Vignettes

Good morning, church.

Today's reading is from Ecclesiastes 5, verses 1 through 7.

Ecclesiastes 5:1–7

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.

To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.

Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God.

For God is in heaven and you are on earth.

Therefore, let your words be few.

For a dream comes with much busyness, and a fool's voice with many words.

When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools.

Pay what you vow.

It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.

Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not stay before the messenger that it was do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake.

Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?

For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity.

But God is the one you must fear.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Uh we've got a packed house today, and there's a couple of great reasons, I think.

Um one of them is there's family in town for Paige and Gibson because they're getting married tomorrow.

Oh, maybe I'll wear my microphone.

Good morning, everyone.

It's great to gather together with you all.

Uh and the other is uh the church plant that has been attending our church while they're gathering things together.

Um, Mark Luby and Patrick Sebeki are uh pulling that together, and they had a retreat this past Sunday, and so I think just about everybody that was on their short the retreat is gathered here today.

They're gonna be going out from our church in October as there's sort of incubating here.

That's maybe overstating it, but it but at least attending here.

And uh uh while they're gathering together, so the Lord is at work in Denver.

Uh He's raising up churches and sending them out, and uh there's the Lord is really at work in in uh our city, which is praise God.

I mean, we could use it.

So we get to bear witness to that.

So yeah, a lot of exciting things.

Marriage, new churches, that's good stuff.

Let's talk about how everything's meaningless.

In our third week in Ecclesiastes, would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, as Zach read this morning, you meet us in our weakness and you understand our frame.

Lord, that we only have a boast in you.

Who has known the mind of the Lord, who has been his counselor, who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid.

From you and through you and to you are all things.

To you be the glory forever.

Lord God, you are in the heavens, we are on earth.

Our words should be few before you.

Lord, let us understand the one that we are drawing close to this morning as we hear your word.

Lord, when we were called, we are a people of no estate.

But yet, Lord, we gather together in your presence this morning.

You inhabit our praises.

What we do this morning, we pray that it would come before you and honor you, that you would be revered and honored by us, Lord, your people.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So we are moving through Ecclesiastes here at the end of the summer.

Before this fall, we're after Labor Day, we'll jump back into Exodus.

It's been a long time since we've been in Exodus.

Um we've uh when we stopped reading, we left all those poor Israelites still stuck in Egypt.

And so we got to get back to it, you know, to get them out.

And uh during this time in Ecclesiastes, uh, we've established uh several themes so far throughout this book.

We've seen the theme of vapor, which is uh that everything is is ultimately vapor, that it all goes away, that everything that is under the sun, because we are in this temporal reality, it all ultimately goes away.

And we've also seen the theme of under the sun, which is about time.

And then we've looked at how Solomon dealt with time, and he brought these two themes together, where he says that there's a time for everything that takes place under the sun, and that God makes everything beautiful in its time.

And he causes us to understand likewise that everything is vapor from the perspective of under the sun.

And so the only way that we can understand the true meaning that is in the world is by faith in God, who promises that he makes everything beautiful in its time.

We have to live in that space where we understand the vapor.

Vapor is all that we can see by our own analysis of the world.

Everything goes away, everyone dies, doesn't feel like vapor, but it all it all goes away.

And there is this unthinkable eternal meaning in it because it is a story that the sovereign God, who is in control of all things, is writing.

He is the true author, who is bringing out of this temporal reality an eternal glory and eternal beauty.

And we see that that met in Jesus Christ.

That in Jesus Christ we see that the eternal one became finite, so that in our finitude we can have an ultimate hope of eternal life.

But today we see that those arguments, which are sort of these high theoretical arguments that are difficult to comprehend, they're about eternal things and finite things and universals and particulars, and they're the things that gets the philosopher and all of us very excited and where we want to spend our time.

But Solomon understands that that is not really the place of the argument.

The argument cannot uh last and it won't be convincing if it just takes place in those theoretical places.

In fact, that's not really the way that us humans learn.

What we learn is more like a pattern of repetition.

If you think back on the lessons that you've learned in your life, it probably wasn't your first experience of something, it was likely your second or third.

