justice and realize that's for him, it's not for us, it's for him.

And again, it's the easiest thing to say, the hardest thing to do, I think, in the Christian life, to let that go.

Now I want to talk about one last thing, and that is the well.

For some reason that page didn't print up, but that's okay, I'll talk about it anyways the enjoyment of life.

Here we go Now.

The enjoyment of life is really interesting because we go from these both these kind of hard things obedience and injustice and then he jumps over to this enjoyment of life and he says by the way, I used the NLT because he did last week, so I figured it was okay.

Verse 15 says so I recommend having fun, because there's nobody nothing better in the world than to eat, drink and enjoy life, and I appreciated the immense.

I heard about that, by the way.

That way they will experience some happiness, along with all the hard work God's given them.

Now this is something Solomon's done more than once in this chapters, in these chapters so far.

He gives you all these truths and then there's a summary statement at the end and he's saying you know, I've just figured it out recommend having fun, enjoy your life.

The problem is, you can take that scripture totally out of context because, guess what?

There's two more scriptures right behind it.

They inform about enjoying life.

So what does he say?

Verse 16 in my search for wisdom and in my observation of people's burdens here on earth, I discovered that there is ceaseless activity, day and night.

Anybody in ceaseless activity?

Be honest.

Do you feel like you have ceaseless activity in your life?

Yeah, nothing changes.

It was happening in Solomon's life.

It's happening here.

The only problem is back then people spend a lot of time just trying to live.

Now we fill our every moment up with a lot of times entertainment.

By the way, do you know that?

I had a big kick out of this?

Do you know that the video game market last year was $217 billion?

$217 billion?

That's just one form of entertainment.

You know?

The ESV says how, neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep.

We see this all the time.

We're busy, we busy our lives, and he is saying that that is a negative.

You can enjoy your life, but if it's too busy, remember we're doing this in context of that right and the verse 17.

He says I realize that no one can discover everything God is doing under the sun.

Not even the wisest people discover everything, no matter what they claim.

Do you find yourself?

If we're just trying to figure out what God's doing?

I wanna know what you're doing, god.

I've seen this sometimes where people just want a prophetic word and it's okay.

I think getting a prophetic word is a great thing, but seeking them can be a dangerous precedent and you have to really look deep into your heart and say why do I want that?

What's driving me to wanna hear something about where I'm going and what the direction is?

And Tyler talked about it last week and I was listening to it and I thought, yeah, that's exactly the same thing.

Control.

And we might even say, well, god, I don't wanna control it, I just wanna know what you're doing.

Does that not sound and taste a little bit like the garden?

Here's Satan going.

I tell you, on the day that you eat, you will be like God and you will know everything.

I'm talking like Dracula.

I don't know why he's able to, though he's able to, but literally the same lie that was fed to Adam and Eve is the same lie that we see today, and we slip in God.

I just wanna know what's going on.

I just wanna know what's going on.

He doesn't promise that.

He doesn't promise that at all.

We wanna take back control of something we should never have control over.

And Solomon says stop it, stop it.

You can't do it, you can't get the answer, so just stop it, quit trying.

And I see sometimes I wanna put that in my mirror Just says, stop it.

And there's lots of sins that it will apply to.

But when it's fun to control, it's really important.

We have to realize God's someone leading us and guiding our steps.

So when you look at all that, you realize that that first verse there that says enjoy life, eat, drink, enjoy it Wasn't talking about wanting, just not even thinking about it.

It's all informed by the fact that number one, you're trusting God in everything right and you're not trusting in yourself and you are following and you're being obedient to him.

And when you're doing that, you literally can sit back and say I trust you, god, I trust what you're doing.

So let's conclude this really quickly.

So there's three lessons that we talked about obedience and again obedience.

Again, as we talked about, use wisdom to determine how and when we respond to those in authority, but we can still respond and always remember that God's responsible for those putting those that govern over us into those positions, and we sometimes just have to trust.

There's a plan bigger than our own In justice.

The second thing we must come to the realization that we're not always gonna see justice in this world, I don't care how many movies that you watch that maybe feed that need.

Unfortunately, sometimes those movies make us think that I can do the same thing.

I can bring justice and again, it's not a robe that you can take on and the enjoyment of life.

We should enjoy the life we've been given in the context of obeying God and trusting that he has our heart and our whole, our long-term goal, in mind.

There's two verses I didn't read in the Colesiastes chapter eight, and they really cover this whole chapter with this context of sovereignty.

Verses seven through eight say this indeed, how can people avoid what they don't know is going to happen?

None of us can hold back our spirit from departing.

None of us has the power to prevent the day of our death.

There's no escaping that obligation, that dark battle which is our battle of life.

And in the face of death, wickedness will certainly not rescue the wicked.

We all have GPS right on our phones.

When I first moved to Knoxville, my wife and I first moved up here, we didn't know Knoxville from anything, but if I needed to go somewhere I would open up my maps, type in the address and hit go and I would just start following it.

I knew where the ultimate destination was, but how to get there?

I had to trust this thing.

Now, the metaphor between God and GPS, by the way, is it can break down.

So I'm not saying God is a GPS unit, but God's planning system.

Right, gps, god's planning.

Okay, work with me here.

But here's the beautiful thing about it.

And really there's one thing that really applies if you think about it, god doesn't promise you to tell you a return before you take it on that journey.

Many of you, all of you, I can guarantee you say I had a plan and our ultimate goal is to be with Jesus for eternity.

I had a plan and I was going this way and I planned this route, but God told me to turn right.

Then I turned left, then I met a U-turn, then I wandered around a parking lot for a while but ultimately, if you followed God, he's the one.

He's going to get you to the destination, and I'm just going to leave you by saying this to all of you who don't know God.

For those of you that don't know this and don't have this assurance, I just encourage you to stop living that life, because it's the most fearful thing.

Anyone here that follows Jesus can tell you if you took Jesus out of their life, they would be deathly afraid.

I know I would.

God's the one that wants to guide you and he offers that to you.

You might be afraid to give that up, but I'm telling you it's the sweetest burden you're ever going to let off your shoulders, because you know where you're going to be, you know how you're going to get there and you know, in His sovereign will, he's going to get you there in one piece and you'll be so grateful in the end.

Why don't you stand with me and pray?

Father, you are so kind, you are so good and, father, most importantly, you are sovereign.

We thank you for these words from King Solomon.

We thank you for this wisdom, father.

May we be people that walk in a way that brings glory to you and doesn't try to thwart what you're doing.

Help us, god, to use wisdom as we deal with those that rule over us.

Help us be faithful to truth, father.

I also pray, lord, that as we walk forward and we see injustice, that we trust that you will be the one that ultimately mests out the justice, that you are a God that's a just God, and there will be a time when every one of us will stand before you to account and those of us that have Jesus as our Savior, that blood will just, will pardon us, but the evil ones, they will not be pardoned.

Help us to trust that, lord and Father, as we also go forward and enjoying this life, father, help us to enjoy it, but always within the obedience to you and trusting that you're sovereign hand, no matter what bumps and hills and turns and curves we have to go through.

That it's for our good.

As we pray today or we sing today, you are for us and that gives us great comfort.

So I pray your blessing upon our day and the rest of the time as we enjoy our fellowship time around the meal, bless our food and we just thank you for it all in Jesus' most holy name.

Amen, amen, thank you everyone.