Alone in a Broken World | Myles Holmes

It is good.

It is good to be together this morning.

And if you have a copy of God's word, you can take it and open it up to Ecclesiastes chapter three.

We're going to be starting our time together in verse 16 and working all the way down to the end of chapter 4.

If you don't have a copy of God's word, uh then our ushers are going to make their way to the front of the worship center, and they would love to get a copy into your hands.

So flag one of them down.

You can keep this as our gift to you.

We love God's word here and would love for you to take this home and to read it.

Now I found a note on my table here, and I don't know if this is an old note, a relevant note, a note from an angel or something.

I'm not sure, but it says Gray BMW SUV four-way flashers on in, I'm guessing that's parking lot there.

And so if that's you, I don't know if that's relevant information.

I would suggest you wait like a minute and a half and then go so that everyone's not staring at you in this time.

I want to play a game.

We used to play this game, well, maybe it's a variation of the game we used to play called What Would You Rather.

You guys ever play that game?

Maybe put your hand up if you ever played a game of what you would rather.

When I used to play it, it was like, What would you rather wrestle an alligator or a gorilla and that kind of thing?

It's a little more serious when Solomon plays it with us.

And maybe we could more aptly title the game What's Worse?

And the question I have for you is this what's what's worse?

The reality that the world is broken, which I'm guessing I don't have to convince you of this morning, or the reality that the places and things and people that are supposed to fix the world are broken and corrupt themselves.

What's the worst reality for you?

Well, in verse 16 of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, Solomon recognizes, having recognized really for three chapter and a half chapters, that the world is broken, and verse 16 says, Moreover, I saw under the sun, as I looked around in the world, that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

And in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.

Solomon looked to not the streets, not the world, you would expect brokenness to be found there.

Solomon looked to the place that was supposed to fix the brokenness, and he found himself really at the end of himself, because even there, where there was supposed to be justice, where there's supposed to be healing for the wrong that was done, where there was supposed to be righteousness, things being put upright, made right, there's wickedness.

There's no justice, there's no righteousness, there's just wickedness.

And I can't help but to think that you can relate to that, that there have been times in this world where you have been wronged and you've done the right thing.

But you found that as you've gone to the right person or done the right thing or trusted in the right system, that even then you have been let down by that very thing.

It's not just a sad reality, it's a horrifying reality that as we live life in this world and we understand its brokenness and experientially know its brokenness, and I just trust this morning that you know those words are truer than true for some of you.

That you're walking into this place just feeling utterly broken and crushed by the weight of living life in this world.

That you feel the burden of what's happening in your life right now.

And maybe you're walking in this place and we're singing songs of praise, and it's really hard to sing because you're just like, I just feel the weight.

I just it just feels like gravity constantly crushing me to live in this broken world and to suffer under these, under these systems.

And this morning, God wants to meet you there.

That's what I love about God's word.

I love that when we're being honest with God's word and we're opening up God's word and doing what we do at Redemption Church, expositing God's word and finding our meaning and our message from the very pages of Scripture itself, we actually don't ignore what's happening in the world.

We come face to face with it.

We actually don't have to come into church with this sort of like cheesy smile plastered on our face.

Hey, everything's okay here.

My week's been great.

I've followed the Lord in every single way, and I didn't even yell at my kids this morning on the way to church.

Which, whenever you have to mention, is maybe evidence that that might have happened this morning.

We don't have to fake it.

We don't have to put this cheesy smile.

We we come on and we approach God's word, and what we find is that it addresses the brokenness of the world that we feel to be under the weight of day in and day out, and maybe you feel that this morning.

That's what Solomon does this morning.

He takes a tour of the broken world and he's asking you and I this question: can you survive it?

You can't escape it.

You are stuck under the sun in not only a world that is broken, but in a world whose systems that try to fix the brokenness are broken themselves.

And the question is: in a world so broken, being crushed by so heavy a weight, can you survive it?

Let's take the tour with Solomon together.

You can stand with me as we read God's word, Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 16 to the end of chapter 4.

Ecclesiastes 3:16

Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness.

In the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.

I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.

I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.

For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same.

As one dies, so dies the other.

They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.

All go to one place, all are from the dust, and to the dust all return.

Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?

So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot.

Who can bring him to see what will be after him?

Chapter 4.

Again I saw all 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 on their 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 yet seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

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.

