Fear God | Ecclesiastes 8:10-13 | 09/20/26

All right. Well, great to see you

everyone. If you don't know me, my name

is Josh. I'm one of the teaching elders

here. And as always, it's the great

privilege of my life to get to open

God's word and convey to you what I have

received.

Does anyone here I know not all of you

are old enough to remember this, but

does anyone here remember the 2008

financial crisis?

>> You know, you laugh, but there's people

here who were just little kids when that

happened. I'm realizing now with my

community group, we're the old people.

In 2008, I was graduating college and it

was the first time in my life that what

was happening out in the world might

legitimately affect me personally, you

know, and uh you know, things started

happening and you didn't really know

exactly what they were. So, some big

financial institution I never heard of

on the East Coast had failed, gone

bankrupt, required a huge government

buyout. Feel like, all right.

Then, like a couple months later, two

other large financial institutions

called Fanny May and Freddy Mack both

went bankrupt and had to be bailed out

again with this enormous bailout by the

US government. And, you know, as a kid,

I'm hearing these names for the first

time thinking to myself like, why is

this on the news? I wonder what's going

and then I remember the day I remember

where I was sitting in my old house in

Fresno and this guy on the news is

explaining that between these two

companies they own like half of the

mortgages in the United States between

the two of them and if they were to fail

it would the repercussions of that

failure would lead to a widespread

depression similar to that of the 1930s.

I was like wow okay crazy.

A month later, another firm went

bankrupt. And then another firm went

bankrupt. And pretty soon, the

government was having to bail out this

giant insurance company called AIG

because if they didn't, it was going to

lead to the entire global collapse of

the financial system. And I'm sitting

there just having graduated college like

what is going on? Like what is going on

to America? Are we going to be okay?

The stock market was plunging. Banks

were failing. Every day it seemed like

was worse than the day before. Every

adult I knew was like super stressing

out about it.

What was happening? Nobody knew.

After months and months of this, finally

the president signed this economic

stabilization plan, this huge fund to

kind of help banks that were struggling,

financial institutions that were

struggling. And about a year later,

things sort of stabilized. But

practically speaking, like all the

construction in Fresno stopped. And tons

of people I knew were getting laid off

from their jobs. And it was like people

I knew had just bought a house had to

quick sell their h it was it was crazy

like the the way things were going and

you know things sort of stabilized and

then we started to learn as in a trickle

over time that like yeah there was a lot

of institutions engaged in corrupt

practices. There was fraud and like

people misleading the general public.

There was more serious crimes than that.

reckless lending

and we all found out about it

and then everything just seemed to kind

of go back to normal.

None of the criminal, no one who had

perpetrated any crime except for one

person got in trouble.

The world seemed to move on.

No one was held accountable for this

horrible thing that happened.

And what are we supposed to think about

that?

This is exactly the kind of thing

Cohelith, the author, is wondering about

in our text today. Bad things happen.

The dust eventually settles. The bad

guys seem to get away with everything.

Is this the way things actually are?

Like, it sure looks that way.

Will there actually be a reckoning for

wrongdoers? Will there actually be

vindication of the innocent?

It's crazy that the the way that the

sorry I'm not going to rabbit a trailer

to this, but the way that the government

chose to handle that was they punished

the institutions instead of the

individuals responsible for committing

the crimes. And so literally like

everyone got away with it. It was crazy.

It's in the heart of this hard reality

that the king of Jerusalem is going to

take us today. Which brings me to the

main point of my passage. Main point.

When evil appears to prosper, fear God

and wait for the dust to settle.

When evil appears to prosper, fear God

and wait for the dust to settle. Please

open your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter

Ecclesiastes 8 · chapter mention

8.

Let me just very briefly remind us where

we are at in the book.

We've spent several months going on this

journey with Cohelith in the attempt to

answer the question, what really

matters? And having gone through a list

of the leading contenders of things that

might really matter, Cohelith has

concluded that nothing that he's able to

figure out really matters. Nothing. Not

wealth, not fame, not power, not the

construction of great monuments, none of

these things in the end

actually really matter. And he seems to

say that the the the question itself is

he the question itself is like a vapor.

It's chasing after wind.

And starting a few chapters back, there

seems to have been this transition in

the author's mind.

It's like he's come to the place where

he's like, "Okay, I can't know what

really matters, but how can I live

wisely in the life that I do have? What

can I how can how I live wisely in the

meantime? After all, some things are

clearly better than other things. Some

aspects of this world are worse and more

grievous than others. How do I walk with

wisdom given the facts?"