And then you look back and you said, Oh, I'm in a I'm in this experience again, or I'm I'm in a relationship that was just like that other relationship.

What's going on here?

And you realize, oh, the common denominator here is um me.

I'm the one who keeps being a part of these things.

And then you see these patterns develop in your life, and then you start to glean lessons from them, and you start to gain wisdom in them, and you realize uh the uh and that's that's how that's how we actually gain understanding.

And Solomon understands this, and so he doesn't argue like the philosophers argue.

And it the Bible typically doesn't argue like the philosophers argue.

He doesn't it doesn't uh say like, okay, here's my we it would be nice, we often think that it would be nice if the Bible worked like this, where it would say, like, okay, well, here's my premise, here's a conclusion that I'm drawing you towards, and they would introduce that.

You get to read it in the abstract at the beginning.

And then you would then the next part you would begin to read, and it would say, Um, now here's premise one.

Do you understand premise one?

And you'd say, Yeah, yeah, I get that one.

It's okay, well, if you get that one, then here's this next one, you'll get that one.

Then if you think both of those are true, then here's the conclusion.

And we'd say, Got it, lesson learned.

Now I'll go love people well.

But that's not the way we learn, and that's not the way that the scriptures interact with us.

The scripture interacts in a much more humane way.

Uh, the scripture is ultimately the revelation of the person of God, and so it it is, it deals with us as persons and communicates to us as persons.

And so the way you can see this in Ecclesiastes, as I've been reading through this and trying to systematize it and understand it in a way that can be communicated up here, I've noticed that Ecclesiastes is actually a lot like life.

Where the way that Solomon presents the book is he'll present this sort of idea, and it's like you catch this idea and then he'll circle around it, and he'll revisit the idea again.

And now that you've gone through this circle of these different phases of life and you come back to this same idea, ah, now I understand it a little bit better, and it makes a bit more sense.

And then you'll you then he'll leave it again, and then he'll come back around, and you'll be like, I don't know if I get it here.

And that's the way that the Lord works in us and our lives, and that's the way that the scriptures work as well.

And so Solomon has been circling this idea that even amidst the vapor of life, and even amidst the toil of life, that there is a joy to be experienced in it, and that joy is just the gift of God.

And he's reintroduced this idea several times up to this point, and he'll do that again at the end of the large chunk that we're covering this morning, which is about two and a half chapters of Ecclesiastes that we're going through this morning.

But what he's doing is he's taking us into particular instances, and he'll tell us little stories of things that he sees happening in the world.

And that's where the real argument happens.

And we know this.

We know this is where the real argument happens because we might understand that the Lord is sovereign over all things and that he makes everything beautiful in its time.

And we might gather together in church and be able to affirm that.

We might even be able to think it later in the week in our minds.

God is sovereign over all things, all things happen perfectly according to the counsel of his will.

But then we'll encounter life.

And we'll see the horrible oppression of the innocent.

And we'll organize everything just right, and we'll we'll get things just in their right place, we'll even get some momentum going in our own lives, and then a catastrophe will strike.

That seems completely unreasonable and horrible.

We'll look for justice and we'll find cruelty.

And all of a sudden, in that place, these arguments start to feel very thin.

And it as though they aren't able to measure up.

They work in the abstract, but when they are brought down into the real issues of our life, then they start to fall apart.

One of my favorite books uh that I've read is The Brothers Kramazov by Dostoevsky, which is just a if you read it, you have to say it's one of your favorite books because you sound better than everyone else.

And there's a uh um this this sort of terrible scene where two of the brothers are sitting in a bar, and the one brother who you're pooling for the whole time is named Alyosha.

And he's uh uh simple but a true believer, and uh and a simple, loving, good man.

And then there's his older brother who's named Ivan.

And Ivan is shrewd, brilliant, like a brilliant intellectual, and he's uh he sort of makes it his task during this one scene in this bar together to destroy the simple faith of Alyosha.

And the way that he does that is not by explaining, you know, if the Lord is omnipotent, and if he's all-knowing, and if he's all good, and if he's all powerful, then it's impossible that evil things would happen.

And there's a paradox here.

And so so now Alyosha resolved that paradox.

That's not the way Ivan approaches it.

