The book of Ecclesiastes communicates the truth that the source of true joy and satisfaction is in God alone. Ecclesiastes describes what a life lived apart from God looks like by examining “life under the sun.” This is life without considering God. Solomon explains his journey through life and the relative value of pleasure, work, wisdom, intellect, activity, and wealth. In short, the book of Ecclesiastes records Solomon’s search for meaning and significance. 

So, Ecclesiastes has a very clear and prominent theme, and that theme over and over again proclaims one of the most helpful, encouraging, life-giving truths that a human heart can ever grasp and that is this that the source of true joy and satisfaction is in God alone that's the whole matter of Ecclesiastes of course the author is Solomon That's revealed to us in chapter 1, verse 1. The title is The Preacher. How about that? The title of a book called The Preacher, and this is the Hebrew word koholef, and it indicates someone who is proclaiming truths. In terms of the genre of literature, this is part of the wisdom literature that also include the Book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes.

You have various categories of Scripture. You have the Pentateuch. You have the historical books. You have poetry, and here we find ourselves in the wisdom literature. Time of writing, Solomon most likely wrote this around 931 BC and my view is that Solomon is looking back on many many years of his life and he under the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit, after maturing, after many experiences that he documents in this book reflects thoughts that are godly.

He didn't always have godly thoughts. Solomon strayed, particularly in his younger days. And my understanding of this is he wrote this at the end of his life after his apostasy. He tested, he crashed, and now he sees the Lord in the hand of God. Let's talk about the message in some level of depth.

The message of Ecclesiastes centers around the search for meaning in life, but particularly the search for meaning in the heart of the person who's living apart from God. And this is characterized by the phrase life under the Sun. When you read these words, under the Sun, it's code for a life apart from the consideration of God. Rather, the consideration of yourself. Rather, the consideration of what you view as pleasurable, rather what you think will bring you happiness, rather than under the care and the authority, under the umbrella, under the shadow of God's wings.

So this phrase, you know, under the sun or life under the sun is critical for understanding the entire message of Ecclesiastes, And it means a life lived apart from regard to God. And when that is your disposition of life, you're on a long journey. And you will bang your head against a lot of doorways. And Solomon reveals it here in Ecclesiastes. He was on a search for ultimate purpose in life.

He wouldn't have a purpose. He's like all people, you know, they want to make a difference. They want to experience life. And the message of Ecclesiastes is that the search for meaning in life apart from God is futile. It's vanity.

It's nothing. It will get you nothing of any value. And so Solomon is weighing various parts of life. Wealth, work, wisdom, intellect, activity. All these things are part of a person's search for meaning.

And Solomon is here to say that regardless of the pursuit that you make in this world, whether it's for wealth or for wisdom or some kind of power of any kind, there's nothing in this world that can satisfy your soul. I like the way that Joe Moorcraft speaks of this. He says that Solomon makes it clear that no single part of God's world can unlock the meaning of life. You know, you might be able to learn something from the great political or social or literary movements of the day, but none of these by themselves can unlock the meaning of life and can help a person find what they're really looking for. And Solomon is in a search of life in this entire book and he gives the answers to the questions.

The questions of meaning, the questions of purpose, the questions of value, the questions of enjoyment, all of these are weighed and they're found answerable only in God. And so if we're going to understand life under the sun, then we must live by wisdom that's beyond the sun, that's in the heavens, that's far beyond our own grasp and understanding of things. It's found in God and Solomon discovers that here. Now when you're reading Ecclesiastes and the various phrases that might seem confusing, and there are some confusing phrases in Ecclesiastes, All of it has to be thought of in terms of the last two verses of Ecclesiastes in chapter 12. That is the North Star.

It's the interpretive key to everything that is said. And everything that Solomon says in every chapter up to that last phrase serves the phrases that you find at the end of chapter 12. You find a man who was living a life of misplaced priorities. He was absorbing himself in irrelevant activities, and he finds out that the pursuit of truth and happiness cannot be found there. And he identifies so many different kinds of areas of life.

There's intellectual life. In chapter 1 verse 12 or verse 13 he says, I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven, this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man by which they may be exercised." So, he's in a pursuit of intellectual life. He pursues pleasure with a vengeance. Chapter 2 verse 1 we read that Solomon said this, I said in my heart, come now I will test you with mirth. Therefore enjoy pleasure but surely this also was vanity.