The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

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

Again I saw vanity under the sun.

One person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks.

For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?

This also is vanity in an unhappy business.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.

For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls, and has not another to lift him up.

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

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

A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

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

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

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

There was no end of all the people, all whom he led.

Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him.

Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can grab your seat.

This indeed is the word of the Lord.

And on a morning like this, we sometimes struggle to believe that words not only so relevant but so jarring and depicting of the brokenness that is in our world are found in God's word.

And yet you and I in this moment maybe can take the opportunity to thank God.

To thank God that He meets us in the brokenness of the world.

I love that news we can give to the youth in our church who are growing and maybe beginning to encounter arguments against Christianity and beginning to encounter brokenness in the world.

And I want you to understand that you can come to the Bible with your questions, that the Bible, even in a book like Ecclesiastes that is 3,000 years old, meets you in the world that you live in, so that there is nothing you will encounter that you cannot find at least principles for in the Word of God.

You may not have encountered it all yet.

There may be much darkness in this world to discover, but know, know that the Bible provides a framework not only to understand the world, but to live wisely in it.

And it is all that we have.

Now, this morning, then, Solomon is casting this sort of shadow over our entire lives to say not only is the world broken, so are the systems that are supposed to fix the world broken.

So that this world has brokenness like gravity, constantly pressing down on you.

Impossible to escape.

It is always affecting you.

That's what Solomon wants us to understand.

And we're gonna walk through this passage in four points this morning because I'm you know a faithful preacher.

I can only ever do three or four.

If I do five and I tell the worship team, they just walk out on me.

Like they cannot handle five.

One time I did two and they made fun of me for like 15 minutes.

So I'm stuck in three or four here.

We have four points this morning.

First, I want you to see how the how brokenness affects you.

Then, in the next two points, I want you to see how we often then respond to the brokenness of the world.

Two errors we make in responding to this gravity-like brokenness of the world.

Lastly, I want you to know how the brokenness can be solved.

First, notice this.

First, notice that the brokenness of the world will grind you down.

Brokenness of the world will grind you down.

Notice that in verse 16.

Put your eyes on your copy of God's word.

As Solomon is doing a survey of the world, trying to find satisfaction, fulfillment, meaning in the world, but only finding vanity, he turns next in verse 16, saying, Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.

In this world, the systems that are supposed to provide relief from the hurting, that are supposed to provide healing to the wounds that we experience, often do the opposite.

We don't have to search far in Canada to see where that is happening in our culture.

We can look just as far as something like the MAID program.

Medical assistance in dying.

Definitionally absurd at the very outset, promised to be offered only to those who are terminally ill.

And yet I'm not sure if you saw this in the news just a few weeks ago of the man who did not have a terminal illness.

He had some intestinal issues and some mental health issues.

And in the place where maybe there's not supposed to be justice, but there's at least supposed to be double-doubles, Tim Hortons, donuts, Timbits, this man was provided a signature to medical assistance in dying in the parking lot of a Tim Hortons by a doctor who then drove him to the clinic where he assisted him in dying.

In the place of justice, there is wickedness in our nation.

That doctor was given a six-month suspension.

No righteousness, no justice.

We can look to our government, to Bill C9, which is right now before Parliament, removing a protection that lets a Christian quote the Bible without charges of hate speech.

You can read the words of the federal minister who stood up saying he was a Christian and said, How could every anyone ever be allowed to quote passages from Deuteronomy and Leviticus and Romans and that not be called hate speech?

In the place that's supposed to fight for the freedom of speech, there is wickedness.

And we could go on and on and on.

We could talk about the fight that we are in right now for the life of the unborn.

You don't have to look far to see how we're in the place where there should be justice and righteousness, there is nothing but wickedness.

But what Solomon confronts you with this morning is this question: how do you respond to that?

How do you respond to the brokenness of the world and the inability of people and systems and nations to deal with that brokenness?

Let me suggest to you that there's two ditches we fall into as we consider the brokenness of our world and the brokenness specifically of our nation.

The one ditch that we might fall into is the belief that the failure of the nation is the failure of our hope.

This thought that if the nation crumbles, if if the nation loses its morality, if the nation loses its sense of direction and vision and fight for what is right, then we have lost all of our hope.

That there's no possibility of even living here, that we've just got to move to somewhere that does have sense, somewhere that does fight for God's law.