And so last week we considered how a

servant of a king ought to comport

himself in the presence of a ruler who

has absolute authority over him. And we

saw that the court official, the person

who's lives in the king's presence needs

to be patient. Pick their moments and

rational. Patient and rational. We also

saw the author briefly hint at the end

of last week's passage that maybe the

king is not the final authority after

all. Maybe there's another power at work

to which all of us will finally give an

account, even the king.

And it's only on the heels of that

subtle suggest suggestion that Cohelith

is going to pick up his point. So let's

now humble our minds and open our hearts

for the reading of God's word in

Ecclesiastes chapter 8, beginning in

Ecclesiastes 8 · chapter mention

verse 9.

All this I observed while applying my

heart to all that is done under the sun.

when man had power over man to his hurt.

Then I saw the wicked buried.

They used to go in and out of the holy

place and were praised in the city where

they had done such things.

This also is vanity.

Because the sentence against an evil

deed is not executed speedily,

the heart of the children of man is

fully set to do evil.

Though a sinner does evil a hundred

times and prolongs his life, yet I know

that it will it will be well with those

who fear God because they fear before

him. But it will not be well with the

wicked. Neither will he prolong his days

like a shadow because he does not fear

before God. This is the word of the

Lord. Father, would you bring these

words deep into our hearts and minds? I

ask in Christ's name. Amen. All

right. So, we're going to consider four

things today as we break this text down.

First, we're going to look at wisdom in

its context. So, wisdom in context.

Second, wisdom in noir. I'll explain

what that is later. Third, we're

considering the wisdom of the settling

dust. And fourth, we'll reflect on

application.

So, let's start with wisdom in context.

Looking down at verse 9,

the king says, "All this I observed

while applying my heart to all that's

done under the sun, when man had power

over man to his hurt." So here, Cohelith

reminds us that his quest for knowledge

and wisdom, the the degree to which he

is interacting with these issues is

really deep. It's deeply personal and

raw.

He's in on an honest exploration of life

under the sun, which involves his whole

heart in all the things he does. It's

interesting how much most of us struggle

to do that the way he does. To make

ourselves face all the difficult

realities of the world as they truly

are.

To meditate on things that make us

uncomfortable.

I think as a pastor I probably think

about hard dark realities more than

most. But even I confess I often hit my

limit and have to stop. I have to like

take a step back and take a deep breath

and go for a walk in the woods.

Solomon says, "I took my whole heart

into the whole reality and I truly

thought about it." And his thoughts

about wisdom and authority are not

occurring in a vacuum. It's not

occurring in a library surrounded by

books.

He's conducting this exploration in a

world actively being marred by human

oppression.

He's considering the way a man ought to

conduct himself before kings in a world

full of kings wielding power

tyrannically.

But Cohelith uses this expression at the

end of verse 9 that I I I deliberately

pushed it out a week because I wanted to

spend some time unpacking it a little

bit and thinking about it. Thinking

about it as a community. And that is the

phrase at the end. When man had power

over man to his hurt.

I want to think for a minute about what

that's referring to, how it's referring

to it, and what we should learn from

that particular way of talking about it.

So, first, man having power over man.

What is that referring to?

Well, if you go to the literature,

there's a whole list of suggestions that

people have made referencing all kinds

of different contexts that would have

been familiar to Solomon. So you think

of, you know, a king in his court

exercising authority over his subjects

or a servant in a house with a master or

a ruler exercising sovereignty over a

patron city-state or a man with his wife

or parents over children or a patriarch

over his tribe. There's literally dozens

of suggestions of what Solomon might

have had in mind here, but I think the

answer isn't the fact that it's vague of

what he's referring to.

I think his point is man having power

over man is a broad all-encompassing way

of describing every context in which one

person has authority or control or

influence over another.

It's vague because he's trying to

capture all of it.

What he's talking about here transcends

specific institutional structures like

slavery or state tyranny. It is calling

attention to the broadstroke temptation

that every human being feels all the

time. Namely, what if I just abuse my

authority to get what I want from

someone who can't do anything about it?

What if I just treat this person however

I want since I'm the one with the money?

This is describing the temptation at the

very heart of that sin. It's a

temptation to love myself instead of

loving God and my neighbor. to serve

myself instead of my neighbor.

