Living Life Backwards Pt.1

All righty. Good morning, family of God. And anybody that's watching online, it's good to To be with you guys. Mike Barry here.

We're starting a new class, Living Life Backwards. We're going through this book by David Gibson which covers, much of the content of Ecclesiastes and let me just do a couple of housekeeping items and then we'll, we'll move into our lesson. there's going to be some handouts over here. Kelly is a little under the weather and so sooner or later you'll see some Sunday school table over here with some handouts for you.

You can also get the handout online. if we're not able to get it up right now, I know she printed them last week. I think we're just looking for them right now. and this will have the schedule.

We're basically going to be covering this class from November 15th all the way to February 3rd, and then after that we're going to be getting into Pilgrim's Progress for the rest of the year. Let me give one announcement before we pray. And that's our 2nd to 5th grade Sunday school class is going to begin next week, November 22nd at 9:30 in the patio area just behind the Bourne security area. And so we will have our 2nd to 5th graders meeting over there.

They're going to be going through some curriculum from Grace Community Church. You can see Carlos Price or call our church office, and that information will be on our Sunday school handout. It doesn't look like we have the handouts there right now. so if you want to go grab those.

But let's go ahead and pray, and we'll jump into our first lesson of living life backwards. Lord, we thank you so much for this opportunity for us to gain wisdom, from this book that you have given to your church, and, we thank You, Lord, for those that have gone before us to study it and, to teach it to us. We pray that your spirit would illuminate our hearts and minds as we engage with your word today. And Lord, that we would move closer to reality and away from living a life of pretend.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen., One of my favorite memories. With my son Sam is a day that we hiked up Vivian Creek Trail near Forest Falls. And we got all the way up to the first lower camp area.

This was In the winter, snow was on the ground. Mist was flowing in the air. droplets were coming down from the snow that was melting on the branches. Sunlight is beaming through the trees that lit up the mist.

But what I remember most is how long our breath hung in the air as it floated away. We would breathe and literally our breath would float for 30 seconds and I confirmed that with my son this morning. I said, What do you remember most? And he says, I remember our breath floating for 30 seconds in the air and I've never seen my breath float for that long.

Think about it. That's a long time to see your breath. And that's exactly what Ecclesiastes is going to describe our lives as being. It's like a breath.

Another memory I have is when Sam and I hiked up Olive Hill in Moreno Valley with our dog Max, and butterflies were just jumping up with every step, and our dog at first began to try to chase 100 butterflies with every step until he just ran out of energy. I also remember the first morning after my wedding, waking up in a cabin with my new bride. The wind was blowing outdoors. I remember seeing the shadows of trees moving across the face of Katie, my new bride.

Or the day that we brought our first born son home from the hospital and then our daughter and then Sam after being in the NICU for two weeks. It all goes so fast, right? Life is a breath, a mist. And you wish you could grab on to these things, these people, these days, but they float away like breath hanging in the air on that cool mountain day.

That's an image of what we're looking at in the book of Ecclesiastes in verse 3 of chapter 1. The preacher Solomon asked this question What does man gain? By all the toil at which he toils under the sun. What's the gain?

What's left over? What's remaining? What's the profit? But let's ask a couple of other questions before we get into The full text of Chapter 1.

Why did God even give us the book of Ecclesiastes? Ecclesiastes encourages us to begin. With the one thing at the end that we know for sure and then to work back from there to all other decisions, heartaches, and joys, the one thing that we all know is that we will all die. We know that for sure according to the book of Ecclesiastes and even by experience.

So God gave us the book of Ecclesiastes really to throw it like a grenade into our make-believe world, helping us to live in the real world where life is not so clean and tidy. And so the book of Ecclesiastes is meant to shake us up. And get us out of living a life of pretend. We're going to talk about that a little bit this morning.

