Good morning. Yeah. Alright, let's get started. That's what I'm talking about. So we are on a journey here together. Going through the book of Ecclesiastes is my great pleasure and honor to be able to work through this book with you. I'm really excited to see what the Lord does with it in our hearts and minds. I know that this book, as I've shared in the past, has been an incredible blessing to me. One that has lifted my spirits in the darkest times. During the most difficult times of my life. I shared this last week. I think this is the book, this book I've read more than any other book in the Bible. Because of its ability to reset and reorient my mind. And to give it the proper perspective. Today's sermon is entitled, The Beauty of Insignificance. Now you might think, wait a minute, what kind of beauty could there possibly be in insignificance? I think today, hopefully by the closing of this sermon, you'll have discovered what that beauty really is and why we should embrace it wholeheartedly. How could insignificance be beautiful in our lives? Please bow your heads with me, let me pray for help as we go through this word together. Heavenly Father, we need you. We need your help to understand this word. As I have shared in the past, the gospel according to Solomon. Something that gives us a recognition of who you are, how great you are, and how insignificant we truly are. This life really only matters in Christ. As we share often, it's either Christ or chaos. And I believe Solomon is trying to give us a very clear picture of what chaos looks like. and how that should rot in us repentance in our hearts. A repentance for failing to put things in the proper perspective by starting with the fear of you. An acknowledgment and recognition of who we are as creatures made in your image designed to perfectly represent who you are and your character. To do that in worship. To do that in relationships. To do that in the stewardship and understanding guardianship of your created order, and how often we fail at that. Please give us a proper perspective today of truly the beauty of our insignificance. So what does the preacher and assembler want us to understand about ourself, really? That's the point of this sermon today. He wants to tell us something. Solomon has had experiences in his lifetime, and I believe, with some others, not all agree on this position, but I think that this is Solomon recounting his life as a king and in his old age, repenting of pursuing folly. Living a life of sin. A life of destruction. But doing it with eyes wide open. Walking into it headlong. And then coming out of it on the other end, recognizing all is vain. All is truly vanity. He was a king in Jerusalem. He had everything available to him. He was the wisest man on earth. according to the scripture. He stood before the people of Israel as he assembled them and gave this profession. Now, have any of you taken the charge of at least listening to this or reading through this in one sitting throughout the week? If you've done so, I guarantee you and promise you the more you do this, just repeat this. It takes, I think Willie told me this morning, it takes about a half an hour. You can listen to it over and over. They listened to it twice on the way up here today. And I know that in doing that, as we do that, we're gonna understand this unfolding, this confession, if you will, this very public confession, Solomon provides us, for our wisdom and properly situating us in the created order. Remember, sections of this starts with, and I believe it's chapters one through two, really want to tackle our creaturely limitations. That man is powerless to prescribe meaning or really enjoy anything. Think about that. We are powerless to ascribe meaning to anything or enjoy anything. Now, some might be questioning in their mind going, wait a minute, Jeremy, hang on a second. I do that all the time. I ascribe meaning to things and I enjoy things. If any of you are like me, you like a good beer every once in a while, right? Greg and I had one last night. Great cigar over a fire, enjoying each other's company. We're not really powerless. What do you mean by that? Well, truly, that apart from Christ, apart from God, providing meaning for anything. Any meaning that we ascribe to something is really meaningless. We don't get to dictate and determine what meaning actually is. It's God who does that. Think about it. One of the key components of this series, we're gonna be looking at two things, vanity, habel, right? And under the sun. What does it mean to live life under the sun? I mentioned last week that this is an incredible tool that you should be utilizing when preaching the gospel, when evangelizing. Why? Because Solomon is providing a perspective that only someone who above the sun could know, which is God. We must have God's revelation in order to understand what under the sun means, to provide any context, a framework, to be able to begin to define things and value things, to appreciate things or not. We wouldn't have any clue. We couldn't say that we had true knowledge