It Happens to Everyone

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

You can take your copy of God’s Word and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 9. And I am in the most providentially perfect mood to preach this passage this morning. This may be the most negative, pessimistic paragraph in the entire book of Ecclesiastes. And thankfully, it is, I think, as low as Solomon has gone so far, and I think this is as low as we’ll go in the book. I think that even though he’s got some more kind of pessimistic negative things to say left in the remaining chapters, I think that this is probably as low as he goes. There is only one positive thing in these six verses. The only positive thing is that it’s better to be alive than to be dead, but the reason that he gives, this is masterful, the only reason that he gives why it’s better to be alive than dead is because at least the living people know they’re going to die. And that’s as great, that’s as happy as the message is for us this morning. Now it doesn’t really sound, even just in what I’ve said so far, It probably doesn’t sound like he’s going to give us anything new.

He’s not going to make a new argument. He’s not going to really tell us something that we don’t know or that he hasn’t already communicated and revealed earlier in the first eight chapters. So why go through this again? Have we not gotten the point already that life is hard and then you die? The amount of times I’ve said, and then you die this week, I couldn’t count them. I wish I got paid for saying, and then you die. Because I would make a lot of money, and I’d invest that in funeral homes because everybody’s going to die. And then you die. Do we really have something to benefit? Can we really gain something from covering evil under the sun and vanity under the sun and the certainty of death yet another time?

And obviously the answer to that is yes. And the reason why I say that the answer to that is yes is because it’s here. Solomon is repeating it again. Yes, he has told it to us multiple times already, but he has gone through the trouble of writing it again. Under the inspiration and control of the Holy Spirit, this is a message that he repeats for a purpose. It’s not just that Solomon was so disorganized. I mean, consider who it is that is writing this. It’s not just that Solomon is so disorganized. He’s not such an imbecile that all they can do is just repeat himself over and over and over again. That’s not why he repeats himself.

It’s not that he is so ignorant that he learned one thing and so I’ll just keep saying that. Lots of people who only have one message, that’s because that’s the only thing they know. That’s not Solomon’s issue. It’s not that Solomon was so disconnected from God that he just wants to complain about how bad it is under the sun. He does actually know better and yet he writes this stuff again. There is a method, there is a reason, and I might even say there is a benefit for us in seeing such a bleak picture painted by King Solomon. Now before I suggest why I think There’s some prophet in understanding this paragraph in Solomon’s strategy here.

How bad is it really? It’s bad. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 1. But all this I laid to heart examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. 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 to the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice, as is the good so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in 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. It’s almost hard to believe that something written more than 3,000 years ago could capture the frustration and the disappointment and the discouragement and the heaviness and the weightiness of our modern situation. That’s almost unfathomable to me that something so old could be so relevant and so applicable to our own time. In this paragraph we sense uncertainty about the future. Man does not know what’s going to happen to him tomorrow.

He does not know whether he’s going to experience love or hate. We’ll talk about from whom and how that happens, but uncertainty. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. We feel man’s disconnection and his helplessness. There is nothing in verses 1-6 that man is in control of. It’s like he is at the utter mercy of forces that are just completely beyond him and outside of his ability to have any influence over or to control or manipulate or move in any direction that he wants at all. Totally helpless. We sense the dread of being bound to certain death. That’s the title of the message. It happens to everyone.

You live and then you die. What goes up must come down. What goes up will also die. What comes down will also die. You sit in a chair and then you die. You stand up and walk out and then you die. You get a great job. you get married and then you die. You, whatever, and then you die is the end of it for everybody. And then you die. There is no way to escape that. That’s brutal. No matter how you live, you are going to die. We feel the heaviness of seeing a world that is dominated, that is full of evil and stupidity, of madness. I mean, all these things are what we got in verses 1 through 6 so far. We sympathize with the hopelessness of knowing that we will die and that everything we’ve done will drift into oblivion.

