I invite you to turn in your copy of God's Word to the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 9. We'll be looking at the first ten verses. Ecclesiastes 9, 1 through 10. And this chapter 9 begins a new section, a major section in the book of Ecclesiastes. We are now starting to head towards the conclusion. In fact, you might even say that chapters 9 through 12 as a whole are the conclusion of the book. And what we see happening here is that the author of Ecclesiastes, the one who calls himself the preacher, he's shifting in the way that he's been doing his work. Up until now, those first eight chapters, he's been involved in what we might call investigation. Now, he's shifting towards counsel. What do I mean by investigation? Well, remember, this book was written in the third century before Christ. It was a time when the nation of Israel was under the domination of the Greeks. The Greeks under Alexander the Great had conquered the whole of the Mediterranean world, and that included the nation of Israel. And the people of God were being tempted. to leave the faith that seemed so restricting, that seemed so limiting, in order to pursue all the wonderful things that the culture of the Greeks offered the people, very similar to the situation in which Christians find themselves today. We likewise are tempted to abandon our faith. We're told, why should you limit yourself? Why should you not have fun? Why should you not prosper when you can have all the wonderful things that society and that the world seem to offer? And so the preacher writes this book, and in the first eight chapters what he does, he says, let's take a look, let's investigate all the different things that the world offers. And you have seen him as he's looked at wealth, and possessions, and power, and pleasure, and all the different things. that we look for to find satisfaction and meaning and significance in the world. And one by one, he's shown us that in the end, none of those things can give us lasting satisfaction. The significance and meaning is only going to be found in Jesus Christ. He's done that investigating in the first eight chapters and now in chapters 9 through 12 he turns more towards giving us counsel, applying the things that we've learned. Now when we look at chapter 10 starting next two weeks from now, three weeks from now, we'll begin to look at that and see that from 10 to 12, he's rather more positive than we've seen him so far. But here in chapter nine, before we get to the positive, he's once more gonna do what he's done for us, which is show us the world as it really is, without all the romantic kind of notions that we attach to it. He plunges us once again into a life seen from the perspective of under the sun. And remember, that's the language he's used all throughout the book. We're going to see it here in just a moment in the reading. Under the sun means that your perspective is limited to what is worldly. You don't take into account the heavens. You're just looking under the sun at everything that's here. You might say that it's a life without God. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you don't believe in God, but that the things of God do not take hold of you and affect the way that you approach life day to day. You are, in fact, a functional atheist, and there are many, many people, even one sitting in the pews of churches all across this country, who are, in practice, functional atheists. They forget God in their day to day dealings. And what is life like when we look at that? That's what he's been doing all throughout the book, but he's gonna do it once more here. He's gonna show us life with all its dangers, all its hazards, all its uncertainties. He's gonna once again show us death and change and chance and the fickleness of people all around us. He's also going to show us in chapter 9 that familiar theme that we've been seeing throughout the book, that you can find contentment in life, but it only comes from God and through God. Now, you might say, well, we've heard all these things before. And that's true. But we're not the same people who started this journey eight months ago. We've changed. We've learned. We've grown from the things that we've read. We've been down this road already, and we know how to deal with this stark look at life and how it really is. And the preacher recognizes that. So even as he approaches the same topic once again, He takes into account that we've learned along the way. So with that, let's go ahead and read chapter 9, the first 10 verses. Here now the word of the Lord. But all this I lay to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know, both are before him. It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil and all that is done under the sun that the same event happens to all. Also the hearts of the children of man are full of evil and madness is in their hearts while they live and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. And they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished. And forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun. Go, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your mind, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going. Thus far, the reading of God's Word, may He bless it to our hearing, especially as it's preached to us this morning. Veronica Lake, are you familiar with that name? Did you recognize that name? Do you know who she was? She was a famous actress from Hollywood's Golden Age. Now, here's the thing. Names of other stars of the silver screen's Golden Age have come down to us through the decades. Names like Rita Hayworth and Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman, but Veronica Lake, not so much. So who was she? Well, she had a rather short career, and it peaked in the early 1940s, but during that time, she was hugely popular. In 1942, she was voted the top female box office star of the year by Life Magazine, and if you know anything about that era, you