Let's ask another question that David Gibson raises in chapter one, and that is what does it mean to say everything is vanity? Most of our translations translate the Hebrew word Hebel as vanity. In Ecclesiastes, in my, in my version, New King James, the word vanity is the only word that's used to translate Hebel, and it's the one word. It only occurs two other times in the Bible in the New King James.

All the other times it occurs in Ecclesiastes. and there is another word in the Bible that could be used for the word English word vanity. It's our Hebrew word shav in Psalm 127 2. It's that part where it says, it is vain for you to rise up early.

You guys remember that passage. It is shav for you to rise up early and just to worry yourself about getting up and your work and trying to put all of your stock in that. But this word hebel literally means vapor or breath. That's what it literally means.

And sometimes the word is translated as vanities, particularly when referring to idols, which it often does in the Old Testament. For instance, in Deuteronomy 32:21. we see this, that Israel was provoking. God says provoking me with their idols, and the word translated idols is literally Habel.

Trans they're provoking me with their breath or their vapor. the Old Testament frequently refers to idols as being vacant or vapor-like, almost like a slam on the idols themselves. However, the Hebrew word is often translated as breath or breeze. The preacher is saying that everything is mist, vapor, a puff of wind, a bit of smoke.

David Gibson says like in Psalm 1444, where the psalmist says man is like a mere breath. His days are like a passing shadow. In fact, those two images we're going to see in Ecclesiastes over and over again, breath. And shadow in Job 7:16, Job says, My days are but a breath.

And then Psalm 39:5 says this using the same Hebrew word, Behold, you have made my days as hand breadths. That's not our word, and my lifetime is nothing in your sight. Surely every man at his best is a mere breath. That's our word, Hebel.

So what does it mean for our lives to be like a breath, and how should that impact the way that we think and live? That's really what the rest of Ecclesiastes is about. That's what the rest of David Gibson's book is about, is what does it mean to live our lives where our life is, is referred to as a breath or a mist, and how should that impact, impact the way that we think and the way that we live. The preacher spends the rest of Ecclesiastes answering that question.

We find a summary answer in chapter 1, verses 1 to 11. Let's go ahead and read this text together and understanding that while our translation, most of our translations say vanity, think breath or mist or smoke when we see that word vanity. Let's go ahead and read the texts 1 to 11. The words of the preacher, the Son of David.

King in Jerusalem, vanity of vanity, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises.

The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north. Around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing. The ear filled with hearing.

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, See, this is new. It has been done already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of latter things or later things, yet to be among those who come after.

And all God's people said, Amen. Such a positive introduction to this book. It just makes you want to go out and Play with unicorns and have some cotton candy and just enjoy the, the goodness of life, right? But this book is in our Bibles for a reason, and it's because God is wise and God is good, and he wants to teach us something.

He wants to throw a grenade into our pretend party and help us view life as it really is. And so we're going to cover 5 basic points that Gibson lays out in his chapter. first, explicating what it really means for life to be a breath or mist, and then what it is that we should learn from that and that's the way the whole book is going to develop from there. So let's, let's look at point number 1.

Life is short, and this is what you can fill in on your handout life. is short. Again, verse 1, the words of the preacher, the Son of David, King in Jerusalem, Vanity of vanities or mists of mists. Smoke of smoke, says the preacher.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. All is smoke. All is mist. All is vapor.

You guys no doubt recall a birthday. I've got. My son is having my smallest son is having a birthday this Tuesday, and he will blow out a candle. This puff of the smoke is real.

It's not imaginary. The writer of Ecclesiastes is not trying to get us to doubt reality. The smoke is real. But the puff of smoke vanishes quickly.

You guys, as I do, probably remember your grandparents talking about how fast life goes, right? And now I'm 52 years old and I'm saying the same thing. Life goes so fast. There's places in my house that I can remember each one of my kids being in those places in the house and things that happened there when they were little, and now two of my kids are out of the house at college and one of my kids is turning 12.

Life goes so fast. Proverbs 31:30 says charm is deceitful, but beauty is heel. It is fleeting. It is like a vapor.

