Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.
We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,
builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.
Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible
and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.
So welcome and enjoy the message.
If you have your Bibles this morning, open them to Ecclesiastes chapter 8.
We're going to continue to study Solomon's pursuit of meaning and purpose within life.
Now the passage that we're going to look at today is about how to enjoy life
in a broken world.
The Bible says that this world is broken by sin,
that it is fallen from the way that God created it
and the way that God intended it.
But Solomon is going to share with us,
and he does throughout the book of Ecclesiastes,
that even in the midst of a sin-soaked world,
you can experience the joy that comes from a relationship with God.
Now, Solomon tells us that the key to joy is wisdom.
Not a wisdom that comes through revelation or through observation, but a wisdom that
comes through revelation, a wisdom that comes from having a relationship with God.
So let's begin in verse number 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.
Solomon says a wise person has so much joy
that you can see it on their face.
Why?
Because they have learned how to enjoy life
in a broken world.
They have learned how to live above the sun in a relationship with God while at the same
time living below the sun with sin.
Now notice that Solomon says the wise are happy even though they don't have all of the
answers.
You know, pride focuses on what you know, but wisdom is knowing what you don't know.
Wisdom is knowing and understanding what you don't understand.
And that kind of takes the pressure off, doesn't it?
It's easier for me to trust God when I'm aware of my own limitations.
And Solomon is going to tell us that trusting God is one of the keys to enjoying your life in a sinful world.
Notice what he says in verses 2-5.
He says, I say, keep the king's commandment for the sake of your oath to God.
Do not be hasty to go from his presence.
Do not take your stand for an evil thing, for he does whatever pleases him.
Where the word of a king is, there is power.
And who may say to him, what are you doing?
He who keeps his command will experience nothing harmful.
And a wise man's heart discerns both time and judgment.
Solomon says we enjoy life more by obeying the authorities that God has put within our life.
And so here's the principle.
Don't let what you don't know keep you from doing what you do know is right.
Wisdom doesn't do any good until it is applied.
And Solomon was the wisest man on earth, and yet so often within his life he didn't apply the wisdom that God had given him.
And all of us know more than we're actually applying and doing within our life.
Now, wisdom says there's a lot of things that I don't know, and there's many things in life that I don't understand.
But I'm just going to focus on doing the things that I know to do.
Now, this morning, you may be a new believer in Christ, and you don't really know a whole lot of the Bible yet.
I want to encourage you to just take the part that you do know, to absorb it, apply it,
and follow it within your life, and then continue to learn more.
I remember Pastor Brian said after he got saved, he didn't know the Bible.
He had never read it until the day he got saved, really.
And so he began to just read it every day and look for opportunities to do what it said
and what he had read that day.
Well, that's wise advice.
Now, the example that Solomon gives is obeying authority.
Now the Bible says that authority and accountability comes from God.
That God has given us authorities within our life for our own good.
And he calls us to obey the authorities that he has placed within our life.
Now I know what you're thinking on your way to church.
You were probably saying to your spouse,
"'Honey, I really hope the pastor preaches
"'on obeying the government,
"'because it just brings so much joy into my heart
"'when I think about obeying authority.'"
Well, the truth is that is an important part
of enjoying life.
If you don't believe me,
then go talk to some people in prison.
It's important that we obey the authorities in our life.
And so if obeying God is the key to enjoying life, then obeying the authorities God has put over us is also a key to enjoying our life.
In verse 3, he says,
"...don't be hasty to go from the presence of the King."
It's kind of like, don't walk away from me
while I'm talking to you, you know?
In other words, Solomon is saying show respect
to those who are in authority within your life.
Show respect to your parents, to your teachers,
to your coaches, to police officers,
to those who exercise authority within the world.
Now, we have kind of made
disrespect of virtue within the United States.
We have kind of made disrespect of authority
a national pastime in America.
But the Bible says that we are to respect the office
even if we don't agree with,
and even if the person who holds the office
is far from perfect.
Now I understand that that's a lot easier to say
than it is to do.
And if I'm honest, I have been disrespectful at times
both within my heart and also with my lips
towards those who are in government office.
And so this past week as I was reading this passage
and praying and asking the Lord, Lord is it I?
Yes, it's you.
This applies to you.
