Sermon Transcript
the ministry work that they do. It’s, it’s fantastic. It really is, all that they do. And every week they bring us to God’s throne, and we are grateful. Thank you.
Well, I put back here my new hourglass. Did you get one this week? Were you here last week? Bernice and I bought this this week. We went online, couldn’t find one in a store.
I won’t go through the list of stores that we went through. To try to find one of these. But anyway, we went online and got one. If you were with us last week, we talked about Ecclesiastes chapter 3, that chapter that talks about the time of our lives. There’s a time for everything, every event under heaven.
And we talked about it in concept of chronos and kairos time. Chronos is this chronological time, or it’s the seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months of our lives. And we talk about how important it is to make sure that we make the most of that chronos time, but also kairos time. Kairos is the appointed seasons of time. So here we are at this worship service again, and so we have an appointed season, if you will, a period of time to not just go through the moments and seconds and that sort of thing, but to get the most out of this season, to get the most out of this opportunity, to get the most out of this appointment.
So to make the most of the time, and that’s kairos time. And so I just suggested that you might perhaps get yourself an hourglass like we did this week and put this somewhere that it would remind you of the time of our lives and how our time is limited. There’s a beginning, there’s an end, and then there’s this time in between the beginning and the end to make the most of our life. So I’ll just put this over on the piano this morning and we’ll let it run out. Now if this runs out, then that means I went too long, okay?
Because this is an hourglass. That’s an hourglass. Get it? And some of you are saying, you better not go an hour this morning. Take out your Bible if you would and find Ecclesiastes.
It’s in about the middle of the Bible. It’s the 3rd book that Solomon wrote, and we’re in chapter 3, verse 16, through the end of the chapter and then on through chapter 4 this morning. So I encourage you to pull out a Bible. We’re not gonna put any of those passages on the scripture, so you could use the pew Bible or your Bible on your phone, wherever you can find a Bible, and you’ll wanna follow along. The section we’re looking at got me thinking about a bathroom chat that my wife had with me some years ago.
It was shortly after we got married. Bernice, my wife’s name, she said she needed to talk to me about my bathroom behavior. And what that basically meant was is that we had a small bathroom in the home we were living in. It was the only bathroom that she and I used, and it was very small, and so it was pretty obvious the condition that the previous person who was in the bathroom, the condition the bathroom was left in was pretty obvious. And so I would go into the bathroom typically first to get cleaned up in the morning, and I would leave the bathroom in terms of water a mess.
So there’d be water on the counter, there’d be water on the mirror, there’d be water on the floor. And the fact of the matter is I didn’t even realize it. I didn’t even realize that I was leaving this mess in the bathroom. It’s kind of like, now women, you’re just gonna have to take this one by faith, but if you ever walk in the men’s bathroom here, it’s a mess every week. I mean, it starts out good, but then it becomes this flood in this bathroom over there.
It was kind of like that. That was the condition I left the bathroom in. I don’t know if it’s a guy thing, I have no idea. I checked with one woman this morning to ask, is it like water all over your floor? Do you need a mop to get out of there?
No, we don’t have that problem. Why, you guys got that problem? Yeah, we got that problem right over there. But anyway, so I’m not here to talk about that bathroom, but my bathroom at home. And so Bernice said, you know, Dave, it is rude, it’s inconsiderate of you, it’s unloving of you.
Those are the kinds of words she used to help me get the fact that I really need to pay attention to the condition that I left the bathroom in, that if I loved her, That if I loved her, I would think about how I was leaving the bathroom when I finished in the bathroom. I don’t know if any of you are elbowing somebody next to you this morning or whatever, and essentially what she told me was what my parents had told me when I was growing up in the home. Constantly they used to say to me, maybe you’ve heard this before, clean up after yourself. You ever had anybody say that to you before? Clean up.
And so that didn’t sink in even before I was married when it came to the bathroom, So she had this chat with me, this conversation. Now I could have just ignored it. I could have just said, you know, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’ll just have to live with it, and that sort of thing. Of course, that would impact our marriage.