Now it can be true that the nation loses its way.

It can be true that the nation that was once built on a foundation of God's word loses God's word and embraces secularism and all of its ends.

However, what's not true is that we need to lose our hope in light of that.

Love one, do you know that the nation will fail?

The prophet Isaiah says that the nations are like a drop in the bucket.

Like a drop in the bucket.

I mean, that's Isaiah saying, go to your sink and you know, play a little game where you take your tap and you turn on as little water as possible.

Do it this afternoon.

See how little water you can make come out of that tap.

And Isaiah says, that's the nations.

That's how insignificant the nations are.

That's how small they are.

And we don't need to look far in history to know that every nation that has ever oppressed God's people, from New Testament to Old Testament, has either fallen or is falling now.

There is not a nation that has stood, and we won't have wisdom until we understand that, and not only understand that, but embrace by faith the reality that we have been saved from a kingdom of darkness to a kingdom of light.

And the kingdom, loved one, the kingdom that you have been saved to is a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

It is a kingdom we are told in Daniel that will stand forever.

Loved one, does that give you stability in life?

Does that help you read the headlines?

If it does, you need to tell your face right now because all of you are looking at me like this.

That's right.

Like, are you not?

Are we not happy?

Can we do this?

Maybe we can loosen ourselves up right now.

Can we say, hallelujah?

Can we do that?

Three, two, one, hallelujah.

Praise be to the Lord.

I mean, listen, there's no election coming up for that kingdom.

God will reign forever.

Amen.

Amen.

So we don't have to worry.

Loved one, Canada will crumble.

We're gonna edit that out of the sermon on Spotify so that I'm not in jail next week, but it will.

The United States will crumble.

It will not stand forever.

And so as the countries falter, as they fall, as they are a drop in the bucket and you feel the evaporating happen, you don't need to lose your hope.

It was always the plan.

That's the first ditch.

The second ditch we may fall into is maybe an easier ditch to fall into.

It's a quieter ditch to fall into.

That is, to be numb to what is happening in the world, to not care.

Solomon is unwilling to fall into either of those ditches.

Look at his response in verse 17.

I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked.

And there is a time, a time, we read about that last week in chapter three, a time for every matter and for every work to stand before the judge.

Solomon says, Love one, there's a day coming when everything will be made right.

Jesus is coming to reign.

I love that Solomon is writing about how broken the systems are.

In the place of justice, there is wickedness.

Who is the one at that time in Israel who is administering justice?

It's Solomon.

And you remember when Solomon was given wisdom, you remember how much wisdom he had?

You remember the story of the two women who were fighting over one baby?

And Solomon, with this amazing wisdom, figured out whose the baby was, and he was administering judgment or justice.

And he said, even in this world where you know I'm wise and I can administer justice and tell what's right from wrong, you won't find you won't find righteousness, you'll find wickedness, you won't find justice, you'll find wickedness.

And so listen, loved one, the the answer to your problem is not to move to another country.

The answer to your problem is told to you every, I mean, turn page after page in scripture.

Would you wait for your eternal hope?

Would you live in your heavenly citizenship?

That is the only hope that we have.

That is the hope of heaven.

And the comfort we have here is in a judge before whom the righteous and the wicked will stand before.

Now, if that has been heavy so far, Dennis said that he was feeling a little, you know, tired of the heaviness.

I just want you to know, chapter 3, verse 18, it gets even heavier.

Are you ready for this?

Are you ready for this?

That you walked in a human, Solomon wants you to know you're nothing but a dog.

Here we go.

Verse 18 I said in my heart, with regard to the children of man, that God is testing them to see that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.

Solomon looks under the sun, and from his perspective, in a world without God, he cannot see a difference between beasts and man.

For verse 19, what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same.

As one dies, so dies the other.

They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.

From his perspective, verse 20, all go to one place, all from are from the dust, and to dust all return materially.

That's what Solomon's talking about.

Listen, but I mean, dogs, they're buried.

Humans, buried.

We all go back to dust.

We all turn into the very thing that we came from.

But but then he talks spiritually.

Who knows, verse 21, whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth.

From my perspective, under the sun, I cannot tell a difference spiritually.

I cannot tell a difference materially.

This is logic under the sun.

It's fascinating then that secularism right now is saying that evolution is a relatively new thing, that Darwin came up with it.