Uh, it's not so cold and so intellectual.

The way that he seeks to destroy the simple Alyosha's faith is by telling him stories that he's collected from the news of Russia in their day.

And the particular stories that he has collected are stories of uh oppression and violence against children.

And all he does is he he shares these stories with Alyosha.

And there are three stories that he really shares and really goes into.

There are actually true stories that Dostoevsky, you know, rips from the headlines, like how Law and Order used to do.

And he shares these stories, he puts these horrible events in the mouth of his antagonist, and those become sufficient for the argument.

And Aliosha's faith, it it gets right to the limit, it it almost crumbles.

I wrote this intro several times and I I shared a couple of the stories when I wrote it.

And honestly, I thought I'm not gonna share these.

They're horrific.

They're horrific.

So let your imagination go.

Um you can rip them from our own from our own headlines of the the terror of oppression that you see in the world.

Then you hold that up, and then you hear Solomon say, There's nothing better than for you to eat and to drink and to take joy in all your toil, for this is God's gift to man.

And you think, is Solomon writing Ecclesiastes, is this helpful if you're some bored king who is able who is coming to the conclusion that he he th the riches that he've accumul that he's accumulated are just unsatisfying?

And we say, okay, that's one type of insight, that you're just not satisfied with the riches of the world.

But can that conclusion that in the midst of this you ought to eat and drink and take joy in your troubles and in your trials because this is God's gift to man, does that stand up against the terrors of the world when we look plain plainly at them?

Or is this just some sort of retreatist perspective that Ecclesiastes is giving us?

Well, this week in Ecclesiastes, the section that we're covering, Solomon will press us, like Ivan, into the terrors and oppress and oppressions of the world.

And he will show us that this is not a retreatist position.

That the perspective that the scriptures are taking is not an unrealistic perspective, but it is the most realistic perspective.

He is not avoiding the horrors and the terrors of the world.

He is pushing us directly into them.

And then we'll see that even there, even there, his premise that there is joy to be had in this world as a gift from God, it sustains.

It works even there.

If it doesn't work there, we're all vulnerable.

Because catastrophe will befall you.

You will encounter someone who will share a story of their life and you'll think, how could God possibly?

How could God possibly?

Well, this, I hope, these texts I hope will serve as like an inoculation against the the horrors and the terrors of the world.

So that you might not be surprised at them.

But even there, your faith might hold.

Alyosha loses the argument in uh against Ivan.

Uh Ivan's smarter, he's more clever, and he's probably even more willing to look at the terrors of the world than Alyosha is.

But Alyosha wins the book in his simple life.

Ivan loses by the end of the book.

Alyosha doesn't.

It's simple.

It's a simple faith, but it's durable.

So we're going to move through a large section.

We're going to move quickly through lots of different stories, and then we're going to be thrust into this glorious conclusion that Solomon makes at the end of these mostly terrible stories.

So let's begin in Ecclesiastes 3.16.

It says, 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.

Now this is the less popular of the three sixteens.

It's a maximal argument that he's making.

If you go to the place where you ought to see justice, even there you see wickedness.

Now, don't you know this?

This is what set the whole podcast thing ablaze was a bunch of journalists discovered, hey, we can tell stories about people in our criminal justice system, and we'll be able to tell stories of wickedness.

Were you all there at the beginning of the podcast explosion?

This is a Tell Link prepaid call from Anand Saeed.

Is that familiar?

And what the exploration was is that there is a even that at this place, like you go to court, you seek out justice there.

What you find, corruption and wickedness.

You go to the place where justice ought to be.

You go to the church court.

And what you find is that your church was not interested in addressing the justice of the matter, they would rather cover it up to save face.

Well, where where do I go then?

And what Solomon is saying is that even there, even if if if it is corrupt all the way to the top, then what is the point of an appeals process?

What will I get on the other side of that?

And it shouldn't be surprising to us because of our doctrine of original sin.

Chesterton says original sin is the um most contested doctrine in Christianity, which is strange because it's the only one that's empirically verifiable, which is very Chesterton line.

He's very good at those.

But what we see, you know, if you go to a place of wickedness and you see wickedness, well, it just confirms what you already expected.

