What Wisdom Can't Do | Myles Holmes

Awesome.

Well, if you have your Bible, you can take it out this morning and open it up to Ecclesiastes chapter six.

If you don't have a copy of God's word, uh you're gonna need it this morning.

And so our ushers are coming to the front of the worship center.

You can flag one of them down, they will get a copy into your hands, which you can keep as our gift to you.

Ecclesiastes, if you open to the book of open your Bible in the middle, you'll likely hit Psalms.

If you keep going to the end, it's Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and you will find it there.

Ecclesiastes chapter six.

By way of introduction, I want to just say how thankful I am to be back in this pulpit.

I've been served so well by everyone who preached these last few weeks, and I got the sweet opportunity, the rest, soul, life-giving opportunity to sit and worship with many of you.

I did sit in the back one week, and someone turned around and said, Oh, the pastor's here.

We need to be on our best behavior.

So now I'm watching the back because I don't know what goes on there anymore.

But apparently it's a party back there.

We're in Ecclesiastes.

I want you to think about this.

We really are the most advised people.

I think you could maybe make the argument pretty easily in the history of humanity.

Your great-grandparents, when they made decisions, and and you think right now about who they consulted, they did not have as many voices as us.

It was their pastor, their parents, their neighbor.

They still had that crazy uncle who gave the advice, whether they asked it or not.

And now things have changed for us.

Everywhere we look, left, right, and center, there is advice.

And through Facebook, that crazy uncle has a platform.

We have advice to all the, we have access to all the advice in the world.

So that you open Instagram and you see five ways to, you know, and it's targeted to whatever your hobby is, have the best garden, to five ways to be ripped by summer, and you're like, it's July 24th.

It's not gonna happen, okay?

Five ways to make the best five ways list.

There is advice everywhere that you look, whether it's a podcast for your marriage, whether it's a book for your parenting, a system for your money, a protocol for your sleep, a plan for your career, an app to tell you what to eat and when to eat it.

We are the most advised generation ever.

And every decision that you make this week has been researched by someone who can tell you how to do it better, and that if you do it better, you will fix everything that is wrong with your life.

Here's the question I have then, as we consider all this advice that's constantly coming towards us, is it delivering us to a better life?

We have more information than ever.

We have better information than ever, more scientifically studied, is it fixing us?

If so, we should be the people who have figured it out, the people who have found the path to peace, the way to happiness, and yet, as we look at our generation, I think you would agree with me that we are, by almost every measure being the most advised people who have ever lived, we are also the most anxious.

Why is it then?

That's what I want to consider with you this morning.

Why, when the advice is better, when it's more scientifically researched, when it's more abundant than ever, why are our lives not better?

This morning we're back in Ecclesiastes, and the preacher is gonna talk to us about a word called wisdom.

Ecclesiastes, you'll remember as we've studied through this over the last couple of months as a lesson about the misery that we invite into our lives when we take what the world offers instead of receive what God offers.

And if we've discovered with Solomon that money, career, success, entertainment, that all these things are empty pleasures, this morning he wants us to take wisdom and see that it is vanity as well.

Now, as I say the word wisdom, I wonder what comes to your mind.

Maybe wisdom is the plaque that is at the cottage hanging up on the dusty wall.

It's between live, love, laugh and the fish that your grandpa stuffed.

He does not want to take down.

There is wisdom.

Here's all that wisdom means.

Simply put, you could say this wisdom is your best effort to get life right.

There's worldly wisdom where you take the advice of the world to get life right, and there is biblical wisdom, the greatest of all wisdoms, where the creator of this world who designed you to live it, live in it, tells you how to live in it.

Wisdom in general is the research, the planning, the discipline, the execution, the good decisions we make that we make, believing it will lead us to the life the way it's supposed to live, be lived.

Wisdom, then, very relevantly, is the podcast we listen to, looking for that practical piece of advice that will adjust our lives.

It is the parenting book.

It is the five-year plan we make to deliver us out of this place that we are in now.

And the preacher, Solomon, who is the wisest man of his age, who was given by God the gift of wisdom, is gonna tell us the truth about what knowledge and effort can and cannot do.

