The End of the Matter

Introduction

I’m going to invite you to turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 12 on a read beginning in verse 9 in just a few moments. I’m a little sad this morning because I’m coming to the conclusion of this study of Ecclesiastes, which I’ve really enjoyed. It’s been a great study. I’ve enjoyed personally working through the book, and I’ve enjoyed working through the sermons, and hopefully it’s been beneficial for you as well. That’s the idea is to kind of pull out the important highlight factors within this book in a way that is I would say immediately applicable. That was the idea or the goal, and in ways that touch our lives that sometimes are particularly a struggle. A lot of you came to me in the sermon that had to do with the myth of control.

That was a hard one for a lot of people, but it’s an important one. It’s the ability to let go and realize we don’t have control in the ways that we often think that we do. And so coming to the end of this, I want to kind of pull everything together in a way that I think the teacher is really aiming for. Some of this we didn’t spend a whole lot of time on throughout the previous sermons, and actually the preacher doesn’t also. He takes his time, he sort of hints at it along the way, and then in his conclusion, he pulls all this together. And so that’s my goal in going through this morning. So begin reading with me in Ecclesiastes chapter 9, or chapter 12 and verse 9.

Ecclesiastes 12, verse 9. Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care.

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings.

My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books, there is no end. And much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. I started out the study in the very first sermon talking about the teacher’s message, what he was trying to convey, and part of that is not trying to sugarcoat life, not trying to act like everything’s good all the time, and if you just make the right decisions, you won’t have to deal with problems. That is not reality, and we all know that. And so the wise man is bringing that forward in the very beginning, and he’s looking at the things of life that are difficult and hard.

Life itself is difficult and hard. We get up every day and we just go through these cycles and we realize at some certain times it just seems tedious and monotonous, and why do we do this? And what he wants to do as we get to the end is then explain why we do this. What is it all for? What is the purpose and the meaning of life? What is the point of all of this? The toil that we work through throughout every day and throughout our lives. Why are we doing this and why are we here? And of course, to emphasize that point and to really help us understand it, he has to bring us down the darkness of the pit of what life looks like when you don’t see it the right way.

Life apart from God, a life that has no thought or awareness for the things of God. And of course, in the ancient world, it wouldn’t have been that they were atheists or had the idea that there is no God. That was not really a concept that any of them had. That’s more of a modern idea. And so it’s not that. It’s not that the wise man, the preacher here is saying, you know, you need to believe in God. They all believed in God in some way or some certain way, but it’s then what you do with that. How do you act with your belief in God? That’s what actually matters. And so he works through all sorts of things in life. How we deal with time, how we deal with our jobs and money and possessions and the way we think about all of those things.

And in the midst of all of that, through the darkness, he also wants us to realize there is hope. It seems dark and it seems gloomy day-to-day. Things just don’t seem like they work out the way they should. It’s the life is filled with injustice. The wicked seem to prosper, and those who are trying to do the right thing often don’t seem to prosper. How do we make sense of all of this? It seems terrible. But in the midst of all of that, he also wants us to see that there is hope if we view our life through the lens of God being a part of it. This is the end of the matter. This is what this wise man in his life discovered, and it’s what he’s sharing with us, but also with the original readers.

It’s the thing he’s learned over time through all of his experiences, many more than I’ve had, many more than you have had, as he’s worked through all of these things and done everything that is imaginable. The conclusion of all of this is that yes, life is heavily. It is vain, it’s vapor, it’s mystery, it’s paradox, it’s temporary. There’s so many things we can’t understand. And yes, time and chance are beyond human control, and wealth and toil will never satisfy, but there is an answer in all of that. And the answer is that we respect and obey God, we fear Him. I want to point you to some structure within the text as we move forward. This is just something I put together. It’s not professional, but at least it gives you some kind of idea of how the book works.

And for those of you who are having trouble seeing that, I understand that’s all that’s why I did the color coordinating here. So the top line is blue. Those are kind of the very general here. There’s a lot of topics, so I generalize this. You know, as you work through the book, it’s talking about the pleasures of life, right? All the things you can acquire and the experiences you can have. That’s the first couple chapters. And then there’s this whole thing about time, maybe one of the most famous sections of the book of Ecclesiastes, where it seems like you know, there’s all these cycles, and there’s a part of that’s kind of nice, like it’s predictable until you realize you have no control over any of it.

And time just happens to you. And then he’s recognizing that life just isn’t fair. There’s things about life that they shouldn’t be the way that they are. And don’t we all recognize that in our money can’t help us, our possessions can’t help us, we can try to control everything around us, and it’s still not going to work. And even living a wise life doesn’t mean everything’s just gonna work out alright. And he has some things to say about old age and good judgment as we live. And so in the midst of all of that, and it progressively goes from a kind of what we would call a secular mindset, viewing the world just from a worldly standpoint, and he’s gradually moving this more toward seeing it from the lens of God.