It would impact my fathering once we had children. It would no doubt impact my ministry because it wasn’t an expression of love toward her or toward God if I just ignored the conversation. It would probably impact my future behavior in your house if you ever had me over for, you know, dinner or something and I used your bathroom bathroom, and so, you know, you’re like, I don’t know if we’re gonna have Gudgel over anymore now. But anyway, you kind of get the idea. In other words, I needed to look and learn from what it was that I was doing.
I needed to look and I needed to learn. Now, the passage that we come to this morning actually brings those 2 elements into it, which is really helpful for us because there are essentially 3 ways to learn. There’s the easy way, there’s the hard way, and there’s the tragic way, okay? The easy way is to learn from somebody else. So let them make all the mistakes, just watch what they’re doing, learn as much as you can from other people.
That’s the easy way to learn. So I already gave you a little tip this morning. Pay attention to your bathroom behavior, especially if you’re married. You wanna make sure you leave the bathroom in a nice condition when the next person comes because that will be loving, that won’t be rude, that will be considerate, all right? So the easy way to learn is to learn it from somebody else, don’t go through the same experience.
The hard way to learn is to learn it yourself, to learn it by book study, you know? That’s a lot of work, wouldn’t you agree, students? Yeah, it’s a pile of work to do homework and prepare for quizzes and exams and all the rest of that stuff. Yeah, it’s difficult to learn, but also it can be difficult to learn by experience, by just life experiences where things hit us and You know, it’s the 3rd time or 4th time or 18th time that we’ve gone through the same thing and we say, when am I gonna learn this? When am I gonna actually get this?
So there’s the hard way that we learn, then there’s the tragic way to learn. What’s that? That’s not to learn at all, okay? It’s not to learn the easy way, it’s not to learn the hard way, it’s just not to learn, which is tragic because you had or I had the opportunity to learn something. We could be a better person if we had learned something, It’s tragic that we didn’t get anything out of it.
Now, when we come to this passage in scripture, what we basically see is the wisest guy in the world who’s older now, yet he’s still learning. And the book of Ecclesiastes is his learnings. It’s his experiences. Some of the things he learned the hard way, and what we’re gonna see this morning is some of the things that he learned the easy way. So not all of his learnings were based upon things that he went through.
Some of his learnings were based upon what other people went through, and he saw it and he took it to heart. So the easy way, we could say, like Farmers Insurance says, we know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two. Or we could say that Solomon had seen a thing or two and he knew a thing or two by what he learned as a result of the experiences that he had in life. So this morning we have an opportunity, then as we study this section of scripture, we have an opportunity to learn the easy way. We have an opportunity to learn from somebody else who learned these things from other people that he observed.
So I’m gonna encourage you to stay with me. You know, I was talking to somebody after the first service and she said, I was writing these things down on my note sheet, but then I started translating them into, or putting them into my Bible, And I said, that’s great. You know, whatever you gotta do so that these are learnings that we don’t, you know, leave behind, but you take ’em with you, you know, decide right now you’re gonna do that. So we wanna learn a thing or two, but we also wanna learn the importance of looking and learning, okay? Of looking and learning.
Now, when you look at this passage, here’s what’s interesting about this passage. Just notice chapter 3, verse 16. What’s interesting is that there’s this pattern that’s built all the way through this passage. I saw, and I saw something else. And then you get down to verse 17, I thought.
I saw something, I thought. In other words, I looked, and then as a result of what I saw, I learned something. And that plays itself out all the way through the passage we’re going to be looking at this morning. So Verse 18, I also thought, but you go on down to verse 20, so I saw. And so this pattern just plays out.
Verse 1 of chapter 4, again, I looked and I saw, and I saw the tears of the oppressed. And then you get down on into verse 2, and I declared. So there’s the learning. So I want you to just notice the pattern that’s here because the pattern can help us hopefully develop the same kind of pattern in our lives. So that we don’t have to learn everything the hard way.
Does that sound good? So that we can learn some things the easy way by just looking and by learning from what it is that we see. So let’s get started in that. Have you ever felt like life is unfair? Well, Solomon felt like life was unfair, so he wrote these words.