If I look at the dynamic of my situation

with another person and I see it through

the lens of how do I use this dynamic to

serve myself rather than to serve them,

to self-gratify instead of to bless, to

self-s serve instead of neighbor love,

that I am walking in this sin, the sin

that he's referring to here.

In the same way that your world is full

of people succumbing to this temptation,

Solomon is like that. Also,

I think being general and vague,

Solomon's trying to highlight the fact

this isn't a sin that just touches kings

and princes and lords. It's a sin that

touches all of you.

It's a sin that touches big sisters

towards little sisters, co-workers with

each other, people you work with. That's

a sin that touches you. Man having power

over man to his hurt is bigger than any

one context you can point to and then

distance yourself from. It's pervasive.

It's everywhere. It's like a virus

and it's endemic in Cohelis world and

it's endemic in ours.

So that's what the author is talking

about the sinful abuse of authority in

whatever situation it takes place in.

Second, I want to consider how he's

referring to this sin.

So the reflex of our modern culture in

America

to to when they notice this very thing

that Solomon is pointing out is to react

and say authority itself is the problem

to look at everything in society through

the lens of power and privilege and so

forth and to try to radically tear down

all these distinctions in the interest

of fairness and quote unquote justice.

But it's important to realize here that

Solomon's beef with this situation he

describes is not with authority as such,

but the abuse of authority. Man over man

to his hurt when it's inflicting

violence against the other person.

The Bible is very clear on the fact that

authority itself is a morally neutral

thing. It's a thing that can be used for

good and it's a thing that can be used

for evil depending on how you use it.

The scripture celebrates in fact the

right use of authority.

David clarifies in his final words that

right authority is like a life-giving

blessing in 2 Samuel 23:es 3-5. He talks

about a good leader is like the dawn

like the morning dawn after night or

like rain that makes the grass to sprout

and flourish.

Good leadership, good a right use of

authority is lifegiving.

On the other hand, scripture is

literally full of songs lamenting the

wickedness of bad authority

or boasting about the o overthrow of

wicked authorities.

When the righteous increase, the people

rejoice. Proverbs 29:2 But when the

Proverbs 29:2

wicked wicked rule, the people groan

under the burden.

The scripture does not long for a day

when all authority is abolished. It

longs for a day when all authority is

brought into subjection to the love of

God. Christ is a king.

It was Christ Jesus after all who told

us that the greatest among us, the

greatest among us is the servant of all.

He himself came not to be served but to

serve and to give his life as a ransom

for many.

So what should we learn from Solomon's

characterization of the issue here? Like

abusive authority is all pervasive and

the kind that I'm mad at is the kind

that's abusive.

Most of us possess authority in our life

in some way or another.

Especially given that not all authority

is institutional and formal. There's

lots of kinds of informal relational

authority. The question is how do you

use your authority?

Whatever the authority is that you have,

do you use it to serve and to bless

or do you use it to serve yourself?

Let's do a quick audit of ourselves.

Don't answer out loud. Answer these

questions in your mind.

When I go to a restaurant where I'm the

one paying the bill and the server who

is serving me is not doing as good of a

job as I expect, do I use my informal

authority in this situation to be rude

and punish them or do I use my informal

authority to try to help and bless them?

When I am at work and someone on my team

is trying hard but keeps making mistakes

that's causing the project to take

longer, how do I use my influence in the

group? Do I attempt to mobilize the rest

of the team to help that person or do I

mobilize the team to complain about the

that person?

When I'm at home with my younger brother

or sister and they are being annoying to

me,

do I use my influence in their life to

try and help them learn to not act that

way or do I punish them for bothering

me?

If I am in a church and I give money to

that church and I give time to that

church, should I use my influence to try

to get what I want from people in that

church or try to figure out how to bless

those other people even if they don't

give or serve like I do?

If I know a lot more than you about

something in a conversation and someone

is sharing their thoughts about it and

maybe it occurs to me that their

thoughts aren't exactly right, should I

use my knowledge to correct them and

clarify for everyone in front of

everyone what the truth is or should I

take the person aside later to try to

help them better understand the subject

that they're discussing?

The heart of this issue, brothers,

sisters, is are you looking at what you

have and your position in people's lives

and thinking of it as an opportunity to

serve, to help them, to bless them, or

as an opportunity to receive, to take,

to get.

