Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

Very happy that you are with us today. We got a couple of announcements real quickly, but before I forget it, there is an outline in your bulletin you're welcome to follow. On the backside, a bunch of questions for reflecting on during the week.

Thank you to Matt and our team for the ministry to us this morning as we remind ourselves who God is and remind ourselves that we need to hold fast to

him. We need to really stay connected with him in every way. So the quick announcement is this we have. Two men who are headed. Mike Jacobs andBen Tyson are headed to Nagaland, India, which is far northeast India. We have a partnership there with a pastor named Tia and Atula is his wife. We've been in

partnership with them for 10 years and they have a Bible college there.

And now they have built a mission training center. And this area is in very near some of the countries like Bhutan and Bangladesh. In some countries that we can't go into as believers to do ministry, but people can come out of them and be trained at the school and then they can go back in. So it's a terrific ministry and we're very grateful for it. About 3 years ago we collected a whole container load of theological books and sent them over there. So there's just been a great partnership and we're grateful for it.

So these men head out on Tuesday. It is a 35 hour trip to get to Nagaland. I've personally been to Nagaland. When I got off the plane, I just collapsed. It was just a hike to Nagaland. So please pray for them as they head over there. And I see Ben sitting here now thinking, oh Gee, MIDI Dave, why are you

discouraging the daylights out of me? You'll be fine. So we're going to, we're going to pray for them in just a moment. We also have 3 ladies in Kenya right now doing medical ministry very. 

Soon we're headed to Ecuador with myself and five others from FCBC. So we're getting a lot of opportunities for ministry around the world and, and we are very grateful for that now, friends.

I am having a heavy day today for a couple of reasons. Number one, first hour I went out to get a bulletin and after the second song a woman was leaving after 2 songs and I said ma'am are you OK? And she turned to me and said no I'm not and I said can I help you? And she just waved me off and walked out.

Now I have no idea what kind of pain she was in. Obviously I didn't get to

engage her and you know you hate to see it. I just learned that another great friend of mine lost the child she was carrying yesterday. And it's just a pure struggle to me. So I'm going to pray for both of these people and for Mike and Ben as they head out and our ladies over in Kenya. So let's pray together.

Father, there's so much in this world that's difficult and it weighs on us as a body. We right now lift up this woman who walked out of the first hour. I have no idea who she is, Father. I have no idea what her struggle is. But you know, and I pray you would connect her with people who care about her. Connect her with your word, connect her with yourself. Give your ministry to her. Father, for this precious couple who lost their child yesterday, give them your absolute grace. Let them. Let them lean on you. Let them know your compassion, your love. Let them know your presence. Thank you that they are still pursuing

you even in the face of a difficult loss. We rest them with you, Father. For Ben and Mike as they head out on Tuesday. May they have your stamina to be used by you as they're teaching and preaching over there in India. I pray they have a great time, great relationships and they would be encouraged and built up as they build others up. And then for the three ladies who are in Kenya doing medical work, I pray you would give them safety, you'd give them spiritual impact, You would give them personal growth and help and encouragement and bring them home safely. Father, you're so good to us. Thank you that

your Son, your only boy, was a missionary, and we want to be missionary people as well. We pray these things in Christ’s name, Amen.

The Fire Tower on Mica Mountain: 100 columns of vapor

Friends, I work for three summers as a firefighter at a place called Saguaro National Monument. It's now called Saguaro National Park. It's just outside of Tucson, a huge cactus forest. And you're thinking, well, I didn't know they had

fires in cactus forests. And the answer is they don't. But in that monument there was a three mountain chain called the Rincon Mountains. And I was stationed on top of a mountain called Mica Mountain Wilderness Camp. Eight firefighters up there, 8600 feet in the air, huge pine forest. And Mica Mountain is kind of like a pancake on the top. It's pretty flat on top for about a couple miles. And then it just. 12 crazy on every side and in order to try to see fires they built a fire tower that was 110 feet tall. You go up that fire tower on a set of stairs that winds back and forth. Show me a shot of that, please, would you?

So this is, you know, you go up this tower, and my responsibility was to go up there during or after a lightning storm and look for fires. Now, friends, I'm not a fan of heights. I mean, I'm a little frightened right here, you know, So maybe I'll move back a little. I'm not a fan of heights.