Now I need to be completely honest with you because as I uh am addressed by not only Solomon but the Holy Spirit of God, I need this message because I much probably like you am an optimizer.

And I believe this message that if I just tweak the dial on my life enough, I can I can fix what's wrong here, that I can deliver myself to the life of happiness, that I can get out of this maybe hole that I'm in, that I can fix my life.

And Ecclesiastes is gonna press on that belief this morning.

And when it does, when when that belief breaks, what gives way and floods out of that belief is the greatest news that you could possibly embrace.

That the reason you can stop striving isn't because nothing matters.

It's that someone has already done what your best effort never could.

That's this amazing truth.

It's our main idea this morning.

I believe it's gonna come up on the screen.

Your best effort to get life right cannot fix what's broken.

But Christ already did what your best effort never could, so there's nothing left to prove.

To which all God's people said, Amen.

Amen.

That is good news, and we want to read it this morning.

And so we're gonna read from Ecclesiastes chapter six.

Now, some of you saw in the email that we're tackling uh two chapters, three chapters, two and a half chapters, and you wore your comfy shoes because you thought we're gonna be reading a lot this morning.

However, we're gonna read just maybe a passage.

This whole argument really hinges on uh uh 10 verses in the middle of chapter 7 that I want to read with you.

So would you stand with me as we honor God's word?

Ecclesiastes chapter 7, reading verses 14 to 24, but covering in our time together chapter 6, verse 10 to the end of chapter 8.

Ecclesiastes 7 · chapter mention

Here's Ecclesiastes 7, 14.

In the day of prosperity, be joyful.

And in the day of adversity, consider God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.

In my vain life I have seen everything.

There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in ease his evil doing.

Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise.

Why should you destroy yourself?

Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool.

Why should you die before your time?

It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that not withhold your hand, for the one who fears shall come out from both of them.

Wisdom gives strength to the wise man, more than ten rulers who are in the city.

Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you.

Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.

All this I have tested by wisdom.

I said I will be wise, but it was far from me.

That which has been is far off and deep, very deep.

Who can find it?

This is the word of the Lord.

He can take a seat this morning.

You hear the question of verse 13.

I didn't actually read it, but turn your attention there now, verse 13.

Look at the question.

I think really the question that summarizes everything in this chapter.

When Solomon says this, consider the work of God.

Look at what God does in your life.

Who can make straight what he has made crooked?

Who can make straight what he has made crooked?

It is an illustration.

An illustration that if you've ever done a building project, you know exactly what he's talking about.

You go to the lumber yard, you pick up a long two by four, and you do that thing that you've seen everyone do.

You hold it up to your eye, you look down the length of it, and I do this every single time with total confidence, having absolutely no idea what I'm looking for, but I am told that as you look down the length of that board, in some of them you will see a warp in the wood.

And you want to put that one back because there is no amount of effort that can straighten the crookedness of that wood.

The warp is in the grain of the wood.

And so you could take it home and have your whole family sit on it for a week.

You could leave it outside, you could clamp it, but as soon as you stop trying, the warp will come back.

It's in the very nature of what it is.

And the Bible comes to say that sin has made not only the world like that, but I'm sorry to offend you on this fine Sunday morning, but you like that.

There are things in your life, there are things in you that are warped, that are bent along the whole grain of them, that no amount of wisdom, no amount of clamping, no amount of effort to get life right can force them flat.

And this is where the preacher starts.

Who can make straight what is crooked?

That is where we will then start.

The first thing I want you to see this morning is this you can't fix your life.

Loved one, you can't fix your life.

Look up then at chapter 6, verse 10.

Look at what Solomon says.

Whatever has come has already been named, and it is known what is man is what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with the one stronger than him.

You don't get to write the life that you live.

The way that we say it is you are dealt the cards that you're given, and you must play that hand.

And no one ever says that after a good thing has happened in their lives.

I don't know why no one's getting a good hand dealt to them, but that's the way life goes, isn't it?

Solomon says you can't dispute with the one stronger than you who ordained it.

There is a helplessness that we experience as a part of our humanity, which means the first thing that we run up against is this.

You can't guarantee your circumstance.