You guys may have read the quote in our book from Joan Collins where she said the problem with beauty is it's like being born rich and then becoming poor. That's quite an amazing image. Joan Collins, one of the most beautiful actresses that, that you can think of in history, and yet she recognizes that you get poorer and poorer the older you get. I have a, I joke around about how I was born poor and I'm still poor, but I think my wife can resonate with that.

I married up in the world. I outpunted my coverage, so to speak. But everything is a breath. Our lives are the merest breaths.

Life is short. Secondly, what we see in our text is life is elusive. Verse 3 says, what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? What does he gain?

We'll talk about what that gain means, but life is elusive. The smoke from a blown out candle is short-lived, to be sure, but it's also elusive. Try to grab some smoke and stick it in your pocket. Not going to happen.

This doesn't deny the fact that the smoke is real, but it eludes our grasp, right? When Katie and I were dating, we took a walk through Evergreen Memorial Park and Mausoleum at 14th and Pine near Mount Rubio. I don't know if you've ever visited that, cemetery, but it's amazing and you see so many stones that go way back. And, while we were reading some of these very old gravestones, we came upon an impressive monument of Oliver Thorell.

I, I just remembered Oliver. That's been in my mind. I had to go look up what his full name was. I didn't remember, but it's Oliver Thoreau, and in my research yesterday, I recalled that he died February 5, 1893 and right on the monument, it says aged 84 years and 20 days.

Doing some calculations, this means that he was born Monday. January 16th, 1809 and died on Sunday, February 5th, 1893. I don't know if you've ever thought what day you were born on. I was born on a Saturday.

I didn't know that till last night and I looked it up. but there's things about ourselves that we don't even know and no one else remembers. That's something I throw in whenever I do funerals. I always mention what day the person was born, what day they died, and virtually nobody there knows that information.

And it's, it's something that is like just aha, this, this person was born on an actual day and they died on a particular day. But at the base, this is why I bring up this, this monument of Oliver Thorerell. At the base of the spire is a portion of a poem by Alfred Tennyson, which is interesting, by the way. He was born in the same year as Oliver 1809 and died in 1892, 1 year before Oliver.

In a poem called Break, Break, Break, Tennyson says this. But oh for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still. That little part of that poem has stuck in my brain since I read it on that monument, and it'll come back to me periodically. Who was the family member that wanted that?

Was it, was it Oliver himself? Was it a family member? Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still. Life is elusive.

It's a breath. And, and, and so it is. We think that we can control our lives, but control is elusive. the book of Ecclesiastes fits within a certain genre in scripture that we call wisdom literature.

you have the Torah, right, and you have epistles and you've got prophets. Ecclesiastes fits right in this section of scripture that we refer to as wisdom literature. In wisdom literature, this genre asks what does it mean to fear the Lord in a world that the Lord has made. That's the basic thing that wisdom literature tries to do.

What does it mean to fear the Lord in this world that the Lord has made? And so we read Job, one of my favorite books, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes. Well, Ecclesiastes, according to David Gibson, is a meditation on what it means to be alive in a world that God made and called good. And yet which has also gone so very wrong, often in catastrophic ways.

How do we fear the Lord in a world that God clearly made and He made it good and yet it has gone very, very wrong. And so wisdom literature like the book of Ecclesiastes uses proverbs and pithy sayings, riddles and provocation. By the way, maybe we'll talk about this in some future class, but I think that the book of Job is largely a riddle. It fits within the riddle aspect of this genre.

Questions and answers, prose and poetry, all these things are used to force us to look at things from a different angle and as David Gibson says, to wound us from behind, to sucker punch us in the back. That's what Ecclesiastes does to get us to think about life differently from the way that we normally think about life in our pretend world. And Ecclesiastes as a piece of literature really mirrors itself. The book itself is a vapor and grasping for the wind.