In other words, he just wanted to have fun. He just wanted to have somebody make him laugh. So he pursued laughter. You know, people do that today. With the rise of the internet, the ability to find quote-unquote humor, you know, has been expanded.

And so you have people who are searching for one funny video after another and often people will spend hours and hours of their day just looking for fun and that's what Solomon did. He says in verse 2 in chapter 2, he says, I said of laughter, madness. That's his conclusion. And of mirth, what does it accomplish? So he comes to his senses.

He speaks of diligent labor, he speaks of oppression and work and riches and we'll get to that later on as we walk through the basic narrative as we walk through actually chapter by chapter. In chapter 7 there are lots of comparisons, but all of it really comes back to the same basic problem, man's search, man's emptiness, man's desire for pleasure, his frustration in his work, the specter of death that's always upon man, the search for wisdom and how fleeting it really is. And this is why many have said that Ecclesiastes is just nothing but a dark and discouraging and disheartening book. So there's some variation in the interpretation of the book. Some people say it's a book of despondency.

It's a book of a man that has just lost all hope. I don't believe so. I don't think it's a disheartening book. I don't think it's a discouraging book. It's very simple and it's very straightforward.

And it really is about happiness and fulfillment and meaning. How do you keep yourself from all the rabbit trails of meaning and happiness and find yourself at the center of the sweetness of life? And that's what you find the very last phrases of this book. You know each book of the Bible has different blessings for the people of God. Job shows us how to suffer.

Psalms shows us how to worship. Proverbs shows us how to be wise. Song of Solomon shows us how to love. Jeremiah shows us how to weep. And Ecclesiastes shows you how to be happy.

And He gives us the central matter of all human happiness. There are many lessons here. I'll just give you a few. First of all, everything done under the sun is vanity. You see that so clearly in chapter 1 verse 14.

In other words, everything done out from under the hand of God and out from under the authority of God is vanity. He says in verse 14 in chapter 1, I've seen all the works that are done under the sun, and indeed all is a vanity and grasping for the wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered. Have you ever felt like your life was caught up in just trying with all your heart, making what is crooked to be straight and you just couldn't get it? Well that's what Solomon was saying and he was saying that because he was doing it apart from the power of God.

Another lesson is that there's a time and a season for everything. One of my favorite sections in this book is in chapter 3. It's some of the most beautiful language you'll ever read. In chapter 3, verses 1 through 8, it really speaks to the times and seasons of a person's life. And here's how it goes.

Chapter 3, verse 1, To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven a time to be born and a time to die a time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to gain and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to throw away.

A time to tear and a time to sew. A time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace. And later on he says that God has made everything beautiful in his time. That all the various times that God takes us through, they have their own beauty. And we should always savor the beauty of the various times, whether it's a time of war or a time of planting or a time of breaking down or building up because we enter into these various seasons of life as we grow through the years and Solomon sees it.

He sees the sweetness of it, that there are many different kinds of time in life and you shouldn't despise them, but if you're living your life, you know, out from under the sun, if you're living your life out from a consciousness of God, then times will always be full of sorrow and disappointment. You know, He says here there's a time to be born and a time to die. You know, those who live life under the authority of God and they have the presence of God, when it comes a time to die, They die beautifully. They let it go. They go in peace because they know that God is in control.

But there is a time and a season for everything. And you might just consider the time and the season that you're in right now. You know, how would you characterize it? Would you use any of these words to speak of your time right now? I would encourage you to go through Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 8 and say, what time am I in right now?

And how should I relate to that time? Am I relating to it in a godly way? Is it a productive, positive, helpful, righteous way? Is it a biblical way that I'm engaging this time that I'm in right now? And so go through it and read it and ask yourself, am I in a time to plant or am I in a time to pluck up what is planted?

Am I in a time to gather stones or am I casting away stones? Another one of the great lessons here is about really eternity and how God has wired all human beings, that God has set eternity in the human heart. There's this beautiful phrase here, He has made everything beautiful in its time, and also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. I know of nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in their lives and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor. This, it is the gift of God.

