Latest / Reformed Thinking / The God of Our Good Days and Bad Days (Ecclesiastes 7:13-15)

Transcript

The God of Our Good Days and Bad Days (Ecclesiastes 7:13-15) · Reformed Thinking

0:00
Right now, 70% of the people listening to this are terrified
0:03
of the future. Yeah, that is a staggering
0:06
thought. It really is.
0:08
The American Psychiatric Association just released their
0:10
2024 annual mental health poll and, well, the numbers are
0:15
absolutely staggering. I mean, we see it everywhere,
0:17
right? Right.
0:18
Almost half of all adults report feeling significantly more
0:22
anxious than they did just 12 months ago, and a massive 70%
0:27
are explicitly panicked about what happens next.
0:29
Which shows we are a culture of panic, really.
0:32
Yes, we are a society quite literally suffocating under the
0:35
tyrant of what ifs. Oh the what ifs they just eat
0:38
away at. You they do.
0:40
We buy the best planners, we optimize our warning routines,
0:43
we download financial forecasting apps, and we try to
0:46
build this, you know, impenetrable fortress of control
0:49
around our lives. Which never actually works.
0:51
Never works. Yeah, but what if the cure for
0:53
your anxiety is not a better schedule or a more optimized
0:56
life? Well, what else is there?
0:57
What if the actual cure is a complete, total surrender to a
1:01
God who intentionally makes your life crooked?
1:03
Wow, giving up the illusion of control to find actual joy.
1:08
I mean, that feels completely backward to the modern mind.
1:11
It does. Welcome to reformed thinking.
1:14
I'm so glad you're joining us today.
1:15
It is great to be here for this. We have a mission today that
1:18
feels incredibly urgent for the cultural moment we are currently
1:22
occupying. Definitely we are fixing our
1:24
attention on the ancient wisdom of Ecclesiastes, specifically
1:28
Chapter 7, verses 13 through 15. Those are some heavy verses.
1:32
Very heavy. The goal for this deep dive is
1:34
to examine the theology of our good days and our bad days.
1:38
Right unpacking how God's absolute Providence govern our
1:41
fleeting, unpredictable lives. Precisely, we are looking
1:45
straight into King Solomon's teachings regarding prosperity,
1:48
adversity, and, well, a human obsession with trying to steer
1:52
the universe. Which is an obsession we all
1:54
share to be honest. To understand the weight of what
1:57
Solomon, who is also referred to as Kohelith or the preacher, is
2:00
saying, I think we have to pull you out of the hyper connected,
2:03
fast-paced modern era. Right, we have to way back.
2:07
Yeah, drop you right into the dirt and the gold of the ancient
2:11
world. We need to look at the 10th
2:13
century BC. So set the stage for us.
2:16
What was that world like? Well, we have to understand the
2:19
soil from which this wisdom grew.
2:21
Solomon reign during the absolute zenith of Israel's
2:25
golden age. We are talking about a period of
2:27
unmatched geopolitical dominance.
2:30
Right and unparalleled stability.
2:32
He had peace on all sides. Right, he is not writing from a
2:36
place of deprivation. Not at all.
2:38
We tend to associate heavy philosophical reflection with
2:41
people who have suffered intense loss.
2:43
You know, like someone sitting in the ashes of a ruined life.
2:45
Sure, like job. Yes, like Job, but Solomon had
2:48
everything. I mean First Kings describes his
2:50
daily provision. It is wild. 30 cores of fine
2:53
flowers, 60 cores of meal, 10 fat oxen, 20 pasture fed cattle,
2:59
100 sheep. And that is just a Tuesday.
3:01
Right besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fat and fowl every
3:06
single day. It is an absurd amount of
3:07
wealth. He had an ivory throne overlaid
3:10
with pure gold. Yeah, silver was as common as
3:12
stones in Jerusalem. He had international fleets
3:15
bringing back exotic goods from across the known world.
3:19
So he had absolute power, staggering wealth, intellectual
3:23
supremacy, and basically every earthly pleasure available.
3:26
He built the temple. He built massive public works.
3:29
But, and this is the turning point, the literary context of
3:33
Ecclesiastes is defined by a specific Hebrew word.
3:37
Which is Hebel, right? Yes, Hebel.
3:39
In English translations you will often see it rendered as vanity
3:43
or meaninglessness. Which feels a bit abstract.
3:45
It does, but the literal physical translation is vapor or
3:49
breath. Solomon uses this word 38 times
3:53
in the book. 38 times that is a lot.
3:55
It is the defining theme. He looks at his palaces, his
3:58
military alliances, his goal reserves, his agricultural
4:01
triumphs, and he calls it a vapor.
4:03
I love the visual of a vapor. If you walk outside on a
4:06
freezing January morning and exhale, you see this thick white
4:10
cloud. Right, your breath just hangs
4:11
there. It looks solid.