As you're reading through the book, you feel like you're grasping at smoke at times, and many authors or commentators believe that's intentional. That's exactly what Solomon is trying to accomplish, that as you're reading through this book, it's like you're walking through mist trying to grab it and trying to figure out what is he even saying. And then there'll be light. The clouds will open at different times, and then we'll see these fear of the Lord passages that we'll talk about in the future.

Let's talk about this word gain. The question, the main question of the book really is in verse 3. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? Answer.

Nothing Isn't that fun? We gain nothing. That's the answer. What does man gain?

And what does gain mean, by the way? The idea here is, what's left over. What's remaining at the end of your life? What, we wanna show a profit.

We wanna be in the black. We want a surplus. We ask questions like, will my life matter? Will my life amount to anything?

Will I leave a legacy? What will people say about me at my funeral? I forget who said this, but I remember reading a quote about how that at a funeral, people will get up and say a few things about you and then they'll sit down and eat potato salad. That's pretty much the end of your life.

And that's, and that's part of the point of Ecclesiastes is people are not going to remember you. I had this guy, this guy named Oliver who's buried over here at Mount Rubidoaux, this monument's huge. Whoever this guy was, he was a well known person. Does anybody know who Oliver Thorell is?

I looked him up on the internet and the internet doesn't doesn't know who he was except for the fact that he's buried over there. And he, and he died in 1893. Mr The book Ecclesiastes later has this to say in chapter 5 verse 15. As a man came from his mother's womb, so will he depart again naked as he arrived.

He takes nothing from his labor which he may carry in his hands. You come out of the womb, you go into the grave, and you take nothing with you. And beyond that, when we look at, we'll look for in a second here about the merry go round that's described in the next paragraph, but the world will spin on without Mike Barry. Mount Baldy will still be there when I'm dead and gone, right, unless the Lord comes back.

Over here at Sugarloaf, it's still gonna be there and I won't be able to hike it anymore. I'll be in the grave. We will not alter the cosmic merry go round. Our author says.

Everything is a breath. Our lives are the merest of breaths. Life is short. Life is elusive.

You guys encouraged yet? Let's talk about a third point of what this means. Life is repetitive. Let's look at the groups of 3s that we see here in our texts, 4 to about 10.

We see the sun rising, we see wind blowing. We see streams flowing into the ocean, and yet the ocean is never full. And that all gets compared with our utterance, the use of our mouth, our eyes seeing and never being satisfied, our ears hearing and never being full. So there's this, you look at nature and you see this cosmic merry go round and then you look at yourself.

We're never through speaking, we're never through seeing, we're never through hearing, and it's meant to create this idea of this circle, this poetic circle that just keeps going around and around and around. And what is the meaning? It's like space travel or hiking, you, you, you watch these movies about space travel. Somebody gets out to a particular planet and yeah, you've discovered that planet, but what's the obvious question?

What's beyond that? When I, when I go hiking with my son or my dog, we'll get up to a, a peak. I remember the first time I went up to Sugarloaf up here, I was so excited to get up there, but then I looked straight across over there to Table Mountain and I'm like, that's higher. I want to go to Table Mountain, right?

And then you get to Table Mountain and you're looking across that way and you see Richey Canyon, Richie Peak. you're like, well, that's a little bit higher. I'd love to get over to Richie. And it just goes on and on and on.

It doesn't matter what peak you climb, there's always going to be the sense of there's something else, some other place to go. our author David Gibson says this. The preacher doesn't mean by no new thing. In the text, he says there's nothing new, right under the sun.

By no new things, that there's never anything new invented in the world, for that's clearly not true. He means there's nothing new that we can ever discover to break the cycle and so satisfy our hearts. You, you do one thing and there's still the cycle continues and, and there's still a dissatisfaction if you're trying to gain some satisfaction that lasts from that particular thing. I don't know how many sports fans are here, but I, I experience this every year whenever, you start watching playoffs in baseball and you're watching the World Series and you get so into your, your team and your player, and then the World Series comes and maybe your team wins and it's very exciting, and then at the end, I go into a mini depression for a few days.

