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It’s so good to have worship at church and not have to play music. I feel like by the time I get to the message in the morning, my brain’s blowing up sometimes and and it’s just good to sit back and and worship and also gives me a good time just to free my mind and reflect. And I think as, as I was sitting there worshiping the Lord together. Um, praise the one who paid my debt. The one who gave us life. And. I think about just the words that we’re expressing as a church and what we’re about when we gather here on Sunday morning, and what it would mean for us to walk out of this door this morning and feel like we’ve accomplished what it is we’re here to accomplish. And I have to say, for us as a church, the win for all of us is if we walk in this building and when we walk out, we feel like we’ve been before the presence of the Lord. And and not only just for ourselves, but we also become an encouragement to each other to do the same. So we walk out on Sunday morning and all that spin is just we went to church. It does no good for us. I mean, it’s about the Lord and his glory and goodness in our lives. And and that’s really where the book of Ecclesiastes picks up that we’re studying together.
And Solomon writes this book to explain to us as people that he has walked every road of fame and glory apart from God, that an individual can endure and go through and experience. And in the end, what he declares for us is that it’s empty. The satisfaction of life with which we were created for to enjoy as people is before the presence of the Lord. And so today we’re going to jump into Ecclesiastes chapter ten on the backdrop of that idea. If you don’t know if you brought a Bible, you don’t know where the book of Ecclesiastes is, just flip open to the middle of your Bible. You usually end up in the in the book of Psalms and flip two books past the book of Psalms. You end up in the book of Ecclesiastes. It goes Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. And the biggest section of the Bible is, is Psalms. So it’s fairly easy to find. And in chapter ten, Solomon’s carrying the idea for us that he’s been carrying throughout this entire book that we as people, he writes this in Proverbs, need wisdom, and that wisdom is rooted in the Lord and walking with him. That’s why you’re created. God created you to know him and enjoy him. Not when you get to heaven, but today, in this very moment, as you gather in church, God created you that you may experience that relationship with him forever.
He created his church that we could gather together and encouragement and participate in that life in him and joy in him together forever. And so Solomon writes this entire book as a glass half empty book. He gets to the end of the book in chapter 12. You’ll see in the very last two verses he says this the premise of the whole book, the fear of the Lord is where it’s at. The the reverence for God in your life. God created you for a relationship. God desires to lavish his love upon you and you to enjoy him for eternity. God didn’t create you because he needs anything from you. God is a needy God. God has everything he could ever need. God created you because he is a loving God, and the expression of his love is that scene and giving itself away. That’s what love is. Love is selfless. And in seeing the goodness of that God. We as people were created to respond to the glory of God and glory in his glory for his glory. And Solomon desires to awaken us to that. And he does it through an interesting way. In chapter ten, he talks about mortality. Our death. How morbid. You glass half empty guy. Right. But the thing that Solomon knows is that the mortality rate of human beings is 100%. It’s something that everyone will face and come face to face with at some point in their lives.
We’ve even read the quote of Jonathan Edwards where he says in his resolutions at the age of of nine, 19 years old, and in 1719, taking on his first pastorate in New York City, he says, resolve to think much on all occasions of my own dying and of the common circumstances which attend death. The idea is this. Most of the time, we don’t consider the way that we live life until we stare at the mortality of our own life. It’s in death that we began to ask the deep questions of life. And Solomon. When he begins the chapter, he he opens it up this way. My clicker is not working, so give me a click. Their batteries are dead. Verse one. For I have taken all this to my heart, and explained that righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hands of God. Solomon opens up this very thought. And when he begins to speak about death, he’s saying, I’ve considered this in the the depths of my being. I’ve contemplated what life is all about, and in realizing what life is all about, found it significant to begin with the idea of death. And so he begins to elaborate on this explanation of the importance of thinking of our own dying, so that we, as people, can appreciate the life that we have. And so he says, man does not know whether it is to.
It will be love or hatred that’s coming his way. Anything awaits him in verse two. It is the same for all. There’s one fate, for the righteous and for the wicked, for the good and for the clean and for the unclean. For the man who offers a sacrifice, and for the one who does not sacrifice. As the good man is, so is the sinner, as as the swearer is. So is the one who is afraid to swear. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all men. Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterwards, they go to the dead. The Solomons starting to say it doesn’t matter what walk of life you’re in, what premise you operate from, whether you’re a hateful person, a loving person, a rich person, a poor person, a good person, a bad person, what we know is all persons will experience death. And the interesting thing he notes about the lives of individuals is that people live life as if they don’t recognize that one day they’re going to meet their maker. Give me a click here. Says this in Hebrews chapter nine and verse 27. This is a guarantee for all of us. If if you have death in your future, you have judgment in your future.