That's why you can't fix your life, because you can't guarantee your circumstance.

You didn't choose the two by four that is your life.

And some of you look down, you know, the grain of your life and you say, Man, my life is crooked.

All of us.

There is a warp in the wood, and we cannot, Solomon says, wrestle with the one who is stronger, that that made life like this.

No amount of wisdom lets you trade your life out for one or or fix the warp in the wood.

What you get is what you get.

So then look at verse 12 and see how Solomon presses this.

For who knows then?

Who knows what is good for man?

Well, he lives the few days of his vain life.

Who knows what's gonna straighten it out?

Who knows what's gonna make this crooked life feel better?

Who knows what is good?

Now, if you have a pencil or a pen, you can circle that word good.

Who knows what is good for man?

Because in chapter seven, Solomon takes up this word in the Hebrew, it's this word Tov.

And he keeps just hammering it.

You see it in chapter seven.

He says, a good name, Tov, is better than precious ointment.

Better, same word tov, better is the house of mourning than the house of feasting.

Better Tov is sorrow than laughter.

Better, Tov, the rebuke of the wise than the song of fools.

Over and over and over.

Tov, tov, tov.

Good, good, good.

The preacher just asked, who knows what is good?

And then he says, Hey, listen, here are some things, if you want to live wisely, here are some things that will show you what is good.

And you, you know, straighten up your back and you pay attention, you say, Solomon, what's good?

And you don't like the answer.

A little strange, isn't his answer?

Look at verse 2.

Or sorry, verse 1.

The day of death is better better than the day of birth.

It is better to go to the house of mourning to then to the house of feasting.

For this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.

We can see the wisdom of it.

You ever noticed what a funeral will do to you?

You walk out of a funeral and you and you have this post-funeral clarity on your life.

No one ever walked out of a funeral and said, I need to spend less time with my kids.

That's what happens with a funeral.

You're you're given this wisdom.

That doesn't happen at the party.

That doesn't happen at the feast.

There is no such thing as post-party clarity, is there?

In fact, one of the things I love about my small group is that we have a guy in it who was saved from a life of partying, and he always starts telling us these stories of when he used to party, and it's like, you know, it starts on a calm Friday night and it's gonna end in jail.

That's how it goes.

And so then Paul Solomon says, This is the end of mankind.

When you're at the funeral, you see you're able to live wisely, and the living will lay it to heart.

It's the pattern that's running through all of these Proverbs at the beginning of chapter seven.

Verse three, he says, sadness makes the heart wise.

Sorrow then is better than laughter.

Verse five, the rebuke that stings is better than the song that flatters, because rebuke tells you the truth.

This is the preacher's point.

The things that you and I rank as good and bad are often the very things that will let us finally see that this life is not what we make it up to be.

We can live wisely when we see the negative things of life and are made completely aware that life is warped, that it is broken.

The things that we chase, then, because they feel good, are often the very things that keep us blind.

And you probably have someone in your life like that, don't you?

That's like, man, I don't think they're gonna see anything until they hit rock bottom.

Because in the good times, there you lack a sense of clarity.

And so Solomon comes to say, Listen, that's all of us.

You can't trust your rankings.

And then in verse 13 and 14, he lands on the point.

Consider the work of God.

Who can make straight what he has made crooked in the day of prosperity?

Be joyful.

In the day of adversity, consider God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.

Here is what he is saying.

In this world, you cannot guarantee what will be good.

You don't have the vantage point, you can't see far enough down the board.

I can tell you how I know this is true.

The worst thing that ever happened to me in my life was the separation of my parents.

And the psychological damage that came into my life was staggering.

It was by far the hardest thing that I have ever gone through.

And I found myself a few weeks ago looking at my oldest daughter, who was the same age as I was when I went through that, and tears started to come to my eyes as I just thought I could never imagine her going through that.

I would never do anything to make her go through something as horrible as that.

And yet I can look back on my life and tell you that the greatest good came from the most evil thing.

That apart from God working in what I would have easily written in my life, I would have never been saved.

Cuts the other way too, doesn't it?

That in our lives, some of God's greatest mercies are the good things that He refused to give us.

You cannot know what is good.

Wisdom is an advantage.

