Ecclesiastes 4:1-16

It's freezing in here.

But I did notice the people in the red house, they just have a window down.

So we need to be more like them, like toughen up a little bit.

So if they can do it, we can deal with it.

We are in Ecclesiastes chapter four.

We have been in Ecclesiastes together for the past few times that I have preached, and today we will continue with chapter four.

We're going to cover verses one through eight-ish, nine-ish, ten-ish.

Every time we've been in Ecclesiastes, we have seen the author, the preacher, saying something to the effect of this is all hopeless and fleeting, and nothing that we have done or will ever do is going to last.

And we all run to our little points of significance in our lives to make us feel better about things, and we pursue things in our lives to make us feel better about our existence, but ultimately those things are temporary and offer absolutely no solution to the eternity-sized hole in our souls.

So here we are today walking around, working really hard to build our little kingdom with our little time that we have here, and that kingdom is actually really quite pathetic.

Or we're not working hard at all.

We're just trying to enjoy this life and relax our way there.

But no matter how much we chill, we still can't escape this feeling that this isn't fulfilling.

We can't drink enough, we can't shoot up enough, can't have enough sex, we can't make enough money, we can't laugh enough, we can't learn enough to make us feel like this is enough.

And that's kind of been the theme in Ecclesiastes.

And to be quite honest with you, chapter four is even worse.

So I'm sorry if you came on this dreary day looking to warm your soul.

This is bleak.

We're in Ecclesiastes, and actually after this chapter, I'm taking a break from Ecclesiastes because I find myself very hard to stay upbeat as I work my way through this book.

So we're going to reach the depths of human depravity as we walk through this chapter.

It's not all that hard to get to the depths of human depravity because we are broken sinners.

We have fallen short of the glory of our Creator God.

There is no goodness in us outside of Christ.

It's vanity.

Are we going to trust in our own intuition?

Listen as I read chapter four, the first uh eight verses here, and just feel the darkness in this.

Feel the depravity of mankind.

Feel our fallenness and sinful nature on display in chapter four, verses one through eight.

It says this again, I saw all the oppression, 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.

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

This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

Better is a handful of quietness than two handfuls of toil and a 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 asked, For who, for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?

This also is vanity and an unhappy business.

I'm going to make an effort here to cover three types of people in this chapter.

We're going to look at the oppressed, we're going to look at the pressed, and we're going to look at the depressed.

And we're going to start out with the pressed.

Or I'm sorry, the the oppressed.

It's right there in the first verse.

I'm going to read it again.

Ecclesiastes 4 1.

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.

Is there anything so dark as human oppression?

Is there any picture that can be painted on earth that's any darker than Ecclesiastes chapter 4, verse 1?

Ecclesiastes 4:1

The tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them.

The wickedness that has to be plotted and schemed to put another human or a group of humans into a situation where they are being oppressed and isolated to the point where they cannot even reach anyone outside of that situation to comfort them.

That is heavy and very depressing to even talk about.

I wrote this out and I'm typing this out and I'm thinking about this for the past three weeks, and I could feel the weight of this.

I read articles to tune my heart to oppression that honestly made me cry.

Like there is so much disgusting depravity and darkness here.

But yet here it is in God's word.

I can't just skip over it.

It's kind of like uh looking in the mirror in the morning, you know?

You see a lot of stuff that's there, and you're like, I'm not really happy with all the stuff that's there, but I gotta cover it.

And that's kind of how I'm feeling about Ecclesiastes chapter 4.

Ecclesiastes 4 · chapter mention

I'm looking there, I'm seeing some stuff I don't really like, but I gotta cover it.

I have to do this.

Well, if we're allowing the God's word to read us.

The Bible doesn't shy away from the condition of the human heart, apart from God.

It is dark and evil.

In Genesis chapter 6, it says that God looked at man's wickedness and man's thoughts, and heart was evil continually, and the Lord's heart was filled with pain.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

Our hearts are so dark that they can actually fill God's heart with pain.

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

People in these situations that have been cooked up by mankind have absolutely no hope.

They are without power and they were without someone there to even console them, to comfort them.

And the author says that he looked around, he looked at the oppressions.

It didn't take much for the author to look around and see the oppression of people.

And here we are, thousands of years after this, and it's easy for us to look around and see the oppressed.

You could just as easily say today that I saw the oppressions that are done.

We we really haven't advanced all that much.

I know that it's the age of enlightenment, and we're all so much better now, and mankind is making advancements greatly, and we're generally good in our hearts.

Except that's not actually true.

We really haven't advanced.

We are still horrifically sinful.