know that Life Magazine itself was huge. And when Life said that you were popular, you were popular. Veronica was also beautiful. In 1941, she introduced a new hairstyle called the peekaboo bang. Some of you may not know what it was, that's the name of it, but you'll recognize it. It's the one where the hair comes down and covers one eye and gives you that sort of sultry look. And it was so popular that every girl copied it. In fact, it became a national problem because after the US entered the war, millions of women went to go work in factories. And that hairstyle prevented them from using the machinery properly. They needed to have both eyes to operate the machinery. They did not need to have long hair. They got caught up in the machinery and so on. So the War Department asked Veronica to change it, and she patriotically acquiesced to that. But what it shows is that here's this woman who was at the top of her game in the early 40s. She had wealth, she had influence, she had prestige. She was successful in every way that you can imagine. And yet, by the late 1940s, her career had entered into a rather rapid decline. She ended up getting divorced, she was soon broke, and she began to drink heavily. She died in 1973, ruined and forgotten. She was only 53 years old. Her body was cremated and her remains spent three years, her ashes and a little urn on somebody's shelf because no one was willing to pay the fees to take them out in a boat and disperse them off the coast of Miami as she had hoped. Veronica Lake perfectly embodies the vagaries of life. One day, you're the queen, the star, the icon of your country. Everyone loves you. Everyone wants to be like you. And the next day, you're a useless, forgotten piece of trash, haunting the streets and smelling of bad alcohol. Those are the things that the preacher is talking about when we read this very difficult passage in chapter 9. And as we look at the passage, we're going to see three things that speak to those vagaries of life. We're going to look at the hundred-year rule. We're going to uncover the source of our despair. And we're gonna talk about finding significance. So the 100-year rule, uncovering the source of our despair and finding significance. So let's look at the first thing, the 100-year rule. You might wonder, what is that? Let's take a look at the first few verses of this passage. And like I said, this is a tough passage. But again, let's understand the perspective with which the preacher is writing. Three times, in verses three, six, and nine, he talks about this being seen under the sun. So again, there's our perspective. A life without God, a life that does not take God into account for day-to-day living. And when we look at those things from that perspective, we see that life is hard, that life can even be cruel. And then we begin to wonder, does God care? Is He listening? Is He even there at all? Let's take a look at what he says in verse 1. He says that we are in the hand of God. Now, it's telling us that God has us under his care, but our experience in the world doesn't seem to bear that out. He goes on to say, whether it is love or hate, Man does not know. Both are before him. We see so much destruction in the world, so many bad things that we wonder, is God for us or against us? Does he love us? Does he hate us? We're in his hand, but is he there to protect us or is he there to crush us? We can't tell, and the reason we can't tell is what he says in verses 2 to 3. It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This, he concludes in the beginning of verse 3, is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. It doesn't seem to matter whether you are good or evil, he says in verse 2. It doesn't seem to matter whether you are religious, one who sacrifices, one who takes an oath, or whether you are irreligious. The same evil comes upon all of us. So what good is it being good? What use is it being moral or being religious? Doesn't matter how you behave because we're all gonna suffer alike. There's no advantage to being good in the end. It tells us in verse three that death comes along and it levels all of us with incomplete indifference to our character, to our accomplishments, to our morality. It doesn't seem to matter at all. The things that you think ought to matter to God, things like how we behave, whether we are fulfilling religious obligations, all those things turn out to make no difference at all, or at least none that we can see, to the way that we're disposed of in the end. As Homer said in the Iliad, they die an equal death, the idler and the man of mighty deeds. So from our perspective of under the sun, life seems meaningless. It seems that whatever you do makes no difference. How can you find significance in this world? The preacher goes on. At the end of verse 3, he throws out a line. that you might say, well, what does it have to do with this? But he says, also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil and madness is in their hearts while they live. And after that, they go to the dead. So all we see in the world is that death is this universal obliterator. And before we die, evil is running rampant all throughout the world. Now, those two things, the fact that death is universal and the fact that there is so much evil in the world, those two things are actually closely related and that's why he brings them up here. You see, if we live in a world that is apparently without meaning, that it doesn't seem to matter what you do, you're still going to suffer and you're still going to die, if we live in that kind of world, then people quickly grow disillusioned. They feel that there ought to be more. The way that we look at the world, the way that we interact, we want to say, no, it matters. The things that I do should have significance. But if that's not the case, then that's deeply disillusioning. And people who are disillusioned lash out. They lash out in destruction, they lash out in despair. That's what he's getting