Hevel and Tov

Good morning. Hey, so good to have you here.

If you have your Bible, we're going to be in Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2. We're going to be landing at the

tail end of some of the discoveries that Solomon has

been making. We're still on a journey.

As Ross said, we'll find some conclusions, but not the

ultimate conclusion this morning.

But for those who are visiting, if you haven't picked up

Ecclesiastes in Bible college, they always told us, never read

Ecclesiastes on Mondays. So if you haven't gone anywhere

near it and when you try it, you think, Oh my gosh, I don't know

what's going on. Well, welcome me too, even me.

But when it comes to Ecclesiastes Chapter 2, where we

Ecclesiastes 2 · chapter mention

had left off last weekend, Solomon has basically decided,

you know, he's seen a whole lot of stuff that's meaningless.

And, and he focuses on that in Chapter 1.

Chapter 2, he starts asking if all of this is meaningless, then

then where do we find value? What what is good in life?

You know, how, how can I make my life and build my life in such a

way so that it will count, that I'll make a difference, that

I'll glorify God? And so he he tries what I

suppose every bluff I would try. He verse 3 says I tried cheering

myself with wine. Verse four, he built houses and

planted vineyards. Verse 8, I messed silver and

gold and treasures of kings and provinces.

And verse 10, maybe you've given this a go.

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired.

So that's what he's been up to, you know?

What was your weekend like? And then we get to verse 17

where he now tells us one of the conclusions that he's come to,

and you'll be surprised he doesn't say so.

I had a fat jaw instead. Verse 17 says so.

I hated life because the work that is done under the sun was

grievous to me. Look at these words.

All of it is meaningless. So chasing after the wind, I

hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun,

because I must leave them to one who comes after me.

And who knows whether that person will be wise or from the

bluff, if they will have control over all the fruit of my toil

into which I've poured my effort and skill under the sun, This

too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair of

all my toilsome labour under the sun, where a person may labor

with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave

all their own to another who's not toiled for it.

This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.

What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with

which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is

grief and pain. Even at night demands do not

rest. This too is meaningless.

This too is why we don't read this on a Monday, because what

on earth is going on? Like seriously, bro, you got

issues, but my voice is in there too, and possibly yours as well.

What what is going on here? So when I, when we first found

out that we're going to go into the book of Ecclesiastes, I read

through once or twice and then I thought, Hey, I properly need

some help. So I went to the Bible project.

I thought, you know, if I could get an overview of the book of

Ecclesiastes really helped. Just, you know, before you start

sinking roots, just kind of know what direction you're going in.

And when I Googled it on the website, what was very

interesting in the first one I looked at, the first little

video clip that they showed wasn't on Ecclesiastes

specifically. It was actually on the wisdom

books that we find in Scripture. And Ecclesiastes is considered

one of them. But what is very interesting in

the video is basically it started off, it had like a

couple of picture frames on the wall, and then they put a

picture of what each book of the wisdom literature kind of looks

like. And so they started with

Proverbs and Proverbs they described as a bright eyed,

bushy tailed young teacher. And she's all about wisdom.

She's basically trying to win you over to the attributes of

God, which is wisdom. And essentially the Ground Zero

is all about if you use wisdom, you can build a successful life.

So not just live the good life, but actually live good at life.

And so that's the picture that that paints this young teacher

trying to impart her wisdom to you and I.

And then they went into Ecclesiastes.

And then things changed because the the picture of what they're

presenting, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes as in terms of an

overview, is a much older man, a little crusty, slightly cynical.

And he's actually standing there with a pipe and, you know, blows

out some smoke and looks at the the lady, the Proverbs, the

woman of wisdom and says, OK, but what do you do?

I'm here to ask the question, what do you do when wisdom

doesn't work the way you thought it should?

And it's a little dark, but it cuts to the chase because you

know, what do you do? You're building your life on

wisdom. It's Scripture, It's in the

Bible, it's God breathed. And it says in there, in all

your ways, acknowledge me and I'll direct your paths and crown

your efforts with success. Now, what do you do when you're

doing that and you get fired because you are acknowledging

God? And so when your boss said,

listen, I want you to do a little bit of creative

accounting and you said, no, I said, fine, I'll find someone

who can. What do you do when wisdom

doesn't work the way you expect it to?

Or maybe you and your fiance, you decided, you know, the word

is very clear, but not sleeping together unless you're married.

