Son and our Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 9, as Solomon, the king of Israel, king of Jerusalem, he called himself, talked to us about the endigmatic and mysterious tans of God. Solomon begins in this chapter his fourth and his final section of this book we're referring to as his journal about life and the sun. He knows he has a small introduction of two verses in the beginning of chapter 1 and a small conclusion, but two verses at the end of chapter 12 that he divides almost in even sections is journaled into four different parts. He talks in the first two chapters about the futility of life's pleasure, about education and riches and the pleasures of what we would call the good life and how they leave a empty futile. Then he talks in the second section about the ficticity of permanence of life's fate. There are seasons for everything ordained by God and man seems to be from Solomon's rather test of his defective at that point, six ponds and a greater gain than they realize is being played. In the third section, because finish he talks about the frustration of life's fairness, life treats everybody the same and is not fair to everybody. Kind of an enigma. For fairness means everybody treated the same, but when we're all treated the way that life treats us, Solomon's cousin, the conclusion that he wonders whether it's worth living. He's been rather negative, but he's praying after this point. Now he begins to turn the corner, that he talks about the foolishness of life's wisdom. He begins to say that the great problem he realizes in his own life that therefore he projects into our lives is that we basically think about life completely the opposite of what a God thinks. And because we are lies on our own estimation, we've really become fools. That's what the Bible says. Being wise on their own estimation, they became fools. That's what Paul said in the Romans. And he contrasts all through his writings, especially in this book of Ecclesiastes, man's wisdom with God's wisdom. And he agrees with Paul, long before Paul wrote these things, that the wisdom of men that compares to God is really just foolishness. For Paul said, where is the life man? Where is the scribe? Where is the beta of this age? Has not God make foolish wisdom of the world? Or since if the wisdom of God, the world through which wisdom did not come to know God? God was well-pleased in the foolishness of the message preached to say those who believed. I treated what Solomon is saying, in a sense it's his first repentance in the Old Testament. Solomon is saying, you know, I've lived my whole life thinking that I was a wise man, thinking that I knew God. And in a fact, I found that I know him very little. And my wisdom has really come to me to be foolishness. Look how he introduces this last section. He actually begins the last section, not in chapter 9, but in chapter 8 and verse 16. When I gave my heart to no business to seek the task which had been done on the earth, even though one should never sleep day or night. And I saw that every work of God, I concluded that man could not discover a work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover. And those wise men should say, I know he cannot discover. I take all this to my heart and explain it that righteous men, wise men and their deeds are in the hands of God. Men does not know whether it will be love or hatred, anything will wait in. Look at that last phrase. He says that man does not know whether it will be love or hatred, anything will wait in. Pauline says when I think about the life, keep it by the Psalms of old man now, that's older than I am. And he's thinking about these things that have gone by in this life. And he says he has come to the conclusion that the God is the sovereign God. And he's a deep and a mysterious God. And his hand is an amygdala to me. It reaches down from above the sun into life under the sun where I live. Where you live, we grow and have more beings. And I know that God will then change. And then I also know this. That man will not know what will come after him, anything will wait in. Walter Kaiser says this fourth and final section of the Plesiastes, there's not open up additional arguments but merely supplements that have already been affirmed. Men and women must give some practical advice. And most people have to apply the insights gained from the new perspective on life provided in the first three sections. The righteous must be encouraged, less the inignness that still remain in the mystery of God, or allowed to disheartening. Solomon talks about some insolable mysteries here. And what's amazing is he's talking about the same things that we talked about this morning in Romans. And it's like last week that two sermons unplanned by me, they just seem to match. They seem to go together. And Solomon says, you know, there are certain basic issues we struggle with. Like how long we live. And we want to accomplish new our labors. And how much people love us and appreciate it. We just struggle with these things all the time. And the questions he writes is a basis here of questions that you and I have raised a thousand times. Why is it that people who deserve to be loved or not? And those who work hard, it should be successful or not. And those who deserve to live a long time don't. And why did those who deserve the opposite get what belongs to the good? The very goodness is before the positive emphasis of the final three chapters in a merge, we have to make sure that we shall be building on nothing short of hard bitter reality. In case we could be sure