about anything if all that we had was our personal experience under the sun. Under the sun connotates that there's something above the sun. There's something beyond the sun. The sun is a boundary. It's a boundary prescribed to us as creatures. If life only existed under the sun, I want you to think about it for a moment, we would be left to determine reality and value, anything meaningful on our own. And do we all agree what that meaning is? Or what that meaning should be? As Greg Bonson would say, do facts speak for themselves? Do they just have a list like, here, this is why I'm here, and this is what I am, and this is how you should handle me or think about me. Do they? No, they don't. So if life only existed under the sun, this is the message that Solomon is trying to drive home. To those who have hope, only under the sun. You have nothing. under the sun. All is vain. Think about it. Here's why. We have to ask in light of that, what if this is true, Solomon, right? What you're saying to me is true. Then what value is there in pondering our powerlessness or insignificance? What value is there to that? It's just eat, drink and be merry. For what? You guys can all finish it. Tomorrow we die, right? That's what Paul says in First Corinthians. In light of what? the resurrection, his defense of the Lord's resurrection. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Therein lies the summary of all of Ecclesiastes, unless we had some vantage point above the sun. And we have to also remember as we go through this book together that there are two groups of people that are in mind that Solomon has. One, the wicked There's a group of people who are not God-fearing. They're wicked. And then there's the God-fearers. Those who actually have the power to enjoy things. Those who can experience life in a way in which God intended. But those who are wicked only have the vantage point under the sun. Think about it. Where do we get our above the sun vantage point? Where does that come from? Thank you, from scriptures, the very word of God. Interesting enough, in our interview last week on Emmaus Road Media, shameless plug, right? Like and subscribe. In our interview with Denny, one of the things that we brought up over and over again was, how do you understand the Bible? Is the Bible the word of God? Is it conveyed to us wisdom and the will of God? Is it the authority necessary for all matters of life and faith? His response? No, the Word of God had a beard and lived in the first century and walked around, performed miracles, resurrected from the dead and ascended to the Father. And the immediate response is, well, then how did you know that? Did you just come up with that in your own imagination or did you read that somewhere? You must have read it somewhere. If all of our private experience was what he was expressing, and if he gets a chance to listen to this, I'm going to share this with him in our private communication after the fact. The thing that we were trying to press the hardest with him is, if we believe, Denny, what you believe, then really all we have is our private experience, as he claims, the apocalypse between his ears, after fasting for months, losing tons of weight and locked himself up in his room. That is the authority of Denny's life. And what does Denny do with that authority? He rejects a lot of what's taught in scripture. And so then we have to come back and ask Denny the hard question. Denny, if all we had was your apocalypse between your ears as our primary authority on all matters of life and faith, All is vanity. It's really meaningless. You get to argue however you want to argue and it doesn't matter. If the moment we come to correct you, provide any kind of correction or instruction, it's meaningless. Because this here is not the authority any longer. It's not what Paul says and he says he's in a full agreement with Paul. It's not what Paul says, that it is the very word of God breathed by him, given through men, not of their own will, Peter says, but it's good for reproof, correction, exhortation, and the building up of the godly men. There's no room for correction any longer, no room for reproof in life under the sun, because anyone gets to come up with their own reality on their own. So you can begin to see then, where the beauty might shine through in our insignificance as it relates to all matters of life and faith. So what does Solomon mean here? Look at verse 2. He says, "...vanity of vanities," says the preacher, "...vanity of vanities." All is vanity. All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil in which he toils under the sun? What does man gain? Think about what happened in Genesis, right? What is the curse? All of creation was what? Subject, Paul says, to futility. Awesome. This is great. It's all subject to futility. Vanity reigns supreme in our lives. And it reigns amidst two people groups. The believer and non-believer. We experience vanity in everything that we do. Everything that we do. We work hard. We go to work every week. We drive our cars every week. Kids, you know, they're