And so you kept yourself pure, got married as virgins, but now

she's not able to fall pregnant. What do you do in when wisdom

doesn't work the way it ought to?

Or what happens when you're living a godly life?

You're looking after your children.

And like we had in our life group this week, the lady

pregnant with twins and she lost both of them this week.

And it's on the other side. You got that Lady drinking and

smoking to hot content. And the babies are perfect.

And so it gets rather close up close and personal.

And we have to ask these questions because this is the

question that Ecclesiastes asks. It looks at life.

It says, what do you do when you come across heaven?

I discovered something recently that psychologists say the

greatest wound that your soul can endure is the wound of

rejection. Not like being battered to the

friend zone or, you know, put your proposal together and

busted and approved. Not that like when rejection

gets underneath your skin, that spirit of rejection.

I want, I want to read to you some of the downstream things of

encountering rejection. It leads to low self esteem,

attachment issues, emotional dysregulation.

That's when you're overly sensitive and can't control your

behaviour. Impulsive when someone from life

group doesn't greet you and you all you lose your stuffs.

A decreased capacity to trust people, harmful coping

mechanisms, increased vulnerability to mental health

issues, hypersensitivity. What they actually said here is

you either become rebellious or religious.

So rebellious is don't put your stuffs on me.

Don't you tell me what to do. Religious and you become a

workaholic. You're driven to please people

because of the rejection in your past social isolation.

And then this one caught my attention.

Intergenerational effects. Rejection can influence

generations. And This is why it's so

important that we stop the bus and we deal with the book of

Ecclesiastes. Because if your worldview and

your understanding of your journey with Jesus is only bound

by the principles found in Proverbs, as soon as something

falls outside of that purview, you feel rejected by God,

abandoned. Where was God when?

When I was fighting for the life of my twins?

Because it doesn't fit in here. So we have to have a good

understanding of Ecclesiastes. Because by not having it, what

I've seen is 99% of the people who walk in through my door and

sit with me and do coffee, 99% of them are grappling with a

Proverbs world view that God stepped outside of.

And so it is so helpful for you and I to understand what was

going. What did Solomon discover?

How do we guard our hearts? Because something like this can

literally have an intergenerational effect for the

good when we can navigate life. See, the the best way I've been

trying to explain it to friends, the best way I can describe it

is like Proverbs is, is the road signs, the roadways, the

markings on the road. But Ecclesiastes says, yeah, but

you're also going to be aware of the fact that you're going to

face some potholes and taxis and women drivers.

And you need to know, you need to know how to keep the faith

because it can have an intergenerational impact.

Now that I have your attention, so he shows us two things in

chapter 2 that I want to lift out of scripture for you.

The first one is essentially he says you need to understand

Proverbs is neat and Tati, you need to understand that.

There's also this thing called hevel, a meaninglessness to

life. We need to understand, we need

to just not just understand and acknowledge the fact that some

stuff is meaningless hevel, but also we need to learn how to

discern what is hevel. So hevel is the Hebrew word that

we translate meaningless. But it's such a rich word.

Just meaningless doesn't quite cover it, you know, because it's

not that it has no meaning. I loved what Roar did when he

had those, those candles and he blew them out and tried to try

to catch the smoke. It's sort of, it's there, but

you can't quite hold it. But it's more than that.

It's it has no eternal value. So I don't know if you know

this, but I'm rather fancy. I've got to, I carry dollars

with me everywhere I go. Yeah, yeah.

Mega church pastor, you know what I'm saying?

So I don't know if you've ever seen a dollar.

My kids, my son was like, oh, it's like in the movies, you

know. But what's interesting about

the, the dollar is because it's green on the back, it's

colloquially referred to as a greenback.

I don't know if you've ever heard that, but I don't know if

you know this, but the American greenback at one stage wasn't

the only currency that the US had back in the 1860s.

They also had a greyback. So I'm sure you're all up to

date with your American history, but in case you missed that

class, in the early 1860's, the whole issue with slavery,

whether or not they should abolish it, literally divided

the nation into the North and the South.

The North just became a union. Some of the states down South

formed the Confederacy. And it got so heated that in

1861, they declared war on one another.

And so you had the North and the South at each other.