Jeremiah 17, 9 is still true when it says that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who could know it?

In 2019, they made a they did a poll, they made a conservative estimate that 70.8 million people worldwide were forced to leave their homes because they were being oppressed.

And and just in case you're like, yeah, but that's like worldwide, uh, an alarming statistic in the US, in the USA, an average of five children a day die due to abuse or neglect in the good old US of A.

And if you're like, yeah, but that's that's somewhere else.

Five miles from where I live, out in the country, five miles from where I live, uh a 22-month-old boy was punched in the face multiple times and then just put to bed.

And the next day the parents wake up and and and they they see this innocent, helpless child having difficulty breathing.

They collaborate a story together, they take him to the ER, and his injuries are too significant, and he dies five miles from my house.

What do we do with that?

You can find an endless stream of sadness and heartbreak of people being abused and misused.

It is not just overseas, it's not just in the big city, it's everywhere.

And what do we do?

Do we read all the articles?

Do we read every Facebook post?

But then what?

Like do we just trust ourselves?

Are we following our hearts here?

What are we doing?

We get to see a little bit of what Jesus does in his life.

We get some clips of that.

So uh I would like to just give an example of what Jesus did with the oppressed.

One example would be Mary Magdalene in Luke chapter 8.

Luke 8 · chapter mention

We see that Mary was traveling with Jesus and his disciples.

And the text there tells us that Mary had been possessed by seven demons.

That is great oppression.

And now, here she is, a part of Jesus' ministry.

She's with him, she's with his disciples.

She's walking along following Jesus.

He's not avoiding the oppressed, he actually went right to them.

He purposefully went out of his way to meet the woman at the well.

He went to Samaria.

The Bible says he must needs go to Samaria.

He went out of his way to go to a woman that had been oppressed by society, shoved to the margins.

We have the maniac of Gedera ran to Jesus in Mark chapter 5.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

Jesus' heart was that of compassion.

It moved him to very dark places.

He didn't pretend like it wasn't happening.

His heart moved him to very dark places.

This world is a broken mess.

So much so that the preacher here in Ecclesiastes says that he thought that the dead were better off than the living.

And the people that had it the best were the people that hadn't even been born yet.

With all the oppression that we hear from everywhere around us, I mean, we are so easily informed of everything that's going on around us.

What do we do?

Again, do we lean on our own understanding?

Do we follow our hearts?

Do we think do we reason within ourselves?

Like we can figure this out.

I've got the answers.

And that's that's just the oppressed.

As we move down through Ecclesiastes chapter 4, we see the pressed.

Ecclesiastes 4 · chapter mention

People that are pressed.

To be pressed is to forcefully put forward a course of action.

Listen to verse 4.

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

This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

This that verse that that really summarizes America really well.

We forcefully set a course of action so that we can keep up with our neighbors constantly.

So much of what we do is just work on our persona so that we, so that others think of us as successful.

So we work.

And we don't work to provide in a good, wholesome way, but we toil so that we can accumulate.

Not open-handed and generous, not sacrificial.

The skill at work comes from a man's envy of his neighbor.

We strive to gain more at work, and it's often not because a promotion would be best for us, but because it would look best on us.

So we toil and we strive and we try to get better at jobs that we don't really like that much, to impress people that we don't really like that much, so that we can buy stuff to impress the people, and the stuff that we're buying, the people that we're trying to impress don't even like that much.

They don't even like the stuff that we're getting.

That's what chasing the wind feels like.

We can't catch it.

But here we are, more pressed and stressed, trying to impress.

I wasn't trying to do that.

I'm sorry.

I'm not, but that's what we're doing.

In Ecclesiastes 2.9, if you back up a chapter, a two chapters, the preacher says that he accumulated enough treasure and enough people, he accumulated people, that's how rich he was, that he surpassed all who were before him in Jerusalem.

This is how we measure our self-worth.

If we can pass enough people at something, some task, then we are something to ourselves.

Except the problem with that is there's an endless stream of people to pass at these given tasks.

And those tasks that we are trying to be good at need to be refined so that we can be better at that task than someone else is.

Except we don't have enough time to refine the task to pass the endless stream of people.

We are chasing the wind and we cannot catch it.

We can't get a hold of it for more than a split second by the time, but but then by the time we look to see what we've accumulated, it's gone.

We are pressing to be somebody for an audience that isn't even watching.

Again, we get some clips from Jesus' life.

What did Jesus do with people that were stressed and pressed?

In Luke 10, we see Jesus and the story with uh Mary and Martha.