And I'm not a fan of heights and lightning storms. So it was some thrilling times up there. Once you got up there, you would look for fires. Now, on that

particular mountain, after a big storm had passed through, there was a lot of moisture, a lot of mist. There was a lot of fog in the air. And we would particularly have columns of fog that would rise up around the edge of the mountain. So I would use this tool called the Osborne Fire Finder, and you line up those two things. Together, look through it and it'll give you how many degrees the fire is and then you estimate, let's say maybe it's 2 miles out. And so you would call in to the fire camp and say at 314°, at about two miles we have a fire. They would send a crew out. I had many, many nights or mornings up in that tower after a lightning storm where I would say, oh, there's one definitely one I would get the firefighter on it. It's 41°. About a mile out and I'd write that down. I'd be working my way around. I'd have like four of them written down. And then the next time I came to 41°, that's gone. And I would go around in a circle for an hour writing down Mark and oh, definitely got a smoke here. No, it was just missed. It was just a column of mist. And it was very frustrating because you thought you had something. You thought, OK, definitely I'm calling this in. And then, oh, wait, wait, it's not there anymore.

The Troublesome Author: Qoheleth

That's what Cohelith is going to say to us about life. It's about as substantial as a column of mist in many, many ways. Brace yourselves for this first paragraph, friends. It's a challenging paragraph, verse one. Here's the troublesome author. He calls himself Qoheleth. It's a Hebrew word that can mean an assembler of people, speakers, spokesman, philosopher, president, professor, collector of sayings. And it's a dual title.

It's ecclesiastical, meaning it's religious, and it's governmental. It's like the King of England who was technically the head of the government, but was also the head of the Church of England. Now, of course, in our case, he's really the head of neither, but that's what he technically is.

And so Cohelith is saying to us, I am a collector of wisdom. I'm an assembler of people. I'm a teacher of proverbs. And he was also a governmental leader in Greek, the word is Ecclesiastes. So when they went and translated the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek.

The word they chose instead of Cohelith in Ecclesiastes. It comes from the Greek word ecclesia, from which we get which is the word for church. And ecclesia means a gathered group of people. We are a group of people gathered out of this city together because we are people who believe we can see

the unseen. And so we've all gathered together. So the book in our Bible is called Ecclesiastes means there's a guy who's been. Gathering people there, most likely King Solomon. I believed all my life it was King Solomon until I

read an author named David Derek Kidner about 3 weeks ago. And Kidner points out in chapter one, 16112 and 29, the writer says I gain more wisdom than all who ruled in Jerusalem before me. It is a plural statement. But there was actually only one king of Israel who ruled. In Jerusalem, that was David. Saul ruled in Gibeah, which was outside of Jerusalem. After Saul died,

David became king. He captured the Jebusite capital, which was like a nine acre compound which he renamed Jerusalem. So the first person to rule over

Israel in Jerusalem was David. The second one was Solomon. Maybe what Solomon was saying over all those who were ahead of Israel. Who are in charge of Israel, even though Saul didn't technically rule there? Our White House was completed in 1800, and our most famous president never went in it. George Washington was never in it. Now he's the head of the government, but he was never in the White House. Maybe that's what's happening in this situation. So the key issue is whoever's writing is a merchant of wisdom. He has learned a lot of stuff. He's asked a lot of hard questions. And he refuses to take sugar coated answers. He's far more interested in truth than he is in

comfort. And the book has a habit of making us uncomfortable if you're not uncomfortable. At the end of the day, I probably didn't do a good job with this first paragraph.

It's a pretty stunning book. Derek Kidner, this Hebrew scholar, said The voice of the Old Testament has many accents. There's almost everything there, from the impassioned preaching of the prophets to the cool, reflective comments of the. And a whole world of poetry, law, storytelling, sympathy and vision in between. But there is no one quite like Coheleth, no book in this whole great volume which speaks in quite the tone of voice in which he speaks. Cohelith is a collector of wisdom, a distributor of wisdom, and he is a very troublesome man. Now I have known some people in my life who are contrarians. They were only happy. When they were causing trouble, they didn't really have a problem with what was said or what was happening, but they just had this need to cause trouble and Qoheleth at first might seem like a contrarian.

But as we get into it, I think you'll see Coheleth is actually doing PhD level research on the life that we live. He's trying to figure out the questions and the answers. And he is a person who is really focused on the hard questions of life, the questions that are so hard that they cause courageous people to struggle.

And so hard that they cause timid people to self medicate. Or to make up worldviews in their mind. Anything to be to stay away from the things that are

true and the things that are hard. He is a very, very striving, very interesting man. So here's his main thesis in verse 2. This is the thesis of his dissertation. He's going to try to defend it.