And So what the South decided to do, it's kind of like a

propaganda plan, was they thought, you know, you can take

your greenbacks and we're going to we're going to actually use a

new currency. And so everyone in the South

converted to greybacks. And So what they did was they

said, you know, one day we're going to have the victory over

the North. We're going to declare our

independence from those peasants up there.

And then we are going to trade only in greybacks.

So if you're in the South, basically get rid of those

greenbacks before the greyback becomes the currency of choice.

But if you know your American history, Friday May 26th, 1865,

Confederacy surrendered to the North.

And with that, because there was no victory, because there was no

independence, the currency lost all its value from Thursday,

where you could buy and sell, to Friday, when it had absolutely

no value. The Greyback became meaningless.

And what Solomon is trying to do is he's trying to help you

discern, you know, this looks fantastic in the east of

Pretoria. Another car, another holiday

home, another ski holiday, another set of Botox injections.

But Friday is coming, and he's saying to you and I that

eternity is what measures the value of what is meaningless.

But when eternity is on your doorstep, it is too late.

And we do not like to think about eternity.

Martin Luther when he studied the book of Ecclesiastes, he

says, I only have two days in my diary today.

And that day, that day when everything that I have built

will be tested by fire. And that day I will find out

just how much meaninglessness I pursued and built my life on.

But you know what? Here's the crazy thing.

If on Thursday you had to take all your Gray backs and you had

to convert them, even if it's just one to one, you would have

been the richest man in the South when Friday arrived.

You would be being able to buy property like we buy penny

stocks. And this is essentially what he

calls us. He says the first thing you need

to recognize there is hevel. There is meaninglessness and you

cannot build on meaninglessness. You cannot hang on to it.

It will let you down, if not in this life, most certainly in the

next. And it says this is the first

thing we need to lay a hold of. We need to acknowledge that so

much of what you and I are sold on a daily basis is meaningless.

So much of what you and I are preoccupied with and give our

lives to is meaningless. And so Gardner's Grace is coming

to tell us Friday's coming, Friday's coming.

It's considered the meaninglessness of our lives.

So that's the one thing that he touches on.

The second thing that he touches on is we need to recognize and

understand, like, like you said in chapter 1, if there's all

this meaninglessness and he delves into that in chapter 2,

then what is meaning? The Hebrew word here is tov.

So he begins, he actually says right in the very beginning, the

first verse in chapter 2, he said, I said to myself, come

now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is

good, what is tov. So he's starting to recognize,

because we're on a journey through Ecclesiastes, it's

starting to recognize that actually everything that I've

been giving myself to is meaningless.

But now what I want to do instead is I want to find out

what is tov what what what gives God pleasure.

Actually, what Ross said last week, this was his definition

Tov is the absolute pleasure of God.

So right in the very beginning, the first page of your Bible,

God is creating the heavens and the earth.

And it says that he looked on it and to God's eyes it was good.

It was tov so that and it gave him much pleasure.

So it's not that it's not works and it's not that it's not going

and and you know, studying and it's not that it's not looking

after your relationships. It's within that there are

elements of meaninglessness, but also if you just look, if you

learn to discern, you'll find these things that give God

pleasure. And so actually what he goes

through when you look at chapter 2, he touches on a whole series

of things. Essentially what he begins to

say from here on out is he says what we need to know is that you

don't have to master everything to glorify God.

You just have to master that which is tov, that which is

good, that's which glorifies God.

That undiluted pleasure of God says you don't have to know

everything, you just have to know what is tov and pursue

that. And so he starts throwing out

the baby and the bathwater. You know, he says it doesn't

matter, but your IQ or your EQ doesn't matter what school you

went to or what what clothes you wear, your dress code doesn't

matter what rugby team you support.

He goes on to say it's not about pleasure or power or or wisdom

or woman. He says it's not about silver or

gold. He says it's about tough.

And I think once we get through Ecclesiastes, once we begin to

understand, we start getting a feel for what is meaningless.

We have to start then going like, OK, what is what is tough?

If not that, then what? So I know we've got a whole

bunch of children in the audience this morning.

I've got some contraband on me. We might need to edit it out of

the the live stream and you might need to have a

conversation with the kids when you get home.

But I have spoken to the relevant authorities and they

didn't allow me to bring a cowrie into the auditorium.

A cowrie? Cool.

Yeah. For for integrity.

This was in my home, no? Way.

Yeah, he collected it. No, my mother-in-law.