When you go to the place of righteousness and you see that even here is wickedness, where do you go?

Where do you go?

This is the horror that Solomon is bringing us into.

So what does he say?

In verse 17, he says, 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.

Breaking in, there is this hope in the midst of this.

And he's laid the groundwork for this.

And now the groundwork that he's laid, he can start to draw from in the book.

Because he can say, I said in my heart, they will be judged.

The righteous and the wicked will be judged.

The wicked will be found out.

It will finally be revealed.

The things that were done in secret will be exposed.

The goodness that was neglected and overlooked, it will be celebrated, gloriously celebrated.

It will happen.

There is a judgment coming.

Judgment Day is what we name Terminator movies.

But in the scriptures, it's looked forward to because it means that someone is watching.

There's a truth that can be uncovered.

And when that truth is uncovered, it will be judged perfectly.

Justice will be made, and it will be made known.

He continues on and he says in verse 18 I said in my heart, with regard to the children of man, that God God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.

And the way that God is testing us, as he goes on to explain, is that you, just like your dog, will die.

And under the sun, by your own temporal assessment, you cannot tell whether your soul will go up to the heavens and the dog's soul will go down to the earth.

You can't tell the difference just by looking at them.

They look exactly the same.

What their lives amounted to looks identical.

They both end in death.

And so by your own assessment, you might think there is no justice in the world.

And he's testing the sons of man to consider, is there any justice in the world, or does it all result in the same conclusion?

Do the good and the wicked ultimately end in the same place?

Are they all, are we all just treated like beasts as we go into death?

But Solomon's just told us there is a judgment.

You can't see that.

You can't test it.

You can't perform an experiment that's repeatable in any way to determine the difference in death between a human and a dog.

And so you might think God is an arbitrary judge.

He is no better than chance.

But the scriptures tell us we can know there will be a judgment day.

This is our hope.

Vapor, in this context that Solomon has explained to us, there's a sense in which there's a positive aspect to the vapor of the world.

It means that there's a limit to the wickedness.

Now, we can imagine, as lots of people are trying to figure out how to do, I think in Silicon Valley, is how to live forever.

And if they figure that out, man, the ends of their evil would be incalculable.

I don't think they'll figure it out, by the way.

I don't think that's what death is.

I don't think it's a medical issue, primarily.

And so the vapor in this context that wipes away the deeds of man, seemingly like an arbitrary sponge against every life.

In this context, we see there's a mercy in it, that the deeds of the wicked will not continue forever.

We can know that.

And by faith we see a judgment day is coming.

So now with these principles, Solomon will go into these various examples, or continue in these various examples.

Next one, he looks at oppression.

In Ecclesiastes 4 1, he says, Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold, the tears of the oppressed.

They had no one to comfort them.

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

He is not blind.

Solomon is no bored king.

He is deeply acquainted with the oppression in the world.

And he looks at it.

He says, on the side of the oppressors, there's power, which is like definitionally true.

If you can oppress, you have power.

It's what you use to do the oppressing.

And then on the side of the oppressed, there's none.

What can the abused child say to the parent?

And then who is there to comfort him?

And Solomon looks and he sees there is there's no one.

And his conclusion from this is a is a it's a terrifying one.

It's not one that you could say, maybe he's not looking close enough.

He says, I concluded that for the oppressed, that the dead are better than them.

Because at least they don't have to witness this.

And the dead who are better, in who's better than the dead?

It's the ones who were never born.

You know, Job says this.

He says almost the same exact lament after he loses his whole life and is plunged into this catastrophe.

And he wishes that he had never been born.

And what Solomon is saying here, and what we can see from this is he's not being unreasonable.

Look at the depths that the scriptures go to.

Look at the reality that they are calling you to face.

He looks at the oppression and he says, it would be better if they were not born.

The pain that they're experiencing in this life, it would be better if they had never even existed than to be under this type of pain.

But he keeps looking and he sees again that there is a uh there's another type of oppression, which is not just in the hands of the powerful, but it's it's the type of oppression that you do to yourself.

That it's so easy for all of us to find ourselves under.

In verses uh four through six of chapter four, he lays out these several principles.

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

This also is vanity and striving after wind.

