I'd like you to turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 11. And we're going to be in verse 7 through 12, 14. Let me read this for you. Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all, but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity. Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity. Remember also your creator in the days of your youth before the evil days come, and the years draw near of which you will say, I have no pleasure in them. Before the sun, and the light, and the moon, and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because there are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors of the street are shut. When the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low, they are afraid also of what is high and what terrors are in the way. The almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets. before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher's shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the Spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. All is vanity. Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many Proverbs with great care. The preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. The words of the wise are like goats, they, like nails, firmly fixed in the collected sayings, they are given by one shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these, of making many books, there is no end, and much study is weariness of the flesh." The end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil." I want to go home after reading that. I'm like, oh my goodness. But there's incredible truth here. Let me just talk to you and we'll set the setting here. Many of you have heard the stories of my dad. You know, my dad came to the Lord just immediately before dying. And he and I had a long conversation before that happened. I sat on his hospital bed and he did tell me that one of the words he used with me was, I'm out of time. You still have time. And, you know, I didn't quite know what to do with that because we knew he was out of time. I wasn't quite sure what to do with, I still have time. And I think Dad was saying that I have some regrets. There are things I would like to have done. And now, now I'm here at the end. So what I want you to think about is, You still have time. This is an encouragement. Now this message is generally directed towards younger people, but there are truths in here that we can all benefit from. We're at the end. We're at the end of our time in Ecclesiastes. All along we've watched as this teacher, this narrator, a descendant of Solomon, uses lessons that Solomon learned in his lifetime to teach a younger generation of up-and-coming leaders of a very, very prosperous Israel not to be seduced by the temptations of the world. Here at the end of the book, he urges them to adopt everything he's been talking about before it's too late, then leaves them with a very simple way to apply everything that we've heard in Ecclesiastes to their daily life, everything that he's taught them. This is Catching the Wind, part 14. We're going to see four facets of life. that we should all be able to enjoy, not just be able to enjoy, but to be blessed by. Four elements of our life that we can be blessed by and enjoy. We're going to see that we should enjoy goodness. And we should do that before it's gone, verses 7 and 8 of chapter 11. We should enjoy youth before it fades, verses 9 and 10 of chapter 11. We should enjoy the Creator before it's too late, chapter 12, verses 1 through 8. And then we should enjoy truth. Now we have a lot of questions about truth these days, amen? This is a lot simpler than you think it is, 9 through 14 of verse 12. So let's take a look at how we can enjoy goodness before it's gone. Verse 7 says, light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. Now, we gotta remember everything that's gone before this. This is a pretty surprising statement coming from Solomon, a guy who's been frustrated and searching for answers, and doesn't seem to be coming up with any. But I love this, because even with all the searching, even with all the disappointment, all the frustration, all the feelings of emptiness and loss, our teacher says, he says, life is sweet. He says life is sweet, and there's a likeness to honey here. It is to be savored. There are joys to be had, and yes, there are troubles, but life and the opportunity to experience a creation that God has made is to be counted as precious and sweet. That's nice, amen? How do we do that? Verse eight, so if a person lives many years, some of you can appreciate this. Not me, I'm very young. If a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all, but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity. So we're advised to do two things here. to rejoice, and to remember. We rejoice when? With every opportunity. That's what we need to read in here. We rejoice in the moment that we exist in. We enjoy the times around us, thankful that we even have a moment to enjoy. And we remember, we remember even in that moment of joy that there may be trouble. There may be trials coming down the pike. We don't rejoice that we have trouble. Listen to me. We don't rejoice that we have hard times, but we can still rejoice in our trouble. We can still enjoy ourselves in our trouble. We can still find things