Now, scattered in between, there’s plenty of that as well. But obviously, when we get to the end and the conclusions he’s reaching, he is seeing this from a very high point of view. He’s realizing that through all of the ups and downs of life, what actually matters, his way of saying, seek first the kingdom of God is this is man’s all. Fear God, keep his commandments, be obedient. This is the answer, this is the solution to life. This is what’s going to bring us peace in a world that is often very chaotic. And we’ve spent a lot of time talking about this orange color here, scattered very systematically throughout the text, then is how you respond, even in the midst of a lot of this darkness.

1. The Fear of God Anchors Our Life

He’s talking about how dark the world can be and how unjust the world can be. And then he stops and says, enjoy life. Find joy. But what we’re talking about this morning is actually the means by which you can do that. That’s really easy to say. I mean, you’re going through something difficult, and someone just says, you know, find joy in that. That’s pretty tough. There’s times that’s not easy to do. But what we need to understand is that what he’s going at here with the idea of the fear of God is that the fear of God is what anchors our life. It is the foundation. It is the means by which, through the ups and the downs, we can find joy in whatever circumstance we find ourselves in.

Just like the Apostle Paul talks about in Philippians chapter 4. Whether he’s in prison or whether he’s free, whether he has a lot, he has an abundance, or he has very little. The reason that he can find joy in all of these circumstances is because he understands the essential message of the book of Ecclesiastes, and that joy is found through the fear of the Lord, through obedience to him. That is the answer of life. That’s what’s going to bring rest and peace to our souls, is understanding that is the answer, not all of the other things that he talks about throughout the book. Those can be good things. There’s nothing wrong with nice houses, and there’s nothing wrong with possessions, and certainly nothing wrong with a good job that we work.

Those all are they can be good things, particularly if they’re seen in the right way. That is all good and wonderful. But ultimately, they don’t mean anything if we don’t understand this essential point, and that is that the fear of God anchors all of it. I don’t care how nice your house is or your car or your job or whatever, if you aren’t anchored in the fear of the Lord, one day you’re going to wake up and feel completely empty in the midst of all of it. That’s what he wants us to see. That’s dark. It is a dark thought. It is a difficult thing to wrestle with. And yet at the same time, understood properly, there is an abundance of hope. Realizing that there is joy in the Lord even through very trying and difficult times.

The focus on joy in the book is because of the result of what happens when we are anchored in God. Just think about that idea for a minute. This idea of being anchored, we find ourselves, if we aren’t anchored, we can find ourselves drifting aimlessly, maybe even unknowingly, into dangerous waters. Water’s pretty powerful. It’s subtle too. You don’t always notice everything that’s happening. And so if you aren’t anchored, you can be drifting along, and then you realize you’re suddenly nowhere close to where you used to be. If you’ve ever been in a canoe or a kayak or that sort of thing, out on water, and then you look up and you’re really far from where you started and you didn’t even do anything. There’s a current, there’s things happening that sometimes we aren’t even aware of.

And so if we aren’t anchored, sometimes we’re just aimlessly floating through the water, and we don’t even know why we’ve ended up where we’ve ended up. This is this perspective from the ground level. What’s happening? Why am I here? What’s the point? Why am I doing this? If I’m not anchored in the Lord, I’m just drifting all over the place.

But if we are anchored, it keeps us grounded. That’s the point. Even through storms and waves. It is what sustains us when times get difficult. And we are able to find joy due to a fundamental belief that God is great. That he has a plan. I don’t always know his plan or understand his plan. It doesn’t always make total sense to me, but he has a plan. He’s sovereign.

And whether I understand it or not is inconsequential. And it’s part of the message that he gives us here. My job is to fear him and to trust him. So God is great. And it will all be beautiful in his time. Chapter 3. Again, it may not look beautiful in my time. It may not happen the way I think it should happen or the way I want it to be, but we talked about this a while back with the idea of time and the idea of control.

2. God Has Done It So That People Fear Before Him

And so the idea is that I’ve learned to trust him in a way and fear him in a way that accepts the boundaries of life. I want to go back to this previous slide for just a moment and work you through these texts just very briefly. I want to go through 3, 14, 5, 7, 8, 12, and 13, and 12, 13. Those four. 7, 18 is a little bit different. We will maybe reference that and talk about it in just a moment. But I want us to read these texts and understand what’s happening here. Because what I just said about this idea of the limitations of humanity is exactly the point in chapter 3. He’s talked about this whole thing about time, these different times of life and seasons of life, and many of them we have no control over.