And that's what the Lord showed me this past week.
And so I have had to ask the Lord for forgiveness
and that God would take that disrespect
out of my heart and out of my life.
See, submission is not just external.
It is a posture of respect for authority within our heart.
It is a faith-filled understanding
that authority is a good thing that comes from God.
You say, well, what about civil disobedience?
Well, the only time we are to disobey
is if the law of the land demands
that we disobey the law of God.
And even when that is the case, we ought to do so with the greatest and most utmost respect
that we possibly can show.
Now one of the reasons Solomon says that we need to obey authority is because when we
disobey authority, there are horrible consequences within our life.
There's spiritual consequences.
God has given us authority for our protection.
And when we disobey authority,
we are stepping out from under the umbrella
of God's protection within our life.
And it's a scary thing to step outside of the umbrella
of God's design for your life.
not only their spiritual consequences,
but also physical consequences,
because Solomon says, look, those who are in authority
have power to execute punishment
for those who disobey their commands.
You see, wisdom respects God.
and the authority that he has set up in our lives.
And Solomon says that when we follow those authorities,
that it leads to a more enjoyable life,
that it leads to greater human flourishing,
and it leads to more enjoyment within your life.
Notice once again what he says in verse five.
It says,
No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit, and no one has power in the day of death.
There is no release from that war, and wickedness will not deliver those who are given to it.
All this I have seen and applied my heart to every work that is done under the sun.
There is a time in which one man rules over another to his own hurt.
Then I saw the wicked buried who had come and gone from the place of holiness,
and they were forgotten in the city where they had done so."
This also is vanity.
Solomon says there's a lot of injustices in the world
that government doesn't always address.
And then he says some of those injustices within life
are at the hands of government and are perpetuated
by the corruption of government.
Now, there are two types of authority within life.
There's derivative authority, and then there is moral authority.
Now, derivative authority says, I have authority to tell you what to do.
But moral authority says, well, I am living this out myself.
I'm repenting of my sin.
I'm not going to call you to do anything
that I also am not doing myself.
I have spent time in prayer with the Lord
and God is working on me and I'm seeking to pursue the Lord
and to do what is right.
Now Solomon is pointing out that it's very confusing
when there are those who have derivative authority
but don't also have moral authority as well.
It's kind of like a personal trainer who's way overweight,
way out of shape and extremely unhealthy.
And you sit there and you go, what exactly is going on?
I don't know how to make sense of all of this.
And we've all seen that before.
It creates cognitive dissonance when you look at a situation and you don't understand it,
and it doesn't seem to be consistent or cohesive.
It's kind of like someone trying to teach you about finances when you know that their
finances are a complete wreck and a complete mess.
I don't want to learn about finances from someone whose finances are a mess.
I want to learn about finances from someone who has been a wise and good steward of the resources that God has given them.
And so Solomon is pointing out that there are times where there is a disconnect between what authority says and how authority behaves or how authority lives within life.
I think part of what Solomon is doing here in this passage and often in Ecclesiastes
is he's trying to manage our expectations of what it's like to live in a fallen and broken world.
Solomon is pointing out over and over that life is hard and people are sinners and life is
difficult and it's rough out there at times. And he says, look,
Government doesn't have all the answers
because the problem with government is it's made up
of sinners just like you and me.
So Solomon says, how are we to relate
to the world that we live in?
I think there are four wrong ways
that Christians often relate to the world.
The first is some Christians relate to the world and they're afraid of the world.
You know, the world is bad, and so the idea is, well, we need to retreat from the world,
and we need to separate ourselves from the world.
They kind of view sin like a virus, and if you get too close, then you might catch the infection, you know.
And primarily, these kind of Christians relate to the world in fear instead of relating to the world in faith.
Another false way is apathy.
A lot of Christians are just kind of indifferent
to the world.
You know, the world's gonna do its thing
and as Christians we're gonna kinda do our thing
and I'm not gonna worry about the world
as long as the world just kinda leaves me alone.
They're indifferent to the lost
and what's going on in the world.
Another false way is just to assimilate.
You know, kind of go along to get along.
There are a lot of Christians who say,
well, we're just gonna become like the world
because we're in the world.
We're gonna compromise what we believe.
We're gonna compromise our obedience to Christ.
