Living Life Backwards Pt.2

Well, good morning to everybody. Mike Barry here, one of the pastors at Cornerstone. This is our 2nd lesson on our series Living Life Backwards, and, looking forward to our time. Together.

I was blowing some bubbles a little bit earlier as part of the illustration of what we're gonna be talking about this morning. The chapter we'll be covering is called Bursting the Bubble. We'll be looking at part of chapter 1 and chapter 2 in Ecclesiastes. This will be chapter 2 in our book, Living Life Backwards by David Gibson.

let's go ahead and pray and then we'll jump into our, our time together. Lord, we thank you so much for this time that we can look at your word. We ask God that you'd be with us and our children as they also study the word of God. And Lord, that You would help us to understand what it means.

That man does not gain. From his toil under the sun. But everything is a gift from the hand of God. Help us this morning by your grace to see that there is no gain, but there is a gift.

Help us to enjoy that gift during the times that we have on this earth and that we'd see that. To live as Christ and to die as gain, we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Let's take a few minutes.

Actually, let me give you a couple of announcements, and then we'll review from last week. Again, our 2nd to 5th grade class, Sunday school class begins this morning. If you have 2nd to 5th graders, they can go over to the security area right behind our security station at the Bourne security station. There's a courtyard for our 2nd to 5th grade class, and we're looking forward to ministering to your children.

Last week we had a lesson called let's pretend. And one of the questions that was asked is what is stated in the book of Ecclesiastes. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? We suggested that the word gain means to have something left over in remainder and that time under the sun is more of a temporal.

It's the idea that our lives begin in the morning and then they set and come to an end. And we suggested from the text last week that life is, is very short, it's elusive, it's repetitive, but if we prepare to die, we can learn how to live. The acrostic that has helped me memorize that, 5, the 5 points from last week is circle. You can see that on your, on your handout.

I think the song Circle Rain, Circle Rain. maybe that might help you. But the idea is that life is short, it's elusive, it's repetitive, but if we prepare to die, we can learn how to live. And that's part of why the Lord has given us the book of Ecclesiastes.

The book of Ecclesiastes fits within the genre of wisdom literature. It doesn't hit the question head on. It wounds us from behind. The Holy Spirit gives us a sucker punch, so to speak, to wake us up to reality, to pop the bubbles in our lives, but it leaves us with a ray of light that there are things that we can enjoy in this life, and those things are gifts from God.

The book of Ecclesiastes is also trying to get us away from the wrong storing up to the right storing up. We'll see that today. By the way, Brian had mentioned Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. Ecclesiastes was his favorite book because he said, quote, It was the truest of all books, a book that resonates with many because of its provocative portrayal of life.

And if you've ever read Moby Dick, you can get that Ecclesiastes feel, right, as Ahab is pursuing this white whale and, and is never quite able to capture him. Last week we also suggested that the word vanity that's translated as vanity or meaninglessness in our English translations, the Hebrew behind that word quite literally means breath, or breeze, vapor. The idea is like what you see after you blow out a candle like we did on Tuesday for my son Samuel. You see the real smoke, but you can't grab it.

You can't put it in your pocket. It only lasts for a short time. That's the idea of our word hebel or vanity. we ask the question, what does it mean for our lives to be like a breath, and how should that impact the way we think and live?

Well, that's really what the whole book of Ecclesiastes is about. Last week our, the preacher or Solomon gave us arguments from wind, water, and sun, and we saw the repetitive nature of, of these things. He compared them to the utterances of our mouth, what we see with our eyes and what we hear with our ears. But an objection can easily be raised to the argument that Solomon makes in the 1st 11 verses.

And the, and the objection goes something like this, but isn't it true that We can make a difference in this life. Isn't that what all of us are told at our graduation ceremonies, right? You're there ready to graduate from junior high or high school or college, and the, the keynote speaker says you are the, the ones. This is the generation that's going to change the world.