Uh Jesus is in town having dinner at Martha's house, and Martha's sister Mary is just sitting and listening to Jesus.

Martha, like a true sister, went to Jesus to tattle on Mary, to say, she's not even helping me.

And it says in Luke 10, 40 that Martha was distracted with much serving.

So she goes to Jesus and is like, Are you are you seeing this, Jesus?

I'm doing everything while my sister is just sitting there.

And Jesus says in verse 41, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.

Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.

We see these same sisters in John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

Their brother Lazarus was very sick.

They sent to Jesus, who was a good friend of the family, and said, Your friend is la your friend Lazarus is sick.

Please come quickly.

I I imagine these professional athletes that have millions of dollars, they they uh talk about how people are constantly hitting them up for money.

Imagine Jesus, like people are probably constantly hitting Jesus up for healings, like we saw what you did.

Can you stop in and heal somebody?

Bring them back from the dead, whatever you gotta do.

So they sent for Jesus.

Jesus took his time on purpose, and by the time he got there, Lazarus was dead.

And as he's approaching the town, as he's approaching the house, who do you suppose ran up to him to say, if you had been here sooner, you could have saved Lazarus.

Now, Jesus never got married, but he did have some nagging women in his life.

And Martha is one of those women.

She's a scrambler, she frets and she pushes, pushes, she she she chases.

She does what she knows in her own strength.

But what does Jesus do?

Jesus doesn't avoid her, Jesus doesn't enable her or join in to her stress or add to it.

He enters into the mess of all of this and speaks truth to her.

He is a steady presence in her life for the sake of her soul.

That is what he does with the pressed.

And by the way, if you go back to Ecclesiastes 4, verse 5, uh it says just, it's like it adds it in there real quick.

Ecclesiastes 4:5

The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

So if you're like, yeah, I don't engage in this whole chasing the wind thing, I'm just kind of laid back, then you're probably on the other end of this where you just fold your hands and you do nothing and you ruin yourself that way.

Nobody gets out of this.

We've all created this mess together.

So we have to get off our high horses and realize that we are the problem.

Literally, you and I are the problem.

Uh verse six gives us a little bit of hope.

It's like this if the sun shined for a second out there in the gloom.

It gives us a little bit of hope.

Uh it says in verse six better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and striving after the wind.

But then the author gets right back to all the darkness.

He just dives right back into it.

And he goes with verses seven and eight.

He says, 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.

All of the pressing and stressing, overdoing stuff to keep up, has led to these very sad verses of despair.

The depressed, and verses seven and eight.

Here is this person that has toiled his or her life away, striving to get more for their own glory, and has isolated themselves.

And in the pursuit of fulfillment, they have shut out anything that has any amount of lasting satisfaction, and they are left alone with their stuff.

This person has tried so hard to get more and has been consumed by it so much that he has never stopped to look around and say, why am I doing this?

What am I really getting out of all of this?

He's got no one.

Just everything that he has is empty and worthless.

It is no wonder that across the board, the most depressed populations are in the most developed countries.

Some of the most miserable people in the world are the same people that have fought the hardest to have everything that they want right at their fingertips.

America, the land of the free, where you can chase any dream that you want, consistently ranks near the top in countries that have the highest population of depressed people per capita.

Furthermore, in the land where we can we can be anything we want, we tell everybody to just do whatever you want.

You can be anything, including your sexual preferences and your very gender.

You can do whatever you want and be whatever you want.

But yet the number of L B G T Q depressed adults is double that of the normal, the general population.

If you focus on just trans individuals, the number of depressed people in that group is over four times the amount of the rest of the population.

Roughly 4% of Americans have considered suicide in the last year.

Roughly 48% of trans Americans have considered suicide in the last year.

And this is in the land where it is ever before us that it is okay to be what you want to be.

It's never been easier to pursue the desires of your heart.

And yet we see the more we pursue the desires of our heart, the more depressed we become.

In the most connected age of all time, loneliness rates rise steadily.

This is what Ecclesiastes is saying.

We run and we run and we run and we chase after the wind and we grab onto it and we can't hold it.

And the more we chase it, the farther away we get.

What do we see from Jesus when he's dealing with the depressed?

Well, other than his entire ministry being about going around helping people and healing people and listening to people and offering forgiveness of sins and eternal life, other than that, we get some specific clips.

He starts out his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, by saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

He consistently teaches and models not to be anxious for our lives.

He backs all of that up by going to the cross and paying the price for our sins.

Pursuing whatever we feel is right is getting us nowhere.

And this isn't, hear me, this isn't me finger wagging at the LBGTQ people.