Solomon, 3,000 years ago, looked at our world and said, hey, listen, if you look at this thing without the lens of God, this is what you're gonna find that man and the beast are the same.

That there's no difference between them.

But what Solomon is pointing out here is the end of living according to that logic.

How do we get to a place where something like the MAID program in Canada makes sense?

We get to a place there where we say human life is of no more value than animal life.

That we are just material, that we are nothing more than physics, that there is no meaning.

In life.

But the value of a human life is the same value as an animal life.

Now I want you to notice that that by the very nature of saying this, Solomon is refusing to live here.

Solomon, throughout Ecclesiastes, is taking you on a tour underneath the sun so that you are shocked by what you see and you live with wisdom in God's world.

And so he he's drawing this out so that the absurdity of what he's saying will cause you to see the value of human life.

He's already said it in chapter three.

You remember he said that God placed eternity in man's heart.

And Solomon wants you to understand that there is a vast difference between a dog and you.

How did we get here in the sermon?

I don't know, but this is where we are right now.

And this is where we are in our world.

That we need to fight for truth like this, that we need to fight with statements like this.

See the difference, it's ironic because Solomon, for four verses, here has been crying out for justice.

There should be justice.

You know what dogs don't do?

They don't cry out for justice.

I actually saw it illustrated this week.

I was driving on Davis, I saw a homeless man dragging two dogs.

And I thought, what you all do when you see a homeless man with a dog, where does he put the food?

I see people walk out of Costco with dog food.

It's there, you need a lot of food to feed these two dogs.

And he did not have a backpack that big.

And I thought, these dogs are not living a great life.

They're kind of scruffy.

They look like homeless dogs.

They're being dragged by this man who he's not walking on the sidewalk, he's walking into the forest.

They do not live a good life, but they were dogs, and you know what they were doing?

They were wagging their tail.

Now I want to introduce you to Bindi.

I met Bindi yesterday.

I spent a few hours with Bindi.

Bindi is a loved dog.

Bindi is probably much more like your dogs.

Bindi, in the few hours that I was with, actually don't know if Bindi is a man or a girl.

It was fed like 15 treats.

Bindi was fed treats for sitting, doing what you're doing right now.

And I want to just tell you, you're not getting any treats for it, okay?

Bindi was fed treats for laying.

Bindi was fed treats for going and for stopping, which those four things are pretty much all the things that a dog does.

Bindi was loved.

I was told that Bindi has furniture in the home that is more comfortable, probably, than some of the stuff that we sleep on.

Bindi lives in an air-conditioned home.

Bindi is loved.

You know what's amazing?

Bindi doesn't know how well he or she has it.

And these two homeless dogs don't cry out for justice saying, give me Bindi's life.

They're just doing their thing.

They do not know what is right and wrong.

And here is Solomon talking about the similarities between man and beast, and yet crying out a few verses before for justice.

And Solomon is ironically putting these things side by side so that you understand this: that to be human is to not be able to ignore the justice, to be confronted with it every day, to bear this weight like gravity, that we live in a broken world.

The broken world will grind you down.

And in verse 1 of chapter 4, it continues to grind down Solomon, continually to weigh him down.

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

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

No comforters, no comfort, no relief from the brokenness.

Sure, you can escape it.

We've talked about that in Ecclesiastes.

I mean, you can escape it for a moment.

You can entertain yourself to death.

You can invest yourself in that relationship.

You can get your head down and grind it out at work and forget for a moment that the world is broken.

The problem is that you always come back up for air and you see the reality of this broken world that we live in.

And Solomon here in chapter four says, there's no comfort.

There's no one to comfort them.

Now hold that thought in your mind as we continue to move on.

And Solomon drags us deeper here as he looks at life under the sun, verse 2 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.

The world has completely drowned him down.

And I find it so necessary here to say that if you've ever gotten to that point in this world where you just feel like you can't go on anymore, that the word of God meets you there.

That the word of God has a message for you there.

And it is a message that can lift your eyes from the darkness to the light.

That you can see it this morning.

And so if that's you, if that's you, if you've ever contemplated just ending it all, I want you to know that there is hope for you, that you are loved, and that we want to meet.

I mean, talk to someone about that.

Don't live in that darkness.

Don't live in that darkness.

The word of God has a message for you.