4:12
It looks like you can reach out and grab it, but the second you
4:15
close your fist around it, well, there's nothing there.
4:17
Your hand just closes on empty air.
4:19
Yeah, Solomon describes this phenomenon as life under the
4:23
sun. Which is a phrase he uses to
4:25
mean life lives strictly from an earthly horizontal perspective.
4:29
Locked entirely within bounds of human time and space.
4:33
Exactly. It feels incredibly
4:36
counterintuitive. You would assume the man who
4:39
solved the geopolitical puzzle of the Middle East, the man with
4:43
all the goal and all the peace, would write a book saying, you
4:46
know, I figured out the formula. Right.
4:48
Like just implement my fiscal policies and follow my daily
4:51
habits. Yeah, by my course on
4:53
leadership. But instead he says it is all
4:55
ungraspable. Which puts Ecclesiastes in a
4:57
very distinct category when you compare it to the rest of the
5:00
Wisdom literature in Scripture. It really does.
5:03
Let's talk about that contrast for a minute, because when you
5:05
read Proverbs, which Solomon also wrote, it feels very
5:09
different. It does feel different.
5:10
Proverbs gives you the general maxims.
5:12
Right. It feels like it gives you the
5:13
straightforward formula. Work hard and you will have
5:16
food. Honor the Lord, and your barns
5:18
will be filled. That is a crucial distinction to
5:21
make. Proverbs provides the general
5:23
rules for a normative covenant life.
5:26
It tells you how the world generally operates under God's
5:28
moral design. Basically the laws of gravity
5:31
for wisdom. Precisely.
5:33
Then you have The Book of Job, which addresses the extreme,
5:37
baffling reality of innocent suffering.
5:39
When the proverb seems to break. Yeah, when the formula just
5:42
shatters, Ecclesiastes sits in a unique space between them.
5:47
Solomon's addressing a covenant. People who were looking at the
5:50
Deuteronomic Covenant and entirely miss applying it.
5:52
So in Deuteronomy, God outlines blessings for national obedience
5:57
and curses for national disobedience.
5:59
Right at a national level. If the nation of Israel followed
6:01
the law, God would bless the rains and the harvests.
6:04
If they rebelled, He would send famine in exile.
6:07
Yes, but the people started applying that national
6:10
overarching covenant to guarantee their own individual
6:14
earthly success on a micro level.
6:16
They personalized. It they turned it into a rigid
6:18
mathematical equation for personal prosperity, they were
6:21
acting just like Job's misguided comforters.
6:24
Who assumed Job must have some hidden scandalous sin because
6:29
his life fell apart? Right.
6:30
Their logic was simple. Good people get good things, bad
6:33
people get bad things. Which is such a dangerous
6:36
oversimplification. Let's use an to break down how
6:39
human beings process this. Are we basically wired to treat
6:43
God like a cosmic vending machine?
6:45
Oh. That was a great analogy.
6:47
Think about the mechanics of a vending machine.
6:49
You walk up, you insert your payment, you press the button,
6:52
and the machine is contractually obligated to drop the snack.
6:55
You expect the transaction to clear.
6:57
We do the exact same thing with God.
6:59
We put in our good behavior tokens.
7:01
Like what are the tokens? Maybe we went to church 3 weeks
7:05
in a row. We read a devotional, we did not
7:08
lose our temper in traffic, and we volunteered.
7:10
So we dropped the tokens in. We put the tokens in and we
7:13
press the button for the easy Life snack.
7:15
We feel entirely entitled to receive a healthy child, a
7:19
thriving business or a smooth Tuesday.
7:21
That captures the human condition perfectly.
7:24
We really do think like that. And what happens when the
7:26
vending machine fails to drop the item?
7:29
Well, we get furious. We kick the machine, we shake
7:32
it, we assume it is broken. Or, you know, we assume there is
7:35
no one managing the machine at all.
7:37
We. Panic because the transaction
7:39
failed. Right.
7:41
If I put the coins in and the snack does not fall, it means
7:44
the rules of the universe are broken and I am not in control.
7:48
So I have to ask, is our modern anxiety actually just a
7:51
frustrated, terrified reaction when the cosmic vending machine
7:56
does not do what we commanded it to do?
7:58
That is precisely the root of the anxiety.
8:00
We are terrified because a broken transaction implies we
8:04
are vulnerable. We hate being vulnerable.
8:06
We despise it, and the ancient Israelites were tempted by this
8:09
exact same transactional mindset.
8:11
The ancient Near Eastern Pagan cultures treated their gods as
8:14
capricious forces that had to be managed.
8:16
Managed how? Well, if you wanted to go to
8:18
heart this, you had to manipulate the rain God with the
8:20
right magic, the right incantation or the right
8:23
sacrifice. So it was just leverage.