And I saw something else, verse 16 of chapter 3, and I saw something else under the sun. In the place of judgment, wickedness was there. In the place of justice, wickedness was there. It’s fair, would be, that there wouldn’t have been wickedness in the place of judgment, or in the place of judgment. I thought in my heart, God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed.
You’d think that there would be judgment and justice that would curtail wickedness, and what Solomon is saying, it’s not always that way. In fact, Wickedness is something that’s a part of life in ways that unfortunately are not fair. That’s why we have a phrase that sometimes we use, people get away with murder. People get away with murder. It’s just not fair.
So what can we do about it? Well, Solomon says what we can do about it is remember, and here’s his first learning, judgment is coming. There is a day of judgment coming. You’ll see it here. And this day of judgment is gonna come not just on the wicked, But the day of judgment is going to come on the righteous.
And so knowing that ought to do 2 things for us. It ought to cause introspection. In other words, we know that there’s a day of judgment coming. Even if you’re a righteous person, there’s a day of judgment coming. It’s called the Bema Seat Judgment.
There’s going to be a day where even God’s children are going to stand before him and they’re going to be judged for how they live their life, for the motivations that drove them. And knowing that that day is coming, we wanna live in a way that ultimately is going to please God, obviously in his grace, but we wanna please him. So there’s an awareness that judgment is coming even for the righteous, but there’s an awareness that judgment is coming for the wicked, and that oughta produce in us incentive. If there’s introspection on this side, there oughta be incentive on this side, and the incentive on this side is to help those who are facing, or ultimately will face if they don’t come into a relationship with God, will face the great white throne, this day of judgment where God is going to judge them to see if their names are in the Book of Life. We get our names in the Book of Life through Jesus Christ.
And so knowing that judgment is coming changes our perspective on life and it changes how we live our lives. That is a very important learning for a person to acquire. You ever thought about death? Well, Solomon did. This is what he wrote, verse 18: I also thought, as for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals.
Man’s fate is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath. Man has no advantage over the animal.
Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place. All come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth? So— and here’s his learning— so I saw there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot.
For who can bring him to see what will happen after him? This is interesting. He observes that people and animals die. They live and then they turn into dirt. Physical death is the fate for man as physical death is the same for animals.
And he says, and we can’t even prove, and the concept here is we can’t prove that a man’s spirit’s gonna go upward and live forever and that an animal’s spirit is gonna go down. We can’t prove that. Now we know that the Scriptures teaches us that if you have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, you’re gonna immediately be absent from the body, present with the Lord, that all of our spirits are going to go live on living, whether it’s with the Lord or not with the Lord. So he’s saying we can’t prove that, but we can learn this from looking at death that’s a part of life. We can learn to enjoy our work.
Now that’s fascinating. We can learn to enjoy our work, and so there’s a second learning. Enjoy your work. In fact, if you’re not enjoying your work right now, one of the ways that you can increase your enjoyment in work is to give a little bit more thought to death. That’s what he’s going after here.
If you just give a little bit more thought to death, and I know that sounds morbid, and I’m not telling you to, you know, go die. I’m just saying that if you give a little bit more thought to death, it will help you enjoy the time that you have to live right now. If you stare death in the face, it will cause you to enjoy what it is that you have right now. So he’s essentially bringing into perspective the life that we have, the work that we have, and how in this brief amount of time that we have to live, we ought to be enjoying it. If you’ve ever been around somebody who has had a near-death experience, you know what you’ll find?
You’ll find that they have a different level of elevated joy. You truly will. In fact, sometimes you get this, and Solomon will talk about this with regard to the importance of going to funerals. You say, well, I don’t wanna go to funerals. He says, well, actually, going to a funeral can be a good thing ’cause it’ll cause you to think differently about your life.
This past December, the early part of December, when I lost 40 to 50% of my blood, that’s a whole ‘nother story, but when I was close to death, it got me thinking about life, and I’ll tell you what, I’ll just, you know, the last 4 months for me, I have higher levels of joy because of what I went through the first part of December. And anybody, whether it’s cancer, whatever it is that you have faced, you have a whole different perspective on life if you’ve stared death in the face, and that’s what Solomon’s going after here. So it’s a learning. You could get this learning without having to lose your blood, okay? You can get this learning.