Then he says, the fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

And then to conclude, better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and striving after the wind.

There's a there's a couple of characters in here.

All toil and all skill and work come from a man's envy of his neighbor.

This is why when I walk into your yard, I see how good it looks.

When I walk into my yard, I see where my dog has gone to the bathroom, and I can't and it kills the grass.

And then I think, I gotta fix that.

And the reason I have to fix it is because of your yard.

And the toil and the skill.

It's all because of man's envy.

You know, in uh if you're in the church world and you gather with other pastors, so tell me about your church.

About how many people go there?

About how many people just curious.

Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

We're just here for the kingdom to make disciples.

We celebrate the victory of everybody.

And the toil and the skill, it comes from man's envy of his neighbor.

It's this churn, this cycle of dissatisfaction.

You have to know.

Like I want to, I I wanted to, I should have named this just like you should know this stuff if you're gonna be living out here.

If you don't know that that's there, you're not gonna understand the world, and you're gonna get taken advantage of in all kinds of ways.

You have to know.

Ever since Cain hated Abel, there's been a world driven by envy.

And that is vanity.

It's an empty bag.

There's nothing on the other side of it.

And then the next person, he says, the fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

So you see the person who's toiling and striving.

Then folding your hands is where you rest, you do nothing.

It's sort of a way of saying the lazy person.

So the the lazy person might even look and say, it's just vanity.

Like they're all just toiling and working because of envy over one another.

But Solomon says, I see that person who's doing nothing, and they're just devouring their own flesh.

You can see that because they're putting themselves in their laziness in a in a position where they they have nothing left to devour but themselves.

And even their own, even their own agency is devoured by themselves.

Because they sit and they lose confidence that they could accomplish anything in the world, or that anything that they did would be of any meaning or use or generate anything.

And so they devour their own flesh.

But then another break happens, and he says, Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and striving after the wind.

Quietness, quietness.

It's twice as good as toil and striving after the wind.

But where do you get it?

Where could you get quietness?

We'll continue on.

In verse eight, he tells us another story.

He says, One person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil.

His eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?

This also is vanity and an unhappy business.

That's another thing you'll see out there.

You'll look and you'll see the one.

He has no son or brother, no relationships.

And he's toiling and striving after the wind.

And he never even stops to ask why.

You know, I love hustle culture videos.

Do you guys know what I mean?

Great, this will work.

But they're like these like influencers who their whole shtick is like grinding.

You know, you wake up and you grind.

And you get and you you wake up and you get at you, you know, we're here to get after it today.

And whatever you're working at, I work from you know 4 a.m.

We they do morning routine things that are absurd.

And they'll they'll recommend this to their followers.

They're like, for the next six months, like we're going monk mode.

No people, don't talk to people anymore.

And this is where we're gonna get down to laying out our, you know, you got to get your vision, and we're gonna make our millions, and then maybe there'll be time for people later.

And this is the this is what they're recommending.

And it's like this, you're creating this person.

And it and the question is why?

But that's not even the question that Psalm asks.

Yes, one that's more pointed.

For who?

For who are you doing that?

For who?

Why are you lost in this?

Why have you neglected all of your relationships in this way?

For who?

And then from there, it's like he it's sort of hard to find the link sometimes, because this is almost like Proverbs.

But I think there is one here, right from this question from who, it's like this insight breaks forth from Solomon, and he says this in verse 9 and 10 two are better than one.

They have a good reward for their toil.

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.

This is a hopeful insight.

Finally, something that's better.

What's better?

Two or better than one?

It is better to be in relationship.

It is better to have a real friend, it is better to have a close spouse.

It is better to have community.

And it's better because, well, what if you fall down?

There's someone there to help you up.

And this better that's that's that breaks forth right when he introduces this topic of human relationships.

It's like this clue to where the meaning might be in our lives.

It's like these human relationships are this little teaser trailer for where the true meaning of our lives might be found.

And he's explained this already, and it will it will show forth that that if we are relating to God, that if there's some way that the transcendent is able to break into this world of vapor, then maybe there's a way out.

Maybe there is a meaning in it.

And your relationships are like a clue to this.

We vastly undervalue our relationships.