It's like I've spent so much time watching sports. And I want more. I, I wish the season wasn't over and that I could continue to watch and sometimes I'll actually go back and rewatch some of these games just to relive what had happened in that in that particular playoff season, but that's the point is it doesn't truly satisfy our hearts. At the end of the day, human beings gain nothing from all of their toil under the sun.

There's no surplus because they are never full enough to have something left over. And so there's this repetition that goes throughout life. It's short, it's elusive, and it's repetitive. Even just think of the history of Israel, right?

All of the Old Testament, you've got the, the people going into the land. You think, all right, they finally arrived and Joshua is in charge. Everything's good now, right? And then you get the book of Judges and the Book of Judges is just 7 cycles of decline.

It just seems terrible. And then the Lord raises up Samuel and you're thinking, all right, we've got the prophet we want, and he anoints Saul and we're like, OK, things are all right, and then it just all falls apart on Saul. But then David's anointed and we get to the height of the kingdom and you're thinking this is incredible. And then David commits adultery with Bathsheba.

He asked Solomon. And there's this incredible promise that's given to Solomon and he builds the temple and you, you have to think this is the fairy book ending, right? This is, this is the storybook ending right here with Solomon. What happens with Solomon?

It all falls apart. His kingdom ends up with Jeroboam and Reaboam. Could you have a worse ending to a movie? But that's not the end.

It just keeps going. It's like one king comes up and you think, oh, Hezekiah, he's the man, and it goes down. Jehoshaphat, you even get to Josiah. Josiah's, oh, this is, this is so amazing, and then he gets killed by Pharaoh.

It's just up and down. It reminds you of, of, of Hamlet's soliloquy to be or not to be. in Hamlet's world, he's trying to figure out whether he should commit suicide or not. Should I, should I end it all?

Because look at the world. We've got the law's delays, the proud man's cuntly. I could just end it all with a bare bodkin, but Wait a second. There's the undiscovered country.

What's after death gives pause, right? What's gonna happen on the other side of death? I don't know. Maybe it's worse than what's here and so I'm not gonna kill myself.

But then he goes on and murders his, his, stepfather and it ends tragically, right, with him. he has a totally different worldview, and that's not where Ecclesiastes, that's not where Solomon's driving us, is we should give pause and think about our death, but we're going to see it's going to lead us to a very different place and it's going to lead us to have a, a realistic view of what we can accomplish in this life, what we can gain in this life, and where the true gains are in the next life, right?

Think about it even in American history. how many times have we had a war like World War 1 and then we end World War 1 on November 11th and we say this is the war to end all wars.

This is it. We're going to end all wars. And it was the way that war ended set things up for the next war, right? And the way World War II ended set things up for the Cold War and the Cold War set things up for what Vietnam, Korea and Vietnam.

It just goes on and on and on. Think about racism in our culture. We had, we fought a war. We're the only country that I know of in the history of the world that actually fought a war over slavery and racism.

We divided up and, and fought a war to end racism, and yet where are we at today? We're still dealing with the same things injustice and so on and so forth. Everything is a breath. Our lives are the merest of breaths, and that should inform us life is short.

Life is. Repetitive life is elusive, and that should drive us to the points that Solomon wants us to consider. And one of those first points is that we should prepare to die. Prepare to die.

We're living a life under the sun. And we need to prepare for the end when that sun goes down and what's going to be on the other side when we move into darkness. Speaking of sun, I used to work at the Sun newspaper over here in San Bernardino when I was attending Cal State San Berardino. One of my jobs was to write up birth announcements and obituaries.

Every day I arrived at work, my inbox would be full of a pile of births and a pile of obituaries, and I would type up the births and obits, as we called them. At the end of the day my inbox would be empty. And then I would show up the next day and my inbox would be completely full of births and obituaries. Just a cycle of life and death under the sun.