Solomon talks about that in verse 11, but wisdom cannot tell you which day is actually working for your good.

Only God can do that.

And so what do you do?

Loved one.

Experience the humbling effect of living under this reality that you cannot fix yourself.

That wisdom will not deliver you to the life that you long for.

Solomon wants us to see that wisdom can't fix your life.

Not only because it can't guarantee your circumstance, but secondly because it can't promise an outcome.

Look down at verse 15 with me.

In my vain life, Solomon says, I have seen everything.

There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in evil doing.

Solomon has seen this.

You've seen this.

There is the person, maybe you felt like this before, who did everything right and lost.

And then you look across the street, and there is the person who has cut every corner and they are winning.

In chapter 8, verse 14, he says it even more sharply.

Look down at chapter 8, verse 14 with me.

There is a vanity that takes place on earth.

I mean, you live on earth, you're gonna see this, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous.

And I said, This also is vanity.

This is meaningless.

Solomon's seen it.

You've seen it.

The math doesn't add up.

They lived according to wisdom, the outcome never came.

Loved one, have you embraced this reality?

Have you embraced the helplessness of this?

That no matter how well you live, no matter how right the decisions you make are, you are not promised an outcome.

We can make this incredibly specific this morning.

Think about wise parenting.

Somewhere along the way in your parenting career, you heard Proverbs 22, verse 6.

Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Now many have looked at this proverb and seen in it a contractual agreement.

We believe if we do the right things, we do the family devotions, we pray for our children, we limit screen time, we model the faith, we do all the things that our kids will walk with Jesus Christ.

However, the problem with wisdom and that way of thinking is that wisdom is Not a promise, it is a proverb.

Wisdom gives us principles that are generally true, not mechanically true.

Proverbs 22, verse 6, then is not a promise with your name on it.

Proverbs 22:6

There are parents, many in this room I know, who raised their kids as faithfully as they could, who prayed for them, who did everything they could for their kids, and yet they find this morning that their children want nothing to do with Christ.

It's not the way that wisdom worked.

If wisdom was a vending machine, you could put in your actions and trust that you're gonna get exactly what you wanted.

That's not the way it happens.

Think about success.

The proverb says the hand of the diligent makes rich, but the preacher watched the diligent man get passed over the flatterer.

You and I have seen it before too.

The faithful, honest business that gets crushed by the large, dishonest one.

Solomon's taking a step back and saying, listen, you can run the wisdom playbook flawlessly, and you still might lose the game.

Now, Solomon gives us a guardrail here in how we ought to act in light of this helplessness that we feel, that we can't fix our life.

Look at verse 16 and 17.

They sound strange, don't they?

Verse 16, be not overly righteous.

And do not make yourself too wise.

I wish I found that verse in my teenage years and memorized that one.

That's a pretty, that's a pretty good one, isn't it?

What's God telling us?

Is he saying, listen, don't try too hard in this whole holiness thing, okay?

Try to get a 70%.

That's the best way that you can live.

You need a little bit of wickedness for the balance.

Here's what Solomon is saying.

Both of these are about you and the way that you will be tempted to the reality of verse 15, that there is a wicked man who prospers and a righteous man who perishes.

First is the temptation to use your righteousness as a leverage.

You do the devotions, you keep the rules, you pray the prayers, and you say, All right, God, I'm ready.

That's being overly righteous.

Not holy, but but trying to use your life to game God to get an inheritance from Him.

The second way is the cynics version.

If the righteous perish, why bother?

I'll just cut every corner.

It doesn't matter what I do.

That's Solomon saying what it's like to be overly wicked.

And do you see it?

Both are temptations to us.

Trying to game a system.

Solomon says that cannot be gamed.

This world then is broken.

And so are you.

And you can't fix your life.

You do not have the means.

Wisdom, loved ones.

Wisdom will not promise an outcome.

And that's humbling.

And we need that.

And you feel the sense of soberness come over the room as the Holy Spirit of God settles this reality in our heart of our helplessness.

I cannot do it.

Are you there, loved ones?

Are you there?