like, yeah, that's right. You go to school and you're like, yeah, this is vanity, right? Man, I'm doing this over and over. I have to work hard for tests. Then I take the test and I seem like I'm getting nowhere. I'm going backwards. I do the same thing every day. And it seems like to what end? What am I gaining from all this? Only to what? In the end of my life, turn to a grave, I return to dust." Well, consider our works, particularly, in light of God's. And I think that's what Solomon's trying to do for us here. He's saying, our works are all vain. We live these inconsequential, insignificant lives in light of God's works. Think about what was said today in Psalm 119. The heavens declare the glory of God. They declare the glory of God. What are the heavens? It's the expanse that we are situated in, floating or not, in the middle of outer space, if that's what you want to call it. Sorry, flat earthers, it's round. We're some global object floating in an expanse we can't even understand or define. Think about that for a moment. I remember talking to my mom about this a while back, and she says, I don't like to look at the heavens sometimes. It's very intimidating and scary. Why would it be? Well, think about it for a brief moment. We are currently moving at 17,000 miles an hour. Right? Am I right? Is that correct? Back check me. Around that? I know that's what the International Space Station moves at, is it circles the Earth every, what is it, 93 minutes or something like that? Yeah. Wrap your noggin around that. And then now we're rotating around a huge object that's an exploding fireball. Think about that. And somehow we're like sitting here as though we're not even moving because our inner ear is adjusted for the movement of the earth. And now take a little brief moment to think about this thing does this and it's been doing it for a super long time. A lot of people have witnessed this over the centuries, the millennias, and they're baffled by it. They look out and they go, yep, that's passing again. Yep, same stars, same thing. And they can actually guide themselves based on these constellations, which Job talks about, God tells Job. They can guide their way through and somehow navigate their way through the oceans and land by virtue of the consistency of these objects that have been placed in the heavens. And here we are spinning around a ball of fire that everybody has beheld since the dawn of creation. That's terrifying when you think about it, right? Day to day, he goes on to say, it pours out speech. Night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor their words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. And in them, which is an appeal to God's wisdom revealed, right? Throughout the created order, he talks about specifically this huge ball of fire, the sun, which is really a terrifying object if you think about it in and of itself. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but if we were like just a few feet or inches Closer to the sun, we'd burn up. We're a little bit further away, it gets super cold here, and we'd experience another ice age, right? I look at, you're the one who's the, no. Anyway, I point to Katie, because she works in this stuff. Anyway, the idea is that there's such a careful alignment of our galaxy, a careful alignment of our solar system, a careful alignment of our planet that's wobbling like this that creates the seasons, while it's spinning at thousands of miles an hour and it's looping this huge ball of fire. And what does the Psalter says, in them he has set a tent for the sun. God has appointed and positioned this object, this giant ball of fire. He set a tent around it, and it comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber. It's like, yes! You know, you can imagine the picture of that, right? And God's like, yeah, I did that. I appointed that place for the sun, that huge ball of fire that's terrifying. He says, and like a strong man, it runs its course with joy. It just does its thing. God appoints it, He sets it up, and it continues to do exactly what He designed it for. It's not going to run out of gas, by the way, guys, for any of those out there who are worried about global warming or cooling. It's not running out of gas anytime soon. And it hasn't for thousands of years, right? It runs its course with joys. It's rising from the end of the heavens, and it's circuit to the end of them. And there's nothing hidden from its heat. Everything is exposed to it. Now consider that in comparison to our scripture reading of Job, right? What does God say to Job? Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Job? What are you accusing God of, of being unjust, really? Justifying yourself instead of God, right? Dress for action like a man, Job. Stand up. I'm going to question you, and you're going to make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? He later says. Me. I'm the one that has appointed all these things. I'm the one that set a tent over this globe of fire, this ball of fire. I appointed its patterns. I structured it all. And I was there in the beginning when I laid it. I appointed it all. And I hold it together, as it says later in Scripture, by what? By the word of His power. He speaks it, and it is, and it's set, and it's obedient to me. What does Elihu say later? He says, it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand even. God is the one who puts this wisdom in us. He's the one that gives it to us. We're his creatures designed for his purpose. God is the one who gives us the ability to make us understand. He says, the spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. I am toward God in the same way you are. I'm in the same position you are. What does he say? I too was pinched off from a piece of clay. I love that. We're just the same. Elihu was upset at Job's counselors and Elihu was especially upset at Job for justifying himself. He says, look, I'm a piece of clay pinched off just like you were. I'm no different than you are. And you know what, wisdom, you know, years, age, should have brought forth wisdom, but I'm not perceiving a lot of that here right now. He says he was indignant at their responses. And he rebukes Job and he rebukes his friends. And note, if you read Job, God doesn't rebuke Elihu. He asks the three friends to go repent and offer sacrifices, not Elihu. Elihu had it right. Wear pinches of clay. These insignificant pinches of clay. And who are we, as God would say, to question Him in His working, in His doing? We're the handiwork of God, pinches of clay. So contrast that now, in light of what God says about himself, how God has described his created order, how he appointed it and he settled it, with our apparent state as pinches of clay in our works. I think that's what he's trying to do for us here. He's saying, look, you insignificant pinches of clay. You could go and try to do everything you want your whole life and work super hard for it, and you're going to return to dust. Everyone does. Here's God's handiwork. It's forever. It's everlasting. When God sets it and appoints it, it is very good, and He's the one that sustains it according to His perfect purpose. And nothing can thwart that. New little insignificant pinches of clay are part of that. So then we have to ask ourselves, if that's the case, if all is mere vanity, then why do we work? Why do you work so hard? Why do you stress out on stuff, you know? If working is anything just like throwing snowballs at the sun, then why do we spend our time doing it, right? If that's the end, we're just chucking snowballs at the sun, that's all we do, our whole vain life, is what the preacher says. Then what's the ultimate aim? Is it just meaningless? Is that really the end of it? Why work so hard for what will ultimately be forgotten? Why? Why do you spend your lives working so hard for what will ultimately be forgotten? He goes on in verse 4, look at verse 4, he says, a generation goes and a generation comes. The earth remains forever, which means really the unforeseeable distant future. It's just going to remain. This massive body in the middle of space, that's what we want to call it, floating around a globe of fire, is the same massive body floating around a globe of fire that people did thousands of years ago. That generation has come and gone, this generation will come and go, the next generation will come and go. So what's the meaning of it all? He goes on to say the sun rises in verse 5 through 7. The sun rises and it goes down. It hastens to the place where it rises. Exactly how God appointed it to. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north and around and around the wind goes on its circuit and the wind returns. Jesus says to Nicodemus, people don't understand the wind. They don't understand how it works. Where it comes from and where it goes, it does its thing. And it's been doing that thing since the dawn of creation. Who are we to question God who has appointed it to occur that way? All the streams run into the sea, but the sea is not full, right? From our vantage point and not understanding, imagine you're Solomon, you're like, well, man, the rain comes, these streams develop, lakes develop, and then they pour into streams and all these streams run into the ocean, but it's not filling up. That's really interesting. Why doesn't it fill up? You would think after a while the whole world would be full of water by now. What does God say to Job? Where were you when I told the sea here, this is where your proud waves must stop and land continue? What were something that the disciples noted after when Jesus was in the boat with him and the storm hit? What was noted about the disciples when Jesus stood up and rebuked the waves? What were they mind-blown at? Were they terrified? It listens to you. It's the same language used in Job. It's the same language Solomon's trying to tell us here. It's the same one that rebukes the wind and the waves and says, here your proud waves must stop. Job, Solomon says, that's the same guy, same God, the same one in control of all those things. When Jesus stood up and rebuked the wind and the waves and it listened to