What exactly does this phrase under the sun mean? Well, as our author David Gibson says, and I agree with him, probably it's better to see this as a temporal marker rather than spatial. It's more about now time. We're living now under the sun rather than space.

It's not just that we're living on space, it's we're living in the now under the sun. The sun starts in the morning. Our lives begin. They move and then they go down and they end.

We live under the sun and this side of eternity. This life under the sun is a breath, and this is true of everyone. Of everyone, it doesn't matter if you're a Christian or a non-Christian. One of the popular interpretations in church history of the book of Ecclesiastes is that this book should be read very negatively and that this book is not true of Christians.

But what our author is arguing, and this is actually, I think, more a prominent interpretation of the passage of the book today, is that this applies to human beings generally, believers or not. as a pastor, I've done many more funerals than weddings. In fact, jokingly, sometimes I'm referred to as the Grim Reaper. that's supposed to be funny.

I have done funerals for teenagers. I've done funerals for those in their 90s and many in between. I've done funerals for Christians and non-Christians, but there's one thing I began to notice that was unique about Christian funerals. But it would only happen if I was at a Christian funeral with an open casket.

While I would preach at a Christian's funeral, whenever I got to the gospel, particularly the part about the resurrection, I've noticed at times that the corpse will begin to smile, and you might think I'm crazy, but one time a Christian corpse actually winked at me when I talked about the resurrection. folks, is that true? No, that's a lie. That is a lie, Steven.

The Christians were just as dead and lifeless as the non-Christians in every funeral I've ever done. In fact, sometimes the Christians look worse in their caskets than the non-Christians. Being a Christian does not stop this being true. Our author says rather, it should make us be the first to stop pretending that it isn't true.

Christians can stop pretending that we are not going to die. And that brings us to really our final point. And that is we need to learn to live. If we won't live forever, our author asked David Gibson, if we won't live forever, even long enough to make a lasting difference to the world, how then should we live?

That's the big question of Ecclesiastes. The preacher's, the preacher's argument is cumulative. It doesn't, he doesn't answer it all at once in one little pithy statement. It's like a painter painting on a canvas, and we get the message as we read the whole book, and I want to read this section at length because this is probably my favorite couple of paragraphs in the chapter.

David Gibson says the reality is, is we spend our lives trying to escape the constraints of our created condition. Opening our eyes to this is a significant breakthrough. To be human is to be a creature, and to be a creature is to be finite. We are not God.

We are not in control, and we will not live forever. We will die. But we avoid this reality by playing let's pretend. Just like little kids play pretend games, adults do the same thing.

We all do it. We play let's pretend. Let's go on with a quote from David Gibson. Let's pretend that if we get the promotion or see our church grow or bring up good children, we'll feel significant and leave a lasting legacy behind us.

Let's pretend if we change jobs or immigrate to the sun, we won't experience the humdrum tedium and ordinariness of life. Let's pretend that if we move to a new house, we'll be happier and we'll never want to move again. Let's pretend that if we end one relationship and start a new one, we won't ever feel trapped. Let's pretend that if we were married or weren't married, we would be content.

Let's pretend that if we had more money we would be satisfied. Let's pretend that if we get through this week's pile of washing and dirty diapers and shopping lists and school runs and busy evenings, next week will be quieter. Let's pretend that time is always on our side to do the things we want to do and become the people we want to be. Let's pretend we can break the cycle of repetition and finally arrive in a world free from weariness.

Let's pretend The book of Ecclesiastes. God wants to help us stop pretending. In fact, what we're going to see as our author says, quote, change and constancy are the two balancing weights on, on the seesaw of human experience, and God has given humanity the means to enjoy both of them. By patterning the world with rhythm, there's change and there's constancy.

There's constancy and there's change. When I get up in the morning and I put on my work clothes, I feel good putting on my work clothes and I go to work and I get home and I can't wait to get those work clothes off and get into my play clothes, right? Do you guys resonate with that? Why is it that we want to put on our work clothes in the morning and we want to rip them off in the evening?