Here then, Solomon wants to expose.

I mean, we we see the darkness, don't we, loved ones?

You see it this morning?

I mean, we know the brokenness of the world.

Some of you right now are thinking, I cannot wait till September when we get out of Ecclesiastes.

Maybe we'll think about some light stuff.

Probably not.

But maybe that's what you're thinking.

Maybe we'll move past all of the darkness and the weight and the brokenness.

Solomon wants to keep us here because he wants to see how we kind of squirm under this brokenness.

What are the things under the sun then that you can turn to?

What are the answers that we have under the sun to the brokenness?

How do we react to the brokenness?

I want you to see two things here.

I want you to see first that the brokenness of the world will drive you to isolation.

Here in verse four, Solomon sees a man, not only a man, but that all toil and all skill and work come from a man's envy of his neighbor.

When Solomon looks out, he sees not that people are working together to solve the brokenness.

He sees that everybody is actually working against each other.

People are not embracing community, they're embracing competition.

They're trying to outdo the person beside them, their coworker, their neighbor, their the you know, sibling they have that their mother really loves.

They're trying to, they're they're driven by envy.

They just want to prove other people less significant, successful, powerful than themselves.

They do this with work, but but notice that as Solomon gets to verse 8, he sees a person, 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?

He notes the vanity.

You work so hard, but what are you working for?

You're not working for anybody.

In verse 9, he gets into community.

Two are better than one.

He's confronting isolation here.

Two are better than one because they have a good reward of their toil.

Listen, you think you can make it on your own?

You think that in the brokenness of the world you can just put your head down, put your blinders on, ignore it all, and everything will be okay?

Solomon's saying this: you cannot make it.

We say it all the time in this church.

You can't do it alone.

You were made for community.

Notice what Solomon finds.

That the world, in response to the brokenness, embraces isolation.

We embrace a false belief that one of the ways we can solve the brokenness of the world or at least separate ourselves from it is to live an isolated, individualistic life.

We embrace a worldview that says the more I cut myself off from people, the less inconvenience the world will be to me.

The more I isolate myself from real relationship, which by the way, just because you're here doesn't mean that you're not doing.

You can be at a church on a Sunday morning and not be a part of a community.

You can be isolated from people even though you sit beside them and sing songs every Sunday morning.

Solomon says that one of the ways that we answer the problem of the brokenness of the world is we embrace this isolation.

Now, today in our culture, I think you can make the argument that we are more alone than ever.

That statistically we marry less.

That statistically we have fewer friends.

Did you want to hear that in the sermon?

That statistically we're just a bunch of loners.

That's what we are.

Not only that, you look around just the way that our culture works, and everything is becoming more and more isolated and individualistic.

You know, it used to be, I find myself saying in Ecclesiastes back in my day, but that's where we are.

Back in my day, you had to face the public shame of walking into a McDonald's.

You remember that?

You wanted to get McDonald's, you might see your gym teacher there face like, you know, this is the decision I'm making.

Now I don't know why your gym teacher would be there too, so he's obviously shamed as well, but here we are.

But now you can just have it delivered to your door.

And the driver doesn't even have to know you who you are, they just leave it on the doorstep.

You don't even have to leave your door to go grocery shopping.

They'll just bring it to your door for like$4.99 a month.

And if you use the code PASTERMILES, you can get a discount on that.

Every did you notice that?

Everything is isolated.

Even in the way we build our homes, you drive into your garage and you enter your house through your garage.

You don't have to meet your neighbor anymore.

We have bought into this lie culturally that it is better if you wanna, if you wanna defend yourself from the brokenness of the world, embrace isolation.

Now, what does isolation promise us?

Why is it such a juicy promise?

This thought that if I just if I just don't plug in, if I just don't get involved in the messiness of other people's life, then I can be satisfied.

Well, I want you to notice maybe three things we can point out about isolation.

Notice first that isolation promises control.

You know what people are?

People are unpredictable.

They are unpredictable.

If you have young kids, which many of you do, you know this, they are unpredictable.

This past yesterday, actually, I hit my wrist on a gate.

You know, I'm okay, everybody.

I see your concern here, I'm okay.

But I am a youngest child.

And so I went inside and tried to get some attention for it.

And I said, Ah, this thing might be broken.

And uh my wife said, Oh, is it really broken?