Enjoy your work. Have you ever thought that death is better than life, or have you ever thought that nonexistence is better than existence? He talks about that next. Ecclesiastes 4, he says, again I looked, and I saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they have no comforter.
Power was on the side of their oppressors, and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead who had already died are happier than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun. Now, what would make, and notice the passage here, what would make death better than life? Or as he says here, what would make never having been born, nonexistence, better than existence?
What’s it connected to? Well, he says, If you’re oppressed and you have nobody comforting you, it would be better that you were dead than it would be that you were alive. If you’re oppressed, if you’re taken advantage of, so in other words, if you’re a Syrian right now and you are oppressed by ISIS, Solomon would say, if you have no comforter, you’re just left in the oppression, you’re left to just fend for yourselves, it would be better if you were dead. In fact, he says, it would be better if you had never been born if that’s your existence. So his 3rd lesson here is that we need to comfort the oppressed.
We need to comfort the oppressed because those who are hurting need somebody to come along and to rescue them from the situation that they are in. Friday morning I was at the Silicon Valley Prayer Breakfast and I heard 3 different speakers, and one of the speakers’ names was Vanessa Russell. Vanessa Russell works with Love Never Fails. It’s a ministry that rescues and protects women who are sexually exploited, so pulls them out of sex trafficking. And she told the story of how she usually on Saturday evenings, a bunch of them go out on the streets in San Francisco and they try to rescue girls that are in sex trafficking, that have no choice, that have somebody who owns them.
And so she said there was this day, this evening, I guess it’s like from 9 PM until late in the evening they do this. She said there was this evening that they got out of a car and she started walking down the block and there was this 15-year-old girl and she knew that she was somebody who was being sex trafficked, trafficked, and so she walked up to her and she said, may I hug you? May I just give you a big hug? And the girl said, yeah, that would be fine. So she hugged her, she hugged her, she gave her a big hug, she said, and as she was hugging her, this girl dropped a knife.
She dropped a knife. Now, Vanessa did not see that the girl was holding the knife, otherwise she may not have gone up and hugged her, but she hugged her and the girl dropped the knife. They began a conversation and she found out that this girl, just moments before that, was going to take the knife and she was going to kill herself. That she no longer wanted to live an exploited life, and Vanessa just happened to come up. They had a brief conversation, they got her into a car, they whisked her away to safety and away from this person who was exploiting her that was right across the street.
Now, it may not be that we get the opportunity to help somebody like that, but we can help a friend who’s oppressed right now. Who’s hurting right now, or somebody who’s in a marriage situation that’s oppressed and they need somebody to come along and to bring a helping hand, to bring encouragement and hope. See, Solomon is saying that if a person is in oppression, in pain, the worst thing is, is that they would go through this alone. In fact, it’s better that they were dead than to go through oppression alone. In fact, it’s better that they had never been born than to go through oppression alone.
Third essential learning is we can comfort the oppressed. Have you ever been fed up with the rat race? You know, tired of the dog-eat-dog world? Well, Solomon was. Look at verse 4.
I saw, and I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless. A chasing after the wind. The fool folds his hands and ruins himself. Better one handful with tranquility than 2 handfuls with toil and chasing the wind.
Now what’s he talking about here? He’s talking about how sometimes people are driven by envy. And what envy does is it can cause us to labor to crazy levels where we’re just going after, through achievement, whatever it is, something more than what we have. In other words, we look around and we see what people have, and we want some of what it is that they have. And so we take a crazy approach in how we live our lives.
We’re just crazy over the top. The opposite approach, he says, isn’t good either, to live, verse 5, a fool’s life where you fold your hands and you ruin yourself. And so the picture there is of a lazy life, an idle life. The Message translation calls to live a lazy life a slow suicide. It’s just somebody who’s wasting their life away.