You know this word? means to be totally forgotten and not remembered forever. Nobody cares. If they do care about what you’ve done today, they’re not going to care tomorrow. And maybe they’ll care tomorrow, but they’re not going to care ten years from now. And when you’re gone, what you’ve done will have meant nothing when you think about it under the sun. And so today, and I think among us for those who are thinking. We see people who are nervous, people who are discouraged, people who are depressed, people who feel like shrinking down into a little ball into the fetal position and just napping for the rest of their life because maybe if they can just sleep long enough when they wake up it’ll be better. But you know what happens when you wake up? Then you die.

I mean that nap as long as you want and then you die. It kind of feels like someone has cut the legs out from underneath us and there we are you know trying to balance ourselves on our stump and then someone rips the rug out from underneath us. That is how that is how much positivity and encouragement and Joy, there is, under the sun. There isn’t. And then you die. And somehow, we keep thinking that we can find and protect something here that’s going to make us happy. We keep acting like something, you know, behind some door that’s out there. We just haven’t found the right door yet.

somehow we’re going to find the right door and behind that door is going to be something that really satisfies us, that really makes us happy, that really provides joy. And somehow we’re not only going to find it, but then we’re going to be able to protect it and we’re going to hold onto it and nobody’s going to be able to steal it from us. Best kind of illustration, I was thinking about this yesterday, it’s like we’re running around and we’re trying to suck in air of something that makes us happy. And then we hold onto that breath and we go home and the best place we can think of to store it is a balloon. And so we’re running around our days, we’re trying to suck up as many breaths of happiness as we can, and then we think like we’ll go store it in a balloon.

And we keep trying to pump up our balloon and we think that’s what we found that’s going to provide some kind of meaning or satisfaction and joy in life. Puff up your joy balloon. Like that even works, like you can even keep that, I think Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verses 1 through 6 is Solomon’s pointy stick right in your balloon. And some of you, I’m telling you, you need your balloon popped because you’re trying to suck up this breath of happiness and store it in your balloon and then you just, ugh, play with your balloon, bang it on your head and you’re rubbing it on your head, try to get some static cling or whatever and see how fun that is.

I mean, that’s basically the seriousness with which you’re taking your life. is like you’re storing your happiness in a balloon and playing with the balloon is the best that you got. That’s about how serious some of you, at least students, are taking it. And I guess maybe you just haven’t had your balloon deflated enough already by pain or by being sick or by seeing somebody else who’s in pain or somebody else who’s close to you that keeps being sick. Maybe you haven’t lost enough stuff yet. You haven’t accumulated it and then had it taken away. You haven’t tried something and then failed enough. That’s why you keep thinking that you can be happy playing with your balloon.

And so you just keep merely skipping along, beating your little balloon into your head. And you need to get real. Seriously. is whether it has actually been your experience yet or not. This is, I’m about ready to pour out a very big secret. This is what you’re actually going to find behind all of those doors. This is what you find. Life is hard and then you die. That is behind every door under the sun. That is behind every breath that you take trying to suck in happiness and joy. And the question is, how are you dealing with that? Are you dealing with that? How are you dealing with that? That’s exactly the question that Solomon points us to in this paragraph. It happens to everyone. It happens to everyone that their life is tough and hard and then they die. No matter how they lived their life, death is the end for everybody. The structure of the paragraph we’re going to consider this morning, verses 1 through 6, and our outline for this morning goes like this. Verse 1 is the consideration.

Solomon’s examination is consideration. Verse 1, verses 2 and 3 is the certainty. This is the guarantee. This is the fact of of the matter. And then verses 4 through 6 are the contrast. So the consideration, the certainty and the contrast, the themes of the paragraph and the themes go along with each one of the points. The divine sovereignty over life in verse 1. A universal certainty about life and the tragic irony about life all under the sun. So verse 1, the consideration. After finishing an extended section on injustice, see he’s coming into this paragraph about the guarantee of death. He’s not coming into this cheerfully, having just eaten a bunch of bubblegum and cotton candy returning from the merry-go-round.