The Troubling Motto: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” Psalm 9:1-11

“Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of all is vanity! All is vanity.”

Now, if you take the English word, and Steve pointed some of this out last week, if you take the English word, vanity, which is in. Text here you could say

meaningless, meaningless. All is utterly meaningless. Which is not true.

Faith in Christ is meaningful. Marriage is meaningful, parenting is meaningful, service is meaningful. There's a lot of meaningful stuff. So I don't think he's saying that at all. Another possible word for vanity would be arrogant, arrogant, arrogant. Everything is prideful. Again, that's not true. We do a lot of stuff out of personal arrogance, but we don't do everything out of personal

arrogance. We do some things out of service and sacrifice of love for Christ.

So I don't think it's that or worthless. Worthless. Nothing is worth bothering about. Well, that's not true either. There's stuff that's worth bothering about. And So what? What is the meaning? Well, as Steve pointed out last week, the Hebrew word is Chapel HEBEL, and it's a word that means most often breath, breeze, mist, puff of wind, vapor, or a bit of smoke.

Like a piece of mist coming up off of Mica Mountain. Life is a bit of bit of

smoke. It's a little piece of mist. Fleeting, fleeting. Everything is fleeting. Mist, mist. Everything is missed. Brief, brief. Everything is brief. Merest of breaths, merest of breaths. Everything is breath. Let me read you another passage where Havel is used. It's in Psalm 39, verse 5. It says behold. “You made my days a handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight. Surely every man at his best is a mere breath. Surely a man walks about as a phantom.”

Verse 11 With reproofs. You're chasing a man for iniquity. You consume as a moth what is precious to him. Surely every man is a mere breath. And so I think what he's going to try to prove to us is. Life is a breath. It's a vapor. It's brief. I used to believe that by faith. Like when I was 22 I took it by faith.

Now I'm 72 and I take it by experience and faith. Because yesterday, friends, just yesterday I was 22. And I wake up in 5 decades and they are gone. Turns out I have kids and grandkids. I mean this is out of control. 5 decades is gone like that.

A few years ago I decided that days are long, but decades are short. I have had some days that went on forever, like flying to Nagaland. I've had some days that were so hard I thought they would never end. I've had some days that were just like, Oh dear God, don't let me do another one of these.

And then you have 3652 of those kind of days, and they add up to a decade, and those long days end up being a short decade. Now a lot of you don't believe me. Now you will. You will. You'll get to where you realize days are long, but decades are short. And I don't care if the math works, David Gibson said. Our lives are like a whisper. Spoken in the wind. Here one minute and then carried away forever the next minute.

Now, myth means that our life is brief, but it has some other characteristics he's going to talk about. It's hard to grasp, it's hard to win. It's complex, it's messy, it's always changing. We can't control it. We gather up all this good stuff and then the river floods and it's gone, or the thief comes in and it's gone, or we make a bad investment and it's gone. We get all of our ducks lined up in one row. We're so happy.

Then like an 18 Wheeler goes right through the middle of and runs over half of them, scatters the rest. And you're saying, man, that didn't really work out? What in the world happened there? I was trying so hard. So he says to us, Listen.

He's basically motivated to shock us, to make us think about what's true, to shock us, to break us out of believing things that are not actually true. Here's what he does. First of all, he says, you've got to stop playing. Let's pretend I'm not going to die. Because that's a fool's game. You've got to stop saying let's pretend I can create my own Garden of Eden in my backyard. That's a fool's game. You've got to say, let's pretend I can be. Stop saying let's pretend I can be happy with wine, or with women, or with wisdom, or with money, or with power or fame. Because Solomon had all of that in spades. And he concluded,

no, it doesn't work. Let's not pretend we can find life somewhere else. Verse 3 Here's the troubling question. What advantage, what profit does a man have under the sun with all of his work under the sun? There's two possible interpretations of under the sun. The most popular interpretation, which I personally don't any longer hold to, is this. Under the sun means everything disconnected with God, because God's above the sun.

And if that were true, if that's what under the sun meant, it would mean.

If I'm disconnected with God, life will be frustrating, but if I'm connected to God, life will not be frustrating. How many of you are connected with God

who has found life still to be frustrating?

Me too, me too. I trusted Christ when I was 19 and I got more frustration than I could deal with. That's not what it means, friends. I think under the sun means as long as the sun exists in this time frame that we call time and space. As long as we're in this time frame, there will be frustration. Now when God creates a new heaven and new earth, the sun goes away. Because it's the glory of God that lights everything. We don't need the sun anymore. We don't use the sun anymore. But as long as the sun exists, we're going to be people who have frustration even in knowing Christ.