And so he says, it is appointed for men to die once, and after that then you get to prove to God, right? No. You’re appointed to death. And after that the Bible tells us comes judgement. So Christ, also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation, without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await him. Solomon is saying to us as individuals, we live life as if there is no God. We live life as if we are our own gods, in charge of our own destinies. And Hebrews reminds us that life we. We will meet our maker. There is judgement and the hope that you carry if you are a believer in Christ, is that when Jesus returns, he gives you life to those who trust and wait for him. Bible says this one more time. First Corinthians 15. To those who trust in Jesus. You have an eternal hope in Christ. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the works of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. In John 11, Jesus said this I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead. Yet he shall live.
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Solomon’s promise and thought for us. It’s about living. And living with the idea of God’s active presence within our lives, because the Lord has created us for relationship in him. It’s not about we die and meet Jesus. It’s about living with the Lord every day. And consider what the hand of God holds. Jesus holds all things. Jesus created all things. Jesus sustains all things. Jesus is life. There wasn’t anything that you can do for God that he can’t do for himself. There’s anything that you can prove to God in your own worth. God already sees our sinfulness. There’s no matter how good you ever live in this world, it will never undo the sin that you’ve already done against an eternal, holy God. In our conduct, in our living, there is no hope. But there’s Jesus. In Jesus’s life. The Bible tells us in this passage, it’s not whoever does, but it says whoever believes, whoever trusts in the life giver, that is Jesus. To him he receives life. And Solomon’s recognizing for us in these opening passages that we live life like we are our own ruler. We we are our own God. Not thinking about death, not thinking about meeting our maker. If you were to come before the Lord. What would you say? If you had the opportunity to live your life all over again.
Would you live the same life you’ve lived today? See, Solomon’s getting us to the point in thinking about death. He’s saying to me personally, Nathaniel, if this life that you’re leading, if you’re conscious about meeting your maker and seeing him face to face, this life that you’ve led, having known the Lord, would you do it all over again, knowing that one day you will see him face to face? You’ll stare at his nail pierced hands. You’ll see the sacrifice that he’s given for your life, and you will see him as King of kings and Lord of Lords. This life. Would you do it that way all over again? See Solomon in this passage of Scripture. Talking about death. His encouragement is to get you to really live. To recognize that the ordinary days of life are precious to the Lord. You get to these verses and you begin to think about death and what it upholds. And you can say in this passage, okay, Solomon, I understand one day I’ll meet Jesus. I understand that my life may be complacent right now, but how how can I live it for for God’s glory? How can I make the most of Christ in my life to allow his glory, his goodness, his love, be made known? And I love what Solomon talks about, because I’m the kind of like that. That timber girl. Is it timber girl? Skydiving, Rocky mountain climbing.
Is that that guy? Two seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu. Not met that bull yet. I’m riding it when I do. Right. When I started thinking about living life and I started thinking extreme, I got to definitely skydive that mountain up here on the side of the road. I got to repel off the side of that at some point and hang like those other people who risk everything, whatever. It is extreme. I got to do it. The bucket list. Where is it? How can I live life to the fullest for the glory of God? In Solomon in this passage of Scripture, when he begins to explain how to live our lives for the glory of God, he doesn’t talk in the extremities of life. He talks on the ordinary of life. He says in verse seven. Give me a quick. Go then. Eat your bread and happiness. And drink your wine with a cheerful heart. For God has already approved your works. Solomon is going to begin to start in verse seven. In the next four verses, he’s going to talk about four specific areas of our lives. You talk about recognizing the glory of God, realizing you want your life to count for the Lord, the things that you can do to honor him, recognize him, live for him in this world. Solomon then begins to describe these, beginning in verse seven, verse eight, verse nine, verse ten.
And he says at all the things that he lived out of all the things that I would expect Solomon to say. Solomon. What? What is it? How can I recognize God? Is it just being super rich and spending all this money? Is it becoming famous and then talking about you on television? Right. We like to know if our celebrity friends, are they Christians? You know, I don’t know, but. But when Psalm begins to describe how to live for God’s glory. He says in verse seven. Your bread and happiness. And drink your wine with a cheerful heart. What is that about? You study a Jewish history or a Jewish culture at the time of the Life of Solomon? Typical day would begin in the morning. The family would grab something quick to eat for breakfast, and they would have a brunch before they really began their day. As they would eat this brunch, they they would then go out into the workday and take care of all of their tasks. As the sun set, the family would return, gather together around the table to partake of a meal. Jewish culture. The staple of every dinner was bread and wine. Sometimes. In addition to that, there was some cheese or some milk provided, or if vegetables were in season, or if there was a fruit in season, they would also have that. But the bread and the wine was the staple. It was looked at in the Jewish family as a time of both fulfilling the body and fulfilling the soul.