8:24
Exactly. It was an attempt to domesticate
8:27
the divine. The Israelites wanted to
8:29
domesticate Yahweh the same way. Make him predictable.
8:32
Yes, and honestly this ancient mindset is identical to modern
8:36
iterations of the prosperity gospel.
8:38
Oh for sure. It tells you that if you just
8:40
have enough faith or sow a specific financial seed, God is
8:45
obligated to make you wealthy and healthy.
8:47
It is the oldest lie wrapped in modern packaging, but Solomon
8:51
directly attacks this vending machine mentality right out of
8:54
the gate. He does not pull any punches.
8:56
He forces the reader to stop looking at the buttons on the
8:58
machine and look at the unalterable sovereign decrees of
9:02
the Creator. Ecclesiastes Chapter 7, verse
9:05
13. He writes this massive paradigm
9:08
shifting sentence. What does he say?
9:10
He says consider the work of God who can make straight what he
9:14
has made crooked. Who can make straight what he
9:16
has made crooked? It is an arresting visual.
9:19
It stops you in your tracks. It really does.
9:21
The original Hebrew command for consider is raya.
9:24
This does not mean to cast a passive fleeting glance at
9:26
something while you were walking by.
9:28
Right Raya is an active investigative gaze.
9:31
It means to see, to look at, to actively inspect with intent.
9:35
It is an active inspection. Solomon is commanding you to
9:39
thoroughly examine God's operational theater.
9:42
So do not just look at your difficult circumstances and
9:44
complain about the pain. No.
9:46
Look through the circumstances to the God who actively ordained
9:50
them. OK, So what are we actively
9:52
inspecting here? We are commanded to inspect the
9:54
things God has made crooked or bent.
9:57
The Hebrew word here is ewa. Let's dig into that word a bit.
10:02
Sure. In Hebrew grammar, this is a
10:03
peel perfect verb. For those unfamiliar with the
10:06
language, the peel stem indicates an intensive,
10:09
intentional action. It is not an accident.
10:12
No, it implies A deliberate exertion of force.
10:14
Let's put that into a relatable English equivalent to make sure
10:18
the weight of this lands. It is the difference between,
10:21
say, lightly bumping into someone in a crowded hallway
10:24
versus squaring up your shoulders and intentionally
10:27
shoving them. Oh that is a great way to
10:28
visualize it. The peel stem means this is not
10:31
a passive allowance. God is taking a steel rod over
10:34
his knee and actively bending it.
10:36
Wow. The bent or crooked
10:38
circumstances of your life, the sudden job loss, the chronic
10:42
illness, the betrayal by a close friend.
10:45
They are not accidents. They are not the result of a
10:48
chaotic universe spinning out of control while God looks the
10:50
other way. They are the intensive,
10:52
intentional design of the Creator.
10:54
God actively bent the circumstance.
10:57
I know that is a remarkably tough pill to swallow for a lot
11:00
of people. It is.
11:01
We prefer to think the bad things are just random luck or a
11:04
statistical anomaly. Or, you know, maybe the Devil
11:07
Slip 1 past the goalie. We really want to let God off
11:09
the hook. We do.
11:10
We want to insulate God from the messy, painful realities of our
11:14
lives to protect his reputation. But you are saying the text
11:18
assigns the bending directly to God's hand.
11:21
The biblical text leaves no room for a dualistic worldview where
11:24
God and some other dark force are locked in a cosmic arm
11:28
wrestling match. Battling for control over your
11:30
Tuesday afternoon with the outcome uncertain.
11:32
Exactly. The historic Reformed
11:35
understanding of Providence is immensely helpful here.
11:38
If you look at the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 11
11:41
asks what God's works of Providence are.
11:44
And the answer. The answer is that His works of
11:46
Providence are his most wholly wise and highly capable,
11:50
preserving and governing of all His creatures and all their
11:53
actions. He is governing the bent things.
11:55
Yes, nothing falls outside of his sovereign decree.
11:58
That brings me back to the striking reality of the APA
12:01
anxiety statistics we discussed earlier and the tyrant of what
12:05
ifs. The what ifs are exhausting.
12:08
Author Vinita Risner talks about this grueling tyrant.
12:11
She talks about lying awake at night wondering what if my
12:14
health fails completely? What if my children rebel and
12:17
walk away from the faith? What if the economy crashes and
12:19
we lose the house? We have all had those sleepless
12:22
nights if we. Truly believe God is actively
12:25
governing those terrifying possibilities.
12:27
It exposes something very dark about our anxiety.
12:31
Anxiety is not just a biological stress response.
12:34
No, at a spiritual level, anxiety is a form of idolatry.
12:37
That is a severe diagnosis. It is severe, but a biblically
12:41
accurate one. Anxiety is a violation of the
12:43
first commandment. You shall have no other gods
12:46
before me. How so?