The Troubling Question: “What advantage or profit does man have in the world?”

It's a long, wearisome journey. Second issue is what is the meaning of advantage? What is the advantage that a man has in all of his work in this time frame? And the word advantage means gain. It means something. Leftover. I invested time, money and expertise, and then I had something gained. Something leftover. And we are hardwired for gain. When we plant a garden, we want to produce. We don't want the bugs to eat it. When we start a career, we want to get advanced. We don't want to be passed over. When we raise our children, we want them to love God and become mature and live for Christ.

We don't want them to go into the ditch. When we invest our investments, we want them to grow. There's 2008 and then there's 2020 and it goes the wrong direction because they're just these kinds of struggles in the world. What advantage is there? Robert Lewis said. “There is a time release futility pill in

every one of us.” Time releases futility, Bill, you don't get all the futility today, but some saved up for tomorrow. And that's the nature of the life we live in. It's brief, it's frustrating, it's messy, it's uncontrollable. And so Qoheleth says, what is the advantage to us of all this worth and striving and knocking ourselves out? What do we get, you know, a quiz for you. Work your fingers to the bone and what do you get? Bony fingers. Once you don't know the answer to that.

Kathy and I worked at Alaska Bible College 8 years, and four of those years we were running a thing called the Anchorage Extension of Alaska Bible College. When we showed up in town, there were three part-time students. And when we left four years later, there were eighty part time students and three full time students. And we did it all. I mean, we were the registrar. We did the advertising, I did some of the teaching, I recruited the other teachers. We painted the classrooms. I mean it. We knocked ourselves out for four years. We went from 3 to 80. And then we moved to Idaho Falls and they didn't replace us and the college went to 00. We look at each other and say, what was that about? What's the advantage of that? Now there is an advantage. I'm not going to give you the answer now because Coheleth wouldn't want me to.

What is the answer? Where is the advantage? Here's another quiz. You guys did so poorly on that first one. You load 16 tons and what do you get?

Another day, older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don't you call me because.

I owe my soul to the company store.

Thank you, thank you. I wish I could sing. I certainly would. Tennessee Ernie Ford had a beautiful voice. So yellowed. 16 tons. And what do you get another day older, deeper in debt.

Coheelth is really saying to us, if I'm not going to live forever and I'm not going to gain advantage here, well then how do I live? How do I live in this difficult world? And the answer he gives to us is, first of all, you have to accept some basic truths about this world.

First of all, number one, verse 4, you have to understand that generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. Now, he doesn't mean that matter is eternal like God. Anthropomorphically, he means so far the earth has outlived Moses, George Washington, Jonah, Micah, Nahum Habakkuk.

Pretty soon it's going to outlive Dave Gibson. The earth just outlives us.

Our generation comes, our generation goes, but the Earth will outlive us.

The Troubling Observations:

●    Generations come and go, and come and go and….

There have been about 100 billion people who have lived so far in the world. Out of that 100 billion, Jesus died and was resurrected. He's a category 1. He can't be put in our discussion here. Elijah was taken up and didn't die. Enoch was taken up and didn't die. So two people in the millennia of human history have not died. Two out of 100 billion. So your chances of not dying are one in 50 billion. You like those odds?

Yeah, we're going to die. Let's stop pretending that we're not going to die.

And the game goes like this. Well, you're all going to die. My dad died. Everybody's going to die. I am not personally, I'm exempt. Let's pretend that I am not going to die. Generations come, he says verse 4. Generations go, and out of all those people, only two of them have not died. I need to be a person who is saying my life, your life, every life will end. And once I adjust to that, once I realize that. I can start to live well. I'm not a prepper, friends. I'm not

preparing for the end of the world because I'm not going to be here.

The world is going to live longer than Dave Gibson. I'm preparing for the end of my life. That's my goal. I want it to end well. I want to have my funeral with my kids and grandkids saying things about me that I hope they will say.

That's my, that's my end goal because I am absolutely going to die when I, when I realize and say I'm going to die, I can prepare for death. I can love others well, I can stop being afraid because I know Christ. I can order my

affections to love the right things. And the crazy part about it is, when I accept my death, I stop obsessing on it, and stop bothering me. I'm not afraid.