And what Solomon observes is simply this: there is a better way to live than to live with discontentment or to live with disengagement. All right, so discontentment is just discontent with what you have so that you’re adding more and more tension to your life and turbulence by going after more and more. The other side of this, disengagement, is just to pull out of life altogether. So Solomon comes to this conclusion: we need to live with tranquility. We need to live with— I love that word, don’t you?
It just makes you feel good all over. I like that, tranquility. Sense of peace and a sense of satisfaction. Tranquility, he says, is better than turbulence. Tranquility is better than tension.
Tranquility is a willingness to say, if I’ve got one hand of stuff and tranquility, that’s enough. I don’t need 2 hands of stuff. I don’t need to get 2 hands of stuff because that’s ultimately going to drive me, me crazy. I got a letter this week from a friend who is now in Russia. They’re taking a couple of weeks for a ministry trip in Russia, and when I got this letter, because I’ve been with them on this trip before, I thought back to the time where we were in Russia.
We were in Moscow. We were in Saransk, as they’re in Saransk right now, Russia. And staying with these people who were experiencing tranquil lives. They didn’t have a lot. They had a handful, not even a full handful, and yet they were living lives of peace and tranquility.
And so when I got this letter, my mind went back to that and I thought, man, that was a great time. And I suppose part of the reason why I was thinking that is ’cause it was a crazy week. And we all have these crazy weeks that are oftentimes driving us toward something more than is that we have right now, and boy, is that a learning. In fact, often when you’re looking through, you know, Facebook or whatever it is, there are these constant ads in there to make you discontent with what it is that you have. And so how much we need a passage like this to remind us, no, listen, if you’ve got a handful and tranquility, That’s enough.
Have you ever valued friendships at the level that the Lord would want you to value friendships? Solomon speaks to that subject next. Verse 7, he says, and again I saw something meaningless under the sun. There was a man all alone. He had neither son nor brother.
There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content. With his wealth. For whom am I toiling? he asked. And why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?
This too is meaningless, a miserable business. 2 are better than one because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up. Also, if 2 lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, 2 can defend themselves. A cord of 3 strands is not quickly broken. What’s he observing here? He’s observing here the bane of independent living, the bane of trying to do life alone without friendship.
God from the beginning said, you know, it’s not good, right? It’s not good for people to try to do this alone. So I’m gonna create relationships, and from the beginning, God created relationships, and he created us with a need for relationships, for companionships, for friendships, for soulmates. In fact, the Talmud, Jewish Bible, part of the— it’s actually teachings on the Bible, says this: a man without a companion is like a left hand without the right. I mean, which one do you want?
You know, I think I want them both, right? And they’re saying, yeah, you need both, and the concept that Solomon’s going after here with this friendship concept is that we need to be a friend. We need to be a friend. We need to have friends. Why do we need friends?
Because friends can come along, verse 8, and they can help their workaholic friends, these friends who aren’t content with taking time off from their work. And part of it is, is that they can get away with it because they don’t have a son or brother or anybody around, and so they can just work like endless hours, but ultimately they’re missing out on something that should be a part of their work. Do you see it in verse 8? They’re missing out on enjoyment, that enjoyment is meant to be a part of life. There will always be no end to toil, and to have a friend come along and say, hey, don’t live like this, that’s valuable, that’s needed.
And verse 9, and friends add value to each other’s lives. Friends make it possible for us in friendship to have greater profit. There’s a good return for our labor, he says, when we have friendship. And in verse 10, friends are able to lift us up when we’ve fallen down. They’re able to pull us up out of the pit and we can start this all over again.
And friends, verse 11, they add warmth and comfort to our lives. And verse 12, and friends, well, they’re there when the battles hit. And when the battles come, friends are able to fight off the enemy with us so that we can be victorious in the situations that we find ourselves. In other words, he’s saying, don’t try to do this life alone. I’ve seen people try to do this life alone and it’s not good.
You need friendship. A week ago I was in Phoenix and I had breakfast with a friend, somebody I’ve known for several years now. We don’t get to see each other very often because of the distance between Phoenix and You know, Los Altos. And so we had breakfast while I was there just for a couple days. And when he came in, I could see that he was distraught.