it's cherishing some comforting illusions, check the line confronts us in the little that we know with the vast success of what we cannot handle. Death. The essence down the fortune and the erratic saber of the crowd. But first it asks the crucial question with a rear in hand of a friend or a foe. And how is he the foe that stores us? We shall have it either way. But we shall only have an uncertain answer about the creator's character from the world we live in. And this mixture of delight and terror, beauty and repulsiveness. Following the themes of tearing down the last shred of hope, is he when I could ever do our own efforts and the bed so to speak in this life so that everything goes away we wanted to go. And I imagine if there were three things that pie were a genie, that you could rub and I'd give you whatever you wanted. And I said, okay, make three wishes. I don't think I'd be far from the mark with the vast majority that you'd say well. I want to live a long and a healthy life. I want the Lord to bless my labor so that I am not still too rich and I'm fortunate and blessed and well-provided for. I want all my friends and the people around me to love me. I want to go to the grave of man who's lived a long time and successful and then genuine we appreciate it. And the thing that makes it so difficult is we know that we don't have to turn your DNA because then God will give you everything. It gives us a lot of people. He just is not consistent in the way he does the same thing. And we struggle with that. We know two things for certain. God is sovereign, we know that. And things don't turn out the way they should without that. And that leads to some people to a crisis of faith. A very well known, very famous rabbi. A rabbi, a Harold Kushner, a long friend of us wrote a book about a decade ago why bad things happened to these people. And the premise of that book was simply this statement of a rabbi of Kushner. I was much rather worship of God who was a light to this good, but was not able to do so. The wish of a God who could, which uses not to do so. When we say that again, because what rabbi Kushner for all of the criticism we've taken is really doing is he's voicing out loud and public and print with a vast majority of people including Christians, all something I would rather have a God who was unable to do good to people even though he wanted to, but have a God who could do good to everybody but chose not to. But that my friend is exactly what we've got. A God who could be good to everybody. But in fact, as it appears to us under the sun, it's not always that way. And so we ask these questions along the song, and we ask not song them that God, how long will I live? We bless the fruit of my neighbors and my life's sound for something. And we'll people love me. These are the enigmas of the enigmatic hands of God in our life. Look what Solomon's asked first of all, that he talks about this enigma of the length of life. How long will he live? He's planted in the first nine verses, actually beginning in verse two through verse nine of chapter nine. He talks first about what he called the madness, the insanity of death. It is the same for all. There was one state through the righteous, one through the wicked, for the good, for the clean, and for the young clean. For the man who offers a sacrifice of those who don't, for the one who does not offer sacrifice, as the good man is so as the sinner, as the swearer is, so as the one who is afraid to swear. This is an evil, and all that is done under the sun, that there is one state for all men. Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and the insanity of madness is in their hearts, throughout their life. Afterwards, they go to the dead. Solomon says the same for all. It shouldn't be. It's the same state, for the righteous and his pelvic heart are wicked, for the man who is good or clean, and for the man who is the opposite of him on clean, a bad. For the man who was religious and the atheist, for the good man and the sinner, for the one who honors God's name, for the one who doesn't care about is at all. It's all the same, one faith for all men. Death. And I think someone said, this is madness. Solomon says, see death as a natural phenomenon, but an invincible evil. A link with this evil is what he calls madness, and he grew a moral wildness that is infectious, irrational, and self-destructive. Solomon says, I don't know about you folks, but when I look at people, I think that it's wrong, the way they all end up the same way. But worse than that, he says, is the madness behind it all. But he says again, in the end of those verses, he says, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and madness, or insanity is in their hearts. To out their lives, and afterwards they go to the death, the evil reads more like this. The hearts of the sons of men are madness, and after death, it has an abrupt ending in the Hebrew. A abrupt ending says to reject the suddenness and the inevitable terror of death. It strikes at the most inoperative moments and seems to squander for nothing. The life that is already been squandered by the madness of simple living. His idea is this, when there it says, that the astonishing thing is that instead of reckoning with the meaning of death, he would fill their lives with the distractions of thousands of passions and stronger their life, little by little, an insignificant penny worries and filthy works. You'd think that we would no better, but death was coming to space at all, and you'd think that we would use the precious moments we have