him, they're like, oh my gosh, whose presence are we really in? We're in the presence of the Almighty, the same one that gives us breath, the same one that puts wisdom in our inward parts, the one who rose us from the dust and to dust we shall return. Whose presence are we in right now? Streams run into the sea, but it's not full to the place where streams flow and there they flow again. The observation is, man, as you look around you, everything is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It's subject to futility and so are we. Where's the mess here? The created order acts in perfect obedience to its creator. It always does the same thing without hesitation or argument. Then why do we? Where's the problem with us? How can we act with hesitation? How can we argue and push back and ask questions to this creator who's appointed everything for us and before us? Think about it, guys. Most of us spent time in God's created order. And we've beheld its beauty and we appreciate it. I've personally, I remember, we used to take hiking trips to Mammoth every year. And my aunt would take us on these crazy hikes, go to seven, you know, 14 miles deep sometimes, into Yosemite National Forest. If you've been there before, it's beautiful, gorgeous. We're up at the pass with this one pass called Duck Pass. And Duck Pass is like, you are at the top of a mountain. I mean, when I say top, you can see as far as the eye can see for miles and miles on a clear day. You can see the literal ridgeline of the Sierras mountain range. It's amazing. You sit back and you're like, Wow, I am so insignificant in light of this little patch of this created order. And it's gorgeous, it's beautiful, Yosemite National Forest is beautiful. I'm sure you guys have gone on trips, you've seen amazing places, you'd be held with your eyes. We know people who've climbed mountains and slept on the side of mountains just to get to peaks that nobody else has spent time on. So that they could say, I saw this, like Mount Everest, imagine, right? I got to see this from a unique vantage point that probably no one else in the world has ever experienced. We go through these great things, you know, to try to attempt to behold God's glorious created order. We get pictures on our Facebook, right? Some of you are on Facebook, maybe Instagram, of all these wonderful trips that people take and they show them, you know, they selfie it. Look at this, look where I'm at, right? It's amazing. And then we experience the vanity of it all when we wish it would never end. But it comes to conclusion, the sobriety kicks back in when you're on the car ride on the way home, kids are complaining they have to potty every 15 minutes, right? Or they're hungry. If you have kids like mine, or your wife does. That's right. Think about it. The sobriety hits you on the way home. You're like, oh man, you got to go what? I got to get back to the grind again. I wish this could last forever. This moment in time with these friends, this place, this thing we're experiencing, I wish this could last forever. That is the very vanity. that Solomon's trying to drill into us, into our minds. So in light of that, he goes on to say in verse 8, he says, All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor ear filled with hearing. No matter what we do, it's wearisome. We go work hard to go on vacation, to go back to work hard again. Right, James? Right? You're exhausted, bro, I can tell. It's a good sabbatical for you. Right? Let this be an encouragement to your soul. It's good to be weary for good things. We're weary, we're working so hard to be forgotten and not remembered. This generation's gonna pass, this one's gonna go on. We're gonna continue to press on, we're gonna go on our vacations, do our cool things, wish that time never ended, but it's weariness to the soul because the moment that vacation starts to wrap up again, the reality of the sobering reality is, man, gosh dang it, I have to continue back into the grind again. My eye is not satisfied with seeing. No matter how much I see, I wish I could see more. No matter how much I do, I wish I could do more. There is no end. My ears could be filled with all sorts of wonderful things, but in the end of it all, I wish I could hear more. When you guys listen to books, podcasts, things like that, there's not enough time in the day to get through all that great stuff. I wish I could hear more. I don't have enough time to read all the books that are available to me to read in a lifetime. I have to be discriminant. I wish I could read all these books. I wish I could understand these things better. I wish I could go to school longer. I wish I could, or school might end faster. Think about all these things that we wrestle with and go through. That's what Solomon is trying to drill into our minds. So then can one find value in anything? Can one find meaning in anything? Is there true worth in anything? Always pressing on and never arriving, never achieving despite continual striving, right? Always pressing on and never arriving. Never achieving, despite our continued