They're in our way, in their heart.

I was talking with a friend of mine this past week.

We've known him since fourth grade, and we he's lived out here for a while and he's moving back to Florida.

And he is um uh he was like, Man, at Denver just started to wear on me.

Single guy, successful, definitely a hustle culture dude.

Like he's made a lot happen.

And he said, you know, I just have the sense that for relationships out here, people expect it to be like as easy as easy and convenient as like calling an Uber.

Like it's just on my terms, and if anything gets in the way of it, then there's no point in participating in it.

And he's like, and I feel like if I uh need help or ask for help in any way, I'm gone.

I'm out.

I'm I'm there's no friend for me.

I think that's true.

I think that we've we've been trained to think of our relationships as things that are that are in the way.

And then they're the one thing in this section that is broken out where Solomon has to say, you know, that that's actually better.

That's better.

It's better that there was a friend.

Here's another important thing for you to know.

Another important story.

Verse 4, 13 to 14.

He says, 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 the throne, the poor and wise youth goes from prison to the throne.

What a story.

What a story.

It's the by the way, it's the story of Gladiator.

So you know it's a cool story.

Though in his own kingdom he had been poor.

Man, don't you know?

Isn't that the truth?

I feel like you hear that.

Here's something you should know is this story.

It's better, the poor wise youth is better than the old foolish king who can no longer take advice.

Age is no guarantee of wisdom.

It can produce just mere hardness of heart.

Who's no longer someone who is no longer able to take advice?

You can look and plainly see, it's the poor and wise youth is better and should be in the place of the king.

And it's right, and we should celebrate it.

When that king is removed and the poor and wise youth is put into that king's place.

We all we all get that.

We're all tracking so far.

Now here's what happens.

Here's the the next part of the story.

You have to know this too.

You have to know this too.

All you zoomers that looked at our millennial pants and said, those are skinny.

All you millennials who say, okay, boomer.

All you boomers who said, never trust anyone over thirty.

This one's for you.

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

That poor wise youth, there was no end of all the people of whom he led.

Well, let's see how things went for him.

Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him.

Ah we're so close.

Surely this also is vanity and a striving afterwind.

The familiarity of the poor wise youth breeds contempt.

Ah, if we could just replace this generation, if they would just let go of those homes in downsize so that we could maybe buy our first one.

Well, it will happen.

Or something like it.

I don't know.

It might not happen.

You think, then we'll be the we'll be able to replace.

And then things will be good.

And then it will come for you.

Then it will come for you.

How aren't you don't you know this story?

Aren't you glad it's in there?

Doesn't it explain a lot?

You have to know this story.

You'll be a fool if you don't know this story.

And you'll look and you'll you'll think that the problem is in the wrong place.

You'll think you will have finally broken some sort of cycle if you don't know this story.

When you've been in leadership, and then you start to grow a little long in the tooth, and you see the contempt that's bred towards you, you have to know this story.

This is the way it ends.

We've had so many great men in evangelicalism die in the past couple of years.

And these great men, you know what they get when they die when they die?

Mixed reviews.

All of them.

They get mixed reviews.

You know what you're gonna get if you're one of the best, if you're one of the most effective in your role, you know what you're gonna get?

Mixed reviews.

That's what you're gonna get.

That's helpful to know.

I'm glad that story is in there.

Next, chapter five, verses one and two.

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.

To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.

Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth.

Therefore, let your words be few.

That vanity is also present in the religious life.

It is easy, and some commentators read Ecclesiastes as a secular experiment.

That's not the appropriate read of Ecclesiastes.

He's never apart from God.

That's not really his project.

And so here he takes us into church, takes us to the house of God, to the place of worship before the Lord, and he calls you to this high standard.

Here in this place of worship, we are to honor and we are to approach the God, we are to approach God with honor and reverence.

Let your words be few.

The God that we are approaching today, that we are before now, He is in The heavens.

You're on earth.

Fear him.

This is so difficult for us to understand.

I think in American evangelicalism, it is so difficult for us to understand the honor and reverence that is due the name of God in our gathered worship.

We think of this as a program that we ought to put on in order to meet our particular preferences.

So that we assess our worship by saying, like, did you like it?