in life, better than we do, but some of them says we don't, and that's the least insanity. He says in verses 4-2-6, for whoever is joined with the living, well, there's hope. Surely a large dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die, but the dead do not know anything, who have they any longer or reward for their immense reward. Indeed their love and their hate, and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun. Some of it appears to quote what would be, of what we would call a street proverb, of common saying in his day, that a live dog is better than a dead lion, and there is the most privileged preacher in the most noble. We would put it this way, a live wretch is better than a dead nobleman. But, wherever the man finds himself on the social scale of the spiritual realm, life is better than death. Why? You think all this tension is in someone's day off again? No, that's not true. Someone says life is better than death, because only in life, do people have the time and the opportunity for repentance and hate? Someone who seems to grasp the finality of death, that it is appointed for men to die once and after this is the judgment. And he says, I don't know who will be and how disgusting. How disappointing a life is, and what people do with it. It's a madness. The insanity of a sinful life is better than the finality of death. Charles Griffith is the old spirit that's living on the land of hope, but very possibility of escaping the dark, destroying home that the impenetid did is unspeakable blessing. I knew this text was coming, and it's to me, this chapter 9 is one more difficult chapter than Ecclesiastes, and I am always thinking ahead in the sermon series, and I couldn't help but be thinking about these while I was on vacation with young Mr. John F. Kennedy Jr. plummeted to his death with his wife and his young sister-in-law, or the tragic thing. And it was bad to see how the country mourned, and how everybody was preoccupied with it. I began to think of that family because the media wouldn't let you not think about them for about two weeks, all that struck the Kennedy clan, as we call. There is only nine children. Two of them died by assassin's bullets. Two of them, by the way lost in playing crashes, and one of them was a father. Because they were mentally and capable of carrying home life, running to his church. And of the grandchildren, their lives would be sex with things like rape, child molotation, drunkenness, arrests, crooked politics, chaos, accidental death on the peaceful cancer that's taken their rims, broken families seem, it just seems like the tragedy has never happened. And the media kept saying, well then, in all of that family, why is the best one of the life? Why is they called as the Prince? The Crown Prince, John, Kennedy Jr. Why? Why such a good boy, having to die? Well, I don't know if it was a good boy or not. And I don't know if he was prepared to take the turn of your life. I thought he was. But I know that somewhere along the line, somebody in the Kennedy family has got to be asking themselves, do you think maybe God is trying to say something to all of us? Well, I mean, would that be the logical question? Which, the fact of the matter is, though, that's why she's being asked about all this all the time. Not just the Kennedy's. Every one of the seven years cases is death somewhere or nothing. And we can, I think, and sometimes do, explain it away, see a lot of the way, say, well, this is like that I said about that, after all, down 10 to the 3-week, after a few years, I'm sure that the 9-weeks didn't descend as death, I said, oh, we can't get anything to expect, yeah? That's true. But the truth remains, a live dog with a better chance to repent, that a dead line is taken in a sense. A poem that says, you know, all the things that happened to us, the destructive, nothing is as final as death. And yet, it has a purpose. Old Matthew Henry says, well, there is life, there is an opportunity of preparing for death. Letting know this, that which has been had no knowledge of, particularly, they know that they shall die. And, or maybe, thereby, can be influenced to prepare for that great change which will come certainly, and often comes suddenly. Yes, there's a madness to death, but there's also this wonderful mystery of life. I don't want you to lose this, but the one you see the Solomon in the previous age chapters would make these statements to walk away from then and leave us saying, what's going on? Not anymore. Now, he begins to give the answers. There's what he says, yes, there is a madness to death, but there's also mystery to life. It makes it all worthwhile. He says this in verse 7. Go then, eat your redness, happiness, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart. For God has already approved your works. Let your clothes be white all the time. And let hot oil be lacking on your head. He's doing life with the woman you love all the days of your fleeting life, which he has given you under the sun. For this is your reward in life, and in your toil in which you have labored, under the sun. Righteous men. God-fearing and conferred in them alike. Know that life is a probation, but only those in Christ can really believe that life is a source of joy. It is this great dealing with God at the cross about death that gives us the right in the ability to enjoy life. It's only those who can really enjoy life. The only ones who can really enjoy life are the ones who have already dealt with the slinality and the inevitability of their death. Those who are sure that when they die, they will go to be with God through Jesus Christ, are absolutely the only ones I take out here with. They all say on survey. I'm telling you what God says. They're the only ones who are able to live life, short, unpredictable, bruises it may be to its fullest. Jesus said, I am the resurrection of life. He who believes in me shall live even if he dies, which he will. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die, each one of these. There's a double rancidant there. Walter Paiser says, solemn on urges that whatever remains of the unexplained mystery in our lives must not present us from enjoying this life. The tendency to brood and promote about things has to be resisted in the lives of those who fear God and take life as a gift from the hand and receive God's plan and enablement to enjoy that life. Righteous men need not worry whether God is indifferent to them in their life. He is not. They are the special object of His gifts and of His acceptance. The believer brethren in the long run has no reason to be sad for very long about all of the death and decay and destruction around Him. Because in the end, sudden or broad, the death that He so much feared is an unconverted dog. It becomes the release of a lion's pup destined to live with a lion of Judah forever in the King Reglorious Heaven. Solomon says, look, I know that temporal life can often be shattered by those around us. It's just a reminder that we don't have much time to enjoy this life before we get to enjoy eternity. And it is in the swan of your life in worry when your life is guaranteed by Christ to go on and glory forever. Charles Bridgett's temporal blessings are doubly sweet that's cooking from Christ. It is absolved to be stowed and we are invited to receive them all in our special portion. We are not only the errors of heaven, but we are the newborns who inherit this earth. He has the clearest confidence for the heaven above, who has that heaven now in His own soul. So the Solomon says to the believer, you go ahead and eat it and drink. Enjoy the wife of your youth. The five pleasures in your labor, these are good gifts of God. As we sing in old Danny Cross, he's in a foretaste of glory to life. That leads us to the Second Amendment. They think about not about the length of life but about the labor of life. You say we have, the length is the treachery because we have to work. That's all I'm going to answer that. He talks about the meaninglessness of careers and the lighty power of work. Here's what he says, you're getting him first hand. Actually, verse 11. I again saw unto the sun that the race is not to the swift, and the battle is not to the warriors. Neither is red to the wise, nor wealth to the discerning, nor favor to men of the ability. For time and chance, over date them all, moreover, a man does not know his time. My fish caught in a treacherous net and birds trapped in a snare, so the sons of men are ensnared at an evil time when it suddenly falls on them. What I'm going to talk about is the meaninglessness of careers. And he uses the fiber we read of the last to display what he thinks is a gross injustice. He says, look, athletics. The race is not always to the fastest one. Look about warfare, but the battle is not always to the warriors. Business. The wealth is not always to the discerning, farming. Neither is red to the wise, skilled labor, nor favor to the men of the ability. In other words, the best college football team does not always win the national championship. The best restaurant in town doesn't always have all the customers. Look, pretty girl doesn't always get the boy in the end. And the boy doesn't always get the promotion he deserves. He can be a great parent and have a lot of kids. And happens. Our performance about life just don't work out the way they should. Life is a bread making machine. You put the ingredients in and out comes the most. If the lottery is put in the point and you don't know what's inside. And you don't know what comes up. Three cherries, three lemons. It's not as you know it's unpredictable. Life is about some machine where we put things in an automatic and get things out. In other words, people who deserve to be successful, deserve to win, deserve to be prosper. They don't. Not all the time. He says, well, the man does not know his time. Like fish caught in a treacherous net and birds trapped in his hair, so the sons of veterans stare at an evil time when it suddenly folds upon them. Like fish who are just swinging around lining their own business and the trolling that goes by and they get caught. So our men sometimes call up with what he calls time and chance. Remember back in chapter three, we talked about time and change. Here we talked about time and chance. You put a franchise. This is a little business that you and your wife have wanted all of your life. Save up your money. You borrow off your insurance policy. And you buy that little franchise and guess what happens. As soon as you buy a three or four months later, some bulls who buys a whole company and runs it into the ground and you lose everything. You carefully make investments and contemplated savings. So that when you reach out, you've got that nest egg. But in the president's revise and the tax goes and the market changes. And the rest of the world's losses and the recession that come about and all of your something comes to nothing. Preach faithfully, diligently, and passionately, but you live a phase where preaching is what Paul calls out of season. You have three lovely daughters who marry three who are apparently