I mean, if you're if you're in a spot right now where the Holy Spirit is not showing you, man, like bringing up relevant things to your life that you've been trying to do that you're like, wow, I cannot believe that I thought that would fix my life.

I want to tell you, you are in a dangerous place this morning, loved one.

That to live with the str the belief in our own strength that we think we can do it is one of the most dangerous places that we can be.

To not be convinced by Solomon's message this morning, you cannot do it.

We need that humbling, but but what Solomon says in verse 18 is so good.

It is good that you should take hold of this.

It is good, loved one, that you should feel this helplessness.

Because look, and from that not withhold your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.

You can be delivered.

But you first, you first must see what damage trying to fix your life is doing to your life.

You know, when I was a teenager, one time I was I didn't have scissors to cut fishing line, and so I just thought, I'm gonna just rip this fishing line.

And so I took the fishing line and I pulled as hard as I could.

And I just kept pulling.

I was like, this is really hurting, but I'm just gonna keep pulling here.

And I didn't break it, and eventually I gave up and I looked at my hands, and there was blood everywhere.

And what Solomon is saying is some of you guys need to look down at your life and see that the reason that things are so painful is because you have this confidence in a savior that is not Jesus Christ.

You have this confidence in a savior who is yourself.

And Solomon is asking you to look down and see the vanity of believing you can fix your life through good efforts, through good decisions, through trying hard enough.

There is only one way to be delivered.

And Solomon in verse 23 comes to the end of himself.

All this I tested by wisdom.

I said I will be wise, but it was far off from me.

That which has been is far off and deep, very deep, who can find it out?

Remember now.

Solomon is the wisest man who ever lived.

There were kings who crossed deserts to come and sit under his counsel, and he cannot figure it out.

He comes back from the search empty-handed, saying, It was far from me.

Now, if Solomon couldn't pull it off, what makes you and I think that we can?

What makes you and I think that we can straighten what is crooked, that we can take the warp out of the board that is our life?

Wisdom, it cannot guarantee your circumstance.

It cannot promise an outcome.

And at the bottom of it all, Solomon, if the rug isn't pulled out from your feet yet, he says, you can't even find it.

You can't at the end of the day know what is good.

The search comes to a dead end.

That question that Solomon asks in verse 27, who can find it out?

It is not answered in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Thousands of years later, Jesus of Nazareth stands in front of a crowd, and he says something incredibly, incredibly prideful if it is not true.

In Matthew chapter 12, verse 42, Jesus says to this crowd, Behold, something greater than Solomon is here.

Matthew 12:42

Someone who is greater than the man who searched and failed.

And Paul in his letters tells us that his name was Jesus Christ, who became to us wisdom from God.

It is Jesus Christ.

And what we discover in Jesus Christ is the answer to Solomon's question of where can I find wisdom is not found in a method.

It is not found in an Instagram algorithm.

It is not found in the advice of a person, no matter how wise or much they know.

It is found solely in a person.

That was a great place for an amen church.

So let's try this again.

It was found solely in a person.

Amen.

Is that not true?

It's a person.

It is Jesus Christ.

Let's get some more of that.

It's the second thing that I want you to see then.

Christ died under the infix, the unfixable.

Now, Paul says one more thing about this.

Adam prayed this verse earlier.

He says, In Christ are hiding all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Paul says they are hidden.

Solomon says that they are far far off.

I couldn't find it.

Paul doesn't deny the depth in our inability to find wisdom.

What he does proclaim is that wisdom is hidden in Jesus Christ, so that wise living was never about a set of principles.

Man, I loved one.

I need to hear this.

It was never about a set of principles.

It was about a relationship with a person.

You know, you don't need more information.

You don't need more self-control in your effort.

You need to be in a relationship with the one in whom wisdom is hidden.

There's a reason why Jesus could do what Solomon couldn't.

Look back with me at verse 13 of chapter 17.

And notice something quite interesting.

Solomon says, consider the work of God.

Who can make straight what he has made crooked?

I think even as we probably read over that, we we took the blame off God.

You kind of read that as like what has been made crooked.

But Solomon assigns the, maybe we could call it blame to God in verse 10 as well.

He says, he, the end of verse 10 of chapter 6, sorry, he says he is not able to dispute with the one stronger than he.