It doesn't matter if you liked it.

Did God like it?

Was God pleased?

Was his name blessed?

Was his name honored and glorified?

In our gathering today.

Don't be rash.

Don't you you you may think like you're going and you're you're doing something good just by doing the good thing, by showing up, but it but when this is not from your heart, when this is not in spirit and in truth, God says they don't even know they're doing something evil.

That's scary.

I hate verses like that.

The ones where it's you don't know if you're doing evil.

So are you doing evil?

If you think you're not, still might be.

God is in heaven.

We are on the earth.

This is why I think um, you know, every week we uh we confess along with John the Baptist what his what his confession was when he was asked, which is I am Yeah, and I know that like for probably like half the room, it's like this is one's weird.

I don't know if I totally get this one, but here's the point of why we do that.

We do that because we're we're trying to posture ourselves, especially after confession of sin and assurance of pardon.

Because our assurance of pardon comes from him.

It doesn't come from you, it doesn't even come from your confession.

It comes from the free grace of Christ.

And so we position ourselves: why am I saved?

Because of the Christ.

Who's that?

Not me.

He's in the heavens, he's really there.

The thing that I want to say about this part is God is real.

God's real.

He became a man once.

His name was Jesus Christ.

He lived one life, he died, it atoned for the sins of the world.

He rose again three days later.

That's the world you live in.

That really happened.

God hears you, he hears your prayers, he's listening.

I know because he promised you, and he can't tell a lie because he's God.

That's who we're approaching.

Solomon calls us to that.

We must approach God with reverence.

Now, this is an important thing.

This section of Ecclesiastes, it starts to really rhyme with Psalm 73.

Psalm 73 is one of my favorite Psalms because it's very relatable.

It's a man who is looking out and he sees things are going well with the wicked.

And it doesn't seem like it seems like these wicked people are doing all this stuff and nothing bad happens to them.

They're sleek and fat, you know, in a like in a good way, like in the like they they have everything they want.

It comes to them, it's theirs, it belongs to them.

But here I am, and I'm trying to honor God, and I'm just facing all these problems.

In fact, it seems like once I started trusting in God, the problems got worse, and things got more difficult and more challenging, and now I'm battling even against my flesh.

And then when I try and go back to sin that used to feel good, now even that doesn't feel good.

So I feel trapped in this.

And he's assessing and he's looking, the psalmist is looking out, and he's like, What is this world?

And then in verses 16 and 17 it says, But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God.

Then I discerned their end.

Why is Solomon calling you to enter the sanctuary of God with such reverence?

It's so that you might discover the place of hope while you're in the midst of this wearisome task of life.

And there you go to the place of God and you remember together with all the saints and with the songs that you sing, and with the promise that God has given us to attend this time that he has called us to set out before him, with the sacrifice of praise that we bring to him, that he promises to honor.

When we come here, our spirit is enlivened by his spirit, and we're reminded there is a God, there is a judge, there is an end, his judgment is good, it will be revealed.

I have hope in him.

This is the place where we see that.

Next, Ecclesiastes 5.8, this is another good thing to know.

If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter, for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them.

So you look in a province and you see the oppression of the poor.

There's this terrible violation of justice and righteousness in that place.

And what we do typically is we're like, what?

How can this possibly be happening in the United States of America?

Release the list.

There's gotta be a list.

And we say, how can it not be released so that justice could finally?

Have you heard of these crimes?

Could there possibly be justice?

Or are there just certain people who never have to experience the realities of justice?

Is there just a class of people that just get away with it?

And Solomon says, Well, there's people above them.

And those people, there's people above them.

And we hunt, we hunt for the center.

We hunt for the origin of injustice.

That if we could find it, if we could find the top, if we could finally uncover the top, then we would we could finally be relieved from this injustice.

There's people above them.

There's people above them.

The fool is amazed.

The fool says, I can't believe that it's corrupt all the way up to the very top.

And then even above them, it's corrupt above them.

I thought it was just the deep state, but they're just run by the Illuminati.

And then above them, there's, you know, I don't know, something we'll discover.

The point that Solomon, the fool doesn't know that's what it's like out here.