You can make a difference. And so we raised that objection. Isn't it true that we can study and improve our lives and improve society? Isn't it true that At the very least we can enjoy the ride.

We can laugh and smell the roses. Or we can work and build something, or we can play. And Solomon's response to these arguments that we're gonna see in our text this morning is he begins to argue from experience, from his own experience. Solomon is, is the wisest man on the earth, or was the wisest man on the earth, and he had amazing experiences at the height of Israel's kingdom.

And what he's going to argue from experience is that these things are all bubbles. Vapor, grasping for the wind. And by the way, who will remember your accomplishments when you die? And who will inherit your empire and who will inherit your stuff?

That's basically where Solomon goes in our text this morning. as Christians, we are told like Abraham that we're strangers on the earth, right? We're, we're pilgrims. We're meant to be moving through this life.

We're not supposed to settle down and get too comfortable. Our author David Gibson says in, in the chapter 2 that to be a believer is to be a stranger in a misfit. Really, if we understand what the Bible says about us as believers. but too often as Christians, we move from a nomadic type of lifestyle to taking up residence in this world and rather than seeing the bubbles of life, we think that we can really maintain and find some permanence and some satisfaction from things that were never meant to satisfy.

David Gibson says, quote, the preacher will argue that wisdom, pleasure. Work and possessions are very often the bubbles we live in to insulate ourselves from reality. And his needle, the sharp point he uses to burst the bubbles is what? Death He's going to use death to pop the bubbles of our objection.

A death can radically enable, David Gibson says radically enable us to enjoy life. Death can change us from people who find deep joy in receiving life as a gift, or it can change us from people who find deep joy in receiving life as a gift. This is the main message of Ecclesiastes. Life is in God's world is a gift, not gain, gift, not gain.

I want you to say that gift. Not gain. That's what we're gonna be hammering over and over and over again. Life in God's world is a gift, not what?

It's not gain. We're gonna repeat that over and over. And there's 3 points that Solomon is, or, or David Gibson's making from our text written by Solomon. 3 points to pop our bubbles and leave us with a ray of light.

When we get to the end of chapter 2, there's going to be a ray of light. So far the book seems to be pretty pessimistic, right? It's pretty depressing. By the time we get to the end of chapter 2, we're going to see the sun start to come out a little bit.

But before the sun comes out, Solomon's going to take the needle of death and try to pop all these objections that we have against his opening argument. So let's look at really the first point number 1, this is in your outline our not so trivial pursuit, that's what you want to fill in our not so trivial pursuit happiness. Happiness is a pursuit that all of us are on. And it's not so trivial.

Let's look at Let's look at verse 12 together. I, the preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem, verse 13, and I set my heart to seek and search. Seek and search. He's on a pursuit.

And as we see, he's gonna talk about different pursuits that he goes on by way of experience to find true happiness or joy. And the first thing he's gonna try out is what we're gonna call education. Or he refers to it as wisdom and knowledge education. Maybe if we just get educated, then we can be happy and make an impact, a lasting impact.

Let's look at verse 13 to 18 together. Verses 13 to 18, and I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven. This burdensome task God has given to the sons of man. By which they may be exercised.

I've seen all the works that are done under the sun. Indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind. Remember, vanity literally means vapor. All is vapor and grasping for the vapor or for the wind.

What is crooked cannot be made straight. What is lacking cannot be numbered. We're going to come back to that. On a first read, it seems overly pessimistic, doesn't it?

You're saying that we can't straighten anything out that's crooked? You're saying that we can't count anything that's not there. Solomon's like, exactly. Verse 16, I communed with my heart, saying, Look, I have attained greatness and I have gained more wisdom than all who were before me in Jerusalem.

He's not exaggerating. My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge. I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly, so I, I went and I saw true wisdom and, and the proper way to study and look at the world, and then I went and looked at the counter, the counters to the true philosophies. I look at madness and various worldviews.

I perceive that this also is what? Grasping for the wind. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. So even though Solomon pursues true wisdom and even contrasts it with madness and folly, at the end of the day it does not produce happiness.