I know that whatever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken from it. God does it that men should fear before him. And here you find this mixture of our motivations and the way that we experience life that, you know, on the one hand God has promised that he's making everything beautiful in his own time. On the other hand, God has put in the heart of man a desire for more.

He's put eternity in their hearts. And so their lot in life becomes really very simple, and that is to rejoice. Rejoice in what God has done. Rejoice and do good. Eat and drink and enjoy the good of your labor.

That's the gift of God. So what he's saying is you don't understand what's going on in all of your life, but here's one thing you can do. You can rejoice right now. Go do that. How about that?" And Solomon is teaching that.

There's also some really fascinating kind of disarming things about this book, particularly regarding mourning. And if you go to Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 2, there's this really startling statement that almost seems to contradict some of the other things that he's said, and particularly in chapter 3, the things that we just referred to. He says, better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men and the living will take it to heart. So what does that mean? That means that mourning is also a part of life and a person should learn how to mourn properly, to mourn in a godly way.

And this is one of the marks of true Christians. They know how to mourn in their times of trouble. It's not a mourning of abject despair. It's a mourning that somehow maintains hope. Even though the feasting is gone, even though the mourning has come as a result of real things that have happened.

You know the Christian life, the way that God explains it, It's not a fake life. It's not like you don't ignore the things that are really happening. You actually mourn. We don't just suck it up and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We live life.

You know, we go through the ups and downs, but we also understand that all of these are part of God's plan. And what should we do? We should do what it says in verse 2, take it to heart. Experience the time. Go through it.

Don't disdain it. Don't languish in it, but experience it the way that God would have you do it. There's several places in here about youth, and I remember reading these things as a very young man, particularly in Ecclesiastes 12 verse 1, and there's a command here to youth, and it's very helpful for young people particularly who are beset with all kinds of fears about the future, unknowns, wondering about what's going to happen to them. You know, they haven't had very many years under their belt yet, and so they don't really know what's going to happen to them, and often, you know, they despair. But he gives an answer to youth's questions and helps them to center their thinking in the days of their youth so that they find themselves going in the right direction.

He says this in verse 1 of chapter 12, Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth." And then he says this, before the difficult days come and the years draw near when you say, I have no pleasure in them. Here's something that all youth need to understand. The days of youth are the days of the fewest troubles you'll ever have. And well, in my experience, I had fewer troubles when I was a young person. I had more fears.

And now I have more troubles and fewer fears. And this is the beauty of the work of God. It's one of the most encouraging things to know is that God does walk with his people. But the days of youth you don't have that many troubles. You know when you're raising children you understand this.

You know you're reading the Bible to them and and David is in these just you know radical times of persecution and difficulty and you have threats of immorality and all these radical sins are presented before your children and you're thinking, there's no way they can relate to this. You're there with a child who's four or five, six, seven years old and they don't have any of these troubles. You know the admonitions to cast your burdens upon the Lord for a four-year-old? What is that all about? It makes no sense to a four-year-old really And what Solomon is saying is that in your youth, you haven't experienced the difficult days yet, but you will.

They're coming. You'll experience things in your future that, where you certainly can't anticipate or calculate, but here's what you need to know. You'll experience trials. There'll be disappointments, all kinds of things that will happen that will actually be worse for most people than the things they experience in the days of their youth. And I know that that's not universally true.

Some people in their youth really do experience great trauma and then the traumas somehow fade away because of environment, experiences, maturity, and different things like that. But it's a general principle and that's why Solomon says, remember your Creator in the days of your youth before the difficult days come. And who knows what difficulties are around the corner for all of us. Be ready for them. And how do you be ready?

Read the last two verses of the book of Ecclesiastes and you'll know how. And that takes us to those last two verses right here. Fear God and keep His commandments. Verse 13, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all.

For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil." This is such a helpful thing. You might consider what could possibly happen to you. You know, you're in the days of youth and things aren't so desperately evil and you haven't experienced much, you know, radical disappointment, but you're told here exactly how you should go through these times. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all. You can do that whether you are on your deathbed, you can do that whether you have, you know, just earned 50 million dollars.

You can do that no matter what. Whether you're at the top or whether you're at the bottom, the fundamental factor for success in life is in these two words, fear God. And that's something that you do internally. And then there's something that you do externally. You keep His commandments, those two things.