that we can be thankful for, even though our circumstances may be difficult. We never take our times of enjoying, never take our times of rejoicing for granted. So, what the teacher's saying is savor these things when you can. They may not last forever. It's okay. So, the first encouragement is to enjoy in the good that comes our way, keeping in mind that he's talking to this young audience. Our second facet to enjoy is our years. Enjoy youth. before it fades. Verse 9, rejoice, O young men, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes, but note that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. He says, enjoy your younger years. Have a good time. The teacher's saying, don't be consumed. with making money. Don't be consumed with becoming a success. Don't be consumed with your image or your status. Be happy and enjoy what you have, what God has surrounded you with. Don't fall in the trap that says that if you just work harder and harder and bring all of your resources together that in the future things will be good, because you don't know what's going to happen. Enjoy the moment you're in. And then he tells him some curious advice here, isn't it? He says, follow your heart. I mean, Scripture tells us to be careful with our heart, doesn't it? Because the heart is what? Deceitful above all things. He says, pursue your desires. But notice that that comes with a caution. Now we'll get into the nature of that caution a little bit later in the passage, but he's warning them, yes, follow your hearts, but keep in mind and be cautious about where your heart will lead you. He says what seems like fun and satisfying today can have disastrous consequences further down the road. And ultimately, God will judge all of us by our actions, so while we follow our hearts, we should be wise about where our hearts are leading us, because we can be fooled by them. Have you ever had that happen? Oh, I just know this is right. I've been there. And you make your decision based on how right it feels. You get a little further down the road and go, well that wasn't so right. That didn't turn out the way I thought it would. I think God just sits on the throne and smiles over that. Oh, so you had a good idea. We need to be careful where our hearts lead us. The teacher wants them to enjoy themselves. But keep in mind, he says, you're supposed to be a godly people. You're supposed to be the bearers of God's word. You're supposed to be the messengers of God. The caution about judgment is there not to condemn them, but to help them maintain a healthy, godly, and moral perspective on what they allow themselves to be drawn into. And there's a blessing hidden in there. If you stop to think about it, the idea that God is watching. God sees what we're doing, and He's watching to see if we're enjoying the gifts that He's given us rather than complaining about the ones that we don't have. And we're enjoying them in a way that honors the one who gave them to us. And in that light, the teacher says in verse 10, remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity. He says, don't be consumed with, vexation, anxiety. And we need to understand what that is, because we associate that with worry, and that's certainly there. But in the context, it means don't be consumed with grief, anger, and irritation. Don't let everything around you get to you and get you upset. Put it all aside. Don't dwell on it. Furthermore, put away the aches and pains that you have in youth. Anybody understand what he's saying here? Put away being overly concerned with your body. Young bodies heal quickly, particularly if they're leading healthy lifestyles. So, we see the caution here. The youth is fleeting. Goes away like a vapor. And there will come a day—tell me if I'm right—when everything hurts all the time. Okay? So enjoy this level of health and energy while you can, because as we all know, at some point that will begin to fade. I loved what we did yesterday. I would stand there and I was so blessed watching all these kids having fun, and everybody that was helping out and everything. But I gotta tell you something, when I got home, Kelly looked at me and said, are you tired? All I did was fall down. I don't have the stamina that I used to. I look back on those days when I did, and I don't know if I enjoyed them the way I'm being encouraged to enjoy them here. Come a time when it's too late. Now listen carefully, and this is why this is important, because he's talking about being thankful, he's talking about focusing on the right things, leading a godly life. What he's really talking about, please listen to me carefully, are spiritual disciplines. If we don't develop this attitude of thankfulness, as a spiritual discipline, as a way of living our lives, as a way of getting through the day, then we're not going to be able to do it when the dark days come. Listen to this. Before the sun and light, and the moon, and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because there are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut. When the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low, are we being encouraged yet? They are afraid also of what is high, and terrors that are in the way, and almond tree blossoms. Grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because a man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the