fighting Christians in ten years. Here's what you find. One of them is a victim of adultery. She's been disordered. She's putting on one of those double-checked. She's one of the statistics of the new poor, the hidden poor, a lonely woman who's underfunded. The other is in strange way about the son-in-law as a member of a weird, planning family, and they somehow have alienated and put a wedge between you and your daughter and the third one is dying to breast cancer about six months ago. You're within five years of retirement. That'll all plan down. And the company is forcing into some leverage by out, and you're laid off, and at the age of 60, you're looking for work. Some of them said, don't be surprised. And we shouldn't be surprised if people say it's useless. I'm going to drop out. I'm growing a beard, I'm putting some sandals on it, getting a nap pack, and I'm living in Colorado. I get them out. Well, I'll listen carefully to what someone is talking about. It's the danger of a career there, not the power of work. His answer is in person. There's meaninglessness to careers, but there's might in work. That's what he says. Look at him. He says, whatever your hand finds to do barely do it with all your might, but there is no activity of your planning or knowledge of wisdom and she knows that you are going. As long as I agree with you, this career business stinks. To best your life and becoming a professional whatever it is. It's a foolish thing to do. But there's great value and power, great might and work. Whatever your hands trying to do, verily do it with all your might with every fiber of your game. Forget your reward, forget your return on your investment, forget your recognition, that all comes later. Begin to rediscover Solomon said, but I had forgotten for a long time. So there is value and work simply as work and for no other reason. And hard for us because we have changed the essence of work. So now we only work for what we'll get out. And Solomon said sometimes, we forget that there was the old management book she used to call the intrinsic value of work itself. It's through our work. But God uses one of the teeth instruments of His sanctifying grace. Work takes the self-confidence and loves in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's all this fun and it's not all this easy. I'm sure that many of you have read about this. I think it's a comic that's written a few stories. The mill faiths how painful work can be. I came across it, I think, originally, first of all, in one of these checks in the old book. But he talks about a guy who actually had to fill out on an insurance form. Why he had an accident at work? He was a brick layer. Here's what he said. I'm writing a response to your request for additional information. And block number eight of the action that's won't quite put trying to do the job alone as the calls of my accident. You said in your letter that I should explain more fully. And I just think the following details will be sufficient. I am a brick layer by trade. And all the data the action I was working alone on the roof for the new six-store building. When I completed my work, I found that I had about 500 pounds of bricks left over. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to load them in a barrel by using the pulley which fortunately was attached to the side of the building at the six-store. During the road at the ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out, and loaded the 500 pounds of bricks into the barrel. Then I went down to the ground, and untied the rope, holding it lightly to ensure a slow descent of the 500 pounds of bricks. You will note in block 11 all the action reports that I weigh only 135 pounds. Due to my surprise at being jerks off the ground for 70, I lost my presence of mine and forgot to let go of the ropes. Leaded me to say I proceeded at the rather rapid rate off the side of the building. In the vicinity somewhere around the third floor, I met the barrel coming down. This explains the fractured skull and the broken color bone. Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid descent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. Fortunately, by this time, I every gain my presence of mine was able to hold tightly to the rope in spite of my gain. But in approximately that same moment, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom broke out of the barrel. Deployed of a weight of the bricks, the barrel now weighed less than approximately 50 pounds. I refer you again to my weight in block 11. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building. And in the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up again. This accounts for the two fractured ankles and the lacerations on my legs and lower body parts. The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell under the pile of bricks. Fortunately, only three of vertebrae were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on that pile of bricks in pain, I'm able to stand it anymore. And watching the interval six years above me, I again lost my presence of mine and let's go of the rope. The empty barrel, weighing more than the rope, came back down on me and broke both my legs. I hope I have furnished the information that you gentlemen have requested. The work can then be a lumber. And work when we try to do the job alone can be absolutely painful and sometimes deadly. That measure is known better than to try to do that alone. And we all know better than to try to raise kids without a partnership on a couple. Try to build an agency with a partner who