I'm convinced that this is my mother-in-law collected.

This one in particular. I can either confirm nor deny if

I had any involvement in the collection of shells.

Never before for those who've been coming to three CR during

the Ecclesiastes series. Never before as collecting

shells caused such stir in such a community.

Actually, once before, in 2000, John Papa got up and addressed

the collecting of shells. He was talking to a room full of

40,000 students and he was asked to address the difference

between meaninglessness and tov, between hevel and tov.

And he began like this. He started reading some of the

the accounts from his church and he picked up on one He said.

Three weeks ago we got word at our church that Ruby Elias and

Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon.

Ruby was over 80, single all the life as she poured out her life

for one great thing, 112 thing to make Jesus Christ known among

the unreached, the poor and the sick.

Laura, her friend, was a widow as a medical doctor, pushing 80

as well. She was serving at Ruby's side

in Cameroon when the brakes gave way on their car.

And they went over a Cliff and they died, killed instantly.

And he said he announced this news tragically and on a Sunday

morning and told the people about them.

And, you know, they were praying for the families.

And he said what captivated him was everyone that spoke to

afterwards wanted to know a little bit more, kept using the

word tragic. It was so tragic that this

happened and that kind of threw him a little bit because he, he

went on to say that the word tragic is it's got to do with a

disaster, but it's the regrettable side of a disaster.

And he started asking his friends, like, do you think this

was regrettable? Is, is this tragic?

What happened? And he goes on to say 2 lives

driven by 1 great vision, 2 lives spent, poured out to the

very end, and unheralded service to the poor for the glory of

Jesus Christ, two decades after almost all of their peers had

retired to throw their lives away on meaningless trifles and

empty days. No, that is not tragedy, he

said. That is glory.

That is glory, that is tov. And then he says, I'll tell you

what is tragedy. And he leaned over and pulled

out a Reader's Digest from the suitcase.

So I'll tell you what is tragedy.

Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs five

years ago. When he was 59, she was just 51.

Now they have great tans as they cruise about on their SU PS play

tennis and collect shells. That is a tragedy, he said.

And then he went on to say, people today are spending

billions to persuade you to embrace the American dream.

And I get 30 minutes to plead with you.

Don't buy it. This is tragedy, it's all

heaven, he said. With all my heart I plead with

you, and with all our hearts we plead with you. 3 CR Don't buy

the American dream of a nice house and a nice car, a nice

job, a nice family and a nice retirement.

Collecting shelves As the last chapter before you stand before

the Creator of the universe to give an account for your life.

Here it is, Lord, my shell collection.

And then he leaned over that pulpit with fire in his eyes to

those 14,000 people said don't waste your life.

Don't waste your life on what is meaningless.

Instead find out what is tov that which glorifies God.

So what does that look like? I don't know yet.

Rather should I say Solomon doesn't know yet.

It's amazing the way he writes it.

He's he's still on a discovery, but he's come across something

in this wrestle and he says this this is verse 22 of chapter 2.

He says what do people get? He's busy wrestling over the

toil and everything. What do we get for the toil and

anxious striving all their days our work is grief and pain.

Even at night, our minds unrest. This is meaningless.

And then he says a person can do nothing better and that's the

word tov than to eat and drink and find tov satisfaction in

their toil. Says a person can do nothing

better. If you want to know what tov

looks like, he says start here, eat and drink and find

satisfaction in your toil. Find tov in the toil, not apart

from the toil, but in the toil. Those two I see is from the hand

of God. Verse 25 For without him who can

eat to find enjoyment to the person who pleases him tov God

gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness.

So it's almost like the New Testament.

Jesus says seek first the Kingdom of God and all these

things will be added. Seek first.

Tov. If we go after tov, all the rest

seems to come behind. But to the Sinner, the one who's

wanting to throw it all the way gives the task of gathering and

storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God

tov. This too is meaningless, that

you'd go after emptiness. Gray backs are chasing after the

wind now. The series is called Finding

Sophia for a reason. It's not called We've Found

Sophia. It's because actually this book

of Ecclesiastes needs us to slowly dismantle and in this

place begin to rebuild. But that verse there a person

can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find tov in

their toil is key right here. This is like the first

discovery. While he's been throwing

everything out, the first thing he suddenly begins to realize is

actually, you can find tov in your toil.

I don't know if you know this, but you cannot.