At the end of the day what Solomon gains is sorrow. Sorrow comes about at the end of his pursuit of education. And you'll find that those of you guys who have done much study and like say the areas of philosophy, some of the greatest philosophers, the deeper they get in their philosophy, the sadder they get. And they begin to realize that the questions that seemed to have a firm answer at the beginning of their studies that the foundations just roll away and they they'll end their studies with with no answers.

They may have started college with some answers, but they'll end their PhD with no answers and a pessimistic, a completely pessimistic view. Of the world. And so education by experience and Solomon's perspective, that bubble has popped. What about entertainment?

What about comedy and laughter and, and pleasure? I look at verse chapter 2, verse 1 to 3. I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with mirth. Therefore, enjoy pleasure.

But surely this also was vapor or vanity, I said of laughter, madness, and of mirth. What does it accomplish? I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine while guiding my heart with wisdom and how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives. So Solomon pursued mirth, he pursued laughter.

He, it seems like he pursued wine in a wise way. He's trying to figure out is this going to bring me pleasure? Various wines and wine testings and let's see what the right mixture is and what brings the most pleasure, and so on and so forth, and it all ends in vapor. I, I, I like comedy.

I like seeing good clean comedy. but it's sad. Some of the people that I like the most, when you read about their lives, they're so tragic. you look at a guy like Jim Carrey and you read about his life, Robin Williams.

you read about some of the, the funniest people. I, there's sometimes I'll pull up a old Chris Farley skit and just die laughing. And then you start thinking about what his life was like and how it ended. There's times where our, our family will be watching the Three Stooges and just having a good time and then one of my kids when they were younger, they say, Dad, is Curly still alive?

No, son, Curly's dead. and you read the lives of some of these people and they end tragically. Even some of the actors that I love, that have, in some of the movies, the dramas that I really enjoy, some of the, one of the old Robin Hoods from the 1930s and you read about the actor and his life, tragic, tragic. And, Solomon says you, you look and you, and you try to fill your heart with mirth and laughter.

And I don't know about you, but I am prone to excesses. I'll sometimes, I'll, I'll, I'll enjoy something and I just can't enjoy it and then turn it off and move on to something else. It's like I, like I've told you guys about my addiction to Colombo. It's like I finally rediscovered Colombo in my 50s.

I can't just watch one or two episodes. I've got to watch the whole seven seasons and then the new ones, right? And then I go back and I have to see him again. lately, my younger son and I were watching this series called Decoy.

It's from the 1950s. It's the first policewoman show, the first female, protagonist, and it's a very good show, but I can't just watch one. We've got to sit down and watch the series. and I don't know about you, but there's times where I, I'll dip into this binge thing.

And then you watch 3 or 4 shows in a row, and am I any happier after watching 3 hours of television? No, I'm not. And then I have to go get a spiritual bath and get in the word and get into prayer, but that's part of what Solomon's talking about. We can fill our minds and hearts with comedy and this and that, and it just leaves us still grasping for the wind.

what about the pursuit of happiness when it comes to work? Maybe if we just really put our nose to the grindstone, we get involved in real estate and land management, farming, and vineyards and gardens and trees and irrigation. that Solomon mentions here in verse 4 and following, I made my works great. I built myself houses and planted vineyards.

I made myself gardens, orchards, planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove. That's like today. And, whenever I go down to Home Depot, man, that place is full, right?

Everybody's going to Home Depot and buying something else for their house. They're doing something in their yard. and it's Solomon's point that don't do any of that, that there's no, that, that we should not care about our houses, that we should not care about our stuff. That's not going to be his point at the end of the day.

But are we trying to grasp that? Do we think that it's going to last? Do we think that that's going to bring us a lasting Happiness. At the end of the day, that bubble gets popped.

What about power, prestige, possessions? In our text, he talks about his servants. He talks about possessing herds and flocks, silver, special treasures, provinces, singers, musicians. He's got the, he doesn't need to have a stereo.