is not a believer, not a partner with us seriously. Try to establish our careers without the leadership of Christ. Try to preach without the fellowship of the residents, the support of the church. Try to get rich and make it on your own. That's what happens to careers. They grew in that way. The work was not meant to be that way. Let me just say something here by way of the side because it's something that I would not have had to say 17 years ago when I first began to preach. But I think there are three things we need to keep in mind when it comes to work. Number one, there was a growing tendency even among evangelical Christians to worry more and more about building a successful career and making lots of money at the expense of these humanizing the value of work so that we preach to crowds instead of to persons. And we turn our client into a patient and to meet with process through the office, filling out forms and going from one ring to the other. We sell so many qualities and so many products that work and we don't even have times of talk to the people who buy them. And we can have so many meetings and so many trips that we've lost time or people. That happens. And then that happens, you are no longer working for the Lord of God. You're pursuing your own vain, glorious career. Time to draw back and begin to work again. I also need to say this. There is a growing problem among young men today. There are growing number of young men who simply refuse to be gainfully employed. It just won't work. I don't know if they deserve it or they don't feel the rat rage. What did I think really is my generation. It's this spirit of entitlement to someone owes them a living. Someone owes them prosperity. Holes them security. And it's causing major problems in relationships with marriage. More than ever before, women are having to divorce men simply because the men will not be the women. They won't work. It's not to such an extent that in this recent study a few years ago on Mary to the Wars of the Numeries, a president in church in America said, yes, a woman can have difficult reasons for divorce because she got refused to work as a man. As the spiritual head and the leader of the family, she refused to work and to support the family is a form of desertion. I think third we need to realize that people need to recover once again the personal enjoyment of work. Doing something because you like it is okay even if the pay is not good. There is an intrinsic value to work. The meaningfulness in the fulfillment of it is part, in fact, the major part of God's role in giving us work to see perfect. There's an intent that we ought to have. And God doesn't care how much money we make. He really doesn't. He wants us to be fulfilled and intended and he wants us to have meaning. Art of God's great time of sanctifying us is our job. It's Rick Langer, a big brain surgeon. That's why Paul said this looking, so then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed not in my presence only but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and turning forgiveness. Donnie was it working you both to willing to work for his good pleasure? I'm sure Paul doesn't have in mind specifically the job. But he's talking about working with God to work out our salvation, our sanctification. And the job is part of that. That's why Paul says in Corinthians, rather than you either drink or whatever you do, you also the Lord of God and the Colossians details the church. Whatever you do, do you work hardly as for the Lord rather than for men knowing that it is from the Lord that you will receive the reward of your inheritance. It isn't the Lord Christ who you serve. And it's easy folks to look at your work. You know, I have days like that where you try to do the job alone and you get hurt. And it's easier to come to conclusion with this thing's job worth it. I have those moments. I see that I had the opportunity to go out of town and we met some people, and lovely people, lovely Christian people, and they took us to this large end to go home with their building. It's like I was born with a limb. In fact, we were walking up to the front door and the guy said, what do you think? And I went, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. It's beautiful. And I went along a couple days back. I was kind of moping around the office now. And then at the end of the day, what's wrong with me? I think I was wrong with the Lord. I got a little light. I got a little job. I got a little to show for. And then the Lord directed the day I had to get something out of the closet. The closet in my office is where many people are gone and they've never come out again. But, ah, so I went in there and opened up the closet door and jaded it in there but it was a hard training to help you arrange things. And there was, I mean, in Cornwall's water, we're having around the shelves. We're at 52, the little three ring binders, all of the terminals. Over 5,500 pages of seven years of preaching and in boxes underneath that servanodes for 10 years. And the Lord said, now, those are your troubles. And those are your treasures. That's why you do what I made you to do. I had to say my closet and say what I'm sorry. I got a desk job in the world and I'm the richest man in Jacksonville, Mississippi. And I have no reason to ever complain about my work. If you took me back to the room and said, we'll start all over again. What you do, I'd say simply this. I'd like to start preaching sooner than I did. There's a glory in doing things I'd want you to do. The parliament said that's what life is