12:47
Walk us through that connection. When we murmur against our
12:50
circumstances and paralyze ourselves with dread concerning
12:53
tomorrow, we are inherently declaring that God is not the
12:57
supreme good and that He is not trustworthy.
12:59
We're saying we could do a better job.
13:01
Right. We are assuming that if we had
13:03
the pen, we would write a better, safer, more fulfilling
13:06
story than the Ancient of Days. Anxiety substitutes the
13:09
sovereign creator with the idol of a trouble free predictable
13:14
life. I'm tracking with you but I have
13:16
to push back here. I genuinely struggle with this
13:18
concept. Go ahead, it is a hard concept.
13:21
If God is intentionally bending our circumstances.
13:24
If He is the one actively making the road rocky and painful,
13:28
doesn't that make him the author of our misery?
13:30
That is the immediate logical objection.
13:32
How is this any different from fatalism?
13:34
How is this different from the ancient pagans who believed the
13:36
gods were just playing cruel games with human lives for their
13:39
own entertainment? Right.
13:40
How do we hold on to God's goodness when He is the one
13:44
holding the hammer that shatters our plans?
13:46
This is the exact tension Solomon is forcing us to
13:49
inhabit, and it is a vital question.
13:52
To avoid slipping into cold mechanical fatalism, we have to
13:56
look intently at the character of the God doing the bending.
13:59
OK, so it comes back to his character.
14:01
Yes, He does not bend things out of malice, boredom, or Caprice.
14:05
He bends them according to his holy, wise, and fatherly
14:09
counsel. So the motivation is totally
14:12
different. Completely different.
14:13
Fatalism says things are terrible, you are trapped in the
14:16
Gears of the universe and no one cares.
14:19
Biblical Providence says things are incredibly difficult, the
14:22
pain is real, but a loving Father who knows the end from
14:26
the beginning is holding the reins.
14:28
That changes the perspective entirely.
14:30
The answer lies in how God claims absolute authorship over
14:34
both the light and the dark, which brings us to the symmetry
14:36
of verse 14. Let's look at verse 14 because
14:39
the text refuses to let us sit in the dark forever.
14:42
Verse 14 says in the day of prosperity be joyful and in the
14:46
day of adversity consider God has made the one as well as the
14:50
other. God claims full ownership of
14:52
both realities. I am reminded of Isaiah 45 verse
14:55
7 where God makes this staggering absolute claim about
14:59
His sovereignty. He says I form light and create
15:03
darkness. I make well-being and create
15:05
calamity. I am the Lord who does all these
15:08
things. The Lord claims all of it.
15:10
He does not outsource the bad days to a subordinate department
15:13
so he can keep his hands clean. He claims the calamity.
15:16
He makes the day of prosperity and he makes the day of
15:19
adversity. They stand side by side as
15:22
paired teachers in the School of Providence.
15:24
Let's examine the first command in verse 14.
15:27
In the day of prosperity, be joyful.
15:30
The literal Hebrew phrasing is be in the good or be enough.
15:33
Be in the good. I like that.
15:35
I want to linger here because a lot of Christians, particularly
15:39
those who take theology very seriously, struggle deeply with
15:42
this command. They feel guilty.
15:43
Yes, some people feel an immense amount of guilt for enjoying a
15:47
good meal, going on a quiet vacation, or experiencing a
15:50
financial blessing. I think they shouldn't be happy.
15:52
Exactly. They feel a low grade hum of
15:54
guilt because the world has fallen, people are suffering and
15:58
therefore they feel they should maintain a posture of perpetual
16:01
misery to prove they are spiritual.
16:03
That is a false piety. It is an ascetic suspicion that
16:07
actually despises the goodness of creation.
16:10
The text explicitly commands us to enjoy the good days.
16:14
But how do we do that without making an idol out of the
16:17
comfort? The key to this enjoyment is
16:19
doing it quorum deo. Which is a Latin phrase meaning
16:22
before the face of God. Right.
16:24
You receive the good day as a deliberate gift from the
16:27
Father's hand. You do not worship the gift, you
16:30
do not hoard it as if it is the ultimate source of your
16:32
security, and you do not let the financial blessing make you
16:36
arrogant or self-sufficient. So you.
16:38
Receive it with open hands. You receive it with open hands,
16:41
and you immediately offer Thanksgiving back up to the
16:43
giver. Enjoyment without idolatry is a
16:46
high spiritual discipline. So when the bonus hits the bank
16:48
account, or the medical scan comes back clear, or you just
16:51
have a beautiful Saturday afternoon with your kids at the
16:53
park, you don't need to apologize for it.
16:56
No, enjoy it. You enjoy it fiercely, knowing
16:59
it is a vapor provided by God. But then we hit the second-half
17:02
of the verse in the day of adversity.