Your brain cannot process negative anxiety as well as

positive gratitude at the same time.

It is physically, physiologically, biologically,

scientifically, whatever the word is, impossible.

You cannot do both of them at the same time.

I found it very interesting that RAW said put your hand over your

mouth. Profound.

For those watching online during the service, RAW said, put your

hand on your mouth. Did you know that throughout

Scripture we find those who praise go first, those who

criticize walk in circles. And if you're wanting to move

forward Tov, one of the first things you need to recognize is

that you need to find that Tov in your toil.

You need to actually find that that gratitude in the midst of

all this meaninglessness. And this is interesting because

this is where he starts. What I find fascinating, because

you look at the science, the fact that I cannot process

anxiety and gratitude at the same time leaves me with

wondering, OK, maybe that's where we start.

Maybe Tov is just that place. When you look in all the heaven,

all the meaninglessness, you actually start scratching to

find that which is good, that which is Tov, that which is

pleasing God in the midst of all this hell.

So I discovered last year that you and I, we have a bias

towards what's the negative. They say for a negative

experience to become a long term memory, you only have to focus

on it for two seconds. For a negative experience to

become a long term memory just takes 2 seconds.

But for a positive experience to embed itself in your long term

memory, you need to spend 12 to 14 seconds drinking it in.

And we wonder why we're struggling with anxiety and

depression and stress. So you have this sympathetic

nervous system where they call it fight or flight and on this

side, the parasympathetic nervous system, which they call

faith and favor. How beautiful is that?

The scientist is telling you and are and actually got us wide in

US, not only the discernment between meaninglessness and tov,

but a way to get ourselves out of this place when our world is

outside of the purview of Proverbs and we don't quite know

what to do before we push it all on God as rejection.

So no, no, if you're able to find gratitude in the toil, tov

in the toil, what it does is it begins to colour your world and

also gives you handles for understanding God.

And so I had a friend of mine who was actually saying this

week, you know, the reason why he doesn't share his faith is

because he's not on the side, you know, he doesn't have

anything to sell. You know, he's not extremely

wealthy, doesn't have a jet and a house with a Seaview.

I'm like, OK, but now you're back on the meaningless side.

When you share your faith, you're not sharing like, well,

look how well I've done with meaninglessness.

Now, when you're sharing your faith, it's actually in the

midst of all this mess. We have a God who's good, a God

who pursues us, a God who's looking after us, who loves on

us. That is the axis, not this.

So if you're looking for a handle, a place to start here,

He starts by encouraging us to find tov in the midst of toil.

But I want to end by also encouraging you to find Tov in

the midst of trouble. Yeah.

This, this week has really, really been hard with a friend

losing her twins. And when that photo she posted a

photo of one of the boy's foot sort of holding his foot in her

hand like that with the announcement that she passed

away, it's like PTSD. All this stuff with nearly

losing my daughter a few months ago just came to the surface.

I was eventually I went for a walk.

I don't know what to do with this.

What do you do? I mean, how do you find Tov in

the midst of trouble? You know, in a few months ago

when we nearly lost my youngest, I remember there were times when

people would come to me, how is she doing?

And I let them know there was a stage when, you know, when the

nurse has got fear in her eyes and the doctors saying like, oh,

we need to move her because I don't want her to die on your

watch. You know, it's not the most

encouraging thing to hear. And I thank you for coming.

I can't believe I'm paying for this.

And then people would come to me on a Sunday and I told him this

because this is my wrestle. And they'd say no, no, no, no,

no, you mustn't even say the disease.

Don't don't speak that word that we cut it off in Jesus name.

You know, you're the head and not the tail.

She will be completely healed. And I eventually I was, I had to

ask these people, please, can you, can you stop?

And what I've come to realize this week, the reason why that

was so hard to hear was because I was actually grappling with a

guard. It doesn't quite fit in a

Proverbs world view. And they were coming saying no

Proverbs, Proverbs problem line by line.

You just need to pray more. You just need to believe more.

And I'm saying, actually, I might lose my daughter.

And if I lose my daughter, not only do I have to care for a

family who's lost our cute little bundle of joy, but then

I'm also going to have to look after you, whose faith is going

to be completely rattled because this is outside of those line by

lines. Just pray harder.

Make sure you don't skip your quiet time.

Stop smoking and it will all go well for you.

And so I politely asked them to keep that to themselves.