Spirit returns to God who gave it. We've gone from that enjoy your youth to concentrate on your Father. Concentrate on your Creator. And what we have in these verses right here is we have the language of death, the language of funerals. Concentrate on your Creator before your time comes. There's a time when reality begins to fade away. Our bodies begin to fail, and it's a time that we are told to prepare for, because this time is inevitable. I have a friend who was career Navy, and he was telling me about his training. He was on a boat, and it was just in the middle of his first round of service, and they had to do drills. Anybody in the service remember drills? where he'd do the same thing over and over and over again. And he'd been doing it for a couple months, and he was tired of doing them, and he's kind of like, okay, I gotta do this, and then I gotta do this, and this goes over here, and this goes over here. And he went to his commanding officer, he said, why are we doing this all the time? We do this all day long, I'm getting so tired of doing this. The commanding officer said, I'll tell you why we're doing it, because right now you seem a little bit tired of doing it, but we're trying to teach you some muscle memory, because when the bullets start flying and the bombs start falling, you're not going to have a clue as to what you do. You're going to fall back on what you know, and what you've learned, and what you have trained your muscles to do. That's us. When I talk about spiritual disciplines, I'm talking about the things that we do to work on our relationship with our Father in Heaven. It's nice to sit here and be loved, amen? It's nice to know that He sent His Son to die for us, amen? But we have to participate. We don't just sit here and soak up all this goodness. We have to learn about the one who saved us. We have to learn about the one who sacrificed so much for us. We have to spend some time in His Word. We have to spend some time talking to Him. We have to spend some time focused upon Him. And if we don't do that when the times are good, we're never going to know how to do it when the times are bad. We have to develop a spiritual muscle memory. And what we're really practicing is the presence of God in our lives. Muscle memory, developing the presence of God in our lives. And you know when he says to do that? Right now! Don't wait, do it right now so that we can know Him when we desperately need to cling to Him. He wants His students to experience all the peace and all the joy they can have in trusting their Father in Heaven. He wants them to be able to enjoy that. He wants them to have a heavenly perspective on things before they get grounded down by life and become jaded and grumpy. empty. Anybody know somebody that's older and grumpy? You know, I always say to myself, how do I, how do you get there? Because we haven't developed the spiritual disciplines and the spiritual muscle memory when we had time. Third facet of life we should enjoy is You know, I think that's what happened to Solomon. Maybe he hasn't totally turned his back on God at this point, but he certainly has neglected his relationship with Him. Maybe God has become a second or a third priority, or worse, maybe God is an afterthought in Solomon's life. Perhaps Solomon is looking back on his youth and realizing that he missed all this by making himself the focus of his life instead of God. Solomon's final comment is right back where he started. He says in verse 8, vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity. And after all this reading. about pragmatism and the practicality and wisdom of life and everything. I don't think Solomon's talking about the practicality of life in general. I think this is a sad coda to Solomon's life. It's all empty. I missed it. Talk about that one over lunch. You know, I think this is the end of Solomon's part of the teaching here. I think, and we see a pivot from the teaching of Solomon to the final comments of our narrator, who was about four centuries later. And we also see the fourth facet of life that we should be able to enjoy, truth. Now, I love the subject of truth. Because that seems to be one of the main issues we're dealing with culturally, amen? What is truth? I mean, Pilate said it when he's standing in front of Jesus. Who knows what truth is? And Jesus is kind of standing there going... You're missing it, Pilate. We're still kind of asking the same question, aren't we? Only it's amped up a little bit more. So, I think truth is simpler than we think. Verse 9, besides being wise, the preacher, now he's talking third person, also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. So, this is a narrator talking about Solomon's teaching. He's using Solomon's experience to warn these young leaders, these movers and shakers, but it's not all fire and brimstone. He's trying to encourage them, and he's trying to encourage them in an early state. In verse 10 he says, the preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. So what he's saying is Solomon wrote truth, and that should edify you. It should nourish you. It should help to equip you as you go forward. Then verse 11 he says, the words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings that are given by one shepherd. So he admits that Solomon had wisdom. He's a pretty smart guy. He was