striving. You've all felt that way. We all feel that way. Imagine Solomon, who pretty much said, yeah, I had everything, man. I had it all. We're going to go through what Solomon had experienced in his life as we continue on in the study. But think about that. He had it all. He had great wealth. He had great wisdom. Anything that really he wanted at the time could be given to him. It was at his beck and call. And here's a man telling you that was all vain. Meaningless he goes on to say in verse 9 look at verse 9 He says what has been is what will be and what has been done? What will be done, and there's nothing new under the Sun nothing new now does that mean there was like wait a minute You know Solomon come on you've heard this argument, but there's technological advancements Solomon There's things that have come out that you didn't have cars like we have have jets sweet jets flying through the air like we have right You didn't have the things that we have Is that what he's getting at? No, not at all. I don't believe that's it at all. What's not new under the sun? The vanity of it all. The fact the sun is still there and still doing what the sun does and the globe's spinning. And that it's still subject to futility and we sin. I like what Doug Wilson says. He says, technology only increases our ability and capacity to sin more and faster. Right? We do it. It just gives us the ability to, like he says, gossip instead of having to walk to someone's house and gossip. We can just do it right over our phones on them internets. Right? We do it faster. We can tell a bunch of people we don't even know, oh, this person. I can't believe they said this about me or did this. You know, there it goes out on the interwebs for, you know, a billion people to see. We do it faster and more now, and we're more efficient at sinning. There's nothing new in terms of futility, no matter how many, by the way, technocrats, if you're watching this, I doubt you will, those who believe that we can solve, that technology is the savior of all things, will come to the unfortunate fruition at the end of it all, that technology is not the savior. Why? Because technology will not improve our circumstance. Even in our technological advance, it's still subject to the same futility that creation account was in the beginning in Genesis 3. Because of us. Think of the example I thought of. Lost in space is a good example of this. You guys seen Lost in Space? What are they trying to accomplish in Lost in Space? If you watch the beginning of it, the whole point is they're trying to get to this other planet, because this one's falling apart, right? Global catastrophe, ecological catastrophe. They're trying to get to this other planet that's like ours. in order to basically start a new life. And what they do is they gather up all these key scientists and, you know, wise leaders and all these people, right? And it's going to be this, like, utopia-like planet where everything is going to be awesome. And what do they bring with them, Sin? You see it, you just watch it, you go, wait a minute, here's this person who's intentionally tricked her way into getting onto the ship, right? And she's causing all sorts of problems on the ship. She causes division and all these things. And they're bringing her with it. I think it's a really great example. You can't change this other planet. You're going to destroy that one too eventually because it's sin that subjected this one to futility. We could try to escape to Mars and create for ourselves a new life, but technology is not going to be our savior. We could try to work towards somehow, I don't know how you do this, it's God who places this in us, but anyway, you could take the image bearer out of you and upload it into a machine and live forever. There are people trying to do that right now. Matter of fact, my brother said that would be fantastic. If he could do that, if that was offered to him, he would totally take it up. Yeah, transfer my consciousness right into a machine. Why? So I could live forever. I don't have to be subject to this futile body, this body of dust. What will end up happening though? There's always a sinner's fingertips programming the programs. There's no such thing as a perfect AI. They make simple choices too. Why? Because they're programmed by sinners. They can't make decisions for us in the same way we do. No matter how hard we try, how good our intentions might be, technology is not our savior. And just like the folks in Lost in Space, we'll just transfer our sin from one planet right to another. And again, face the same issue. Because all of creation was subject to futility, not just Earth. And it's because of us. He goes on in verse 11. Check out verse 11. He says, There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things, yet to be among those who come after. Basically, all of our life's work is like building a sandcastle that will soon be overtaken by the tide, the tide of time. Think about this. Anybody spend time on the beach? It's a lot of fun. They have these amazing sandcastle building