But it only got worse. It eventually got to the place

where the thing that irked me the most and was the hardest to

hear was when people said, oh, but God is good all the time.

All the time. Because I knew you were saying

God is Proverbs all the time, all the time.

And I was going through Ecclesiastes, meaningless

meaning. How do you face this?

God doesn't make sense. And eventually after that very

deep dark hole, I think the lowest that I've got eventually

got to the place where all I knew I believed was that God is

swallowed. God is and in that place I came

to realize God is enough. If God is, it's enough.

And I don't know what you're facing and what you're going

through. I don't know what this year will

hold. I know we love 2020 Thrive

because it's got that beautiful Proverbs ring to it.

But if it's just a fight to survive, if it's more

Ecclesiastes than you'd like it to be, know this when you look,

you will find Tov, you will find God in the midst of the mess.

So I close the way that John Piper closed.

He said, just know this. God is most glorified in us when

we are most satisfied in him. God is most glorified in US over

here when we are most satisfied in Him.

Thank you. Barry, Barry.

Now put your hat on and look decent.

I just want you to pray for all the women drivers in the church.

Let me sit here. You're a beautiful man.

Stephen is a beautiful man. One of the great joys as I've

been understanding this word Tov, is to do church with you.

I'll tell you about this man. I have a 50 year relationship

with him. Many of you don't know him.

His name is Barry. Barry Pretorius, one of the best

worship leaders this country has ever known.

We came from a church, all of us here.

We came from a church called the Invisible Church.

It was called the Invisible Church because we were sick of

doing church corporately with rich pastors and American

prosperity Gospels. So we started a church called

the Invisible Church where we would not be seen and God would

be honored. And he trusted God with his

family and came to Pretoria to plant a church and lost his

family and lost his children through that process.

And I had the privilege of growing up with his sons and his

sons. And I travelled around the world

leading worship. His sons got his mantle.

It became some of the best worship leaders in the world.

I remember once I went to to Holland in Germany and one of

the sons said, there's a girl over there that I fancy, can I

travel with you and maybe meet my future wife?

And so he came with me and we preached in Holland.

He met the girl. I was going to Germany, said you

might have us stay behind in Holland.

And then he got sick in Pretoria with no family, got sick.

And Adrian, who leads the church in Stellenbosch, had a next door

neighbor called Liesel, and she's here today.

And Liesel and Adrian and Antoinette became friends.

And Liesel bought Adrian. Andre brought Liesel to church.

And then Liesel met Barry and brought Barry to church.

And so all of us have lived lives, some of them broken, all

of us have made mistakes. But every now and again, from 50

years ago, from the invisible church, every Sunday I walk in

and I see this beautiful man. And I want to say to you, Barry,

if you can look into my eyes, this is tough for me.

This is good to serve God with you.

It's an incredible privilege to serve God with you.

And to know that after all these years, he's just written a book.

He gave it to me, said, I don't know if you'll read this.

I sat down and I read every page of your book and I sobbed my way

through it as I realized, you know most parts of God better

than I know parts of God. And you just sit, yes, in the

8th or 9th or 10th row. And I want to say we are not

trying to build a corporate venture.

We're not trying to build the big church in Pretoria.

We're just trying to build meaningful relationships that

after 50 years, with all that we've been through, the mistakes

that we've made, the disqualifications that I've

participated in, we can still have.

Tov, I love you. I love you and I thank God that

50 years ago you brought your wife here to start an invisible

church, that people would not be glorified, but God would be

honored and the ways of God would be honored.

And the fact that you come here every week, this is how we build

the church. One beautiful encounter with

human being after the next. This is meaningful.

Thank you, Liesel. Thank you.

Maybe just put your arm on the person next to you.

Stephen walks into my office most weeks.

We are so different, but we found Tov.

I love you Stephen. I love you.

I love talking to you. I love our fellowship together.

Tov Maybe you haven't told your mum, sitting on your right for a

long time, that you love her. Tov,

Butch and Yvonne, 50 years ago you were leading churches in

Pretoria. You still come every week, sit

in the 2nd row full of faith, trusting God, Tov.

It's good. It's good.

What's really important? What's really really important?

Father, bless every single person here today.

Let your hand of grace be upon them, and your kindness, your

generosity and your peace and your love and your goodness

Tough be upon these people in Jesus name, Amen.