That's the sum of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments. And every husband or wife that's undergoing frustration with that husband or wife, every child who's facing various kinds of challenges, disappointments, reversals, they have this really as their rock to fear God and keep His commandments. And you can do that in the midst of anything that ever happens to you for the rest of your life. It's the fundamental principle of life.

You might just, you know, itemize the various things that are frustrating to you or that are causing you pain, you should look at them and say, what's my responsibility? Two things. Fear God, keep his commandments. That's all I need to do right now. And that really is enough.

It's such a blessing to know that God has so carefully reduced our responsibilities in the ways that we can understand. He's very kind. He doesn't give us a complex, you know, multi-page spreadsheet to help help us figure out what to do. It comes down to fundamental principles. I've listed some key verses there.

I've read some of them so far, but there they are. Let's talk about Christ in Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes takes us to the singular hope, and that is that in God alone. I believe that that is here for us in order to proclaim that Christ alone is enough, and that He Himself, the one whom we should fear and obey, He is all we need. I think that's most prominently how Christ is typified in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Now Solomon is also a type of Christ. He is the son of David, and you know he is in the line of the Messiah, so he stands in a prominent place in redemptive history as well, but Christ is in Ecclesiastes. Look for him there. Let's talk about the book. Let's just sort of walk through.

I want to show you some of my favorite places to stop in Ecclesiastes. You can see the outline in front of you. I've broken it down into four sections. There are many different ways to outline this book, but for our purposes here, we'll operate by this outline. And the first section is focused on enjoying life as a gift of God.

And you'll find in this in these first two chapters that there's just an appeal to enjoy life. No matter what you're doing, enjoy it. One time is gonna pass and it'll be replaced by another. Don't miss the opportunity. What often people do is when they're in a particular moment, they don't have any capacity to enjoy it.

They just can't wait to get it over, and that's always a mistake. Because like chapter 3 says, there's a time for everything and all of it is designed for this one thing for the enjoyment of God and to stimulate us to fear him and to keep his commandments in the midst of it. Chapter 2 verse 24 says this, A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too I see is from the hand of God. For without Him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

To the man who pleases Him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and happiness. But to the sinner, he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless and chasing after the wind. These appeals to just enjoy what God has given you. Take what he's put in your hands, give thanks for it, and bless the Lord for it.

Rather than to always be disappointed for what God has put in your hand, a man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. Or maybe you don't have satisfaction in your work. You should seek it and you'll find it. And these verses tell us that God does give good things and He gives us the ability to enjoy them. And it's always a mistake to miss the opportunity to enjoy.

You know, is there anything that you're not enjoying that you could be enjoying right now? You know, often God surrounds us with so much blessing and we completely miss it. And there are a couple of difficult things and it destroys our entire capacity to enjoy it. And that's what he's talking about here. In chapter 1 verse 4 he speaks of the repetitiveness in life, that life goes on from one cycle to the next.

Chapter 1 verse 4, generations come and generations go, But the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north. Round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow to the sea, yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing or the ear its fill of hearing and what has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, look, this is something new? And what he's saying here is that life presents many, many things that tend to repeat themselves, and God has given those things to us as gifts. Don't despise them. Capture them. Consider God in the days of your youth, in the midst of all of it.

Don't become bored with what God has given. Yes, the streams go to the sea, the north wind, the south wind blows. Don't get bored with this. Don't lose your capacity to enjoy these things that God has given. And He gives them over and over again in your life.

And I think that He's saying there's a repetitiveness of life, but there's so much blessing in it. Don't miss the blessing. And then in chapters 3 through 5, after he deals with enjoying life as a gift of God and helping us to make sure that we don't miss the blessing. You know what my dad says to me regularly, he says, don't forget to smell the roses. I don't know how many times he said that to me.

What he means is, Scott, don't run so fast that you miss the beauty and the blessing of life. And Solomon is saying that same thing right here. Don't miss it. Stop to smell the roses. You hear the wind.

You see the sun rise again. It's repetitive. Don't miss it. Don't miss the beauty of it. So then chapters three through five, there's a declaration of God's plan, understanding God's plan for your life.