He’s coming out of chapter 8, which was all about seeing injustice and how there are hurtful authorities, and about how you can’t typically do anything about that, and you still have to submit to those authorities, and about how often times those authorities don’t go unpunished and about the fact that you can’t figure out what makes the world go around. You are limited in your perspective and in your wisdom. That’s the foundation, that’s what he just told us in chapter 8, how pitiful it really is as he moves into this consideration in verse 1. Look at verse 1 again. But all this I laid to heart. All All this is at least what he talked about in Chapter 8 that I just summarized for us.

All this I laid 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. So he says all this I laid to heart, examining it all. This is a comprehensive examination. It’s a comprehensive consideration that he makes. He uses the word all twice. All this I laid to heart, examining it all, and it was not only comprehensive, but it was a very personal consideration. He says I laid it to heart. This was not just his detached looking at it in everybody else’s life with no application for himself. This was a thorough and involved effort on his part in consideration.

What he considered was how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Now it’s curious to me that Solomon, who it is that he’s focusing his consideration about, because you would have thought that he was going to say, I was considering how the righteous and then the opposite of the righteous are in the, their deeds are in the hands of God. Instead, it seems like he’s talking about one group of people, the righteous and the wise.

two groups of people, that’s the same group, just two ways to describe them. It’s interesting to me that he doesn’t include the righteous and the evil based on the fact that he says their deeds are in the hand of God. Obviously Solomon knows that everybody’s deeds are in the hand of God. In saying that their deeds are in the hand of God, it means that God is in control. God is sovereign over their deeds. God is not just sovereign and in control over the deeds of the righteous and the wise. He is sovereign over the deeds of even the wicked. In fact, maybe you’ve heard this sermon that’s called Sinners in the hands of an angry God. So Solomon certainly is not going to deny everything else he said in the book of Ecclesiastes has been that God is in control. That God controls everything, good or bad. God is the one who is behind it. And so it’s interesting Solomon doesn’t include the evil in this description, this consideration for that purpose.

And also because in verses 2 through 3 Solomon makes five contrasts. He shows five opposite groups. And all of those opposites are between good and evil, the righteous and the wicked, between those who are religious people and those who are not religious people. So it’s not like he’s unable to make that contrast or that he wasn’t thinking about it. And so why is it that his consideration is concerning the wise and the righteous? Why does he not mention the evil that that’s what he’s considering? I’m going to suggest that the reason why he’s narrowing his consideration to the wise and to the righteous is because we’re really only surprised when bad things happen to good people.

You know what I’m saying? We’re not really surprised when bad things happen to bad people. they deserve that. We’re really not surprised when evil people die. We’re like, oh yeah, that’s what was coming to them. But when the righteous people die and when the wise people can’t avoid suffering, that kind of causes us to take a moment and pause and be like, how does that work? That does not seem to fit. And so whether you are one of those righteous people, or you’re not a righteous person but you’re looking at righteous people, I think Solomon is making this consideration about wise and righteous people because that’s what doesn’t seem to go together. Sure, we get that irreligious people who don’t fear God that bad things happen to them and that’s what they deserve, that’s what they get.

But when it happens to wise or to righteous people, that’s kind of bothersome. The righteous man is who thinks about what’s coming and the wise man tries to make sure he’s prepared for it, but we see here that all that he does is in the hand of God. All his deeds, all his activities are in the hand of God. Like I said, I think this is true both for the evil and for the righteous person, but isn’t it interesting that the righteous person, wise person is trying to figure out, trying to plan his ways so that he lives in a way that God is pleased. But Solomon also said the mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. So God is totally in control of a righteous man’s life. And yet, and this This is the hiccup.