wise enough to write and compile a whole lot of Proverbs and truthful sayings, which he wrote a lot more than what we have. And all of them were given to Solomon by God, and that's what the narrator wants his young disciples to cling to, the inspired Word of God. Solomon may have struggled. But he had a message, one he learned from his good experiences and one he learned from his bad experiences as well. We saw the breadcrumbs, we saw the hints of that message throughout the entire letter. He says four times in this letter that we should fear God. No, this is not the trembling, quaking, I think God's after me, going to get me type fear. This is that reverential respect. that we should develop in our relationship with Him. So he says that in chapter 3 verse 14, chapter 5 verse 7, chapter 7 verse 18, and in chapter 8 verse 12, four times. And in 8-12 he says, things should go well. for you if you fear God, if you fear your Father in heaven. Solomon taught that God is in control of all things. That's what the first part of chapter 3 was all about. There's a time for everything. God has set a time for everything in its time, and it's perfect. So the narrator wants to see his students embrace these truths. He wants to see them become grounded in God's word. Notice the word for shepherd there is capitalized. We only see that one other time. It's in Psalm 80. Give ear, O shepherd of Israel. It's a prayer to God. You who lead Joseph like a flock, you've enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might and come to save us. He's talking about words given to Solomon by God. He's saying, make this part of your life. Then he says, Keep things simple. Keep things simple. And beware, beware of any wisdom that is beyond that of God's Word. He says in verse 12, my son, beware of anything beyond these, of making many books, there is no end. And many, and much study, is a weariness of the flesh. Now he's not saying there's no wisdom in extra-biblical writings, because we can sometimes find wisdom there. It's not always divine wisdom, but it can be manly wisdom, kind of like what Solomon's been doing. But when he says anything beyond these, The connotation here indicates anything that tries to add to the wisdom of God's Word or contradict it. He wants him to keep it simple. And we see that in verse 13, the end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil." The end of the thing. Fear God and keep His commandments. You want to know where all the answers are? You want to know what to do with your frustration? You know what you want to know what to do when you don't know where to go? You don't know what to do when you feel empty, when you feel spiritually dry, when all you have is questions and there's no answers to be heard? You want to know what to do? Fear God. Keep His commandments. Oh. No, it's got to be more complicated than that. I've got to know Hebrew. I gotta go to seminary for eight years. No, what you gotta do is have a reverence and an awe and a worship for God and read the Bible. Can't be that simple. Oh, yes it is. Yes it is. That's the only way that we're going to know when we get into these teachings that we need to be aware of. What's right and what's not right? What's a false teaching? What's a good teaching and everything? We don't know. You know, it's the old adage about when the treasurer's trying to train somebody how to find a counterfeit bill. What do you think they do? Take them out and show them all the counterfeit bills that are out there? You know what they do. They show them an authentic bill. They say, get so familiar with this that you can tell the difference between this and a counterfeit one. You'll be able to see it just like that. We'll be able to see it just like that, false teaching and bad teaching, teaching that will lead us out of the way. The type of teaching that will say, like these young men in Israel are going through in the fourth century, that there are more important things in your life right now than God. Take care of those. You'll have time for God later. So here we have these four facets of life that we should enjoy and be blessed by. We should enjoy the good before it's gone. We celebrate the good in life knowing, knowing that that's a gift that God's given us. And for believers, it's even a better gift than you think because it is a preview of what is to come. Doesn't necessarily mitigate the trials and the grief that we're going to do, but it gives us a way through the trials and the grief to know that there's something beyond that. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Again, he doesn't say be thankful for all things, he says be thankful in all things. The hard part is focusing on the things that we can be thankful for when everything's falling apart all around us. Second thing we should enjoy is our youth before it fades. You know, while you're young, seems like the days and the years just stretch out before you endlessly. Oh, there's so much time. Didn't you used to think that when we had vacation from school? You know, the last day of school was at the end of May, beginning of June. Oh my gosh, I never have to go back. I've got three months. Of course, in Virginia, you only have about one and a half. It just seemed like there was so much time to enjoy the summer. And the next thing you know, we're out buying pencil boxes. You