And this takes us back to those classic lines that I read at the beginning, to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted. This is all about how to understand what's going on in your life, that He takes you through various seasons in your life, and He's helping us understand that God has a plan, and thankfully it's not a steady-state boring plan. There's all kinds of stuff going on. Things change. Geography, people, feelings, all kinds of things are changing.

The weather, the seasons, victories, defeats, birth, death, everything is changing. And Solomon is trying to teach us to not lose our capacity to see the beauty of the Lord in the midst of the things that are changing. And it should help us to ask, what's changing in my life right now? Am I missing the beauty of it? Is God taking me from one thing to another?

Do I despise it or do I look at it with a glint in my eye and say, thank you God for taking me to a place I never would have taken myself, But you've done it because you love me, because you want to teach me how to find satisfaction in you through everything. In the same way the Apostle Paul communicated when he said, I'm content with abundance and I'm content with privation. It doesn't matter to me. Paul understood this principle, that things ebb and flow, but one thing stays constant. God, the fear of God, the commandments of God.

And when we get to chapter 4, we find some really remarkable language about oppression, extreme times of trouble, and Who knows what kind of oppression there might be in our lives in the future, but look at verse 1 in chapter 4. Then I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun. And look, the tears of the oppressed. But they have no comforter on the side of their oppressors. There is power, but they have no comforter.

Therefore, I praise the dead who were already dead, more than the living who are still alive. Yet better than both is he who has never existed, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun. Again, I saw that for all toil and every skillful work a man is envied by his neighbor. This is also vanity and grasping after the wind. The fool folds his hands and consumes his old flesh.

Now why such disappointing reflections on the things that God's doing? It's because it is work done under the Sun. When in fact a greater vision is necessary, You've got to go beyond the Sun. You've got to get wisdom from heaven. Living just according to human wisdom and understanding will never get you where you need to be as you go through this life.

You need something beyond the Sun. But living just under the sun with your head down just thinking in terms of human philosophy, your own wishes, your own motivations, jockeying for position, trying to make the crooked things straight and the straight things crooked, you know, desperately running around trying to fix everything all by yourself. It's vanity. Trust God. Look beyond the Son.

Look to God himself. You know, there are many matters of work that are revealed here and in this chapter 4 he speaks of this. He says, two are better than one. This has to do with companionship and he explains it like this, Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.

But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken." So this has to do with companionship and laboring together and being in life with other people. It's a picture of the multiplicity of the gifts of the Spirit and how it works when you're really in community.

It's so much better to be in community than to be all by yourself. Now, people have applied this to marriage, and I think it can rightly be applied to marriage, but it's not just about marriage, it's about everything. It's just as much for single people as it is for married people. In fact, he begins really with the matter of just working together, laboring together. And you know, if you're just working along by yourself you might consider, can I get a greater reward for my labor if I co-labor with someone?

You should ask that question because we are designed by God to bear fruit and to increase, to expand the kingdom, you know, to spread the tents further and further. This is one of our responsibilities, and we have to think about our lives and say, well what am I missing? Is there some aspect missing that could be added by co-laboring with somebody else. Co-laboring is a real blessing and he gives a secret here to have a good reward for their labor. Often one person doesn't have the same kind of reward that they could have And so you should always be considering is there anybody that I should be co-laboring with to get a greater increase on what I'm doing.

Think about that. Think about your own skills and think about what kind of skills are necessary to complete work in a better way. I've seen this happen in many, many, many ways all my life long. I realize I'm a person that has a limited skill set. I've always needed to have other people around me to do other things that are complementary, things I wasn't very good at, things that I couldn't see.

And God has built people differently for that purpose. And so it's wise for us to seek the Lord about how we might increase our productivity through our labor by co-laboring with others. You know, he speaks of labor in verse 9 and verse 10. He talks about failure. You know, when one fails, then he has a companion to lift him up.

It's always helpful to have somebody with you in time of failure so that you can get back at it together. You've got a support system going on. He says, woe to him who is alone when he falls. He has no one to help him out. And then he speaks of warmth.

Again, if two lie down together they will keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? To me this sounds like marriage. And then in verse 12, he talks about threats. Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. So he gives all these illustrations of how critical it is to recognize your need and to co-labor with other people.