This is the snag. This is your walking by a fence and the rusty nail reaches out and just rips right into your arm. Here’s the problem. The righteous and the wise person whose deeds are in the hand of God, they don’t know whether it is love or hate. Man does not know both are before him. This is a really important part of the paragraph. sets the stage for everything he’s about ready to say as well. He’s telling us his consideration and yet it is probably as difficult to figure out what he’s talking about as it is important to figure out what he’s talking about. There’s at least three different possibilities what this means here at the end.

Whether it is love or hate, man does not know both are before him. Different translations make suggestions, that’s the ESV. One possibility is man does not know whether he himself is going to love or hate other people tomorrow. Our deeds are in the hand of God and we don’t know whether we’re going to remain faithful, basically, I think is the question tomorrow. We don’t know that. That’s one possibility. The man himself doesn’t know if he’s going to love or hate other people. Both options are there. Will we stick with it tomorrow? Another option would be, are other people going to love or hate us tomorrow? Both are before us. We don’t know whether we’re going to experience people being our friends, or whether we’re going to experience people being our enemies tomorrow.

Our deeds are in the hand of God we don’t know. Or the third possibility is we don’t know whether we’re going to have love or hate from God tomorrow. Even the righteous and the wise person, at least based on what it seems like. And you remember in chapter 8 that the righteous people suffer. I mean, just looking at that, how can you say God loves the one he’s causing to suffer so much? If my deeds are in the hands of God and I’m not guaranteed to avoid suffering and pain and death, then how can I know that God loves or hates me?

I think the best interpretation is not that man wonders whether he is going to love or hate tomorrow, though we always have to trust God to keep directing our steps and keep enabling enabling us to love. But generally speaking, we have a good idea about how we’re going to be tomorrow unless we just jump off the deep end and go crazy. I think that the best interpretation is we don’t know whether other people are going to love or hate us tomorrow, and then based on that, we might wonder then if everybody else turns against us tomorrow, we don’t know then if that’s a display of God’s love or if that’s a display of God’s hate or at least displeasure towards us. And so primarily I think it comes back to, no matter what, there is no built in, no sure thing that guarantees that the righteous people are going to have a good day tomorrow. Just an example, obviously Solomon was not thinking about this example, but who’s the most righteous man ever? That would have been Jesus. And Did people love Jesus or hate Jesus?

Yes. They loved him and they hated him. Sometimes the same people at different times. But even the most righteous man ever was loved and adored by some and hated and ultimately killed by others. Being righteous and being wise did not guarantee that even God himself had great days and then And even he died in taking our place. Like I said last time, life is not a formula and you will not be able to figure it out. We are in God’s hands and tomorrow is unpredictable from our vantage point. That’s Solomon’s consideration which leads him to something that he does know. We don’t know whether we’re going to be loved or hated tomorrow.

We do know something else that might happen tomorrow. If it doesn’t happen tomorrow, it’s inevitably going to happen some future tomorrow. The certainty in verses 2-3, whether he’s loved or hated, he’s going to die. Going to die happens to everyone. Look at verse 2, 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. is the good, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done unto the Son, 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. Three times, at least in the ESV, we We see same or same event three times.

It is bringing us back to the fact that this particular event happens to everyone. No one gets out of this. No one escapes this same event. It is the same for all. The same event happens, the same event happens. This is then an axiom. An axiom is a universal truth. This is true for all people regardless of their culture, regardless of their society. This is true for all times. Whether they lived in the Old Testament, whether they lived during the time of Jesus, or whether they lived after Jesus, or whether they lived now. This is a true. The same event happens to all, namely they are going to die. That is the one thing you can be sure about.

You know, we have the little American proverb or English proverb, the only things that are certain in life are death and taxes. I don’t know, move to Switzerland or wherever they have at least low taxes, maybe you can get out of taxes, but you cannot get out of death. You can disregard it. You can try to deny it, but you cannot finally avoid it, no matter who you are, junior high girl. No matter who you are, high school guy. No matter who you are, staff person, there’s a casket with your name on it somewhere or an urn if your family goes the cremated route.