We're gonna compromise the life
that God has saved us to live
and God has called us to live.
We're just gonna go along with the world.
Another false way people relate to the world is with anger.
You know, we're gonna fight the world.
And so often I think that the anger
that some Christians feel towards the world
is based on false expectations and bad theology.
Why would we expect the lost to live like they're not lost?
Why would we expect sinners who don't know Christ
to live as if they know Christ
and understand what it means to live
in the power of the Holy Spirit.
We so often have unrealistic expectations
of those who do not know the Lord.
I think the biblical approach is not to retreat,
not to get angry, not to be apathetic,
not to assimilate and compromise.
The biblical approach to relate to the world
is to be an affectionate ambassador for Christ.
You see, we are not to be angry at the world.
We have to be very careful
not to make our mission field our enemy.
The Bible says that we are to love the world.
Why?
Because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
We are to love the world and we are to do anything and everything we can to bring the
world to Christ.
We are not to compromise with the culture.
We are to be a counterculture of love and grace within the world that God has placed
us in.
You see, you are here for such a time as this.
And I understand it's easy to be afraid.
And it's easy to be angry at times and be afraid of your children and the world they're living in.
But did you know that God brought them into the world at this time and in this place for His plan and for His purpose?
We have to trust that.
That God has an eternal plan and purpose for our lives and the lives of our children and the life of our church.
Notice what he says in verse 11.
Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
Though a sinner does evil a hundred times, and his days are prolonged,
yet I surely know that it will be well with those who fear God, who fear before him.
But it will not be well with the wicked, nor will he prolong his days which are as a shadow,
because he does not fear before the Lord.
You see, one of the ways that we enjoy life more is that we expect injustices in a world that's separate from God.
And we trust God with the injustices of life.
And so here's the principle.
Don't let the injustices or the false expectations of life ruin your trust and faith in God.
Solomon says, listen, no one gets away with even one sin.
No one's going to pull a fast one on God.
There will be a payday someday.
And it may not be on our timeline,
but it will be in God's timeline.
And so eventually our sin and the sin of others
is going to catch up with us.
Now sometimes in life we can't always see God's purpose
and God's plan and everything that happens
within our life and within the world.
There's a lot of divine mysteries about life, and Solomon's pointing them out one after another.
And sometimes we struggle to understand the mysteries of life.
For me, it's kind of like the mystery of traffic.
It doesn't matter what lane I move to, it immediately slows down.
And I've never really been able to figure out.
It's a mystery within my life.
And if I can't explain simple things, how am I going to explain the mysteries of God and the eternal purpose and plan of God in all of the universe?
You see, God brings some mysteries into your life.
Sometimes there's some trials.
Sometimes.
You can't see the end from the beginning, and you don't understand what God is doing in your heart and your life through those difficulties.
And you can't clearly understand God's plan and God's purpose for those.
But Solomon is saying that God does have a plan and a purpose.
It's just not in our timeline.
It's in his timeline.
Right?
And so Solomon says one of the keys to enjoying life is to not get all caught up in what you can't understand,
but to get caught up in trusting God to do what is right.
That God is working in such a way to bring about good in His eternal plan and His purpose for your life.
One of the things to think about is that God brought judgment right now.
You and I would be caught up in that judgment as well.
Because the Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
If God were to bring judgment for every sin, you and I would experience the judgment of God.
In the New Testament, Peter tells us that God is being patient for Christ to return
because He's not willing that any would perish, but that all would come to repentance.
One of the reasons we have this broken world, as long as we've had it,
is so that you and I could have the opportunity to come to Christ and be saved.
And one of the reasons that God is waiting to bring about His justice to an unjust world
is that God is waiting for those who are going to be saved to be saved.
You see, there are some religious people who say there are good people and there are bad people,
and all the bad people are out there in the world.
That's not what the Bible teaches.
The gospel says there are bad people and there is Jesus and that's it.
We are all sinners saved by grace.
Some religious people say, well, the people out there need to repent of sins that we don't really struggle with in here.
But the gospel says we all need to repent.
We all need the grace of God.
Jesus came to save sinners, and that's you and I. That's all of us. Now, the Bible
says that we are to live our lives in light of the gospel, and so we want to be gospel-centered
Christians.