17:05
Consider. The Hebrew word for consider
17:08
here is raw. It is a brilliant linguistic
17:11
choice by Solomon. It is a word play between seeing
17:14
and calamity or evil. So what is the command for the
17:18
day of adversity? The command is not to panic.
17:21
It is not to immediately blame your boss, your spouse or the
17:25
political system. Or to just tune out.
17:27
Right. It is not to medicate the pain
17:28
away with alcohol or endless hours of scrolling on your
17:31
phone. The command is to contemplate.
17:33
You are commanded to look directly at the adversity and
17:36
recognize that God has made this dark day as well.
17:39
And the text gives the specific reason why God alternates these
17:42
days, why he gives us a season of sunshine and then plunges us
17:45
into a severe storm. There is a purpose to the
17:47
rhythm. Yes, verse 14 concludes with
17:49
this purpose clause so that man may not find out anything that
17:52
will be after him. God intentionally alternates our
17:55
days to hide the future from us. If we step back and look at the
17:59
psychological reality of this, this hiddenness is actually a
18:02
staggering act of Divine Mercy. A mercy?
18:05
How is hiding the future a mercy?
18:07
Because the Lord does not owe us a preview of our lives.
18:10
Think about it. If we knew every coming sorrow,
18:13
if you were handed a dossier today containing every single
18:16
tragedy, betrayal and illness you would face over the next 40
18:19
years, you would be entirely crushed before the hour even
18:22
arrived. That is terrifying.
18:23
You could not bear the psychological weight of knowing
18:26
the exact date of your hardest trials.
18:28
And on the flip side, if we knew every coming success, if we knew
18:31
we were guaranteeing a massive financial windfall at age 50 or
18:35
a perfect bill of health until age 90, we would become
18:38
hopelessly arrogant. We wouldn't need God.
18:40
Right. We would not depend on God for a
18:42
single second. We would just coast through life
18:45
treating God as irrelevant. Spot on.
18:47
God mercifully gives us daily bread, not daily omniscience.
18:51
Daily bread, not daily omniscience.
18:52
I like that. He hides the future to humble
18:55
our predictions, break our self-reliance, and force us to
18:58
walk by faith, relying on his character rather than our own
19:02
foresight. I'm going to challenge our
19:04
listeners right now because we live in an era that is
19:08
absolutely obsessed with predicting the future.
19:11
We really are. We are addicted to forecasting.
19:13
We have predictive algorithms for the stock market, we demand
19:17
10 year career paths, we have endless meteorological models,
19:21
and we spend billions on data analytics to remove any margin
19:25
of uncertainty. We want to know what happens
19:26
tomorrow. Yes, we are a society addicted
19:30
to fortune telling, even if we wrap it in sanitized corporate
19:33
terminology. Let me ask you, listening to
19:36
this right now, are your five year plans actually acts of
19:40
presumption? Are you building a tower of
19:43
control to avoid trusting God with tomorrow?
19:46
That is the direct conviction of the text.
19:48
Responsible planning is certainly biblical.
19:50
I mean Proverbs commends the Ant for storing food in the summer.
19:53
Right, it's not anti planning. But there is a razor thin line
19:57
between prudent preparation and proud certainty when our plans
20:00
mutate into demands. When we say this is what my life
20:03
will look like in three years, we have crossed into
20:05
presumption. We have forgotten that we are a
20:07
vapor, and God's hiddenness forces us back into a posture of
20:11
dependent trust. But honestly, that faith is most
20:15
severely tested when the rules of fairness seem to completely
20:18
and utterly breakdown. When things don't add up.
20:20
Which brings us to the baffling, offensive observation Solomon
20:24
makes in verse 15. He writes, In my vain life I
20:28
have seen everything. There's a righteous man who
20:31
perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who
20:35
prolongs his life in his evil doing.
20:37
This verse is an absolute hammer to any remaining illusions of
20:40
karmic moral arithmetic. It smashes it.
20:43
It does. The prosperity gospel and the
20:45
religious sphere and the concept of karma and the secular sphere
20:48
both demand a clean, predictable transaction.
20:51
Good people must get good outcomes, and bad people must
20:54
get bad outcomes. Which is the only way the
20:55
universe feels safe. Solomon looks around the world
20:57
and forces the reader to confront the terrifying reality
21:00
that under the sun, this equation frequently and
21:03
spectacularly fails. It is the ultimate anomaly.
21:07
Think about the visceral modern examples we see all the time.
21:10
We all know of the corrupt, ruthless dictator or the greedy
21:14
corporate executive who knowingly poisons a town's water
21:18
supply who lives to be 90 years old.
21:20
Never spends a day in jail. Right.
21:23
They die peacefully in their sleep, surrounded by extreme
21:26
luxury, facing 0 earthly consequences for their actions.
21:30
And then you see the exact opposite.