on that second half of verse three. That connection between the evil that we see in the world and the fact that death wipes it all out. Many of you will be familiar with that paraphrase of the Bible called the message written by Eugene Peterson. It's not a translation. It's a paraphrase, which means that it tries to bring out what it thinks are the thoughts, not exactly word to word. They're not good for any kind of study. The message is not a good study Bible, but at times the emotion or the heart of what is being said, he does bring out in a way that really gets our attention. So if we were to look at the message of verse three, I like the way it brings out what I do think the preacher is saying. He says, I find this outrageous. The worst thing about living on this earth that everyone is lumped together in one fate. Is it any wonder that so many people are obsessed with evil? Is it any wonder that people go crazy right and left? Life leads to death, and that's it. You see, what he's getting at is that outrage, because we sense that there should be something more, and when we see that, oh no, it's the same for everybody, then it's no wonder that we lash out doing evil deeds, because nothing that you do will matter once you die. That's what the preacher is setting up for us in those first three verses as we look at life under the sun. It all seems meaningless. It all seems irrelevant what kind of person that you are. And then you die. And death is what obliterates and is that great equalizer that removes all those distinctions that we make so much of. Because we have this feeling, and we're gonna talk about more in a moment, that there ought to be something more. We often then romanticize death and we think that somehow through death we will continue on and that there is meaning there. But in verses four through six, he completely demolishes that idea and he shows us that death, at least from the perspective under the sun, is final and complete. He says, but he who is joined with all the living has hope for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun. Wow, whatever romantic notions we had about death, which we see in movies where, you know, your spirit lingers on or you continue on in some kind of life where you're participating in the things that matter, he comes and he just removes all of them, demolishes all those thoughts. It's like what the 19th century English novelist Samuel Butler once wrote. He said to himself, everyone is immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. What a sobering thought. He's bringing the reality of the curse of the fall home. He's removing all those romantic trappings about what death is, and he says, when you die, that's it. In the immortal words of Private Hicks in the movie Alien, game over, man. It's game over. Some of you will recognize that reference. The point that he's getting at is that when you die, everything that you care about, everything that you enjoy, everything that you love, everything that you value will be lost. In his poem titled People, the Russian dissident poet called Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote, in any man who dies, there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight. Not people die, but worlds die in them. He's bringing out that sobering thought that all the things that matter to you, all the things that you value, all the things that you think of, they're gone when you die. People might be talking about you, but you don't even know that they're talking anymore about you or even remembering you because you're gone. And that's what he's bringing forward. And so many of us say, well, it doesn't matter because I'll be remembered. My memory will live on. But really, is that true? Let's invoke the 100-year rule here. Tell me, what is the name of your great-grandmother or your great-grandfather? Do you know? Do you know the things that mattered to your great grandmother? Do you know what her favorite color was? What are the things that she enjoyed eating? Chances are very, very likely that you don't know. And if you somehow do, go back one more generation and we have no clue. Maybe we have their name that we can look up in ancestry.com, but that's all they are. Their names that show up on a tombstone or on a register or on our iPhones. But as people, those worlds that they lived in all died with them. They're completely gone. You know, all that stuff that you have in your attic, all that stuff that you value, all that stuff that you worked so hard for, do you know what's gonna happen when you die? Your kids are gonna come into your home, they're gonna clean out your attic, and they're gonna have a garage sale. And all those things that you valued also, poof, will be gone. The preacher wants us to see the futility of all these things. He's asking us, why are you killing yourself for all this stuff? Why are you killing yourself for your career? Even why are you killing yourself for your family if it all doesn't matter? In 100 years, the memory of just about all of us will be forgotten. If we're remembered, we're remembered as a street sign, maybe a name on some school, and that's about it. Tommy Nelson, the now retired pastor of Denton Bible Church, once wrote this. He said, in the game of chess, different pieces occupy squares all over the board. The pawns, bishops, rooks, knights, queens, and kings have different abilities and positions of power. But at the end of the game, where do all the pieces end up? In a box. The preacher has never been afraid to take us down into the depths of what life is really like, to shock us with what we see but we ignore and we wish were not the case. And when we begin to understand the meaninglessness of life from that perspective of under the sun, well it's no wonder that we despair. And that brings us to our second point. Uncovering the source of our despair. Why is the world this way? And is there something more? Let's look and see if we can figure that out. Because it's