Families would gather together and literally around the table, partake of life together and breaking of bread and communion with one another. Reflecting on the day. Seeing the hand of God’s goodness in their lives. So what becomes important when you study communion as a believer? You understand that they weren’t just gathering together in a church on Sunday. They grabbed a little cup and just took a drink, and then they ate some little square. But they sat around a table and they communed as family. And they filled their souls, and they filled their lives, and they filled their bodies, and they reflected on God’s goodness. And what Solomon is saying and all the things that he explored in life, and all the satisfaction that he sought to find, the things, the places that God wanted to let his supernatural abilities to, to make itself known was just in the ordinary. God desires for us to make much of him not in the extreme things we do in this world, but in the day to day, ordinary things of life. God takes the ordinary. And supernaturally makes it extraordinary. And he’s saying, if you want your life to count for the Lord, if you want to honor him, if you’re thinking about death and how how to live life not complacent, but for him, look at the dinner table.
If your kids are more excited about going somewhere else to have dinner with other friends and they don’t want to gather together with their family and commune in both body and soul and strengthen themselves corporately, then it’s time for a reality check. God takes the ordinary circumstances of life. And that’s where his hand is made known. God takes the time that we have to gather around the table, and we eat your bread and happiness and drink our wine. And we think about the goodness of the Lord. And he says this in verse eight, let your clothes be white all the time. I know you don’t want to do that. You’ll get mustard on it. But but he’s saying something here. Don’t let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head. And during the life of Solomon. You can imagine no wardrobe was quite as extensive as ours are today. All right, walk in closets would have blown them away. That would have been their whole house. What Solomon is saying is as individuals, there was a special time for people that when particular celebrations would happen in their lives, they would pull out their Sunday best. They pull out the white garments in celebration of a wedding or a feast, and they would anoint their bodies with perfume. Perfume was much more expensive to make. Not every celebrity did it at that time, right? And Solomon is saying.
You know, there’s special times in your life that you’re looking for to make the most of just the special occasions. Make that every occasion. See, God wants you to learn how to invite him into the ordinary of every day of your life. God wants you to seek his face around the dinner table. God wants you to seek his face at just a normal meal, a normal outing, a normal event, a day at school, a day at work. God desires to be a part of your life wherever you go. And when you consider your accountability to your maker, and that one day you’ll see him face to face, recognizing that he has given you everything, you’re left with a question what have you done in response and love towards him? Seeing a God who has given you everything of any point in your life. You’ve even begun to think about sacrificing to him. As he has offered himself in complete love and surrender to you. Have you ever been at a place in your life where you’ve just offered yourself in response and love to him, and giving him everything? And thinking about that death, you begin to really live your life. Around the dinner table, making the most of every occasion. In verse nine he says this enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life, which he has given you to under the sun.
For this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have, you have labored under the sun. We say this often at church, but men? Married men. There’s no greater ministry you’re going to have in this world than to your bride. There’s no one that God has called you to minister to more and love than your bride. God has given her as a gift to you. God knew before eternity began who you would say I do to. God desires for you to give yourself completely and wholly to her. To honor her. To make the most of life and relationship with him. By an understanding your relationship to the Lord, lavishing your love sacrificially towards your bride in the ordinary, God makes extraordinary in the day to day ho-hum of marriage. God desires for you to seek his face and make much of your bride. I think Solomon says this about marriage for two reasons. God created marriage that we may enjoy it. That’s hard to believe sometimes in marriage, right? God created marriage for joy. And he said, and he’s saying this because he understands that we don’t live marriage with joy. Your honor, to the Lord is seen in your honor to your spouse. Seeking the Lord in the ordinary. He goes on and says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom, and she’ll where you are going.
And Solomon saying the dead can’t come back and do it again. You get one shot, right? You get one shot to make a difference in this world. You get one shot to walk with the Lord in this world. And it happens not in the extraordinary things, not in Fu Manchu bull riding. It happens every day learning to walk with the Lord. That’s where it happens. And when you’re faithful in the small things, I believe the Lord gives us greater things to do with him. But be faithful in the ordinary. Even going to work. Whatever you do, do all for his glory. Mr. Solomon goes on in this passage of Scripture. He begins to describe for us this opportunities that we begin to reflect upon that we may have missed, he says, I again saw under the sun this means really apart from the Lord under the sun in the book of Ecclesiastes, that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise, nor wealth to the discerning, nor favor to men of ability for time and chance overtake them all. Moreover, man does not know his time like fish caught in a treacherous net and birds trapped in a snare. So the sons of men are ensnared to an evil time when it suddenly falls on them.