I mean, you see that oftentimes on a person’s face, right? That he was hurting. And so he came in and he started telling me the story of what it’s been like for him the last 6 months, and it hasn’t been good. It’s been a train wreck waiting to happen. A train wreck waiting to— can I say that?
Train wreck. Waiting to happen. He was not doing well, and just that hour conversation, I hope, was an encouragement to him from somebody who cares about somebody else. We so desperately need that. Galatians 6:9 talks about how we can easily grow weary in well-doing.
Sound like you right now? Weary in well-doing. Bible says that we will reap if we do not grow weary. And well-doing and give up. And sometimes we need a friend to come along and lift us up so that we don’t give up.
It’s a lesson that he learned, I’m sure, firsthand, but he also learned by looking at others, what was going on in their lives. And finally, he talked about the whole matter of continuing education. You know, some of us don’t think about continuing education. We think about get the education done, be done, right? But he was very interested in continuing to learn and grow, and so he writes these words, verse 13, chapter 4.
Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to take warning. The youth may have come from prison to the kingship, or he may have been born in poverty within his kingdom. I saw that all who lived and walked under the sun followed the youth. The king’s successor. There was no end to all the people who were before them, but those who came later were not pleased with the successor.
This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. You heard that phrase, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? I don’t know if that’s true or not. We don’t have a dog, and some of you are saying, no, it’s not really true, so maybe it’s a misnomer. But hopefully this doesn’t apply to an old man.
You know, you can’t teach an old man anything. And he’s speaking about that problem right here. He’s talking about an old man, an old king who’s unapproachable, he’s unteachable, he’s arrogant. When you warn him, he rejects the warnings. He can’t be reproved.
He basically blows it off. Why? Because he’s a king and he knows better. And Solomon says, you know, this king is actually worse off than a poor but wise youth. And why is this poor but wise who used to be in prison youth better off or in a better place than this old king?
Well, this poor but wise youth is in a better place because he’s growing and he’s learning and he’s changing. And as a result of this continuing education that he’s getting and he’s receiving, he has ascended to kingship. He now is— he’s a king, and now he’s acclaimed as a king, and all these hordes of people are following him. So this is the picture that he’s painting. But then he throws in this interesting twist here where ultimately though, even this youth at some point loses his following.
And you have to ask, well then, why would he lose his following in the context Probably because he became unteachable. He became like the old king, somebody who already knew it all. So what’s Solomon saying? He’s saying, you know what I’ve learned? I’ve learned that you never stop learning, because the day that you stop learning is the day that you lose your impact on other people.
Your impact on others stops the day that you stop learning. Which is fascinating, ’cause you gotta kinda wonder if at this point Solomon is thinking about his kingship and the possibility of like losing it all, if he’s an arrogant king who doesn’t take any warning ’cause he’s stubborn and he already knows it all. When I read that, I thought of a lesson that I learned 25-plus years ago from Howard Hendricks. Howard Hendricks went on to become a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, one of the most beloved professors ever, in Dallas Seminary history. He’s now in heaven.
But I still remember 25-plus years ago Hendricks talking about how when he was a college student, he used to walk the same route to college. So he walked to college. He didn’t say through snow and other things like that, okay? He just said he walked through college. And when he would— on this route walking to college, he would often walk by, or he would usually walk by, a professor’s home if he took the same route.
A professor who taught at the college, and he said, usually I would walk early in the morning, it was about 5:30 a.m., because I had to get to campus early ’cause I had a job at the dining hall, the college dining hall, so I’d work early before classes, but when I walked by this professor’s home, his light in his study would always be on. He would be in his study studying at 5:30 a.m. He said, then I would go to college and I’d have a full day at college, and then in the evening I would go into the library and spend some time there, and late into the evening, then I’d leave the library and I’d walk back home. And I’d walk past this professor’s house and the light in the study would be on. It would be on late into the evening.
Hendricks said, sometime after that, I had an opportunity to have lunch with this professor. He invited me out to lunch. And Hendricks said, you know, I asked him if it would be okay if I asked him a question. The professor said, sure. He said, I just wanna ask you, what is it that keeps you studying?