This isn't me just shaming Trans-America.

This isn't me shaming you saying, get off of social media and you won't feel lonely.

Although maybe we shouldn't get off of social media.

This is me saying that the Bible has been saying this stuff since it was written.

Our hearts will deceive us.

What do we do about all of this vanity?

Our way has led us astray.

So do we do more of that?

Like, do we just keep doing our way because it's gone so well for us?

More trusting in ourselves?

Do we keep doing that?

Because right now, it is super popular, even among Christians, to question God.

Like, where are you at, God?

We got a problem down here.

We got kids getting beaten to death.

And everyone's moving around too fast, and we're pressed for time, and we're pressed for everything.

And it seems like every other person is in the midst of a mental health crisis.

Are you actually even good, God?

Can there even be a good God that allows all of this to happen?

And here we are using the minds that God gave us, and we spend our energy and our effort reasoning how this could be or should be, how God must have this wrong.

And some of us would even say that.

And most of us wouldn't actually say that, but we'll certainly live like that.

We'll read every article and post and come out with a complaining spirit.

Our response will not be sharing the gospel.

Our response will not be more of God's word.

Christians have to stop responding to the mess with their own understanding.

We are so concerned with looking weird and we want to seem like we're pertinent and we're up to date.

We're so concerned with that that we end up denying the very person that separates us from the world.

Well, if I respond to their crisis with prayer for them, they're not going to like that.

And then if I say the ultimate problem in their life is sin that has separated them from their creator, I'm going to lose a little bit of credibility because that's not in a lot of secular magazines.

Plus, you know, God has his word and it's got some confusing stuff in here.

And if I share God's word as the source of truth, they're going to pick that apart.

I mean, God killed an entire city.

And he has harsh rules.

And Jesus said some stuff that's kind of off the wall about eating his flesh and doing some weird stuff.

I'm not even sure that I believe some of this stuff.

And we spend our lives, much like the author in Ecclesiastes sounds like.

Where are you, God?

Look, if you're going to believe the hard parts of Scripture and then use those hard parts of Scripture against God to question his goodness, you can't say that God killed a whole city and no one should go to hell and then use those things against God's goodness, but then say, well, you know, I believe the Bible because it's in here, but I'm not going to believe the good parts.

Then you posture your heart against God.

And when Psalms 34 says, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit, you're over here dwelling on the fact that he has executed judgment on people that you feel like didn't deserve it.

But what do we do with Psalm 34, 18?

He's near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Where is God in all of this?

He's literally right there with the oppressed.

When a toddler was beaten to death, God was right there.

You weren't.

You weren't there.

Paul addresses people in Athens.

These people were scrambling around, uh, worshiping whatever God they felt like.

Where's God in that?

Paul says in Acts 17, 27 and 28, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, yet he is actually not far from each one of the one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being.

He's right there.

You're not everywhere.

Stop acting like you have the answers.

Where is God when people sit depressed and alone?

When they have no one else, where is God?

Psalm 23, 4 says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Why?

For you are with me.

He is right there, he is walking with you.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, if you are here and in Christ, embrace the peculiarity, embrace the differentness of being a Christian.

We need less of your thoughts.

We need less of your words.

We need to respond with Jesus.

We need to answer our own questions with Christ.

We need to answer the questions of the world with Christ.

Lean on Him and His Word.

He's the answer.

The very one that we're trying to skip around is the one that brings the fulfillment.

I want to just go over what I opened with here.

We are walking around, working really hard to build little kingdoms for ourselves, and these kingdoms are pathetic.

Or we're not working really hard because we're relaxing through life and we're just trying to enjoy everything.

But no matter how much we try to chill out, we can't escape this feeling that this isn't fulfilling.

Again, we can't drink enough, we can't shoot up enough, have enough sex, make enough money, laugh enough, or learn enough to make this world feel like it is enough.

We see this in Ecclesiastes.

The author isn't even mentioning God.

Where is God in all of this?

And I just want to encourage you.

He is right here.

God the Father sent Jesus, who is God in human form.

Jesus came, ministered to the oppressed, ministered to the pressed and distressed people, ministered to the depressed.

Then, for the sake of those who would believe in his name, the Father crushed him on the cross to be the perfect atoning sacrifice for our sins.

And now Jesus stands and offers satisfaction and fulfillment and comfort and peace to all who would believe.

If you have not believed, I implore you to call on the name of the Lord and be saved this morning.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for your word, and I pray that it is your words that stick.

I pray that what we hear drives us to your word, that we cling to more of your truth, that we love you more for what you have done.

I pray that if there's someone here that is