He just calls in the, the professional singers to sing for him. he's bringing in wood from, distant places to make unique instruments. At the end of the day this is all grasping for the wind. Let's read there in verse 7.

I acquired male and female servants and servants born in my house. Yes, I had great possessions of herds, flocks. then all who were in Jerusalem before me, I also gathered for myself silver and gold, special treasure of kings of the provinces. I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the Son of Mann, musical instruments of all kinds.

And, And so I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me. Solomon's not exaggerating. The Solomonic kingdom, this is the height of Israel's history.

I remember the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon, and there was no breath left in her when she saw all of his possessions, the royalty of his court. the wisdom that Solomon had attained, this guy was at the height of history. He had gained it all. If there was anybody that should have been happy, anybody that should have said, Life is good.

It would be Solomon, right? Wisdom Entertainment, work, accomplishments, power, prestige, possessions. Look at verse 11. Actually, we'll read verse 1011.

Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor, and this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done. Not that my hands had done, and on the labor which I had toiled and indeed all was what?

Vanity, vapor, grasping for the wind, for there was no gain, there was no profit under. The sun As David Gibson says, everything is ephemeral. Happiness is a vanishing vapor. All our bubbles burst eventually.

What are your bubbles? What are the things that you go to? when you're starting to feel down, I want to suggest to you that all of us go through times, our hearts begin to be restless, we begin to maybe be depressed, and then our hearts will run very frequently to our pet idols, and we try to gain the happiness from those idols, and then it's always going to leave us with a sense of vapor and grasping. For the win.

I was reading Martin Luther, this week in his, booklet about simple prayer that he wrote to his barber named Peter. His barber was cutting his hair. I'm not sure if he was giving him the tonsure, but, and, and Peter said, could you teach me how to pray? And he says, sure, and he wrote a little booklet.

And one of the first things that Martin Luther says in his opening instructions about prayer, he says, whenever I began to feel restless in my heart. And start to feel a distance or I forget the exact wording, but it's actually I've got it right here. You guys want to hold on just a second while I pull it out. Is that OK?

OK. I love the way he starts this. First, when I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because of other tasks or thoughts, for the flesh and the devil always impede and obstruct prayer, I take my psalter and hurry to my room, and then he says, I began to read over the Psalms or the 10 Commandments or words of Christ as a child might do, and the feeling that you get, it's not like this happens once in a while. Martin Luther.

It's like this happens on a regular basis whenever he starts to feel cool and joyless because tasks and thoughts are getting there and he knows that his flesh and the devil are always trying to get in the way of his relationship with the Lord. What does he do? He runs off to go feed his soul and, and, and then read certain passages of scripture just like a child, and then he goes to the Lord's Prayer and he instructs Peter the barber on how to use the Lord's Prayer as a as a means to commune with God.

And then to find true joy and happiness, but it's not like that happens once.

Martin Luther argues that this is cyclical. Our hearts are always restless. We're always going to fall into coolness and joy or joylessness, but the Lord provides means for us to, to move out of that. So the point being is we do all pursue happiness by nature, right?

Happiness is, there's nothing wrong with pursuing happiness. That's the way we are made. God pursues his own happiness, right? In the Father relationship, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and he always finds his happiness because he's God.

We are made in the image of God and so we pursue our own happiness. And when that happiness, we find it in God and in the right things that brings joy. But when we pursue the bubbles, we feel coolness and joylessness. And that shouldn't make us hopeless.

God just wants to pop the bubbles with the death needle. He reminds us of our death, and that brings this ray of light. Let's talk about the second point that's gonna help us, help us with, to pop these bubbles of the false pursuit of happiness. Number 2, Houston, we have a problem.

Houston, we have a problem. The problem is death. That comes from, what is that? Apollo 13?