What is it that keeps you studying? And the professor said this to Hendricks, I’d rather have my students drink from a running spring than a stagnant pond.
I had somebody come up to me after the first service and they said, I’ve stagnated.
And I think that can happen to anybody. I think that any one of us could get to the point like this king, where we stagnate, where we’re still not learning. And the best thing that could happen to us is that people could learn through our new learnings. So Hendricks heard this and it was something that impacted him and it went with him and he began to share it with others and impacted my life as well. He looked and he learned.
So what’s the lesson of this passage? Well, it’s always be in this sense like Solomon, always looking, always learning, always seeking to pick something up. 6 wonderful learnings here. Judgment is coming. That ought to change how we live our lives and how we think about others.
Enjoy your work. If you can’t enjoy your work right now, maybe you need to think more about death. That it’s coming, that life is brief, and make the most of the life that you have right now. And comfort the oppressed, because not to comfort the oppressed, to let the oppressed live life without any kind of comfort, that’s the worst kind of existence. And be a person who lives with tranquility.
One handful is enough. And be a friend. We all need friends. And never stop learning. Every one of those lessons has the potential to help us be a more mature person who ultimately loves God and others more, don’t they?
Yesterday we spent the day with Paisley. Paisley stayed with us, our 2-year-old granddaughter, here over the weekend, and we were having some fun, but one of the things it reminded me of, and you forget these things, you know, as you get older and you’ve raised your kids and all that, but one of the things it reminded me of is how inquisitive 2-year-olds are. You know, part of that is they ask a lot of questions and stuff like that, but if you watch them, if you just observe them, they are observing everything, aren’t they? They’re looking around and they’re taking everything because everything’s like it’s brand new experience for them. It’s just this wondrous experience.
They’re taking it. We put her on a ride at Happy Hollow yesterday and she was enjoying the bell. You know, it’s those cars that go around in a circle, right, and the bell and all the rest of it. She’s looking at that like it’s the first time and it was in some way. And then she’s riding around looking up at the ceiling, and I’m thinking, look at her, she’s just taking it all in.
Well, guess what? We ought to be like 2-year-olds. We really should. We need to be people who see what it is that God wants to teach us through the experiences of life. Friday, Bernice and I went to Beauty and the Beast.
I don’t know if you’re gonna go or if you’ve already gone. I really loved it. I mean, it moved me to tears in a couple places, but especially this one place there where Belle was singing that song, Something There. You remember that one, the song Something There? And she comes to this realization point where the Beast is something different than she has seen the Beast to be.
And then she sings this line. She said, or sang, there may be something there that wasn’t there before. Well, it was there, just didn’t see it. You just didn’t see it. And it’s there, it’s there for all of us to see.
You don’t have a relationship with God? It’s there, it’s there. It’s in creation. Creation is a huge clue there’s a God. It’s in your conscience.
Your conscience is a huge clue there’s a God. And God sent Jesus so that we might have an eternal relationship with him. Are you looking and learning that? And all around us are all these wonderful opportunities for us to look and to learn so that we might grow to be the people that God wants us to be. So this is a great encouragement, not only from this passage, but to be a looker.
Is that okay? To be a looker. Can I say that in church? To be a looker and to be a learner, to be somebody who’s always alert to what God is doing around us. Well, let’s pray.
Let’s thank him together. Lord, thanks for this passage, for what you teach us from the scriptures. We pray that like Solomon learned even in his old age, whatever age we are, that we might be inquisitive, that we might be wondering and looking and, and taking it all in. And as a result of that, may it transform us into the people that you want us to be and transform relationships. God, may we not just blow it off, blow life off, but may we engage in it every moment that we have to live.
Pray for anybody who’s here today that does not yet have that relationship with you, that they would see that you are reaching out to them, that you want a relationship with them, and they might, through Jesus Christ, receive the gift of life. Help us even this week take what it is we’ve thought about this morning and honor you with it through how we live, in Jesus’ name. Everybody said? Amen.