We want to be gospel-centered in our marriages and in our parenting, in our church, and out in the world.
And what that means fundamentally is that you live as a sinner who is saved by God's grace.
That means that you're not surprised by other people's sin.
You're not surprised when other people sin because you know that you are a sinner yourself.
And so you don't try to hide your sin and act like you don't sin.
And you're really humble because you know that you need the grace of God within your life.
And you're really willing to extend grace to others because you know other people need it because you need it.
The more deeply we understand God's grace within our life,
the more that that grace transforms us and causes us to extend grace to other sinners like us.
Look what he says in verse 14.
He says, there is a vanity which occurs on earth, that there are just men to whom it
happens according to the work of the wicked.
Again, there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous.
I said, this also is vanity.
So I commended enjoyment, because a 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 life which God gives him under
the sun."
Solomon says we enjoy life by enjoying the good gifts that God has given us within our life.
And so here's the principle.
Don't let what you can't control or understand destroy what you can enjoy.
Now this is a perennial theme.
within the book of Ecclesiastes.
Solomon keeps telling us to enjoy life and to have a good time.
You say, well, it kind of sounds hedonistic, doesn't it?
It almost sounds like an Epicurean philosophy,
eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
But that's not what Solomon says.
Solomon says, eat, drink, and be merry, because life is a gift from God.
He says the key to enjoying life is to live every aspect of your life in light of your
relationship with God and the grace of God within your life.
To recognize that even in a sin-soaked world that God has given you a relationship with
Him to enjoy.
and a purpose to live, and he's calling you to live out the joy of your relationship with him
in every single aspect of life. And so here is Solomon's formula for enjoying life.
Accept what you can't control, change what you can change, and enjoy what you can enjoy.
Stop focusing in your life on things that you can't control, like the sin of other people,
the injustices of life, the broken fallenness of the world, and start focusing on enjoying God
and the good gifts that he has given you to enjoy.
I mean, think about it. We spend so much of our life focused on the things we can't control,
and it keeps us from enjoying the good things that God has given us to enjoy.
Now, I want to encourage you to make five choices each and every day.
The first four are very clear in the passage.
The last one is kind of what the first four are based on.
The first choice I want to encourage you to make is to choose obedience.
Every day say, God, this is your day.
I'm going to rejoice in it, and I'm going to obey whatever it is you want me to do.
Whatever it is you want me to hear, I want to hear it.
Whatever it is you want me to do, I want to do it.
The next choice is to choose respect.
God, I am going to show you respect
as my Lord and as my King,
and I'm gonna show respect to whatever authorities
that you have placed within my life.
Sometimes rebellious teenagers think that they'll be more happy if they rebel against the authority
in their life, and they're absolutely miserable. But they're stuck in this downward spiral of
disrespect and disobedience, and Solomon says that's not the key to life. In fact,
that kills your joy instead of feeding your joy. The third choice is to choose faith.
God today
I'm going to trust you with the things that I don't understand.
And I'm going to accept the things that you have allowed within my life
and trust that you have a plan and a purpose for all of these things.
I'm going to trust you to be the potter and I'm just going to be the clay.
God, not my will, but your will be done.
Because God has got an eternal plan that's bigger than this moment.
It's bigger than you.
It's bigger than me.
It's as big as all eternity.
And we need to trust Him each and every day.
The fourth choice is to choose joy.
Do you know that joy can be a choice?
Now, happiness is based on outward circumstances.
And sometimes, you know, we can't choose our circumstances.
But joy...
is a choice to enjoy God and to enjoy the things that God has given us,
to be grateful for the things that God has given us.
And so every day to say, God, I am going to be as grateful and thankful for the good gifts that you've given me,
and I'm going to enjoy all of them to the best ability that I can.
Amen.
I'm just going to give myself to enjoying whatever good gifts that you have placed within my life.
Now, the last choice is to choose love.
Now, that is not explicitly in the passage here, but it really is the foundation for the other four.
Because in your life, you cannot feed disobedience, disrespect, anger, injustice, and hurt,
and feed love at the same time.
You have to choose.
You have to choose to love God and to give yourself to what He wants.
You have to choose.
To love other people and to give yourself to their good as best you can.