The wise person is not amazed.

The fool in that situation would fold their hands and say, Yeah, this is why I'm not a part of any organization, or this is why I wouldn't participate in any broader community, because I know that ultimately these it's all corrupt.

These people are all corrupt.

You know, everybody is.

It's all corrupt.

Well, the f the fool folds their hands and they devour themselves.

You've got to participate.

But in hope that there is a judge.

There finally is a judge who knows everything.

It's not you.

It's not you.

There are so many mysteries that you will never get to know.

You'll never know.

You'll never know what really happened.

God knows.

There's several that I'm leaving out.

If you love money, you'll never be satisfied with it.

That's one I'm leaving out.

Another one that I'm leaving out is the story of a rich man who toiled and then he lost it all in a bad venture, and then he had nothing left to give to his sons.

And he spent his days in anger and vexation.

That's another thing that can happen out here.

That can happen.

Here's where Solomon concludes this section.

Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun, the few days of his life that God has given him.

For this is his lot.

Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil.

This is the gift of God, for he will not much remember the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

He has given you all sorts of things that would give you permission to be constantly burdened down by them, to be driven into despair by them.

And then he says, Behold, there is a gift of God.

And look at the emphasis on God in this section.

We've circled back to this theme, but none has been more pointed than this yet.

There are a few days of your life, and they are given to you by God.

And he has given to you your lot, that is your boundary, your finite place.

And you cannot climb to the top and solve all the problems.

You cannot reach down to the bottom and make sure that they never happen again.

He has given you your lot, and he has tasked you with responsibility for it.

And he says there's joy in it when it's received as a gift from him.

God has given wealth to those whom God has given wealth and possessions and power.

You know what you should do?

Enjoy them.

Use them well.

Seek to honor God with them.

They're his gift to you.

And this type of person, the one who has seen the gift of life that God has given him, the gift of wealth and possessions that God has given him to steward, that he sees that this is the gift of God, says he will not much remember the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

His life will be like a meal with friends.

Even in this world of despair.

To me, it sounds like Philippians 4, 12 and 13.

It sounds like the lesson that Paul learned.

The lesson that Paul learned sounds like this I know how to be brought low.

And I know how to abound.

In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Do you know that that's what that verse is about?

The I can do all things through him who strengthened me verse.

It's not like touchdowns.

Sometimes, you know.

For most of us it's not.

It's about you can have nothing and you can make it.

You can have joy in that circumstance.

You can have abundance and you can enjoy it.

I think Seneca said it's even possible to be happy in a palace, which is an awesome line.

But it's even possible Paul could be happy in a palace, and Paul could be happy in a slum.

Why?

Because he can do all things through him who strengthens him, who is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because our Lord is not a God who is naive as to the sufferings of the world, but he was able to enter directly into them because of the joy that was set before him.

And that is the one who powers, who empowers us and strengthens us.

It is this Lord Jesus Christ who shows us that with the lot he was given, even when it ended in utter catastrophe that looked like pure defeat, there was a judge.

And the judge that saw it rightly judged him righteous.

And he rose again at three days later, and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him.

So because of the model of the Lord Jesus Christ, but not just the model, the effectiveness of his salvation for us.

Because he did it, we can look plainly at the wickedness and cruelty of the world, not naively burying our head in the sand.

And we can be realistic and see all kinds of things and say, yep, even that can happen out here.

And there is a judge, and there is hope.

And Jesus can strengthen us to face it because he has done it.

Our Lord has done it.

So we can be like Paul.

Look clearly, be wise, understand the pain of the world and the depth of the pain that is there.

Trust yourself to Jesus Christ, the one who has done it.

Let's pray.

Lord God, I pray that you would work this wisdom into our hearts, that we would be inoculated against the arguments that come into us from the world.

Lord, that we would not be naive, that we would be able to look plainly at the sufferings of the world, but we would not be driven to despair, because we know the one who has gone to the depths of suffering in the world, and you are the one who knows the way out.

Lord, we pray that we would see your justice, that we would see it enacted, that you would make us agents of it.

Lord, that we would see righteousness take root in our lives and in the world.

Lord, that we would have hope in you of the final resurrection where all will be set right.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.