21:31
You see the devoted self sacrifice advising mother of
21:34
three, or the faithful young pastor who spends his life
21:37
serving the poor, who gets a terminal cancer diagnosis and
21:40
dies tragically young. It makes absolutely no sense to
21:44
our internal scales of justice. It is deeply offensive to our
21:47
innate sense of justice. It destabilizes our simplistic
21:51
Sunday School view of how God should govern the world.
21:54
It really rattles you. Notice that Solomon places this
21:57
raw observation right after the command to consider God's
22:00
Providence. He does this because these are
22:02
the exact moments when our faith is tempted to collapse into
22:05
despair. When the righteous perishes and
22:07
the wicked prosper, our theology of Providence is put through the
22:11
fire. It is like reading a brilliant
22:13
mystery novel. You are following the clues.
22:16
You know who the killer is. You are waiting for the
22:18
detective to burst into the room and arrest them.
22:20
And then you turn the page and realize the final chapter has
22:23
been completely torn out of the book.
22:25
You are just left hanging. You have all the setup, but the
22:28
justice has not happened. You were just left staring at a
22:30
jagged edge of paper. How is a person supposed to look
22:34
at that glaring, massive injustice?
22:37
A wicked man living a long happy life while a righteous man is
22:40
destroyed. And avoid descending into pure
22:44
bitter cynicism. Well, if this life under the sun
22:46
is all there is, if the earthly temporal horizon is the absolute
22:49
limit of reality, then cynicism is the only logical, rational
22:53
response to verse 15. So you should be a cynic.
22:56
Despair would be entirely justified.
22:58
You should be a cynic if this world is the final word.
23:01
But we are not constrained to the the sun.
23:02
We have to look beyond it. We.
23:03
Have to zoom out. We have to look to the ultimate
23:06
act of divine Providence to make sense of this massive anomaly.
23:10
And this is where the theology of Ecclesiastes intersects with
23:13
the New Testament in a breathtaking way, because Jesus
23:16
Christ is the true, ultimate righteous man who perished in
23:21
his righteousness. The crucifixion of Christ is the
23:23
most bent, the most unjust, the most crooked event in all of
23:27
human history. There is nothing more unjust.
23:29
You have the sinless, spotless Son of God, who only ever did
23:33
the will of the Father, who healed the sick and raised the
23:35
dead, and he is falsely accused, mocked, brutally tortured and
23:40
murdered by wicked men. The Pharisees and the Romans.
23:42
Right, who seemingly prolonged their own power and secured
23:45
their own and political stability in the process.
23:48
When they rolled the stone over the tomb, the Pharisees went
23:51
home thinking they had won. They thought the wicked had
23:53
prospered and the righteous had perished.
23:56
Under the sun, looking at it strictly horizontally, it looked
23:59
like a total failure of divine justice.
24:02
It looked like the universe was entirely out of control.
24:04
But we look at Acts chapter 4 where the early church is
24:08
praying, and they declare that Herod and Pontius Pilate, along
24:11
with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, did whatever
24:15
God's hand and God's plan had predestined to take place.
24:19
The cross was not an accident. The cross was the ultimate ewa,
24:22
the ultimate bent thing. Yes, the Cross was the ultimate
24:26
day of adversity, authored by the Father's sovereign decree
24:29
from before the foundation of the world to crush the sun for
24:32
the salvation of His. People wait, so God authored the
24:34
sin? No, God was not the author of
24:37
the sin committed by the Romans or the malice of the Jewish
24:39
leaders, but He sovereignly ordained the saving outcome.
24:43
Through their wicked actions, Through the most crooked tragedy
24:46
imaginable, God accomplished the straightest, most glorious
24:49
victory in the cosmos. Let's talk about Christ's
24:52
psychological and spiritual response to that adversity,
24:55
because it models everything we have been discussing regarding
24:58
yielding to Providence. Look at him in the garden.
25:01
Yes, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he faces the
25:03
terrifying, crushing reality of the Cup of Divine Wrath.
25:07
The psychological pressure is so immense he sweats drops of
25:10
blood. He asks if there is any other
25:13
way. But what does he say at the end?
25:15
His final prayer is the perfect submission.
25:17
Not my will, but yours be done. He yields completely to the
25:21
Father's bending of His path. Because Christ perfectly
25:24
submitted, and because he bore the full weight of divine penal
25:28
wrath on the cross, the believer's relationship to
25:31
suffering fundamentally and eternally changes.
25:34
This is vital to grasp. Untack that, how does it change
25:37
our suffering? For the Christian bad days are
25:39
no longer expressions of divine condemnation.
25:42
God is not punishing you in your adversity.
25:44
That punishment already fell entirely on Christ.
25:47
So what is the adversity then? Therefore, your suffering is now
25:50
categorized as fatherly discipline.