And when we get to chapter five, he's still talking about understanding God's plan for your life and how you work it out. And he begins in chapter five with going to worship, going into the temple, into the house of God, verse one. And how you do that, he says, walk prudently when you go into the house of God. In other words, think about what you're doing and draw near to hear rather than give the sacrifice of fools. And then he says in verse 4, when you make a vow to God do not delay to pay it.

He's talking about one of the things that should be normal for us when we come together in community for worship. That we hear the Word of God, our heart convicts us, and we make vows. We say, I'm going to change that. This part of my life needs to change. That's making a vow.

So you have this sobriety of entering into worship, and then you have actual action that results from that worship. And then in the fourth section in chapter 6 through 7, the focus is about applying God's plan. And that's why we read right at the beginning of chapter 6 about how prosperity can disappear in a moment. You know, you're working this plan and all of a sudden everything changes. What are you gonna do?

And when everything changes, you are either gonna live life under the Sun or you're gonna live life according to what's beyond the Sun. God Himself. Look at verse 1 in chapter 6. There's an evil which I've seen under the Sun and it is common among men. A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that he lacks nothing for himself of all he desires yet God does not give him the power to eat it but a foreigner consumes it this is vanity and it is an evil affliction.

So he's saying that prosperity can disappear in a heartbeat. Don't take it for granted. This is how you apply this wisdom that He's been giving us here. Verse 12, I think, sums it up. For who knows what is good for a man in life?

All the days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow. Who can tell a man what will happen after him under the Sun? Remember, under the Sun. It really, it's a picture of a man who's living his life just on the human plane. Everything is under the Sun.

It's all in the matter of humanism and his own wisdom and his own desires. A man is trapped in his own desires under the Sun, But when he looks beyond the sun, he has help from heaven. And then in chapters 8 through 12, there are many different ways of dealing with discouragements in applying God's plan. He begins with the matter of wisdom in chapter 8 verse 1, and there's some language that should help us to understand why we should always pursue wisdom and never stop, because it changes your face. It changes your whole countenance.

It makes you look out into the future completely differently. Verse 1, who is like a wise man? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man's wisdom makes his face shine and the sternness of his face is changed. What is the impact of wisdom?

It makes your face shine. When you're walking in wisdom, the God illuminates your mind and your whole life and you have something to give. You're shining in that sense. And your sternness, your despondency has changed. Show me a despondent person and I'll show you a person who is feeding himself on foolish thoughts.

Show me a face that's shining. Show me a happy face, and I'll show you a face that is meditating upon the wisdom of God and is living far beyond the Sun. He speaks again of enjoyment in chapter 8, so I committed enjoyment verse 15 chapter 8 because the man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry. For this will remain with him in his labor all the days of his life which God gives him. And then in chapter 9 in the same section about removing discouragements, there's more about rejoicing, and I find verse 7 in chapter 9 here, and for this section here, has lived in my heart since I moved here.

Because there was a period of time as I was starting my business here in North Carolina, and time was hard. There were some really difficult things that came down. And it often happens when you're starting a business. It might be one reason why people should do that because it drives them into moments of privation and fear about what might happen to them as they, you know, are in a situation where they could absolutely lose everything and their families, who knows what's gonna happen to them. Well I just started a church and a company at the same time and had just moved here and a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine, he came to me and he brought these verses to me and I'll never forget it and every time I read it his face comes into my thinking.

He said this to me, go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart for God has already accepted your works. Let your garments always be white and let your head lack no oil. Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which he has given you under the sun. All your days of vanity, for that is your portion in life and in the labor in which you perform under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going." A dear friend read those words to me and he said, Scott, pay attention to these.

Go eat your bread with joy. Love that wife. That's all that matters. Just do that. God will bless you.

It was very helpful to me to hear those words. Chapter 10 speaks of consequences. You know, there are consequences for our actions. And in verse 8, we read about them, he who digs a pit will fall into it. The things that you do have consequences, okay?

That's just the way it is. Whoever breaks through a wall will be bitten by a serpent. If you're gonna break through a wall, you know, just recognize there are certain liabilities associated with it. Don't get too upset. Stuff happens when you do stuff and that's the whole matter here.

He who splits wood may be endangered by it. He who quarries stones may be hurt by them, by the stones. If the axe is dull and one does not sharpen the edge, then he must use more strength, but wisdom brings success. You've heard the story of the two men that were in a contest to cut wood with an axe. They kept pace with each other, but one of them only worked half the time, and the other man couldn't understand it until he saw that the other man spent half his time just sharpening his axe.