Is that right? That's not an exact quote, by the way. They actually didn't say Houston has a, we have a problem with, there's a couple of other words in there. That's the way it's been transferred to us in popular culture.

the problem is death. And Solomon. lays out this problem for us in the next section. And, in verse 14, the same event happens to them all.

That event is death. The preacher discovers that he cannot make the world different from how it actually is, and, and that death happens to us all. Let's look back at verse 15 for a moment. Where Solomon says, what is crooked cannot be made straight.

What is lacking cannot be numbered. Part of what Solomon is recognizing at the beginning of this section is there are things that are wrong with the world that you and I cannot fix. There are things wrong with you and wrong with me. that we cannot fix.

Not everything in this world is a problem to be solved. And by the way, what is lacking cannot be numbered. That's a very interesting statement. All he's basically saying is if, if you have no eggs to count, you can't count them.

Right? You can't count things that are not there, and as we're going to see later in the chapter, you can't count righteousness if you don't have it. You can't enumerate things that aren't before you or in you. That's his point, and it's going to pop the previous bubbles.

Let's look at Let's see, let's look at verse chapter 2, verse 12, and following. Yeah, so 12, then I turned myself to consider wisdom, madness and folly. He's cycling back in this repetitive cycle for what can the man do who succeeds the king only what he has already done. Then I saw that wisdom excels folly, so it's true that true wisdom is better than folly or foolishness, as light excels darkness.

We're not denying truth and absolute reality. Verse 14, the wise man's eyes are in his head. This is just a statement of fact, right? Wise men have eyes in their skull, but the fool walks in darkness.

He can't see, yet I myself perceive that the same event happens to them all. So I said in my heart, as it happens to the fool, it also happens to me. And why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, this is also vanity.

For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come. And how does a wise man die? What's the answer? As the fool Just like the fool, does that make you happy and encouraged?

No, and that's part of the point. We've got a problem. It's called death. There's no more remembrance of the wise man than of the fool forever.

How does the wise man die? As the fool. And then what is the response to this? How does Solomon respond to this initial experiment of experience?

Verse 17, therefore, I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, and all is vanity and grasping for the wind. Is everybody raise your hand if you've never been distressed. OK, good. So we all have experienced this.

There's distress in life. Raise your hand if you've never had a day where you hated life. Never, never ever hated life. Yeah, we, we've all been there.

and there's a sense of grasp, verse 18, then I hated all my labor, not just I hated my life generally, but I hated my labor in which I toiled under the sun because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool, so control eludes me. Control is a vapor. I can't grasp it.

I don't know who's going to come after me, yet he will rule over all my labor in which I toil and and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vapor. Therefore, I turned my heart and despaired of all the labor in which I had toiled under the sun, for there is a man whose labor is with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, yet he must leave his heritage to a man who has not labored for it. This also is vapor and a great Evil Raise your hand if you've never despaired.

There's never been a day where you've felt despair. If you've felt despair, if you've been distressed in your life, if there's days when you've hated life and hated your labor, guess what? You're normal. And you're living in a world that the fabric of this universe has a crack in it.

And when we feel distressed and despair and there's times where we hate life and our labor, that doesn't mean something's wrong with you. You're just operating in a fallen world that was never meant to make you lastingly happy here. That's part of Solomon's point is we're going to see. So when we get distressed and when we despair and when we begin to hate things in our labor and life, that should not make us overwhelmingly be despairing if we understand how our lives fit into the whole, right?

If we're trying to live for the bubbles, then yeah, that despair can become very despairing and distressing. But when we realize how this all fits together, it actually should be encouraging. Let's, let's go back and rehearse what Solomon's just said in this context. Who knows whether the one to whom I must leave my labor will be wise or a fool?

Solomon recognizes I have no control. And when Solomon died, he went through his a terrible time in his life. There's indications that he did return back to the Lord, and then he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. But who did he leave his kingdom to?

Reaboam, did Reaboam listen to the wise men or to the young fools? The young fools. And then what happened to the kingdom? It was split in half, and the northern kingdom went to whom?