25:52
As Hebrews 12 lays out, the Lord disciplines the one He loves.
25:56
The adversity is a refinement process, a tool to detach you
25:59
from the idols of this world and conform you to the image of the
26:01
sun. That is a staggering paradox.
26:04
Through the most crooked tragedy in history, the brutal execution
26:08
of the Son of God, God actually straightened our depraved,
26:11
crooked souls. He took the crooked and made it
26:14
straight. I want.
26:14
You listening right now to consider how looking at Calvary
26:18
completely reframes your own personal suffering.
26:22
It changes everything. If God can take the darkest,
26:24
most unjust murder in history and use it to bring about the
26:28
salvation of the world cannot Yeah, use Matt.
26:32
He used your medical diagnosis, your sudden financial loss, or
26:36
your deeply broken relationship to accomplish His good sovereign
26:40
purposes. He absolutely can.
26:42
The cross proves God's goodness, even when your current
26:45
circumstances look entirely bleak.
26:47
It provides the ultimate theological anchor for the soul.
26:51
Looking at Christ does not erase the mystery of Providence.
26:53
We still do not know why the car accident happened on a Tuesday
26:57
or why the cancer returned. We don't get the answers to the
26:59
specific why. But the cross definitively
27:01
proves the mercy and the love of the God who governs those
27:04
events. You can trust the Father's heart
27:07
even when you cannot trace the Father's hand.
27:09
OK, we have established a massive theological framework
27:12
here. We have looked at the absolute
27:15
sovereignty of Providence, the vapor of life under the sun, the
27:18
intentional asymmetry of our good and bad days, and the
27:21
ultimate resolution at the cross.
27:23
We have covered a lot of ground. I want to steer this
27:26
conversation into the practical boots on the ground
27:29
applications. So if we were breathing this
27:32
unpredictable vapor every day, how do we stop hyperventilating?
27:36
Good question. If anxiety is arrogance, what
27:39
does repentance look like on a Tuesday morning when the bank
27:41
account is low and the kids are sick?
27:43
It begins with a daily conscious repentance of the illusion of
27:47
control. We must stop here to be the
27:50
Providence in our own lives. It is so hard to let go of that.
27:53
Anxiety often masquerades as diligence.
27:56
We tell ourselves I'm just being a responsible parent or I'm just
27:59
planning for retirement. I'm just being careful, right?
28:02
But at its root, obsessive worry is a refusal to be a creature.
28:06
It is a demand to sit on the Creator's throne and manage the
28:09
universe. Repentance means stepping down
28:11
from that throne, opening your hands, and confessing out loud
28:14
that you do not hold tomorrow. And when tomorrow brings a day
28:17
of prosperity, we have to learn how to receive it without
28:21
turning it into a fortress. Receive it with open hands.
28:24
When your marriage is thriving, when the sun is shining and life
28:28
feels incredibly sweet, do not feel guilty, but do not let that
28:32
joy fuel your pride. Do not think.
28:35
Look at this great life my own two hands have built.
28:38
Let the warmth of the prosperity fuel a fierce gratitude toward
28:41
the Giver. Conversely, when the storm hits,
28:44
we meet the adversity with contemplation, not distraction.
28:47
The modern instinct is to numb the pain.
28:49
We binge watch television. We throw ourselves into our
28:51
work. We buy things we don't need.
28:53
Anything to look away? Right all to avoid feeling the
28:56
sharp edge of the crooked day. But the text says to consider
29:00
bring your soul before God and ask the hard piercing questions.
29:04
Like what? Like what idols are being
29:06
exposed in my panic right now? Where have I placed my hope
29:09
other than Christ? What obedience remains my duty
29:12
today, even while I sit in the dark.
29:14
That requires rejecting the prosperity gospel completely,
29:17
and I don't just mean the obvious televised versions of it
29:20
where someone in a shiny suit asks for money.
29:22
No, it goes much deeper than that.
29:24
I mean the subtle, sanitized secular versions.
29:27
We all buy into the belief that if I eat perfectly organic food,
29:31
avoid all toxins and go to the gym five days a week, I am
29:34
guaranteed a life free of cancer.
29:37
That is just karma in workout gear.
29:40
Verse 15 absolutely destroys the idea that health and wealth are
29:44
guaranteed marks of present faithfulness or biological
29:47
superiority. It is a cruel, crushing theology
29:50
that blames sufferers for their own pain.
29:53
We have to discard it entirely. Associated with that is the need
29:57
to resist mysticism and the endless human chasing of private
30:00
signs about the future. Because God says in verse 14
30:03
that we cannot find out what comes after us, we are
30:05
constantly tempted to bypass His decree and seek out secret
30:08
knowledge. Oh, we want the cheat codes.