The crooked thing, Solomon says, it has an author.

The one stronger is a person.

And Solomon is not describing a world that is bent on its own will.

Solomon is describing a world that has bent under the sovereign control of God and asking this question: who can straighten what has been made crooked?

And implicit in that answer is the one who made it crooked.

The one who is the creator of all the two by fours that are bent, the one who created the grain of your life that is now warped.

He is the one Solomon is saying throughout the, it is all throughout this passage.

He is the one who was able to solve this problem.

And as we consider ourselves, of course, we feel the hopelessness, the helplessness of believing that we could fix what is broken in our lives.

But when we consider the one who made it crooked in the first place, the one who is stronger than us, we can't miss it.

Loved one, this is the gospel.

But I don't want you to miss this morning how Jesus Christ fixes the brokenness of our life.

You know, when something's broken in your life, what do you ask God for?

You know, you try to fix it yourself, but then you just get it get to the end of your playbook and you don't know what to do, and so you say, God, you know, you gotta fix this.

You pray, you ever pray prayers like that?

You ask God to reach down and make the warp in the wood straight, to fix what is broken, to force the world flat.

And if we are honest, that is the God we want most of the time.

The God who looks at the mess and overpowers the mess and sets it right.

But you know what the problem with that is?

The problem with asking God to fix the brokenness of the world, to straighten the board, to deal with the warp, to straighten the crookedness.

The problem is that the warp is not just in the world.

Loved one, the warp is in you.

The sin is in you.

And if God is going to come and make what is wrong right, you will find that not only is this world that we live in crooked, but loved one, you are as well.

God's way of making the crooked straight was to not reach down and force the world flat.

God's way was to come down and to be broken under the crookedness of the world.

That's what the prophet Isaiah says so clearly.

Saying he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquity.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

Do you see what happened at the cross?

The only man who was truly ever wisdom from God, who ever who lived with no warp in the grain of the wood, who who he was the straight way, whose life needed no fixing.

That man was bent under the weight of a bent world.

He did not stand outside of it and say, listen, we can just fix this thing from from up here.

If he were to do that, that would have been complete destruction for us all.

Instead, he came and he sat under the crookedness of the world.

And the hope of our salvation is in Isaiah's words when he says that that this man was pierced for our transgressions.

For it was a substitution.

It was crushed for our iniquities.

Now, maybe you're here and you're saying, listen, the world's crooked, but it's not my transgression.

It's you know, this health diagnosis I have, it's this loss that I've experienced, it's this hardship I'm going through, it's this life that I didn't choose.

And I don't know what Jesus' dying could ever do for those things.

What does sin have to do with that?

And the answer of Scripture is this everything, because every crooked thing in this world grows from one root.

We live in a world that is cursed under sin.

It's why days of adversity exist at all.

And at the cross, Jesus took that curse on himself.

He was unwilling just to trim the branches.

He struck at the root of sin.

And more than that, do you remember the thing that Solomon couldn't stomach in chapter 8, verse 14?

You remember it?

Set your eyes on that because if you miss Christ in this, you are missing so much.

There are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked.

And loved one, with a gospel-centered perspective, you look at that and you say, Yes and amen.

Hallelujah! That there are righteous people to whom it happens the deeds of the wicked, because it is in that that I find life.

So that in Christ there is no crooked thing in your life that he has not already been underneath.

You know, the cross is God's verdict on your self-salvation project.

It was never gonna work.

And this is where I want you to understand that it doesn't have to.

In Jesus Christ, there is nothing left to prove.

Not to God.

Your effort to fix your life can stop.

In Jesus Christ, the thing that matters most is finished.

And a loved one, do you know what it's like to be able to be a person who can sit in the midst of what is broken and unfixable and in need of redemption, and have joy, and have peace, and not feel this frantic desire to fix everything immediately.

Do you know what that is like?

That is what Solomon and the Holy Spirit want you to experience this morning.

And it is our third point that Christ bore the unfixable so you can live with what's broken.

So that you can live joyfully with what's broken, we could say.

In chapter 8, Solomon opens with life under the king in verses 2 through 9.