You don’t know how much time that you have. Saying to the Lord God, I’ll do that tomorrow. God, I’ll take care of it. God, you can have 95%. I’m going to keep 5%. I’ll give you 100% later. You don’t know how much time. You have to appreciate the ordinary things that God has given you in his presence, in those ordinary things. You think about those who endure hardships, those who are even going into suffering. And in recent weeks, just the victims in Oklahoma City. The people who lost their lives in the tornado. You think about those families reading this passage of Scripture today saying, make the most of your time. You don’t know when death is going to be knocking on your door. Appreciate the ordinary things. What would they say to us this morning? Man, I wish, I wish I had one more time just to sit around that table. To say, I love you to reflect on God’s goodness, to make this life count. I wish I had woken up to this passage, I wish I saw that need. I wish I could see the beauty of God in the ordinary, that God intends the ordinary to just be extraordinary in him. That’s what he’s saying in his verses. I’m telling you to look at your death, that you can make your life count. And at looking at your death.
Just look at the ordinary things of life. You don’t need extraordinary, extreme things. Just look at the ordinary things that God can use to communicate his beauty to you in this world, and not just you, but the family that gathers and the friends that are around you. Look at those opportunities as gracious opportunities because you don’t know if you’ve got tomorrow. You don’t know what’s happening when you walk out this door. And so the things that are important look at them as God would see them appreciate those moments and live for the Lord. Solomon goes on. Give me one more click. He boils it all down to wisdom. If you live that kind of life. Making it count. Go ahead and call yourself a wise this morning. All right? I am so wise. You can leave today. Tell your family. Mom, I know you’ve been thinking. I’ve been doing it wrong for years. But I am so wise. Today counts I love you. Solomon tells a story about wisdom in this verse. He says in verse 13 he starts with a story. This is also this. I came to see his wisdom under the sun. And it impressed me. There was a small city with few men in it, and a great king came to it, surrendered or surrounded it, and constructed large siege works against it. He’s about to go crazy on these people, right? You see that? But there was found in it a poor, wise man.
And he delivered the city by his wisdom. Yet no one remembered the poor man. So I said, wisdom is better than strength, but the wisdom of the poor man is despised, and his words are not heeded. The words of the wise heard in quietness, are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. Let me explain what’s happening here. Let me, um, let me give you a what I think is actually a more accurate translation of this text. In this story, a young or, excuse me, a young king comes to a city to besiege it, and a wise older man, like all old people, were wise. And he he’s sitting there, he’s had this experience and he’s sharing with the city what they need to be rescued. And it tells us in verse 15 that he delivered the city. I’m just going to throw this out. You can use this or not. It doesn’t matter. You can interpret whether you interpret this passage. It still works out either way. But this is the way I interpret this passage when it says he delivered the city the most popular translation. The most used translation of this is exactly how it was written. He delivered the city, but the Hebrew text allows it to read this way. He could have delivered the city.
I think the text would be more accurate if it would say that he could have delivered the city, because when you read the rest of the verses, because it tells us in verse 16, uh, the, the wise wisdom of the poor man is despised and his words are not heeded. Uh, the words of the wise heard in verse 17, in quietness, are better than the shouting of a ruler. But look what happens. Wisdom is better than weapons of war. But one sinner destroys much good. And so what it’s saying is there is this wisdom that perpetually comes into your life, and it may not shout in your ear like the world shouts in your ear. But when wisdom shouts in your ear, it’s worthy of the recognition. Because if you do not heed it. It brings much destruction. And because the whispers of this wise man, though it be wise, were not heard. The city was destroyed. Solomon’s bringing up death. He’s talking about the ordinary in our lives to bring us to this crossroads in which we realize we have decisions. Every day we are faced with the opportunity of treating life like it’s the ordinary. Apart from God or with God. The wise. Listen to the wisdom of the Lord. And the foolish. Well, it leads to their destruction. Solomon was leaving with the thought today. To ask you where your interest lies.