And that's the idea here. If the axe is dull and one does not sharpen it, then he must use more strength, but wisdom brings success. This section here has to do with consequences. Verse 18 gives us another consequence, a consequence of laziness. Verse 18, because of laziness the building decays and through idleness of hands the house leaks.

Consequences of different kinds. You go out and quarry stone, you might be hurt by the stone. Chapter 11, He speaks of investment in verse 1, particularly, cast your bread upon the waters for you will find it after many days. This is the whole principle of multiplication. You know, often people are so afraid to go do something.

They want everything to be perfectly in order. They want all the plans to be perfectly, logically laid out with everything covered. And my experience is it doesn't really work like that. At some point, you have to just cast your bread on the waters. You got to start, you got to do it, you got to go make it happen.

Maybe you don't understand where it's all going, but you've at least have got to make a start. And often people are just frozen And they don't do anything because they're so afraid to cast their bread, and so they hold it on. They hold on to it. And they don't do much as a result. And it's this whole matter of stepping out in faith, spreading it abroad.

It can be giving money. It can be starting something. There are various ways I think this is applied. It's about making an investment. And then chapter 12, verse 1, finds us returning to a verse that I read earlier, remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days to come.

But he doesn't just stay with the youth. In verse 2, I believe he starts to talk about old people, people in their senior years and what it's like to grow old. You know, remember when you're young, remember the Lord when you're young, and also recognize where you're headed. And those of you who have aging parents or grandparents understand this. Verse 2, I'll read the whole section.

While the Sun and the light the moon and the stars are not darkened and the clouds do not return after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house tremble. He's talking about old people. And the strong men bowed down. When the grinders cease, because they are few, and those that look through the windows grow dim.

So here you have a picture of trembling, of you know stooping over, not being able to do the hard physical labor, the grinding ceases, and You have dimness of your eyes, you need glasses. Verse four, when the doors are shut in the streets and the sound of grinding is low. In other words, you're in your house most of the time. When one rises up at the sound of a bird and all the daughters of music are brought low. Also they are afraid of height and tears in the way." Have you ever noticed how old people become afraid of different things?

They're startled easily and things like that. When the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper is a burden, and desire fails. For a man goes to his eternal home and the mourners go about the streets. Verse 6 is so beautifully written. He says this to the old people, not just to the young.

To the old people, he says, remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain or the wheel broken at the well then the dust will return to the earth as it was and the spirit will return to God who gave it this is a picture of death. It's a picture of growing old, and then finally the picture is shattered at the fountain. And all is quiet. And it's over. And you've lived a long life.

There have been times and seasons, births, deaths, building, tearing down, sowing. All these things have happened, but there's a day when the wheel will be broken at the well and all of the activity will cease and it will be over. That's the reality of life. And so he speaks the same counsel to the young person as he does the old person. Remember your Creator when your eyes grow dim.

Remember your Creator when you have children. Remember, have your Creator when you lose everything. Remember your Creator when you're young and you have so much ahead of you because the remembering of your Creator is the heart of the matter and it's the beginning and the end of all happiness. Now in verse 12 at the end of this book, he speaks about books. We're surrounded by books in this library.

Of making many books, there is no end, and much study is worrisome to the flesh. And then here's the conclusion of the matter. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments for this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil." And so Solomon gives us an understanding of the source of true joy and satisfaction.

It's in God alone. It's in fearing God and in keeping His commandments, and you can do that in no matter what season you find yourself, whether in abundance or privation, whether in disappointment or elation, God has given His children a way to make their path through this world so that they enjoy life and they see the blessing of God. And it can only happen one way. It's when you quit being a humanist and you live your life just under the sun. And the only thing that drives you, the only thing that matters to you are the things that you see and the things that exalt you.

But when you live life under the Sun you have forgotten God who is above the Sun and that is what makes life worth living is to know God and to keep His commandments and to consider His ways in the midst of all yours. And that's why I think Ecclesiastes is one of the most encouraging books that's ever been written in such beautiful language. So when you read it, make sure you always keep your eye on chapter 12, verses 13 and 14, because that is the end of the matter.