My wife is interested in cremation for me. I thought that was kind of brutal. But buying But, you know, buying land to bury somebody can be expensive, so I want to be economical, I suppose. Good steward, that’s right. Solomon divides everyone into groups, and he marks the end for each one of these groups as the same. Just look back at verses two or three again. You’ve got the righteous and the wicked. They die. You’ve got the good and the evil. Maybe it’s only the good who die young, but both the good and the evil die. The clean and the unclean die. The sacrifices and the non-sacrificers die. The oath makers and non-oath makers die. And even though there are five of these opposite groups, there really are only two types of persons, and I mentioned this before, because really what you have, you have the God-fear in the moral, ethical, religious, obedient, and committed person.

Those are just another way to summarize the way Solomon describes them. In the moral, ethical, religious, obedient, and committed person, they still die. And the other person, you’ve got the immoral, unethical, irreligious, and uncommitted person, but both die. The same event happens to everyone. One person gets up early and goes to bed late serving God. They spend themselves for God’s sake. They make tough choices. They stand up against the crowd. They pursue righteousness. And as much as they’re able, try to make decisions out of wisdom. And they die. And on the other hand, you got a couple different ways to approach it on the other side.

You got the people who get up early and they go to bed late all trying to make money or make a name for themselves. And so they spend themselves too. They’re busy and hard at work but for the wrong reasons and they die. Then you got other people over here who get up late and then watch movies and go to bed late and basically squander away all the time that they have. They don’t care about anything but being lazy. another kind of selfishness and they die too. People who exercise and eat vegetables, they die. All of you staff who ordered salads at our Christmas party, your salads are not going to give you any extra days, you are going to die. I mean same thing happens for me. No matter how many revolutions of that belt on my treadmill go around, it’s coming.

It could happen in the midst of one of those revolutions. That’s possible. That’s going to happen. You could be totally wasting your life playing video games, reading stupid banal magazines, and just doing the absolute minimum amount of work to get by. You’re going to die. But it’s the same event for everybody. And what’s interesting is that it’s actually worse than that. I mean, it has another level, I guess, lower than the casket even. And that is what’s happening while we’re around. At the end of verse 3, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil and madness is in their hearts while they live. So you’re going to die and then before that happens, everybody’s a jerk.

hurt you like they make bad decisions or they purposefully try to attack you. All kinds of bad things we can think about. This is depravity at its finest if we can even say that. Sin is universal here at the end of verse 3 because it’s among the children of men. Unless you’re the child of a donkey, you are a child of men and women. You’re a human being. You have breath that supplies to you. Full of evil. It’s universal, it’s penetrating, and it’s lifelong. I mean, unless some other factor comes in, which isn’t in this paragraph, this is a lifelong issue. This is what you have to look forward the the rest of your life until you die.

That everywhere around you is evil and madness, stupidity, idiocy. Just people acting dumb. People acting like jerks and you got like smart jerks and dumb jerks, but that’s what you got. And Solomon says this isn’t evil that is done under the sun. It really is brutal that life is full of evil while you live. It is brutal that whether you live righteously or you live in wickedness, you’re gonna die.

And when you look at it from an earthly perspective, it doesn’t seem to fit, and so it’s bothersome, it’s upsetting, it’s heavy. But it provides a contrast for us in verses four through six. There is a flicker of hope here under the sun.