Jesus himself is the ultimate model for

this. He had to deal with people making

dumb mistakes. He had to deal with

people all the time misunderstanding

him. He had to deal with people treating

him more poorly than any of us will ever

be treated ever in the history of the

world.

Jesus is our hero. Jesus is the hero of

this church. And it's from him that we

learn what good authority looks like.

It's from him we learn that the right

use of authority can bring salvation to

the world.

So this is the context of Solomon's

wisdom.

He's considering the oppression of the

world in a world where oppression is

currently taking place

and he's thinking about how to think

about it.

Let's now turn our eyes to the next

section of text which is wisdom in noir.

For those of you who don't know what the

word noir means, noir is a storytelling

genre that's like dark and morally

ambiguous.

In noir fiction, the characters are

typically very cynical. There's no clean

distinctions between right and wrong.

Most of the time, the character is like

an anti-hero. He's full of like flaws

and brokenness. You kind of don't even

know if you want him to win or not. Um,

stories told in noir involve plots where

justice appears absent. And that's

essentially what Solomon is thinking

about as he looks at the first part of

this next passage.

He says, "I saw the wicked person

buried."

implied by that sentence is that this

person is having a public rather than a

private funeral.

This person is being publicly honored in

death.

He goes on, this person, this wicked guy

that they buried used to go in and out

of the holy place. This guy went to

church and he was praised in the city

where he had done such things.

This wicked person had lived a wild

hypocritical life and now he is being

honored in death in the very city where

he had perpetrated his crimes.

And the only thing worse than seeing a

wicked person celebrated in the place

where they perpetrated their crimes is

when that same person is baptized with a

veneer of religiosity.

This guy did all this stuff while

keeping up the appearance of religion,

going in and out of the inner courts of

the sanctuary, the holy place.

The robber baron was a member of the

church.

The sad fact of the matter is this kind

of thing only happens to wicked people

who are super rich.

Wicked people who are poor never get

treated like this. It's totally noir.

And you yet at the same time, Cohelith

can look at this [snorts] and feel that

sense of despair at it, but then also

recognize that this too is he. This also

is something that you will not in this

life fully grasp with your mind or your

heart. And yet the author can see the

reason for the ongoing issue quite

clearly because he says the evil deed is

not executed speedily. The justice is

not executed speedily. The heart of the

children of man is fully set to do evil.

Justice is delayed, it appears, or else

justice has failed.

We don't see immediate consequences for

moral evil. And so we wonder if the

consequences will come at all.

All those people and all those banks who

lie to America about the value of

subprime mortgages, are they just going

to go off whistling into the sunset?

That's what it looks like.

But there's something worse.

It's not just that justice appears to

delay. The apparent delay of divine

justice is like an accelerant to evil.

This says

it emboldens the wicked and encourages

the next generation to follow in their

footsteps. Their hearts become quote

fully set on evil end quote because they

mistake God's patience with God's

blindness.

When a community fails to see

consequences for moral evil, those moral

evils will not only persist, they will

proliferate. they will grow.

It's one of the reasons why rule of law

is super important for a society.

It's why it's so important for courts to

be just for our judicial system to

require not just evidence and arguments

to substantiate charges, but to actually

punish wrongdoing.

I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole

here, but just we've we've seen this in

our own city that when you stop

punishing a crime, the crime happens

more.

We saw it with our own Okay. Anyway,

there's an obvious connection in

Solomon's mind between actions and the

anticipated outcome of those actions. In

this passage, if people think they are

likely to get away with it, they're more

likely to set their heart to do evil.

And oftentimes when people look around

our world, it appears like a lot of

people are just getting away with it.

And this is what Solomon says in his

day. This is what Solomon says about his

day. It's like so many people just do we

evil things and nothing bad seems to

happen to them. This is wisdom in the

noir.

Let's now turn to the wisdom of the

settling dust.

It's funny as you get older, you start

thinking about things your dad used to

say when you were a kid.

My dad was not religious, but he had all

these inexplicable religious

sensibilities. So, he used to say things

all the time like, you know, what goes

around comes around, Josh. Or if there

was like a bully, he'd be like, you

know, that guy's going to get his

comeuppants. Like, it's he was born in

1930. Okay, he said things like that.

But, you know, he had this sense of like

that guy is event like he's eventually

going to act like that to the wrong

person and get his block knocked off.

You know, these things have a way of

just working themselves out, which I

never noticed at the time carried an

almost theological conviction about

justice. That justice delayed is not

justice denied.