Jeroboam. Was Jeroboam a good guy? Terrible guy who turned everybody away from Yahweh worship to worship in. Golden calves again.

We're back to the same cycle. The height of the kingdom. Solomon dies, and it just all seems to fall completely apart. And if it were not for a Christian worldview, if it were not for the fact that God's on the throne and He's in control, if you were to drop down in the middle of Jeroboam's reign, you would say this is it, life is over.

This must be the beginning of the end. Solomon's kingdom gets left. Think about our own history in the United States. most of our Ivy League schools were formed to train men for the ministry, and there were wealthy Christians who left millions, yet billions of dollars at Princeton, Yale, Harvard, so that the gospel would go out.

that Jonathan Edwards was once the president of what became Princeton University. And yet look at these Ivy League schools today. No one would have any idea. Look at the city of Riverside.

We have some beautiful churches, historic churches that contain pastors that teach a vacant message about just being a good person and that Christ is not exclusively the savior of the world, that you can follow virtually any religion as long as you're a good person, it's OK. These are some of our historic churches in Riverside downtown. Whole denominations have slipped into the ocean, so to speak. Denominations that used to preach the gospel and send out pastors and missionaries worldwide now are proclaiming filth.

and false doctrine. What should be our conclusion to this? We see what what Solomon. has said oh.

Siri, talking to me. for there is a man whose labor is with wisdom, verse 21, knowledge and skill, yet he must leave his heritage. This is a great evil. Verse 22, for what has man for all his labor, for the striving of his heart.

Now notice the, the, the descriptions here for all his labor, striving of his heart with which he has toiled under the sun. Again, that phrase under the sun, speaking of the beginning and end of our lives, notice it's not living life under the stars, it's striving under the sun, the heat of the day, for all his days are sorrowful and his work burdensome. Even in the night. His heart takes no rest.

This also is vapor. That's the conclusion of Solomon's experiment by experience. As Blaise Pascal says, as men have not been able to cure death, misery, or ignorance, They have taken to not thinking about them so as to become happy. We can go Solomon's way and admit reality, which will move us into some ray of light type of thoughts, or at this juncture we can begin to deny reality and try to take pleasure in the bubbles.

And that's what most of our culture does, and truth be told, it's what many of us as Christians do on any given day distractions and diversions. Blaise Pascal has this to say, quote, Nothing is so unbearable for a man as to be in complete repose without passions, without business, without distraction, without application. Then he feels his nothingness, his abandonment, his insufficiency, his dependence, his impotence, his emptiness. Incontinent from the depths of his soul, there will arise boredom, melancholy, sadness, sorrow, spite, and despair.

This is what happens to us. This sounds like some of my Mondays. I spend all of my week working hard and then don't tell anybody this, but Sunday is my Friday and I look forward to tomorrow, right? I get to Sunday and I'm like, Oh, finally, and then I get to Monday and I get out of bed and I'm like, What am I going to do today?

I'm bored. I can't wait till tomorrow to get back to work, and you just go through this cycle. In Pascal's day, what did people do to distract themselves from these types of thoughts? They were hunting and gaming and gambling, today we've got our distractions with electronics and so on.

ask yourself, are you using what distractions are you using to avoid death? What bubbles are you living in that you think will never burst? Peter Kraft is is quoted in our chapter here in this way. This is an amazing quote.

He says, If you're a typical modern, your life is like a mansion with a terrifying hole right in the middle of the living room floor, so you paper over the hole with a very busy wallpaper padding to distract yourself. So we've got this huge hole in the middle of our house, and we just wallpaper over it. But the next image is amazing. You find a rhinoceros in the middle of your house.

The rhinoceros is wretchedness and death. How in the world can you hide a rhinoceros rhinoceros? Easy. Cover it with a million mice.

Multiple diversions, and that's what we do is we cover the rhinoceros of death with a million mice. We divert ourselves in a million ways. That's what Solomon his experiment proved, and it's what we tend to do as well. We go from one diversion to another to try to fill our hearts with the bubbles and to avoid the rhinoceros in the room, which is death.