And I was like, No, but if it was, it'd be nice.

I'd get some attention around here.

And then all my kids started talking again and ignoring me.

And a few seconds later, my second youngest, the same one who made it had a spotlight in the sermon last week, said, Dada, nobody caring about you.

And I thought, I did not expect that.

But that maybe could be the title of my autobiography.

People are unpredictable.

You don't know what they'll say, you don't know how they'll hurt you, you can get close to people that you think they'll never hurt me.

And then they do, they're unpredictable.

So, one of the ways that you can control the hurt and brokenness you experience in the world is just don't give your heart to anybody.

Don't get involved in anybody's life.

That's the promise that isolation offers you.

It's it's a promise of control.

Notice that isolation also offers you this promise of self-sufficiency.

I did it my way.

I didn't need anybody's help.

I didn't need anyone's help getting up the ladder.

I did it myself.

I am a self-made man.

We embraced this pride to say if we needed community that we were something less than.

And I wonder, loved one, if that belief is maybe inherent in you, if you have this idea, even in your Christianity, that it's better to make the to do this alone than to need someone else.

It's better to figure out this sin problem I have myself than to need to confess it.

That somehow God is more pleased by that.

And I need you to know that is the furthest thing from biblical truth.

It is a cultural uh love for isolation that you have in embraced.

Isolation, it promises control, it promises self-sufficiency, it promises comfort.

You know, can we be honest here?

This is an honest place, right?

People are exhausting.

I often say to the ministry staff here, man, our jobs would be so easy if it wasn't for the people, right?

I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about someone else, by the way, just so you know.

People are exhausting.

You know it at work, people are exhausting.

Sometimes you dream if you're in that, you know, if you're in that job where you deal with people all day, you think, man, it would be nice to just not deal with anybody all day, wouldn't it?

People are exhausting, and and one of the ways that you can escape that is by isolation.

It's comfortable.

People don't have to exhaust you, bother you.

Evelyn, where do you see this isolation in yourself?

Where do you fall?

I mean, we all swim in these cultural waters.

So for any of us to say, well, I know I don't I don't embrace such a lot, I just think it's not intellectually honest.

Where do you see it in yourself?

Is it in the control you have over your relationships out of a desire to not be hurt?

Is it in a is it in a pride, like if I really got involved in relationships or like a small group in the church, then I'd need to be known and people would know me for who I really am and know me for my weakness?

Is it a comfort?

A belief that people are inconvenient.

No matter what it is, our embrace of isolation is a belief that it's better to be alone than to be known as broken and to know the brokenness of other people.

And Solomon is here to say that it doesn't, it's not the solution.

It's vanity.

It's it is an unhappy business that you need people.

Now, what then Solomon does is is he he provides us some warmth in community.

Solomon is sort of here to say, hey, listen, community is a great thing, but once he gives you the warmth of that community and he lets you stand by that fire, he does the most Solomon-esque thing that we're so used to.

He pulls the rug underneath your from underneath your feet.

And he does that with community.

Now, let's follow Solomon along.

I want you to notice thirdly that the brokenness of the world will outlast the company you find.

Look at verse 9.

Here are a number of- again, remember that Ecclesiastes is a wisdom book.

And so here are a number of proverbs that if you embrace, you will live wisely.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.

For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.

I mean, we understand the illustration here that you need people.

It's easier to do with people.

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

Verse 11 again, if two lie together, they keep warm.

But how can one keep warm alone?

You know what that's like right now.

Some of you are squished into a row with like five people.

There's you're too close to the people you're sweating right now.

Some of you are, you know, you chose a row by yourself, and you're wondering why didn't anyone sit beside me?

But it's nice, it's cool.

Verse 12 a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him.

Maybe summarizing it all, a threefold cord is not easily broken.

Solomon looks at community and he has this to say community is a beautiful thing.

In a broken world, we need people.

And that is true whether you are a Christian or not.

That is wisdom in this world that you need people.

That is why wherever you look, you you almost always see human beings reaching out to other people, whether it's their coworkers, whether it's their family, their neighbors, their they're always community people looking outwards because it's survival.

You need community.

You can't live without it.

And so we can just take a moment right now to let thankfulness fill our hearts for the communities that we have, for our kids, for the time that we have with them, for the age that they are, which by the way, they will not be for much longer.