In this bent world, you will live under authority that you don't control.

And then Solomon alludes to the very thing that he has torn down to wisdom.

He says, only wisdom is gonna get you through this crooked world.

But the wisdom that gets you through is not a wisdom that can fix the crookedness of the world.

Using the king and his irreplaceable authority as an example, Solomon says that the wisdom we need is the type of wisdom that lives in the midst of that crookedness.

There is a way, Solomon is saying, to live in the crooked, broken world without feeling like you need to fix it, to sit with what is broken.

And then over and over, Solomon then alludes to our new footing in a warped world.

Look at verse 12 of chapter 8.

Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God.

You see what Solomon did.

He says, When I look at this world, when I see with my eyes what is happening in this world, I see a sinner sinning a hundred times and prolonging his life.

But then he looks at the world with the eyes of faith.

And against all that he sees with the eyes of his body, he plants his flag of faith and says, Yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God.

What the eye can't see, the heart takes hold of by faith.

And Solomon knows, despite everything happening out here, despite the amount of wisdom you need to live in the brokenness of the world without being ruined by it, I know that for those who fear God, it will be well.

And you and I, you know, as those who are exhausted trying to fix our life, and as those who will be bombarded because our phones are listening right now about how we want to fix our life, and you're probably gonna get some like better help ads this afternoon, okay?

We will be bombarded with advice.

Solomon says, Listen, you can relax.

This advice is not gonna help, this wisdom is not gonna deliver you.

You can't fix your life, but loved one, all will be made well.

I know, Solomon says, I know.

Can we plant the flag of faith, loved one?

I know it will be well for those who fear God.

We sing it, don't we?

That old hymn, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

And it was Horatio Spafford who wrote those words on a ship passing over the waters where his four daughters had drowned.

He was a righteous man, and the crookedest thing imaginable happened to him, and yet he could sing it as well.

How could he do it?

The words are sung later.

He tells you, My sin, not in part, but the whole is nailed to a cross, and I bear it no more.

You know, he couldn't sing because his life made sense.

He could sing because when his life made no sense at all, he beheld Christ with the eyes of faith and saw the one who was crushed under it all.

Love one, do you know that there is a way for you to sing on the darkest day of adversity?

It is well with my soul.

When you lose that thing that you never thought a possible, imaginable to lose, there is a way to sing it as well with my soul.

We sang it this morning.

What hope is given to us when we can declare these words boldly?

Through every storm, my soul will sing, Jesus is here, to God be the glory.

It will be well with those who fear God.

It's as Sam Gamge says in to Gandalf at the end of Lord of the Rings, asking him, Is everything sad going to come untrue?

It's not a fairy tale wish.

It is the precise hope of the gospel.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is God's answer to Sam's question, the down payment proving that what is crooked will not merely be compensated, but it will be made straight, that the day is coming when all things will be made new.

Do you believe that, loved one?

Do you believe that there is a day coming when redemption will be?

Not only come, the psalmist says that God will redeem in abundance, that there is not a thing in this broken world that will not be made right.

Solomon couldn't see that day.

You have loved one.

When you look back to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and you see an empty tomb.

Notice then what this knowledge frees you to do in verse 18.

Sorry, verse 15 of chapter 8.

After everything, wisdom cannot guarantee or promise or fix.

The wisest man, like a doctor, gives his commendation.

I commend joy, verse 15.

For man has nothing better under the sun than to eat and drink and be joyful.

For this will go well with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given.

Sorry, this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.

I commend joy.

Solomon says, take the joy that's in front of you, not because the tension is resolved.

You don't need everything to be fixed, but inside of the unresolved tension, there is an opportunity for you to take joy.

It is an act of faith where every ordinary delight received with thanksgiving is you saying, I believe that the sad things are coming untrue, so that I don't have to be frantic, working, striving until they do.

One of the things I love about my wife is that she's an incredible gardener.

And if you were to ask her how she learned to garden, she would point to a conversation that she had early in her gardening days.

She was at the Bradford greenhouse, which really is like the promised land for gardeners.

And an angelic being came beside her.

It was just an old man, but in for the gardeners, that's what those are.