And yet it’s really not that great. In this paragraph, the hope is not really that great once you scratch at it just a little. Look at verse 4, 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, forever they have no more share in all that is done unto the Son.” So obviously there you have the adversative idea, the but as the conjunction there at the beginning of verse 4, providing or introducing a contrast with the evil, the disappointment, the frustration of the fact that everyone dies. Zalma says, he who is joined with all the living has hope. This is the only positive in the paragraph. It’s interesting that those with this hope are not apparently just the righteous. The way to have this hope is just to have breath. If you’ve got a pulse, you need to check, maybe some of you, if you have a pulse,

this hope is possible for you. You don’t even have to be righteous at this point to have this kind of hope. Just be breathing. And a short proverb helps prove this contrast, a living dog is better than a dead lion. Now, you may have heard this before, but typically they didn’t have doggy hotels and little chia pet manicured poodles and, you know, they didn’t have dogs as pets for the most part in ancient Israel. Dogs were typically wild and they were scavengers and they were then despised. You just didn’t bring a dog into your house. And on the other hand, the lion was seen more as the majestic or as a stately, as a mighty animal, as a esteemed kind of creature. And yet, for as despised as a dog may have been in their society and as esteemed as a lion could have been, still it’s better to be despised in living than to be gone, to be dead. Pretty much as long as you’re not dead, you’re better. You can see a lot of you putting that on your Twitter this afternoon, hey at least I’m not dead. I could be dead. I’m not dead, not dead yet.

Now in verse 5 though, Solomon provides the primary reason why being alive is better. He said being alive is better. He’s given us the proverb that demonstrates it, but now he gives us the reason why being alive is better. Because if you’re living, you at least know you’re going to die. And that’s why I said, I just, that’s, that is brutal. That that’s the reason. It’s not because you can wake up and smell the roses. It’s not because you get to watch a sunset. It’s not because you have brown paper packages tied up with strings. It’s not because you get to go on your honeymoon. It’s not because you can feel the warmth of a hug or open up Christmas presents or drink Starbucks or whatever it is.

hear he says the only reason it’s better for you to be alive is because at least you know you’re not going to be alive. At some point that is what’s certain for you. The dead have it pretty bad. He says they 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 unto the Son. Because once Once you’re dead, that’s it. And try to think about how to say that another way. It’s over. You’re done because it is appointed a demand. Once to die. And we know after that comes judgment.

No more friends. No more enemies. You got love, hate coming in. No more envy. No more wishing you had somebody else’s stuff. I mean, that’s kind of amazing that out of all the things he chooses to miss about being alive, two of them are negative. You’re going to miss being alive, you’re going to like loving, you’re going to miss hating and envy. The implication is that for as pathetic and as miserable as life can be, it is an opportunity. That’s what I want to really try to get us to think about just for a few more minutes. Because if you have breath, if you have a heartbeat, and if you have a brain, the third one is significant for what I’m about ready to say.

If you’re still breathing, if you have a pulse, and if you have any cognitive capacity left, there is hope. Because thinking about your death, thinking about death and in particular your death may be the most profitable first step towards real hope you could take. Thinking about your death may be the most profitable first step you could take towards real joy and meaning and satisfaction in life. Because if thinking about your death causes you to think about God and causes you to realize, I need to be ready to meet God. That’s of great benefit and profit to you. You know, most people squander, they just piddle away their life and spend their time pursuing a thousand different distractions. But God is very gracious in that he often arranges kind of attention grabbing, shoulder shaking, chin directing times to think about death and to think about him. He does often arrange very traumatic calamities to get our attention.

I was fortunate to have one of those Thursday evening as I was going about my normal business just trying to make a left turn. I make a lot of left turns, have made a lot of left turns in my life. Trying to make a left turn when a young lady hit my car and spun me around and while I’m fine, you may question if I’m fine up here, but I think that like I’m fine, I’m showing mobility and alacrity of thought. I’m showing all those things. While I’m physically fine, the Farfig-Newgen is not as fine. I tell you you up even since then and replaying that over in my mind, you realize we’re, I mean we’re really at a point where we’re talking about seconds and inches that make the difference between me standing here right now and me being in a casket and you guys having my memorial service this afternoon.