all about. You don't have time to lie to the chapter 2, verse 24 and chapter 3, verse 12 and chapter 3, verse 32, chapter 5, verse 18, chapter 9, verse 8. He says the same thing over and over again. Whatever your hand is, I need to do, barely do it with all your might. But there was no activity of planning or knowledge or wisdom and show where you were going. There was nothing better than for man to even defend himself and his labor is good. This also, I have seen it, it is a gift of God from his own hand. We've got to recover the joy of work. And what it does in our lives, he gets ready to be with Christ. Finally, Solomon touches on the third enigma that enigma of the level. He talks about the length of life and the labor of life. He talks about the level of life. People who love it in this life. And here's what he says is verses 13 through 18. He talks about the marble of popularity. It is a marble. He says I can't figure it out. Listen, tell the little terrible. Also, this I came to see as wisdom under the solid. It impressed me. There was a small city with a few men in it and a great king came to it, surrounded it, and constructed large siege works against it. But there was found in it a poor wise man, and he delivered the city by his wisdom. Yet no one remembered that poor man. So I said, wisdom is better than strength. But the wisdom of the poor man is described. And his words are not healed. He tells the story. I don't know if it's real or it's just a terrible problem. He says, you know, there's a small city of big kingdoms. You've got to conquer it and the people inside them. We're going to do it. We're going to surrender ourselves. It's not like today when you surrender yourself in those days. You have to be until he died. But there's one little phase in there. He calls him a poor man. And we call him a nobody. And through somehow political intrigues or his negotiating skills or his military genius, he miraculously delivers that city. But it's not captured. And the enemy goes away and they go on with their lives as they've always been. And he says, this guy became an overnight sensation in a local hero. But that's the problem. He was an overnight sensation and he was a local hero. And it's at a matter of weeks that the people don't even remember who he is until the next time they have trouble. And he says, hear what you ought to hear. But it's listen to me. They say, I'll be quiet. Who are you? And his wisdom, Solomon said, is not remembered. And either it's called pain, so fleeting glory, gone social. Mary Kiddness says, the terrible is not a mortal tale to show what people ought to do. It's a cautionary story to show so people are being reliant. The people who ought to remember this guy forever forgetting so quickly, is amazing isn't it? How popular a guy can be one year. And the next year is still a bit George Bush. Remember George Bush? Remember who he was? He had in 1990 at the end of this upper-row regulations that he had the highest approval rating of every president we know of since it began to take those days. 87% and in 14 months, he was out of place by the fall we have now. I remember about a year ago, I don't care where you turned. William Arthur would come for you. Now you know what I'm talking about. Looks like a little wet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sixtiest man alive. Well, guess what? New woman magazine just took their definitive poll. Sixtiest man of this century. Guess who it was. No, it wasn't. It's not. Okay. A strong comedy. You know, let me take something out of you. You talk about a whole lot. Four out of the five guys were all in their sixties. Sean Donnery. Paul Newman. Robert Redford. Mel Gibson. And the only young one was number two. A little fellow named... I forget his name. Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt. I look somewhat like I do. But... It's amazing. William Arthur was not... I mean, years ago, both times when I was young, I don't know if you remember that. I can't remember. Even when you were about to hear the picture, he's off the charts. He's not there. All his coaches, they can be coached a year or one year, and they fly as an ex. Small and gentle. If you're looking for the people for a lot of you, forget it. Because the girls forget you quicker than you could ever imagine. That's the marvel of popularity. But here's the main say of principle. Look at the last two verses, 17 and 18. The words of a wise heard in quietness are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war. With one center destroys much good. But what does all in the mean? What's that task to do with popularity enough? Is it going to have to do it? He says the words of a wise in quietness are better. That is, these principles of truth and wisdom these things are by no one perhaps, and no one interested, other perhaps, in a small group, or better than the shouting of a ruler among the fools. People who like to hear themselves talk, over people who are shouting over people, like to hear themselves talk. He says when it all comes down to it, wisdom is better than weapons of war. One center destroys much good. Wisdom is stronger than a army. And at the same time, it's easily ruined. But the fact of the matter is, it is not always ignored. Over time, wisdom prevailed. Over kings and armies, the sexiest men alive, the most popular fellow, that the up and down charts of approval rating, they all come and go. But when you're an old man like I am, they don't come to see you because you're the sexiest king alive. They don't come and see you because you've built a