Yeah, obviously we all want to go out and what the Puritans used to call the easy death. None of us want to do the 19 month cancer waste away to nothing. But the truth is we are going to die. The first time I read David Gibson's book Living Life Backwards was four years ago and it so impressed

me when he said you must stop playing, let's pretend I'm not going to die. It's so impacted me that I went and bought my own urn right here. This is Grandpa's blue bottle right there. I don't know if you know this but they sell these on body weight. I'm going to XXL. I gained a little more. I'm going to have to trade this in for a bigger one or get a second one. I don't know what I'm going to do there, but this sits on my credenza, friends, behind my desk in my Home Office. I see it every day. Every day. It is not morbid to me. It's actually comforting to me. I am going to die. I have admitted it. I have a plot in Dry Creek Cemetery. That little bottle is going to be buried in Dry Creek Cemetery with what's left of me there.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. God will resurrect me and give a glorified body to me, which is amazing. Work on His part to start with this or even to start with what's in there, but He can do it. He's up to it. Let's stop pretending that we are not going to die when I've trusted Christ. 1st a fool's game

●    Nature runs in tireless cycles:

See that picture in my backyard, friends? The night before I took that was clean. I worked 2 hours, blew all the leaves on the lawn, mowed them all up, raked up the stubborn ones. It was clean. There wasn't one leaf on there.

And I'm really praying that next year that tree will not drop its leaves. Really praying. What's going to happen next year, friends?

The same thing. It's going to drop them again. He says the sun verse 5 starts up in the East, it goes down in the West, and then he says it scurries around

the world to get to its place so it can come up again. And he does it every day. The only thing in all creation more faithful than the sun is God. I mean God's more faithful than the sun. I have never once opened my eyes when the alarm went off and said, “Hope the sun comes up today.” Comes up every day. Just in cycle, it just keeps going. It just keeps going. You don't have to worry about it. The wind, it swirls to the north and then to the South and southeast, then it's back to the West and then east, and the wind just swirls around wherever

it wants to go. Do you believe that?

Ever had a campfire? Set your chair right here where there's no smoke. And then some days I feel like I just carry my chair. You know, there's no reason to sit down because it just keeps changing and swirling around the wind, the water, the hydrologic cycle. It just keeps happening. It rains or snows, and then the water runs down the river and the ocean doesn't fill up, and then it evaporates and goes back. And it's been going on for millennia. We never get the ocean full. It's a cycle that just keeps going on. And this is not teaching that we live in a circular history like the Eastern religions where you're reincarnated. That's not what it's teaching. The Bible is very clear that there is a beginning, there is a continuation, and there is an end.

Qoheleth will get to that, but he's not going to get to it soon. So he's saying to

us, life is continual, it's tiring, it's cyclical. There's predictable stuff that's going to happen every year. And the truth is, friends, we got to learn to live with the predictability of the seasons and the rain and the snow and the leaves next year.

Friends, if I'm my body's not an adderer to my soul with Jesus. I'm going to rake leaves again. I'm going to carry a camp chair around some fire. I'm going to agonize over what to get from my wife for Christmas every year. If some of you ladies have an idea, let me know. I would be very grateful for that? It's in a cycle and the longing for new stuff, it's a fool's game. It just doesn't work. So the application is, you know, stop thinking that different will be better. Stop thinking I can break out of this cycle. Stop saying to myself, if I just got a new house, things would be better.

If your new house has a tree, friends. You're raking again. Sorry. It doesn't fix it. Novelty doesn't fix it. We have to live in what is true. And so Qoheleth says here's what to expect, here's what not to expect, and he comes through this

very troublesome conclusion.

Verse 8. “All things are full of worries, a man cannot utter it.”  

It just, it just you think, OK, this is fun, this is good, we're going to do this again. Now it doesn't work. Your eyes see something. I've seen the elves. Oh, now I want to see Antarctica. Your ear hears something. I got this Bose speaker on my desk and I love it. But then no, that's too tiny. I need AI.

Need a Binford 8000 double woofer. Bigger deal. And so, yeah.

Thank you, Tim. Tool time. Taylor. Thank you. So you just want more. It's just, it's just it's never satisfying. It doesn't get any better.

●    The Sun…

Verse 9. “.....There is nothing new under the sun.

.

It's a general statement that says what has been will be and what will be will be again. And it's not like nothing new is ever invented. I mean, somebody invented the cell phone during my lifetime, so that has been invented. But communication has been here. I mean, we had pictographs on The Cave

walls and then we had grunting and pointing and pantomime and then we had spoken language. Then we had written language, and then we had. the printing press and then we had. The Telegraph, the telephone, and then we had FaceTime and we had Fortran and we had international texting. I mean, next week I can text Ben and Mike in India if I want. I mean, it's all

communication. It's all been here. I have no idea where it's going next.