younger folks have your parents tell you what the pencil boxes are. Where did the summer go? Then enjoy your youth. It will end at some point. It's so easy to get consumed by what you're trying to accomplish. That's the struggle that the teachers' disciples are going through right at that moment. They're being distracted by all of the wealth, and all of the potential, and all of the opportunities that are around them. They're so busy taking the next step, there's no time to enjoy the step that they're on. So consumed with what they want, there's little appreciation for what they have. And that can happen to any of us and all of us at any age. And when that happens, what goes out the window is being thankful to God for what He's given us. And what happens is we get worried about what we don't have, maybe even resentful that He hasn't given it to us. It's a surefire recipe for disaster. Worry and anger rise up. We need to avoid that. We need to enjoy our Creator before it's too late. It's so easy to take God for granted when times are good. And the problem is when this happens, when hard times come, we have no muscle memory for praying, for trusting. We have no practice of being close to Him. We really have little invested in our relationship with Him, so we should rejoice in Him right now. Right now, we should thank Him right now. We should talk to Him. We should read about Him. We should spend time with Him right now. And when we need Him desperately, we will know Him intimately. We will know the sound of His voice. We will know the feeling of His presence. We will know how He moves in and through our lives. We will know, brothers and sisters, we will know Him. But we start right now. And we should enjoy truth, simpler than we thought. We read a lot of books about the Bible. There are millions of them out there. We can even investigate other religions, and you know, let me encourage you, if you know your Bible, go ahead and read about the other religions. You need to know what's going on out there. But we need to know the Word of God first. We can't do those other things without being more familiar with the Scriptures, without being more familiar with what God has given us. And if we can skip that part, We're going to find ourselves struggling. Things are going to come at us from all directions. We're not going to know where our path is. And the final and ultimate lesson of Ecclesiastes has been the foundation of Warrington Bible Fellowship for over 22 years. Fear God. Keep His commandments. Read the Bible and do what it says. read the Bible, and do what it says. That needs to be a discipline, along with prayer. That needs to be part of our daily lives, not something we do when we have time. We need to do it now. Like I said earlier, when my dad said, there's still time for you, he preceded it with, I've run out of time. He was sincere. I could see it in him. He was looking into my eyes and he was looking back into his past and wondering what he'd made of his life. So he was sincere about, I'm out of time, but he was wrong. My dad was wrong. It's never, it's never too late. It's never too late to recognize that Jesus died, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven, telling us that He would send what? Come on. He would send a helper, an advocate. Think about that. When you think I don't have time, when you think it's too late, when you think I'll do that later, He sent a helper. He sent the most powerful helper in the entire universe. Sent a full member of the Trinity. He sent the Holy Spirit to us who indwells us, and He will help you if you ask Him. He will help you if you want the help. He will help you go deeper in your relationship with the Father. And there's some godly wisdom for you right out of Ecclesiastes. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we're not left to do this on our own. We thank you, Father, that you've given us a helper, one who will guide and comfort and direct us, Father, one who will order our steps. Oh, we pray, Father, that by his presence in our lives you will give us the commitment and the deliberation to follow, to do what he tells us to do, and go where he tells us to go. We thank You for that promise, Father. We thank You for this book of wisdom. Father, we thank You for the worldly wisdom that's in there, but we thank You for the godly wisdom that leads us closer to You. And we pray this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Next week, we will have a sermon on baptism. And the sermon's title is, What is Baptism? We're going to talk about the nature of baptism, why we do it, and how we do it. So if you can't make it, just tune in. I want to thank the people who joined us online. You know what? I'm going to ask everybody to stand. And we do this every now and then. If you can come forward, come forward. We'd just like to greet the people that are online. We have several families that are unable to join us physically. We want to let them know that we appreciate them and love them, too. Pastor John here again. I hope you're blessed by the service. You can find us on the web at WBFVA.org or we're on YouTube and Facebook at WBFVA. We'd love to hear from you. If you have prayer requests, we'd love the opportunity to pray for you. You can just message us or you can email me at KUVAKAS at gmail.com. God bless. Hope to see you again.