I have an extra blank page in my notes.

Okay.

I had a mo. You guys remember a couple

months ago when one of my pages was

missing? I was like, "Oh no, what

happened?"

Given time and circumstances, there will

be a reckoning for all people. That was

something he just thought, even though I

don't think he really thought about why

he thought that. He just thought that.

And this is the very thing I think

Solomon's feeling here, not because of

something he's seen under the sun. In

fact, I think it's contrary to what he

thinks he's seeing under the sun.

I think he thinks what he is about to

say because he's read God's law.

Though a sinner does a evil a hundred

times and prolong his prolongs his life,

yet I know

despite what I see, I know that it will

be well with those who fear God because

they fear him. But it will not be well

with the wicked.

In the short term, we can see under the

sun that it often appears like justice

is delayed. But true wisdom looks past

the immediate optics of verse 10 and

anchors itself in theological

convictions.

He contrasts two certain outcomes for

our way of life. And the pivotal

distinction between the two outcomes is

whether or not we fear God. It will be

well with those who fear God because

they fear God. And it will not be well

with the wicked no matter how many years

they extract through corruption because

their life is ultimately like a shadow

like a fleeting empty rapidly slipping

into darkness shadow. They cannot skirt

cosmic justice forever because they did

not fear God.

Wisdom for Solomon is recognizing that

when the dust all settles, it is God,

not you, not me, not the wicked, not the

righteous. God is going to have the last

word.

And God is just.

God is holy. God is faithful and

compassionate and full of steadfast

loyal love. And he will by no means

clear the guilty.

And Solomon says, "It will be well for

those who fear him. It will not be well

for the wicked who do not fear God."

Solomon knows this in his bones. the way

you know that the bad guy shouldn't win.

And when the bad guy wins, it's a

tragedy.

Even those of us like me who didn't grow

up in church, who never cracked the

Bible until my 20s, I know for reasons

that I was never self-aware of until

much later, that the bad guy shouldn't

win in the end. If the good guy loses,

it's a tragedy. It can't be allowed to

happen. We've just absorbed that by

being from the West.

I never was taught that philosophically.

That was in the air we breathe, the

water we drink, and the stories we love,

and the villains we hate. We are

nurtured and nourished on these ideas

and frameworks. The way Cohelith is

nourished and nurtured on the law, so

that even when he is old, even when he

is lost, even when he doesn't know how

to understand almost anything, he comes

back to the bedrock of what he's been

taught since he was a child that God is

just and God will judge.

God is not going to let anyone get away

with anything because he is a faithful

king and a just judge and that is good

news for the world.

So the immediate application is don't

let the apparent success of the wicked

cause you to compromise your integrity

for even a minute.

It will go well with those who fear God.

You need to trust that when the dust

settles, God will make everything right.

So that said, I want to close with just

a few practical thoughts on what it

means to fear God and how we can

practically live out the fear of God in

situations like that where your things

don't seem to be going right.

Okay. So what does it mean to before we

even apply what does it mean to fear

God? Well, you can I I think it's

helpfully boiled down to like a picture

of of how a loving child relates to a

godly father who is super wise and super

just and super loving and super

compassionate and kind.

You love your father. He's strong and

tender.

You want to learn from your father in

this scenario. You seek him when you

need help. You seek comfort from him.

You don't want to participate in any

patterns of life that your father has

forbidden or tells you to stay away from

because he's wise and he knows.

The sons of the father try to avoid

thoughts of violence towards each other

because they know that this angers the

father not because the father's full of

rage but because he's full of love.

Because he desires to see his children

live together in love and peace and

thriving.

So fearing God is a way of orienting

yourselves towards the father from a

posture of love, humility, dependence,

reverence, obedience, and trust. So then

what does it look like to do that when

I'm looking at a world where the wicked

seem to be getting away with things?

When it looks like it's not going well

for the righteous and it is going well

for the wicked, how do I do that?

Well, the first thing to do, and again,

I'm I'm just hoping to be really simple,

okay? apart from any specific thing is

you have to decide right now that I'm

not going to make my ability to

understand what's fully going on a

prerequisite for my obedience.

We must never say until I can perfectly

understand everything, I'm not doing

anything. That is pride.

That is making your ability to

comprehend things the king of your life

rather than God.

That's like saying my mind and my

ability to comprehend is more reliable

than God's words are.