I don't like to think about it. Let's just keep our head in the sand

●    The wind….

Verse 11 “There is no remembrance of former things or of latter things.”

So the stuff that's already gone is forgotten, and the stuff that is coming will be forgotten and we will be forgotten. Our names will not last that terribly long. I met my grandfather one time. He died when I was five. I know his name, but I have no personal memory of him.

My great grandfather I never met, I don't know where I lived, I don't know his name. His memory is just gone. Even for me, his great grandson, his memory is gone. It just goes away. Who won the World Series two years ago?

I know who won last year because my Rangers won for the first time ever. Who was Sullivan the Magnificent? Who knows that? Couple people. Suleiman are magnificent. If I'm not mistaken, Ren built the walls around Jerusalem. Pretty sure I don't know anything about him other than he has a killer name.

●    The Water

Who knows? Tiglath Powell Lesser 3. Who's ever heard of the War of Jenkins Ear? War of Jenkins' ear. You know I found that out. Thank you young lady. I googled the most obscure war ever. Some British guy got his ear cut off

and there was a 10 year fight over it.

We forget this stuff. It just goes away and all the stuff that was so important goes away. It's not even remembered.

Friends, I pastor in Idaho Falls for 12 years, was the closest I ever came to the millennial Kingdom. When I showed up, there were 180 people. There was no building. There was no land. There were some great leaders, one of whom is sitting right there right now. There Psalm 9:1-11, There was no direction and no visibility. We had a rented office and rented a university auditorium and 12 years later we had about 800 people, 17 acres. Two buildings, 11 pastors to about 700. Went from 1 missionary to about 8, and I mean things. Everything went great. It was amazing. And I came out of that sinfully thinking I'm a pretty big deal. Look what I did here. Look what I accomplished. I put this church on the map. It's all sinfulness and stupidity. God disabused me

of both of those ideas in my next church, so I'm over it now. But I just got to thinking like man, I put this church on the map. I worshiped there this summer. 22 years later, I walked in. I knew about three people in the hallway.

I sat down in the back like a homeless, unknown man. Twice the usher asked me to move because they needed that seat. He had no idea who I was. It was really good for me. It was really good for me.

Let me tell you a secret. Jason Woolen's been going about two years. I mean, in many senses, he put this church on the map. I love and respect the man. I think he did a fine job here. But he's about 20 years away from being a homeless guy on that back row back there. I mean, his dad and his boys

go here. I don't know if they're here today, but he's a fine man and I'm doing Jason a service by telling him. The half life of pastoral fame is somewhere under 22 years.

I don't know where it is. It's all going to be forgotten. We are all forgotten and go away. So let me do a service to you. You might think you're a pretty big deal. I mean, I put this company on the Psalm 9:1-11e map. I put this product on the map. I put this church on the map. I put whatever on the map.

You're not a big deal. You're just the next round now. You're a big deal to God who paid for the life of your eternal life with his Son. I'm not a big deal. I've been disabused of that idea. I will be forgotten like everybody else. So I want to read to you what I think. Here's what Qoheth is talking about today, sort of.

Paraphrase this paragraph. Here's what he's saying. Today. Life on this planet is about as substantial as a fleeting mist. Life is wearisome and repetitive, challenging and unfulfilling. Life is highly resistant to advantage and human control. You will be raking leaves again next year. You're going to be carrying your camp chair around a campfire again next year. It will rain and snow but not fill the ocean. You will never really be satisfied on this planet. The stuff which was will also be again. Fire and communication and sin are not new. The half life of fame is shorter than the half life of a banana.

In 100 years, no one will even know you existed. We are all going to die.

That's what he said to us today. And now we're saying, Qoheleth, wait, wait. Give us some scrap of hope. Give us some silver lining. Give us something to hold on to this week. Help us. And he says to us, I got nothing for you. He walks out. We say, wait, you can't just leave like that. Come here. He's gone.

Welcome to the book of Ecclesiastes, friends.

Le’sS pray. Father in heaven, we want to be people who are connected with reality. Thank you for Qohelith. For his courageous investigation. For his

willingness to say what's true to us. Help us to be people who live well.

Live well in the face of the cycle of the wind and the cycle of the rain and the

worrisomeness and the

frustration and the things we can't control and the stuff that breaks. Help us

to live well.Live well under the sun during this time frame because we're

connected with you and we're connected with what's true, and we need your help in

Christ's name, Amen.