no wonder that people should despair when death makes life under the sun pointless. And yet, as we've been saying all throughout, despite the fact that that is what apparently is the case, that death levels everything and ruins everything, somehow, at some level, we feel that life ought to have meaning. We feel it deep in our very bones. We want to explore that, but before we do, we have to look at why it seems that the world is meaningless. Why is it that everything around us seems to add up to nothing at the end? And the reason that's the case is not because God is indifferent, it's not because God is cruel, certainly not because God is nonexistent. No, the one thing we've been seeing the preacher telling us again and again and again throughout the book is that the reason that everything is messed up is because of us. We're the problem. That's not what we want to hear. And I know in churches all across the country now, you're being told quite the opposite, that you are wonderful, that you are perhaps even divine, and that the problem is out there. But when we look at what Scripture says, including the preacher, he tells us we're the problem. It's the hard news that we don't like to deal with. Take a look at the second half of verse three again. And he says, the hearts of the children of man are what? Full of evil. And madness is in their hearts how long? While they live. Now we've seen this phrase, children of man, the hearts of the children of man. We've seen that phrase again and again. The ESV translates as children of man. It literally says the sons of Adam. And it reminds us that we are children of Adam, of our first parents, the ones who rebelled against God. We are children of that rebellion. And it has to ultimately show us that it's our rebellious hearts that are the problem. It's our sinful hearts. Sin is at the very root of this problem that makes the world look like it makes no sense. Somebody has once said that sin is the most irrational thing. He was saying that in sense of when you do sin, you're being irrational. You're doing everything that's gonna hurt your own self-interest. But it's also irrational in the sense that it, doesn't enable us to any longer understand what's going on in the world. It is the very root of our problem. And unfortunately, that sin nature that we have is universal. We're all sons of Adam, and we have inherited his sin nature. It's also dominant. Notice that it says that our hearts are full of evil. It's not just a small portion of our hearts. It's who we are. It's hard-baked into our DNA. And it's also irremediable. That means we can't fix it. It's lifelong. It says madness is in our hearts. How long? While we live. You simply cannot escape it. It's a terrible thing. Like I said, it's hard-baked into who we are ever since we rebelled against God. And there's no way that we can shun it, no way that we can throw it off. Reminds me of that 19th century French impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin. He was hoping to find that if he can just get away from all the corruption and the deceit and everything of the society in which he lived, that he'd be able to find truth and beauty, and so he abandoned his family and he moved to Tahiti. And there he expected to live and to paint, and he was hoping that he would there find man and his pristine innocence. You know, this whole idea of the noble savage. He believed that when he got to Tahiti, there would be no need for rules, no need for religion. There would be nothing to curtail the noble savage, and everything would just be light and beauty and truth and unicorns and all that other stuff. And instead, what did he find? He found sin and violence and disease and death and pain and heartache. What Paul Gauguin learned is that there is no Shangri-La. It's the same thing that monks learned in the medieval era when they would leave life, get away from the society and the world around them thinking I'm leaving behind the evil and what did they discover? They brought their sin into the monasteries, into their own private cell rooms. They couldn't escape it because we carry it in our hearts. It's not something that we like to admit. It's something that, as we've said before in this book, we tend to see sin as something out there, something that we tend to fall into on occasion. We tend to look at our hearts and our minds and think that they are spiritually and morally neutral, and that only occasionally do we fall into sin. And we fail to recognize that sin is so very much a warp and woof of who we are that it affects everything, our thoughts, our deeds, our will, our action, everything. The reformers had a name for that. They called it total depravity. Total depravity does not mean utter depravity. It does not mean that we are as wicked as we can be, but it means that it affects the totality of who we are. Our sin affects our minds and our hearts and our wills and our bodies. That is the reality of the world, and from what we read earlier today, we see that unfortunately it so clouds our mind that we can't even think clearly about our relationship with God. Romans 8, 7 said, the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. And why can't it? Paul told us in Romans 121. He talks about how our sin darkens our minds. He says, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became, what? Feudal in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. That is the source of our despair. Doesn't do it all to point out there in the world and say, well, it's because of this. It's because of politics or economics or it's because of, The problem starts with us. It's in our hearts. And if you're gonna do anything about it, you have to start by recognizing what the real problem is. And the preacher has shown us all that in spades. Our minds become so clouded that we can no longer see meaning in life. Everything appears to be meaningless, but it's not. We've said that all throughout the series, and the preacher, even here, begins to give us real hints that life can make sense. Let's go back, if you will. Turn with me back to Ecclesiastes chapter three. Let's look at Ecclesiastes 3, 10 through 11. And let's be reminded of what the preacher said here because it applies so well to chapter 9. Ecclesiastes 3 verse 10, he says, I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man. Oh, there's that phrase again, children of man, that's us, to be busy with. So we've been given a task, something that life is like. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. What he's telling us is we're unable to see everything. We can't see it all. We can't make sense of everything. But because eternity's been put into our hearts, we do know that there's something more. That's why we feel that there's some, that our lives ought to have meaning. That's why we feel that there ought to be some significance to the things that send so clouds that we begin to think that they aren't meaningful. Because we see death, death wipes everything out, and yet we think there should be more. Sinclair Ferguson, the Scottish theologian, commenting on Ecclesiastes 3, says this. The frustration that we feel at our inability to make sense of things on our own is actually the result of a God-given burden. God created a world of beauty in space and time, but he also made us to know him and to live in his presence. He thus set eternity and a desire for eternity in our hearts. Consequently, we can never be finally satisfied with anything the world can offer us. Made as God's image, created for Him, we must forever remain dissatisfied until we live in fellowship with Him and for His glory. We were made for eternity, not merely for time. We were made for God's presence, not merely for life in the space-time continuum. No wonder, then, if there is confusion and frustration when we turn away from Him. It should not surprise us that if we choose to live in the dark, we cannot see. You see what Dr. Ferguson is saying. He's pointing out the fact that we know that there should be more. We hunger for something more. We know it should be out there. And ultimately, it's not just this beautiful world that God has made for us, which we are to enjoy, but that we can't even enjoy that until we have fellowship with him. It's not until we live for him and for his glory that we can actually meet our purpose and that we can have significance. And we've been seeing that all throughout this book. But the problem is that because we are children of man, that we are the sons of Adam, because we are rebellious, we want to set aside God, the one who is our ultimate good, and we want to find satisfaction in all these other things. Now some of you sitting here even this morning, in your hearts, you're longing for something, you're hurting. Life does not make sense to you. You haven't been able to figure it out. You know there's something more. Maybe that's why you're even here. sitting in the pews. But you haven't been able to piece it all together. And what the preacher is doing is he's calling our attention to the fact that none of it will make sense until we see that that ultimate significance is found in God. You see, because here's the real tragedy. It's not just that sin blocks us from being able to see it. As Sinclair Ferguson said, it should not be a surprise to us that if we choose to live in the dark, we cannot see. the darkness of our own hearts prevents us from seeing the beauty of life and the meaning of life. But the real problem comes that, again, what Sinclair Ferguson says is that sin does more than blinds us, it actually makes us fugitives from the eternal destiny that God has for us. Even when we are in sin, we have this deep-seated sense that we belong somewhere. that we belong in a place that's better, a place that we might even call home. C.S. Lewis used to call this feeling sensucht. He got it from a German word that essentially roughly translates into nostalgia. We have this longing for something. And often we, he says nostalgic is often we think of the past when we were kids when everything seemed to be okay and there was no trouble in the world. But it's so much more than that. We know that there's something more. In short, what we are is homesick. And what the preacher's been trying to show us in these passages is that there is nothing in this world that can relieve that longing, that can relieve that homesickness. But thankfully, he has shown us. He's been giving us pointers all along the way where we can find rest, where we can ease that longing for home. And where do we find it? Well, you can't say it any better than Augustine said in his opening paragraph of the book Confessions. He said, you have made us for yourself, oh God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. That's the answer. That's where we're gonna find our significance. And that's our last point. Finding significance in what seems to be a meaningless world. We talked a little bit a moment ago about your life, the things that you value, the things up in your attic that you've worked for, all these other things that you feel should have value. Deep inside, you believe that these things should matter. And what you're gonna perhaps be surprised to hear is that the preacher actually agrees with you. They do matter. But what he's wanted to do for us in these initial verses of chapter nine is, as you've already seen it, he's not afraid to take us down to the depths of despair. He wants to show us just how empty life is without God. And some of you are in that emptiness right now. Again, it doesn't necessarily mean that you deny even that God exists. But because you have not pursued Him with your whole heart, because He has not become the overarching interest of your life, then that emptiness enters in and life begins to lose its meaning. But He's left us with plenty of clues showing us that a meaningless life under the sun is not the way that things are supposed to be. Back in chapter 3, sorry, in our