David Gibson says, The permanent human problem is that death comes to us all. None of us is permanent, and nothing we do is permanent. We are going to die. Everything is ephemeral.

Happiness is a vanishing vapor. All our bubbles burst eventually. Are you guys happy yet? Here's our final point.

We've got 5 minutes. There is a pursuit, it's called happiness, and we try to pursue that with bubbles. but there's a problem, Houston. There's a problem and that problem is called death.

But there's a surprising perspective that Solomon brings in at this point, and the perspective is joy. Joy bursts death's bubble. Look at verse 24 to the end. This is just a really weird change in the middle of a chapter that seems very pessimistic.

Solomon says nothing. What do you expect to come after that? Nothing is. Lasting, nothing is good.

Nothing is better. Nothing is tov. Nothing is good for a man than that he should eat and drink and that his soul should enjoy tov, good in his labor. This also I saw.

What do you think you would say? Don't look at your scripture. What do you think you would say now? This also I saw was.

Grasping for the wind, right? Vapor and grasping for the wind. What does he say? This also I saw was from the hand of God.

When it comes from the hand of God, it's good. For what can man eat? And who can have enjoyment? and the, the, the Hebrew here is difficult.

It could be more than I or from him. I prefer from him. Who can really enjoy these things unless it's from the Lord. Verse 26, for God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to man who is good in his sight.

But to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting that He may give to Him who is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind. So you see 3 gives in that final God gives and that he may give, and then, so we see here he gives wisdom. And then, but to the sinner he gives work that the sinner may give to those that are good before God in His sight, and then he goes back to the chorus of the song.

This also is vanity and grasping for the wind. That's our chorus, right? So remember this is like a poem. And so even after like some of these rays of light, the chorus will kick back in like, what's that, that, that group, the Mamas and the Papas.

Or Peter, Paul and Mary. It's like that idea, this, this chorus picks back in. And so when we accept that we're going to die, This pops the bubble of, of us trying to put hope in things that will not last, and it gets us to this idea that, that life is good if we understand it as a gift from God. We cannot go back to Eden.

Our world has fallen and cursed. We cannot make straight what is crooked. We cannot enumerate a righteousness that isn't there. We're gonna see as we move on that there's a righteousness granted from God.

God has placed a fracture in the fabric of our universe. Things are now not what they should be. And we are limited creatures. Jeff Meyers says on page 46 in our book, not everything can be fixed.

Not everything is a problem to be solved. Some things must be born, suffered, endured. Wisdom does not teach us how to master the world. It does not give us techniques for programming life such that life becomes orderly and predictable.

Rather, we began to thank the Lord for the gifts that He's given us. And we do what we can in this life, understanding that he's in control. We are not gifts from God are not stepping stones to greater things. And so the three points that we've made is that we are on a pursuit called happiness, but that pursuit, we can't find happiness.

Through the bubbles of work and labor and entertainment and possessions, because death is coming and God wants us to think about the rhinoceros to get us to joy, the true joy that comes from the gift, the hand of God. When we see things come from God in His hand, we can rejoice in those things and realize that really our death is gain because we come to Christ. Let me ask some final questions in our last minute. Why do you get out of bed in the morning?

Is it to run around and chase bubbles? What would people say makes you happy? Is it right to seek your own happiness? What strategies do you use to hide the rhinoceros?

And let's remember this gift, not gain. Say that again. Gift, not gain, hand of God versus grasping for the wind. Is it coming from the hand of God or are we grasping for the wind?

Gift, not gain. He is in control. We are not, and that's OK because he will bring true happiness. That's what we'll talk about next week.

Let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you so much for the opportunity that we've had. To look at your word together. And to consider that while we are on a pursuit towards happiness, our happiness does not need to be found in things that we grasp for, but things we receive from your hand.

We received them this morning through Jesus Christ our Lord. We pray this in His name. Amen.