For our marriages, for the person that for as long as we are under the sun on this world, we're gonna wake up beside that person.

I mean, that is our person.

The kids are gonna leave, Lord willing, they're gonna leave.

But I mean, that person is your ride or die, they're with you to the end.

You're gonna get wrinklier, you're gonna get saggier.

What are we talking about in this sermon again?

I mean, Ecclesiastes has us everywhere, doesn't it?

But that person is with you, and there the world doesn't know love like that.

That is the most beautiful, genuine, warming love.

The warmth of friendship, the warmth of work, colleagues, of building something together.

The warmth of this church.

I mean, of the joy we have in fellowship with one another.

I just cannot tell you how much joy it brings to my heart as your pastor to just see the joy that the brothers and sisters in Christ here have in one another.

The joy they have outside of the walls of this church, the joy they have inside as they come early and fellowship and stay late, and we gotta kick them out and flash the lights, and it's a joy in one another.

These are all good things.

The the question is, how far can those relationships carry you?

How long will they last?

And in verse 13 to 16, Solomon tells a sort of haunting story of a of a poor, wise youth.

Parents, you believe that that's possible?

It's in the Bible there, wise youth.

It is possible, okay?

So there's hope.

A poor, wise youth.

This poor, wise youth was better than an old and foolish king because the old and foolish king had isolated himself in verse 13.

You see that?

He didn't take advice, which, by the way, if you are making major life decisions, if you are making, you know, decisions on a regular basis without the constant input of people in your life, the Bible tells you time and time again, you're not living wisely.

We can just say it straight up.

You're living like a fool.

You need other people's advice.

The wisdom of counselors is a good thing.

And but this king had isolated himself from it.

He no longer took advice.

This youth went from prison to the throne.

Though in his own kingdom he had been poor, he became the king.

Solomon is watching this youth who who, because he was living wisely, even though he had nothing, he inherited everything.

And he saw in verse 15 this beautiful picture of the prophet of pursuing community.

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

Everyone was there.

And look at verse 16.

There was no end of all the people, all whom he led, they all came to him, they all lived under his reign.

This this wise young king had gotten everything.

But notice verse 16 yet those who come later will not rejoice in him.

The even the community that you won, coming from poverty to riches, will be taken from you.

And in verse 16, the beloved king is forgotten.

And having carried us to the warmth of the fire that is community, Solomon says, Surely this also is vanity and a striving after the wind.

Isolation provides safety, it delivers vapor.

Community provides warmth.

It is only temporary.

Solomon living in a broken world looks to the two.

I mean, hasn't Solomon got us all here?

He said, hey, listen, if you're an introvert, if you're an introvert in here, you're gonna think your introversion is gonna save you from this broken world.

It's not.

The brokenness is gonna find you in the secret place.

Hey, listen, and all the extroverts say, yes, finally, stick it to the introverts, okay?

And then he comes for the extroverts.

And he says, you lean on people, you count on people, but those people right now are I don't mean how do I say this nice is like death is coming to them.

They won't last.

They can't last.

You will outlast the company that you find.

What's left after all of this?

It's fascinating to me that Solomon doesn't come to an answer in chapter four.

And yet, written throughout this chapter time and time again is a reminder of the king Jesus Christ.

And it's the fourth thing I want you to see this morning that the brokenness of this world would be broken by a king who was alone.

Jesus is all over this.

Passage.

In fact, no one knew the brokenness of the world like Jesus Christ knew it.

Because you know, at the end of the day, Solomon says that in the place that he looked for justice there was wickedness.

But what is just for a sinner to deserve?

Can't we say that no matter what we have experienced in life, the highs and the lows, that even if you have walked most of your life in the valley of the shadow of death, that by God's grace you have received more than you deserve according to God's standard of justice?

God told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would die.

And here you are, breathing life.

God has been gracious, God has been patient, God has been forbearant, He's been merciful with you.

So that we stand in the system of the courts of justice and under the sun we cry out for justice.

But the reality is that none of us want true heavenly justice.

None of us want it.

Having broken the law, having stood in the the heavenly courts, being a cosmic re uh being uh guilty of cosmic treason, none of us want justice.

Jesus was the one who came into the broken world, and he was the one man who did not deserve death.

Every second of every day, he lived in perfect righteousness.

He did not sin, there was no sin in him.

But as he came into this world, nobody experienced the weight of the brokenness of this world more than him.