Sometimes I don't think

it's not often we are forced to come

with grip to grips with how little we

actually understand and know. If you

talk to anyone who's an expert in

virtually any field about their field

and they start talking about it and you

start asking specific questions, they'll

be honest with you pretty quickly like,

you know, we definitely know some stuff,

but there's a lot of stuff we don't

understand. And that's like experts in

their field.

And so it's kind of strange that we

would think, you know, life, which is

more complicated than any specific uh

field of study, that like I'm going to

perfectly comprehend this somehow. It's

just it's it's kind of a wild notion.

Um

even more so to make it a prerequisite

without which you won't trust God.

That's an insane notion.

Once we can humble ourselves under the

reality that we're not really going to

know everything at any point anyway,

something wonderful happens.

You are free to no longer lean on your

own understanding.

God tells us counterintuitive things all

the time.

All the rich executives who profited

from the 2008 financial collapse and all

who perpetrated the crimes that caused

it. It might seem like they're still

having a great time in life,

but the dust is going to settle

and justice is going to come.

And we have to say at the end of the

day, you know what, God, you know more

than me. You see more ends than I do.

And even though it looks like they're on

yachts and I'm like driving my Camry

with a catalytic converter missing

because someone stole it,

that justice will be meed out in truth.

It like like in in the real way, not

like in the all right way, like in the

all satisfying why did I ever question

you way.

Here's the biggest thing that fearing

God can teach you about life in the

world. Ready?

Learning to fear God as God teaches us

that we don't live in a story where you

and I and God are all like similar

characters.

Um we live in a story in which God is

the main character and God is bringing

about all things according to his

redemption, power, salvation, and grace.

And we are NPCs or we're side quests or

that's wrong of all those things I just

said. We're

we're minor side characters. We're here

for a few minutes. And the question that

God puts before us is are we going to be

the kind of people who participate in

and assist the expansion of his kingdom

into the world and his purposes and his

glory into the world? Or are we going to

be people who resist it? Are people

fighting against it and fighting against

those people who are trying to bring it

to pass?

One of the great things about learning

to fear God is to begin to live in the

recognition that God's not a part of my

story. I'm a part of his. [snorts]

We're a part of what he's doing in the

world, not vice versa.

And if that's true,

if that's true, then it rules out the

option of ever capitulating to evil.

We make no peace with evil because we

want the good guy to win.

We want God to win because his triumph

is a triumph of love and salvation and

justice and healing and life and that is

the ultimate good.

Finally, fearing God.

By learning to fear God, you learn

something really crucial that you can

only learn through worship and prayer

and faith and obedience. And it's this.

Communion with God, fellowship with God

is more satisfying than answers to our

questions.

Psalm 73 is the ultimate example. It's

or it's probably the clearest exam.

Well, maybe it's tied for the Okay,

sorry. Psalm 73 is a very very good

example of someone wrestling with this

precise question like why do the wicked

seem like they're having all the fun?

Why do the like why does my wicked

neighbor have a jet ski? you know,

doesn't literally say that, but but

something really powerful and memorable

and deep happens in that psalm as he's

processing these things and he's

thinking about it really literally and

specifically like I'm like poor because

I choose not to oppress and steal and my

neighbor's rich because he does that

stuff and like that doesn't seem like

right and why like why am I doing and

and at a certain point it's like he gets

to he's like I thought about how think

about this sort of thing and it just

seemed like worrisome and discouraging

until I went into the sanctuary of God

until I went into the temple and

worshiped and then I discerned their end

and then I remembered that my heart and

my flesh might fail but God is the

strength of my heart and my portion

forever.

I get God

and the one who hates him will receive

his justice.

Knowing why something has happened the

way it happened is not as much of a

relief as knowing that God is just, as

knowing that God is good, that he is

there, that he is with us. Whatever you

think an answer can give you, God can

give you more. In the same way as the

psalmist does when we're thinking about

how to understand why things are the way

they are. When we're frustrated about

that, what do we think about the

brokenness of the world? when we feel

lost in a wash, you know, by our

feelings and our frustrations.

The the best thing to do in that

situation, literally the best thing you

can do is to lift up your head and your

heart and sing holy, holy, holy.

Though the darkness hides thee, though

the eye of sinful man thy glory may not

see, only thou art holy, there is none

beside thee,

perfect in power, in love, in purity.

When evil appears to prosper, [snorts]

fear God and wait for the dust to

settle. Let's pray.