You think about meeting your maker. You consider the goodness of his hand, the love that’s been extended, the sacrifice that he has made for you. I find it interesting and reading this text that Solomon has spent his entire life looking for what satisfies. And all alone it just sat right under his nose. Taking his relationship with the Lord and treating every day as a gift from God. I like the song. By the Rolling Stones write I can’t get no satisfaction. But if that’s the kind of life that I had to lead. I wouldn’t find myself very pleased. And Solomon talks about wisdom as being the key source to bring us satisfaction in the Lord. But I want to remind you this morning that wisdom isn’t about being smart. It’s about where you start. It’s about coming to the Lord. Wisdom isn’t about an intellectual problem. It’s really a will problem. Will I lay myself down for the sake of Christ and allowing his truth to reign in my life? Or will I tell to God that I am king and live life apart from him? Listen to this quote for just a moment. I’m going to close with just one verse here in a few minutes, but. If you’ve ever read the history of of the Second World War, the Holocaust, you know that the famous place in in history is Auschwitz. Where many Jews went and lost their lives.
At the height of the war, some 12,000 Jewish people would lose their lives at Auschwitz every day. Pictures of of that disgrace Mark history. You can see individuals lined up going into gas chambers, just skeletons of individuals leaning on each other just to hold themselves up and support each other in that weight. Going into those chambers, that would be the end of their lives. You can think of all the individuals gathered around Auschwitz in those towns ignoring what’s happening there. World leaders, before we get involved, denying the death that’s taking place, smelling the stench of death in the air in Auschwitz. And if you if you were to visit that town outside of those gas chambers, there exists a quote by Adolf Hitler. He says this I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of conscience, imperious, relentless and cruel. His goal. Let me read it again. I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of conscience, imperious, relentless and cruel. A lot of us will read those stories and think to ourselves, that’s horrible, and I would never do that. And it may be true we would never get to the extremes of of. I would like to think it will always be true the extremes of what the Holocaust was about. Most of us will look at that situation and we’ll say, but, you know, as long as we’re good, we’re okay. But can I tell you when it comes to the idea of what Hitler was sharing in this passage of Scripture, there is a common thread that when we carry the idea, as long as I’m good, I’m okay, that we we use out of Hitler’s line of thinking.
That is. We divorce ourselves from the very one who provides wisdom and direction in life. Hitler’s goal was to live life encouraging young people to be devoid of conscience. To go about their day and just ignore the presence of God. Ignore his wisdom. Ignore his life over us. When you read in the book of Genesis chapter three, when it tells Adam and Eve they go into the garden and God tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of good and knowledge. From the day they eat it, their eyes will be open and they will know the difference between good and evil. For years I’ve reflected upon what in the world’s a big deal about that. I would like to know what’s the difference between good and bad, right? When you read it in the Hebrew text, it’s saying that they have the knowledge of good and evil, but they’re also saying to God, God, we’re defining what good and evil is. You have the throne. You created this, you think you’re in charge, we’re knocking you off, and now we’re going to dictate to you what’s right and what’s wrong, because we are the king of our own lives.
Devoid of conscience. The common thread we carry with Hitler is that our tendency is to people, is to divorce ourselves from God and the ordinary. You look at the beauty of God’s creation and you don’t recognize him in this world, you look at the beauty of the birth of a young child. You don’t recognize him in this world. Get this. When you go into public schools today, you learn about American history. Do you know what make America makes America so great? Is that the people who founded this nation started on the premise of God, and this is what God desires for my life. And so when you start to teach history apart from God and kids, just see stories of individuals who did things and no moral conscience as to what guided them to make such decisions. We have divorced young people from learning about the very source of wisdom that directs their life. Do you see the significance in that? Wisdom begins with God. The ordinary becomes the extraordinary with him. This is why it’s important for us. Because God holds all life in his hand. It tells us in the book of revelation, speaking of Jesus. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead, and he laid his right hand upon me, saying to me, fear not, I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead.
And behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And have the keys of hell and of death. Jesus holds life. Jesus guides life. Jesus sustains life. Jesus is life. When you live life apart from him, you divorce yourself with the very one who’s given you the breath to breathe and the life to enjoy. This is what I think the Bible teaches us that God is infinitely good. His goodness has been displayed for us to recognize he loves you. He desires to lavish his love loving goodness on you for eternity. He has created you to know him and respond in love. He has created us to reflect the goodness of his glory in this world relationally to others. Make the most of it by by coming to him as the source of wisdom and guidance and direction. To think about meeting him. Understand that he is both king. And he is Lord, and he has loved you by serving you and giving you everything. And recognizing that one day we will see our King to begin just to treat the ordinary days of our lives as important before him. And to choose wisdom. To walk wisely in him. Ecclesiastes 12 says it. The fear of the Lord. That’s the beginning. Very end of the chapter tells us the fear of the Lord, the reverence for his authority over your life, of surrendering, surrendering yourself as king and just saying, Jesus, have your way in me.