big empire. But because you've got the most successful franchise in the Middle East. But because you've been on the club for a time magazine more than any other king in ancient history, no! And that's not why they come to see you. They come to see you for one reason, because you're old. You live in the wild. Then do all these things. And you're wise. Wisdom prevailed. Over popularity. And you were also everybody's famous in the life, at least 15 minutes. But when you're old, and the young kings, and the young genders, and the young men come and say, I'd like to point with the king's fallen, they're not coming because I'm handsome, successful, powerful, and tall after in the social circle, they're coming to see me, because I know things they don't know about life. I've become wise. And that's something the young people always lack. So don't worry so much that, about being popular quickly. Don't worry about wisdom, about living, discovering, and applying principles. And in the long run, they will seek after you, when they need wise men. The preacher here, just told us, and he called himself, to set the stage for the finale of his great journal. And he's examined the old, the greatest maintenance of life. How long we lived, and why some are successful, and some are not. And let people talk to learn here, and today, and gone to life. And he's done his final deconstructing work. Eric Kiddness says, at last, the preacher has said, he's just work of demolition. Besides, it's been cleared, and he can now turn to building and planting the shelter. Gone is the guarantee of a long life for everybody who deserves it. Gone is the idea that if we're popular now, we should be popular ever because we deserve it. Gone are those things. And when the next left was nothing, but the sovereign hand of God, reaching out mysteriously in our life, someone says, I think in many ways what Luther said, that there are in this world only two kinds of people, theologians of glory, and the people of God, and the people of God, and the people of God, theologians of glory, and theologians of the cross. The feeling of glory, he likes success, and works, and merit, and privilege. He wants to find God in his glory, and hang around with Christ in his victory. In fact, his vocabulary is filled with triumphalistic praise, victory, overcoming success, dominance. Luther says, the problem is he just never finds God, because God can only be found one place, all across, not in victory, but in defeat, not in life, but in death. Not in glory that in shame. Not popular, but rejected the Bible says, and despised by all men, and so the world needs not theologians of glory, but for did, he stillologians of the cross. People are willing to face the fact that the thanks, the dear God, Jesus Christ died. It was considered a bend to be a failure. He left no foundation, no study center. He didn't leave the institute of Jesus Christ. He was not popular, there was less than 120 people that surrounded him, in the final moment of his life, and only three or four defect would he mobilize his cross. Strauss, who left him one day, was honored to the son of David, said the next day, well, it is love beyond us, and all our children. And that's the God we serve. And that's the one who's going to make life under the son, good preparation for life above the son, and give us the richness of this life, that God has intended for the children of God. Jesus put it this way, do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth, I did not come to bring peace on the earth. He loves the father more than he is not worthy of me. He loves son more than he is not worthy of me. And he does not take up his cross, and follow after me is not worthy of me. He was found his life shall lose it, but he was lost his life for my future I find it, and with it, eternal life. So you tell me along the fallen ones, what kind of theologian you are, theologian of glory, theologian of the cross, the theology may call the difference in this life, and in one day to tell. Father, these things that the fallen and talked about, they are indignant, as if beyond our ability to understand, they have to be taken like most of the word of God, like hate, and feel only to receive because your grace working in our life, only applied and worked out through the power of the Spirit in our lives. But that is in no unashamed way what we are asking for tonight. We are theologians of glory, left to ourselves, healthy, happy and successful and popular, and we want our God to be like that. Problem is, that is not your theology nor they are living. Your God who calls for death to self, instead you are in the rule of Christ to succeed in spiritual things, and maybe to be described as the demand in order to be loved by Christ, and so our wisdom does become foolishness, on the wisdom of Christ critiques us and calls us to self. Give us all God, give us all. This night, repentance and faith, and new understanding of the mysteries of life. So we thank you for the breath in our longness, for the jobs we have, for the people that come and go all the days of our life. They all have a purpose to get us ready to be with Jesus Christ forever in glory. That was not to lose perspective of that in the difficult moment and the moment of decay and destruction and even death. Give us grace to see what I cannot see unless they possess the wisdom of God, wisdom of Paul, wisdom of Luther, wisdom of Christ, that perspective of the cross. Do these things I pray for our good and for your glory that I have been yearning in this. I pray for you. I pray for you.