Now Solomon is saying, look, if you make those four and finally that fifth decision,
you are going to enjoy your life exponentially more than if you try to fight those five decisions each and every day.
Now the book of Ecclesiastes at times can be dark because Solomon is very honest about the problems of life and the difficulties that we face.
But I think fundamentally the message of Ecclesiastes is good news.
That even in the midst of a broken and fallen world,
that you can experience joy in your relationship with God
and you can enjoy the good and gracious gifts
that God has given you.
It's kind of like a hurricane
that's raging out over the sea.
and the swells of water that are huge are coming,
and the wind is blowing over 100 miles an hour,
and the waves are crashing down.
It's a horrible storm.
But deep under the surface, on the ocean floor,
there's a little crab that's enjoying the calm.
And he is completely content and just enjoying the life that God has given him.
We spend so much of our energy and time living our life on the surface, trying to understand
the things that we don't understand, trying to fight the storms of life.
We're trying to hold back the wind and to fight the wind instead of abiding.
and resting in the loving sovereignty
of our heavenly Father,
instead of resting in God's amazing grace.
In other words, the message of Solomon in this passage
and throughout Ecclesiastes is if you want to really,
really enjoy life, stop trying to be God,
and start enjoying God and His grace.
Let's bow together in an attitude of prayer.
This morning you may be here and you may say,
well, you know, I've tried all these things
that Solomon tried.
I've tried lust, I've tried money,
I've tried popularity and pleasing people.
I've tried work and achievement and accomplishment.
I've tried all of these things.
And like Solomon, you found that at the end of the day, it's like grasping the wind.
It doesn't ultimately fully satisfy.
You think you're going to be satisfied.
You get there, and then you realize you haven't got there.
The message of Ecclesiastes is to stop trying to fight the wind and start trusting in God.
The Bible says that you and I are separated from God because of our sin.
And that sin has kept us from having a relationship with God, which is the purpose of life.
And we were made to have a relationship with God.
And when that relationship is broken, we're broken.
Nothing works right.
Nothing works according to design.
Nothing satisfies except for Him.
So the Bible says God gave His only begotten Son
and Jesus succeeded in every way that we have failed
and He went to the cross and God put our sin upon Jesus
and Jesus paid the penalty for our sin.
Then the Bible says three days later he rose from the dead,
proving that he is the Son of God and that his sacrifice was acceptable to the Father.
The Bible says that God offers you forgiveness and grace.
All you have to do is to receive it by faith.
You know, that takes a lot of humility.
To say, you know, I can't save myself.
I can't come to God based on my goodness.
I need the goodness of Jesus to save me.
Here in just a moment, we're going to have an invitation.
We're going to sing.
There'll be people standing here at the front,
and we want to invite you to come and to give your life to Christ.
To say, I want...
the forgiveness and the grace that God offers me in Christ.
I want Jesus to be my Savior.
I want Jesus to be my Lord.
We want to invite you to come today.
Maybe the Lord is leading you to be baptized,
and we can set up a time for you to do that.
Maybe the Lord is leading you to join this church family
and to serve the Lord and to grow here
with a band of brothers and sisters
and pursuing Christ together.
Or maybe...
God's working on your heart at some area or some level.
Maybe there's disrespect in your heart.
Maybe there's rebellion towards God.
Maybe you are holding on to the injustices of life
and you haven't released that struggle
and that pain to the Lord.
Maybe you're not really enjoying the things that God has given you to enjoy
because you're trying to control things that you can't control
instead of trusting the Lord.
This is a time where we can pray.
You can come forward and pray at these steps.
There will be people who want to pray with you.
You can pray right where you are
and ask the Lord to work on your heart
to have His way and His will within you.
Our Heavenly Father, thank You for this time.
where we can hear from your word.
Holy Spirit, I pray that you would apply your word to our hearts,
that we would receive it in faith, that it would transform us and change us.
Lord, that you would produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit within our life.
And so, Father, I pray that if there's anyone here that doesn't know Christ,
that today would be the day of their salvation,
that you would open their eyes to the glory of your grace
and the beauty of your love for them.
Lord, that today they would be saved.
Lord, lead us and guide us according to your loving kindness.
May we follow you.
May we love you.
May we trust you.
May we surrender all to you.
In Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
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