And this was the kind of guy who, like you, you you trusted what he said because he was probably growing cucumbers in like the Cold War.

This was this kind of guy, okay?

And he's pointing at the fertilizers, and he says, You need this one.

And it was hen manure.

And all my gardeners are nodding with me.

It's like, yeah, hen manure is the thing.

And and ever since that day, when whenever we've used hen manure, we've experienced this explosive growth in the garden.

Every time you use that in water, some of you guys are going to Bradford greenhouse on the way.

I'll buy some bags, I'll bring them back for you, I'll sell them.

There's gonna be a markup on them, but I'll do that for you, okay?

It's strange, isn't it?

I mean, at the end of the day, it's manure.

It's the stuff that you and I would look at and we'd say, This is waste, this is rot, this is ruin.

And yet it is the very thing that grows the garden.

Life comes up out of the very thing that you and I would call waste.

Loved one, that is how God deals with the crooked things.

He does not just clear them out of your life, he grows something out of them.

The stuff that you and I look at that we call waste, the very thing that our instinct calls rot and ruin, that we would never write into our lives.

It is the very thing that grows the garden.

Life comes up out of the very thing that you have grown away, thrown away.

And I cannot help that someday there will be a day where you and I, if your faith is in Jesus Christ, are in heaven.

And as we walk on the world that God has renewed, in the eternal life that we have been given, everything that is growing will come have come from the ruin of what God has redeemed.

That's my question to you.

What's manure in your life right now?

What is the thing that you are looking at that is waste?

Do you have the faith that believe to believe that though you don't know how, through it, God is growing something of eternal value?

At the end of our passage, Solomon closes his search with the very words he opened it up with.

In verse 24 of chapter 20 uh chapter 7, he said, Wisdom is deep, very deep, who can find it out?

Now in verse 17 of chapter 8, he says, Man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun.

However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out.

Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.

The search still fails.

And Solomon closes the chapter with this question still open.

And yet, loved one, you and I have the answer in the man who stood in front of that crowd and said, Something greater than Solomon is here.

The wisdom no one could find out was hidden in a person all along.

It was a person with a name, and his name was Jesus.

It was a person with a body who was scarred.

And when Solomon went searching and came back empty, Christ came down and was crushed under everything that's crooked, so that in your life everything that is sad can come untrue.

Your best effort cannot fix what is broken in your life.

Christ already did.

So you can live with what's broken.

Praise God.

He never asks you to fix it.

You can live because the cross declared it is finished.

This is why we celebrate communion this morning.

As we look forward to the communion table and experiencing it, experience it together, we are looking forward to the day where we will have eternal communion with Jesus Christ, our Savior.

And if you didn't receive a cup on your way in, the ushers are making their way to the front of the worship center, and you can flag one of them down, and they will get one into your hands.

As we receive this, the very heart of what we have been talking about is at the heart of the communion table.

We do not earn this because we've presented ourselves in a certain way to Jesus Christ.

We have this because Christ has presented himself in a certain way to the Father, with complete and perfect righteousness.

The meal is a meal we come to with our hands empty, filled now with the blood and body represented in the bread and the juice of Jesus Christ that has been given to us because the work is already finished.

Now, there are two reasons why you might not take this this morning.

If you've never turned from your sin and trusted in Jesus Christ, this communion cup is not yet yours, and we would ask that you refrain from taking it and instead receive this as an invitation from Jesus Christ, who said to those who are thirsty, come and drink.

The second reason to withhold would be if you are living in unrepentant sin.

Paul warns us not to eat and drink without discerning our lives, and so examine yourself, not to see that there is no sin, but to ensure that you are repenting of the sin that you are living in.

For anyone who is in Christ, this is the meal that Christ came to give you.

Come and take it.

You'll find that there are two layers, and I would ask for you to take the bread now.

On the night that he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take it together.

In the same way he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's drink this together.

Could you pray with me?

Father, thank you for the blood and the body of Jesus Christ that is ours now through him.

God, we are so thankful that there was a righteous man who perished for the deeds of the wicked.

It was our deeds.

We give you all the praise.

We give you all the glory.

And we praise your name that it is finished.

God, thank you.

It's in the name of your son we pray.