chapter, chapter 9, but verse 3, he talked about the fact that death wrecks havoc on our lives. And yet, he doesn't treat that as normal. He calls it an evil. He recognizes that it's gravely wrong. Again, when we use to paraphrase the message, he started by saying, I find this outrageous. You see, for the preacher, death is not natural. Death is not part of the circle of life, the way it's presented in our society. No, death is plain wrong. It's unnatural. It's the epitome of what's unnatural. It is evil. And that sense of outrage that we have tells us that we long for something more and something else. And what is that? Well, he gives us the answer in verses seven through 10. Let's read those again. He says, go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white, let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hands find to do, do it with your mind, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going. Now, when you first read that, you might be a little cynical, and you might say what he's saying is, hey, live it up, because you're gonna die, so you might as well enjoy life while you can. You can find very similar passages in pagan literature of the time. The Akkadian poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, maybe they made you read it in school, you'll find similar passages there. You'll find it in Egyptian poetry. But even when the preacher is writing in this sort of minor key, he strikes a rather distinctive note that's different from all those pagan sources. Even here, he's showing us and pointing us to God. That's something that even the liberal theologians had to acknowledge. I found a great quote from Gerhard von Rad. He was a liberal German theologian of the 20th century, and he wrote, his counsels, that is the preacher's counsels, recommending an acceptance and enjoyment of the possible in every case, contains a pointer to God, and that's exactly what this passage does. Did you see it, even as you were reading? Can you see the ways in which it's pointing us to God? Look again at verse seven. Go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart. For what? For God has already approved. what you do. That's a strange line in the midst of all this talk of despair, of life under the sun, in which he then begins to say, well, you might as well just live it up. Why would he say God has already approved what you do? What is the basis for that approval? Because it sure seems like we're not being favored when we look at all the evil things in the world. But remember how we said in verse one that sin clouds our understanding, that we're not even able to tell whether God is for us or against us, whether he loves us, which is the biblical way of saying that God accepts us, or whether he hates us, which is the biblical way of saying that God rejects us. We can't figure all this out, but thankfully the preacher who's inspired by the Holy Spirit goes beyond our human understanding, and in these verses, he actually points us to four gospel images that shows us the basis on which God accepts us. And that's where we begin to find our hope. Look at verse seven. He tells us, go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart. Bread and wine, bread and wine which we find signified for us in the Lord's Supper. Bread and wine that points to the broken body and shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. The basis for our acceptance is what Jesus has done for us. That he was willing to go to the cross, that he was willing to die in our place because we as rebels deserve that death. And we deserve eternal condemnation of which physical death is just the gateway to that eternal condemnation. But Jesus spares us from that by taking upon himself what we deserve. Bread and wine. Or look at verse eight. Let your garments be always white. All throughout the New Testament, actually throughout the whole of the scriptures, this idea of wearing white, of being robed in white robes or white clothing, points to what theologians call justification. That is being declared right with God, being put right with God. The idea is that we're clothed not with our own righteousness, which we have none, as we've seen, our hearts are full of evil, but instead that we're being clothed in the righteousness of Jesus. So on one hand, we have Jesus taking upon himself on the cross our merit, or demerit in this case, he takes our sin, but then he gives us his perfect life and his sinless life and perfect righteousness, and that's given to us. It's what the Puritans used to call the great exchange. And you see it even here, we wear his righteousness. Wonderful passage for that is found in Revelation 7, 13. One of the elders addressed me saying, who are these clothed in white robes and from where have they come? I said to him, sir, you know. And he said to me, these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, which is life now. They have washed their robes and made them white. What in the blood of the lamb? It is Jesus' sacrificial death. that washes away our sin, washes away the very root of the problem that we've been looking at here in chapter nine. He takes upon himself our sin and we then have our robes washed clean. So, let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head the preacher goes on to say now when we talk about anointing with oil What is the very word anointing mean when we talk about the one who is the christ or the one who is the messiah? You know that those words christ is greek messiah is hebrew same word It means the anointed one the one who's been set aside for a particular task and scripture tells us that we are joined to jesus that is to his perfect life and to his substitutionary death on our behalf and we're joined to him through the anointing of the Holy Spirit that comes on us. Second Corinthians 121 says, it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us and who has also put his seal on us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. We have been joined to Christ through the anointing of the spirit who draws us into union with Jesus. And in fact, that's the fourth gospel image says the same thing, verse 9. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun. Here we have a small little picture of marriage, an affectionate marriage, lifelong marriage, a monogamous marriage. And all throughout Scripture, that is always a picture of union with Christ. The fact that Jesus is the bridegroom and we are the bride, the church, and that through the Spirit joining us, we become His bride and we are united to Christ. Again, Revelation 19. Verse 7, let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride, his people, has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. So you have four images right there in verses seven through nine. And somebody might say, well those are just all images about celebrating life and he's just telling us to celebrate life because it's useless and meaningless and so you might as well just enjoy life and then you die. Perhaps if you want to look at it cynically under the sun. But can you really explain away why he would say God has already approved what you do and then put four images that so closely show us Our union with Christ and the basis for our acceptance is ultimately our justification because of what Jesus Christ has done. Again, the preacher is pointing us to Christ, the one who tells us that you can live your life with joy and with a merry heart as verse 7 says. Because that true joy and contentment can only flow from when you understand life rightly. When you understand the world in which we live. And that right understanding only comes through the gospel. It only comes through Christ. Because the gospel enables us to actually enjoy life within its limitations. How? Because life begins to have meaning. Because we recognize that death is not permanent. Even though it is coming. We have the real hope of the resurrection because we have the resurrection of Christ. We have a real hope of a world yet to come where all those things that we did do and all those things that we've worked for do have meaning and significance. And everything does not come to an end with our deaths. What the preacher's been showing us beforehand is when we live life under the sun, that's the way it seems. And that really is truly a source of despair. But if we are going to escape that, we can only do it through Jesus and what he has done for us. There is gonna be a real end, not just to us individually, but to the whole of this world. There will be a day in which God judges all things. 2 Corinthians 5.10 says, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. So those things do matter. But until then, he's calling us to make good use of the time before us, to recognize that we are gonna die, but as verse four says, we're still living. We're still alive, and that means that we're aware that death is coming, and it hasn't taken us. So he's given us time to prepare, given us time to recognize that the only source, the only place to whom you can turn to find meaning and significance in life is in Christ. And so it's a call even here to begin to live life understanding rightly what we see around us. Ephesians 5.15 says, Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. The days are evil. We do see the effects of our sin, but then we are to walk in a way that is as the wise, recognizing why it is it's because of our sin, but also recognizing that the solution is found in Jesus. This is a call to put your trust in Him, to turn to Him, to live for Him. And when you do, then everything begins to fall into place. And the joy of verse 7 can actually be your joy because God has created this world for enjoyment. As 1 Timothy 4, 4 says, everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. So the preacher is calling you to, in one sense, live it up, but to do so realistically, recognizing you are going to die. But if you've put your trust in Christ, then once again, life will have meaning. It doesn't all come to an end. There will be a day in which everything that you did matters. The 18th century English poet Edward Young wrote a poem called Night Thoughts. I think this is printed at the beginning of your bulletin, but he has a line in there. Our birth is nothing but our death begun. Our birth is nothing but our death begun. It's a sobering thought. You're going to die. I will die. That's what the preacher is telling us. But he's also reminding us that in Jesus Christ, we have a hope for a forever future. And that people of God is what gives us joy and meaning to the life that we're living now. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we're thankful for this life that you've given us. We're thankful. that You remind us and show us the meaning of life can be found only in You, especially as it's revealed to us in Your Son, Jesus Christ. It is through Him that we're able to break the shackles of futility that we see all around us. It is through Him that we can defeat death. We don't have that ability on our own. We are indeed children of men. We are indeed the sons of Adam, a rebellious people. But through Jesus, you forgive us. Through Jesus, you draw us into this new life and a new way of living, into the hope of the resurrection. Father, we thank you for that. And we pray for anyone here who is still struggling, who is still lost in this world, who is aggrieved by the meaninglessness or so-seeming meaninglessness of life. And if there's anyone here who knows and longs still for something better, deep in their heart and their bones, they know there should be something more. Won't you show them even this morning that that is to be found in Christ? Help them to set aside all the other things which they are blaming for life. All those things to which they point to and say, there's the problem. Help them to see that the problem begins with us. And help them to even now see that Christ is the only solution. And may they find true rest in him.