30:10
We want a private whisper, a special sign in the clouds, a
30:13
fleece thrown on the ground to tell us exactly which job to
30:15
take or who to marry. We want the certainty God is
30:18
intentionally withheld. So what do we do instead?
30:20
We must rely on the sufficiency of Scripture.
30:23
We use sanctified judgment, we obey the clear moral commands of
30:27
the Word, and we leave the hidden secret things to the
30:31
Lord. This theology inevitably
30:34
culminates in how we treat each other.
30:36
What does a congregation look like if it is deeply shaped by
30:39
the wisdom of Ecclesiastes? What does churchly compassion
30:43
actually look like in a hospital room?
30:46
A congregation shaped by this reality is a community that does
30:49
not demand that sufferers explain their pain before
30:52
offering comfort. They don't try to fix it right
30:54
away. They do not walk into a hospital
30:56
room and say, well, God works all things for good as a way to
30:59
shut down the weeping. They weep with those who weep
31:01
and rejoice with those who rejoice.
31:03
They sit in the tension. They do not offer shallow
31:05
theological cliches or bumper sticker slogans in the midst of
31:09
a tragedy. They sit in the ashes with their
31:11
friends, acknowledging the terrifying crookedness of the
31:14
situation while quietly holding on to the goodness of God on
31:17
their behalf. I think of a quote from Charles
31:19
Spurgeon, who battled severe depression himself.
31:22
He said anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but
31:26
only empties today of its strength.
31:28
That is a profound observation. We drain our present capacity to
31:32
love our spouses, to serve our church, and to do our jobs by
31:36
agonizing over a hypothetical future we cannot control.
31:40
But I want to push back on something here because it is
31:43
really easy for us to sit in a comfortable studio behind
31:45
microphones and say, meet adversity with contemplation.
31:47
Don't complain. But when you read the Bible,
31:50
King David flooded his bed with tears.
31:52
The prophet Jeremiah lamented so hard an entire book is named
31:55
after his weeping. Job cursed the day of his birth.
31:58
Jesus himself was sorrowful unto death.
32:00
Yes, there is a lot of weeping in Scripture.
32:02
How do we distinguish between a fateful biblical lament and the
32:06
sin of murmuring against God? That is a phenomenal and
32:09
necessary distinction. Bringing real raw bleeding pain
32:12
to a real God is an act of dependent faith.
32:15
Lament is looking directly at God and saying this hurts
32:17
terribly. I do not understand what you are
32:19
doing. The darkness is my closest
32:21
friend. Please help me.
32:22
You see this all throughout the Psalms.
32:24
Murmuring, on the other hand, which we see the Israelites
32:27
doing in the wilderness, is an accusation against God's
32:30
character. It's pointing the finger.
32:32
Right, Murmuring says. You brought us out here to kill
32:36
us. You are cruel.
32:37
You are unfair. You have wronged me.
32:39
Lament clings to the relationship even in the dark.
32:43
Murmuring tries to sever the relationship and put God on
32:45
trial. God invites our tears.
32:48
He rejects our accusations. And so the posture of the heart
32:51
is what separates the two. We can cry out, we can grieve
32:54
the bent things, we can acknowledge the pain of the
32:56
vapor. But a faithful lament always
32:59
eventually returns to. Yet I will trust you.
33:02
Yes, we have covered massive theological ground today.
33:06
To summarize the core message for you listening your life is a
33:09
vapor. It is fleeting, it is
33:11
fundamentally ungraspable, and it will frequently baffle.
33:13
You. It will definitely baffle you.
33:14
But that vapor is held securely in the sovereign, calloused hand
33:18
of a fiercely good Father. Do not waste your breath trying
33:20
to seize the steering wheel from the Creator.
33:23
It is an exhausting, impossible and in the end idol worshipping
33:26
task. Instead, enjoy the sweet days
33:29
with immense, unbridled gratitude.
33:32
Let the warmth of the sun and the joy of prosperity point you
33:36
directly to the Giver, and in the bitter days bow your head.
33:41
Embrace the discipline. Endure the chastening, lean into
33:43
the fatherly discipline, and wait with eager expectation for
33:47
the coming King who will straighten all things in the
33:50
final consummation. The crookedness of this current
33:53
age is temporary. The justice and peace of God are
33:56
eternal. I want to leave you with a final
33:58
lingering thought, a question to Mull over as you go back to your
34:01
day, your work, and your family. It has been a deep session
34:04
today. If you truly accepted the
34:06
reality that you cannot find out what happens tomorrow, and you
34:09
completely radically trusted the one who holds it, how would that
34:13
alter the way you treat the people sitting in front of you
34:15
today? That changes everything.
34:17
Does the absolute hiddenness of the future actually act as a
34:20
divine gift, forcing you to finally drop your blueprints,
34:24
look up from your predictive algorithms, and be completely
34:26
present in the exact fleeting moment God has given you right
34:30
now?