He walked into the corrupt courtroom where on his trial nothing was done according to the law.

He was tried in the middle of the night so that no one would see the injustice of what was happening to Jesus.

Solomon looks around and he says later in Ecclesiastes, death comes to all, and Jesus would come to this world, and death would take him too.

Jesus would be the one oppressed not only by man's hate, but by our sin.

Hung to the cross, we sing by the sin that held him there, oppressed on the cross, but there was no comforter for him.

He cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And there was no heavenly voice.

There once was the delight of a Father who at the baptism of Jesus says, Behold, it is my beloved Son in whom I delight now on the cross.

Jesus cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And he, there is silence.

Jesus is the beloved king who many thousands flocked to in his ministry, but on the cross was completely forgotten.

Brokenness was a gravity that none of us could escape.

But Jesus felt the most acutely.

Everything in the world failed him.

The courtroom failed him.

In the place of justice, there was corruption.

He met death head on.

He worked endlessly for others, pouring himself out in people, healing them, delivering them from demons, teaching them about the kingdom of God, but he was still forgotten.

He was the beloved king who, when he came into Jerusalem, they all cried out, Hosanna, Hosanna.

I mean, this is the king, but when he died, he was alone.

There was no one there for him, completely forgotten, the man who was once beloved.

Finally, having been crushed more than anyone, Jesus embraced death.

You know, I can't help but to say that every other world religion tells you how to deal with the brokenness of the world.

Every other religion says, hey, you can do it.

Here is a five-step program, here is a book of law to help you deal with the brokenness of the world.

You know what Christianity comes and says?

It says, you can't do it.

You can't do it.

And loved ones, this is this is even where Protestant Christianity differs from Roman Catholic Christianity to say that you can't do it.

You can't save yourself.

There is nothing you can do to deal with the brokenness of the world.

If we are going to survive the brokenness of this world, we have one hope and one hope alone, and his name is Jesus Christ.

And he was crucified on the cross.

He was defeated by the brokenness of the world, but he did not stay there.

Three days later, he was resurrected with your hope and my hope, a belief, a sure foundation of hope that the darkness and brokenness of this world can be defeated because it was.

And loved one, this is the promise for you that if your faith is in Jesus Christ, the brokenness of this world one day will consume you in death.

But at the voice of Jesus, you will rise again.

And you will rise with a community that death cannot break.

You know, this community is different than any other in the world.

This is the community when you stand up in a moment and sing with your brothers and sisters in Christ, you will sing with them for eternity.

And on the day that you are resurrected to life, you will look to your left.

And I'm sorry, but you'll see my face again.

There I'll be.

I'm not gonna leave you, okay?

I'm your I'm gonna stay with you.

I'm gonna be there, and you'll be there for me, and we'll be there for each other, and through the resurrection of Jesus, he has provided you in the church a community that cannot be taken from you.

It's what makes the church more significant than any other community in the world.

That through Jesus Christ, not through ourselves, not through our own morality, not through our lives, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our union to him by faith, we will defeat our greatest enemy.

3,000 years ago, Solomon looked at this world and he saw the same thing that we see today.

And for thousands of years, people have been crushed by the brokenness because you cannot survive it apart from Jesus Christ.

Loved one, can you survive the brokenness of the world?

The answer in yourself is no.

It will crush you.

And it will crush you.

But if your faith is in Jesus Christ, you will be victorious.

And though the brokenness of the world will consume you in death, you will have eternal victory to the eternal praise and glory of Jesus Christ.

Praise be to God.

Amen, church.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that we can face the brokenness of this world and be filled with such hope.

Knowing the truth that unless you return, we will be consumed by the corruptness of a courtroom, by the injustice of the world, and ultimately by death.

But that like Jesus, death will not be able to hold us.

Because Jesus will return, and at his voice he will call us to eternal life.

And we give you all the praise.

God, our hope is not in ourselves, our hope is not in a 10-step program to get our lives right and to live in a way that we can overcome the brokenness of the world.

Our hope is in you.

In the fact that you have sent your son Jesus Christ and promised that if you began a good work in us, you will bring it to completion on the day of Christ, that you will bring us home and that you will hold us fast.

So we praise you and we worship you and exalt you.

And we thank you for our King Lord Jesus.

We pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Let's stand together and worship Him.