contests, if you've ever been, where they spend hours and hours and hours thinking about it. And that is a perfect analogy for what Solomon's trying to say. These people do build elaborate, amazing sandcastles. They have contests, and it's a big deal. If you've lived on the coast, you would know. You've experienced this. You've walked by and you're like, man, that is amazing. How did they do that sculpture out of sand? They just pulled it from right here, bucketed it, did the right amount of water, and they built this amazing elaborate sculpture. Ice sculptures are the same way. When is it happening to an ice sculpture? It just melts. Here's this beautiful thing that was built and constructed and it melts away. Towards the end of the day, after you spent the entire day working your face off to build this awesome sandcastle that you're so proud of, the tide comes in and sweeps it all away. You're like, ugh. Now you could look at it in one way where you're like, man, that's a bummer that just happened. Or you can go, wow, I have a new canvas to work with tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. Has anybody seen Inception, the movie? Same concept. When he went down to the depths of the third level or whatever it was, right, the multiple depth in his sleep and his dreaming, he could dream up whatever they wanted. But one thing that's really interesting that stands out to me in that movie, if you've seen it, is that the deeper they go into the dream, interesting, it's a reflection of their own desires, and what they think is beautiful, and what they think is good, and what does it look like in the end? Destroyed, falling apart, it never was good enough. No matter how long they stayed in the dream, they stayed in there for a really long time, they couldn't dream up things that were satisfying, there was something that was missing, and that is exactly what I think Solomon's touching on. It is the power to enjoy their life, and their work, and what they've imagined. A while back, I heard this song. It was called Just Hold On, Beautiful One. And this is a beautiful song when you listen to it. Have you guys ever listened to a song and then like, you're like, yeah, that song is awesome, but you didn't listen to the words. So this song, I was like listening closely to the words and I hear this beautiful song and it's called Just Hold On, Beautiful One. And it's made by AU4. May have heard of them or not. And the name of the album is, And Down Goes the Sky, okay? And if it kind of gives you an indication of where this is going, it's a very beautiful song, but it's probably one of the best renditions of nihilism I've ever heard. At the end of the song, it says, Just like heaven, there is no hell. So just hang on, beautiful one, because when you're gone, you're only gone. And what was then before you came, everything will be the same. Just like heaven, there is no hell. Just hang on, beautiful one, because when you're gone, you're only gone. And what was then before you came, everything else will be the same. There's nothing before us nor after us. It's just here in this present, live in the moment, because when you're gone, you're only gone. It didn't matter before you came, and it's not going to matter after you're gone. So remember this, Solomon's going to want to tell us very clearly, that this is a tale of two existences. One stares at an unreachable horizon of insignificance their whole life. Nothing before or after them, only death awaits them and damnation in Adam. What a life. And the other, eternal significance and everlasting life in Jesus Christ. Remember that. That is the message Solomon wants. So in the weeks to come as we think through this, I want you to again, please, take your time, listen to it. Listen to it in its entirety, in the fullness of its argument. I believe it's one consistent argument. Listen to it. Think about who's being spoken of. in the instance where everything is vain, and who's being spoken of in the context of all vanity, capable and having capacity to enjoy that vanity, to enjoy that insignificance. Who are the ones capable of doing that? It's the one that God gives the power to enjoy and to pursue some significance, but that significance has to, please bow your heads. Heavenly Father, thank you for this message from Solomon. Indeed, a wise, repentant man who sought significance in a place that it could never be found. Who did it with eyes wide open in such a way. that He went headlong into treacherous sin. And the wisdom that you gave Him and endowed Him with, He used it to rebel against you. And I believe this book is given to us to realize this is the error that we must escape in trying to find some meaning in something apart from you. Apart from Jesus Christ and what He has accomplished on our behalf. Apart from what it means to be a new creation in Christ Jesus. To receive a new mind and a new heart. new desires, new passions, that we are created for good works, that we ought to walk in them. You are the one, Lord, who provides the significance. It's because you are the significance.