Change and constancy. The preacher is going to show us that we should show us what we should and should not expect out of life. He is not saying there's no gain after we've chased the wind. He will insist that there's no need to chase in the first place.

There is no gain to be had under the sun, and that's precisely the point. None need be sought. And what we're gonna find next week in chapter two, is that life is a gift, not gain. We don't need to try to find our gain in this life.

It's actually a gift from God that's going to float away like breath and mist, and the true gain is on the other side of your death. Everything is a breath. Our lives are the mirrors of breaths. Let me end with some questions or applications.

I'm really just going to make some. Some basic statements from this chapter in this text. If you haven't read it yet, I hope you would pick up the book and read chapter 1, and also read verses 1 to 11. We'll be next week we'll go through about the middle of chapter 2 or somewhere in there.

Here's some, some questions or applications. First of all, realize God is wise. And he is wiser than you and me, and I'll send you this. You don't have to feel like you've got to write everything.

He is wiser than you and I. He has revealed his wisdom to us in the book of Ecclesiastes. It's one of the places where wisdom comes to us, and God is good, and He's better than you or I or you or me. Got to get the right pronoun there.

He has revealed his goodness to us in the book of Ecclesiastes. So let's look and listen together as we go through this book. This breath of life we live has a morning and an evening. Our lives are real.

They're not fantasy. They matter to God. We live under the light of the sun for a brief breath, but the darkness of death is coming. All of us will have our sunsets.

Life is short. It's elusive. It's repetitive. But we can stop pretending it isn't because we know the God who created us.

So let's prepare to die and in doing so, we will learn to live. Let's stop pretending that we can gain something for ourselves here. I don't know about you, but I, I've felt this pressure since I was young. I, I want to, I wanna leave a legacy.

I wanna make my mark. I want my life to matter. That's one way you can go. Or secularists will sometimes say, life is a journey.

Enjoy the ride. Just enjoy the ride. That's, that's not the way the book of Ecclesiastes is driving us. There's more to life than this grasping for the wind that's in the book of Ecclesias all over the place right after the word vanity or habel is this idea of grasping for the wind.

We're going to see next time, quote, Life is God's world. Life in God's world is a gift, not gain. Let me say that again. Life in God's world is a gift, not gain.

There's not a surplus here. Remember Jesus says, What shall it profit? What shall it gain a man if he gained the whole world? And what?

Lose his soul. Paul says, as we talked about last week, for me to live as Christ and to die is what? Gain. To die is gain.

This life is Breath and mist, but to die is gain. What are your favorite memories in life? It's great to enjoy our favorite memories as gifts from God. It's wonderful to enjoy those memories as, as a gift from the Lord Almighty.

And we can worship Him for the things in our past, the things in our present, and the things in our future. But to try to grab them and hold on to them and to mourn the fact that my children aren't children anymore, to mourn the fact that my bride is not 21 anymore, to mourn the fact that I'm not 26 anymore. And to think that I can grab onto this life is to try to gain something from this life I was never meant to gain. If I can enjoy it as a gift as long as I hold it loosely and look to the future for my gain when we see Christ.

Suggested follow-ups for next week are on your handout there. We'd encourage you to read chapter 2 and let us know if you're not getting the class emails. You can sign in to make sure you get those emails. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for the wisdom that we see in this book that you have given to us. We pray, Father, that we would see the loving chastisement when you come up behind us, as it were, to punch us from the back, to wake us up to reality. Help us, Lord, not to think that this elusive life that is short. And repetitive is what it's all about.

But Lord, that we would look to the end when we will die and go into your presence and that that would inform the way that we live now and that we'd be realistic, not pessimistic, but realistic about what can be accomplished by mere creatures, but very hopeful about what is going to be accomplished by you, our Creator. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, and all God's people said, Amen.