Seconds and inches is the difference maker. And it’s made driving the last couple days pretty difficult because I’m pretty consumed with thinking about seconds and inches. Seconds and inches make the difference between whether you live a long life or literally your life is done this afternoon. It’s happening at some point in time and sometimes God uses calamities to get our attention. But you know what else God uses? God uses vanity to get our attention as well. God uses all of the frustrations and the emptiness and the disappointments and being tired and being overworked and unfairly treated to get your precious attention.

Just as He uses the law to convict our consciences about our immorality and need for a Savior, I think God uses our experience to point out the vanity to cause us to realize we need a Savior as well. We need a Savior from our sin and we need a Savior from the vanity that’s all around us. It’s all intended to get our attention back on Him. Isn’t it amazing how sensitive and how vulnerable God has made us to like being tired? He didn’t have to do that. He could have let us be tired and then made it so we didn’t care about it. But we’re like vulnerable to not enough sleep and to too much work. We are vulnerable. We are open books to pain and to discouragement and to emptiness and to our balloons being popped.

Like put all of our hope in that and then it just gets ripped out away from us and like that hurts. And God made it that way. He didn’t have to make it so that it hurt. He did not have to make it so he could make it so that we hurt but not care. He didn’t do that. And for as much as we can try to medicate ourselves to avoid the hurt, for as much as we can try to distract ourselves to forget about the hurt. Ultimately, God has made it in this way so that we’ll see and know and experience the vanity so that we’ll want Him more. And it’s only when you want Him more that you’re ready to die. Until you’d rather have Him more than life, you’re not ready for the end of your life. The first step of happiness, really, is to reckon it true that there is an appointed time for you to die.

And if you take that first step to be serious about that and take that for real and deal with God beyond the sun, you may get ready.

And I’m hoping that your misery and the uncertainty of life and the certainty of His sovereignty over our lives and even over our death would help us to get ready. I said at the beginning I’m in the perfect mood to talk about such a pessimistic paragraph. And I’ll tell you what, if you are not a little bit upset and a little bit down after listening to all of that, you’re an idiot. Can I say that in love? Because pretty much if you are not disturbed by all that a little bit, then you are either ignorant and immature, you’re just naive and you’re not using your brain to consider everything that’s around you. You are either naive and ignorant or you are distracted by a bunch of other stuff that you’re trying to forget all the vanity with, or you’re just an outright denial, which again is a foolish thing, the only way you cannot be too disturbed by what I’ve said is if you fear God. And so obviously that’s going to be the case for some of you. But even for those of us who fear God doesn’t mean that it’s not disturbing at all. It just takes

the sting out of how disturbing it is, but it still hurts. We just know that ultimately It’s not about getting out of here, it’s about getting beyond the sun to eternity to God. That’s the hope, not hope here. There’s more in the next paragraph verses 7 through 10 that we’ll talk about related to joy. But I hoped to pop as many balloons as possible this morning to get you thinking And so that you would be able to pray and not just sing, that you would pray, Draw me close to you. Never let me go. I mean, are you really ready to lay it all down? To leave it behind? To not hold on to anything? To not be sucking in to puff up your joy balloon unless that joy is in God.

Are you ready? Are you wanting God to draw you close to Him? That’s the only way, really truly, that’s the only way you’ve got hope. Otherwise you’re going to die. And then it’s not only going to have been miserable for you now, it’s going to be even worse then. And Father, as negative as this is and as much as I have tried to avoid giving the remedy too quickly, so that we would sense the heaviness and so that you would even use that kind of weight pushing on our hearts to push us to you. There is a remedy. There is an answer. Ultimately that answer is found in Jesus, but it’s just so easy I think, especially for some of these students to skip along and think it’s okay and yet they’re still trusting in something other than you. And I pray that you would take that away from them, that you’d cause them, not necessarily with a calamity and a traumatic, huge event in their life, but just as they think about, your spirit convicts them about the emptiness of the junk they’re pursuing, so that instead they’d pursue you for their joy.

Bring us back next time where we see Solomon’s command to pursue that joy. He tells us where it’s found. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.