And he made this point in verse 11, which I referenced that he makes everything beautiful in his time. We don’t understand it very often, but he’s put eternity in our heart. We seek greater things, and even in the midst of that, we don’t know what God’s doing. We’re looking around and we can’t always understand why things are happening the way they are, or why God is acting the way he’s acting, and his viewpoint is much grander and larger than ours. But notice verse 14. I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken away from it. God has done it so that people fear before him. Let me suggest to you that what he’s saying here is when something is incomprehensible to me, when it is overwhelming to me, when I look at it life and I don’t understand time, whatever’s happening in time doesn’t make sense, or I’m grasping for control, but I can’t have it, and I don’t know why.

The whole point in all of that is to not make me look inward but to look upward. It’s to look at him and fear him because he is the one who holds the world in his hands. He is the one who is sovereign, and that is the point. God is the creator of time. It is not meant for me to control. There’s all sorts of things that happen around me that I may not understand, and when that happens, and don’t we experience this? I mean, we on a regular basis, we go see some magnificent sight. You know, maybe you’ve been to the Grand Canyon, or you’ve been to some huge mountain, and you look at this and you just think, I just can’t even comprehend this.

3. God Is the One You Must Fear

Now, this is kind of the warm, fuzzy feeling side of this, right? Like we see something, it’s amazing, and if we believe the things I’ve already talked about, it makes us think upward about God. How amazing He is. But there’s all sorts of things in life that I can’t comprehend that are beyond me that are overwhelming, that are paradoxes, right? That’s the idea of everything is vanity, everything is heavily, it’s a mystery, it’s enigma, it’s temporary. There’s all sorts of things that just they don’t make sense. And when that happens, the answer is to look to him, to fear him, to put our trust in God. Which sort of then goes into this next thought in chapter five, that often we seek satisfaction and fulfillment through things like empty religion.

You know, we have our own plan, our own words. We heap up words and thoughts and dreams, things that we’ve come up that we think are going to give us peace. We think are gonna give us fulfillment and satisfaction in life. And what this little section in chapter five is doing in the middle of all of this is don’t trust yourself. You are not the answer. That’s what he’s telling them. Be really careful about how you approach the idea of coming into the house of God. Know the difference between where God is and where you are. This is the warning here. God is in heaven, he is sovereign, he is powerful. I am on earth. I see things in a very different, limited way, and I need to be very careful about the conclusions I make, about the vows I make.

He talks about here. Even the dreams and the ideas I come up with and how important those things are to me. Heaping up all sorts of words about the things I want to do or what I imagine God wants. Be very careful about all of that, he says. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Part of this is when this is beyond my comprehension, I should probably be really careful about what I suggest is happening. I need to be very careful. I’m not trying to operate on the realm of deity and saying, oh, this is how it really is.

We kind of work with our kids sometimes on this, right? They like to give ideas and we do the same thing. But we like to give ideas about what we think is happening. And so the temptation is there often to speak in ways when we don’t know what we’re talking about. Have you ever been guilty of that? You know, draw some conclusions, or here’s what I think is happening in the world, or whatever it might be. He says, be really careful. Be really careful about how particularly we do this with God. When we doubt him or we question him, and realize the difference between humanity and deity. For when dreams increase, this is verse 7, for when dreams increase and words grow many, we have all of our ideas and all the things that we think.

That’s vanity. But God is the one you must fear. Just a quick little phrase he throws here in the middle of this. That the answer here is not all of Brent’s ideas and thoughts and the things I think are happening in the world. That’s not really the answer. The answer is that I stop in the middle of all this when life seems uncertain and it doesn’t make sense, and I realize this is who I need to trust. I orient myself toward him. He’s the answer. He’s the one I can put certainty in. Not all of my ideas or somebody else’s ideas. Those things are not the answer. And so often we go to things like empty religious ritual to kind of give us assurance or hope or even the performance of things.

4. It Will Be Well With Those Who Fear God

We heap up a lot of words that makes us feel really good. That’s not the answer. The answer is only found in truly fearing and obeying God and finding comfort and trust through him. Here’s another difficult one. Chapter 8. He is noticing the injustices of the world.

But he’s looking around. We just mentioned kind of the empty ritual and fake religion that people tout very often. He sees the wicked buried. They go in and out of the holy place. You know, they’re seen as righteous and religious and they’re praised in the streets. That’s so empty. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily. So these evil wicked people who pretend to be religious, they kind of go on about their life and everything seems fine. It sort of incentivizes, unfortunately, other people to act this way too, because they’re only thinking from an earthly standpoint. And so he’s noticing others do this too. That’s not right. Right? This is the sort of thing we have to deal with in life, unfortunately. That people, they’re thinking from an earthly perspective, and so instead of doing the right thing, they’re doing things in a way they think are benefiting them now.

But then here’s the conclusion, right? He throws this in the middle of all of this. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know there’s a trust here. Even when I don’t see it, when it doesn’t make sense to my eyes, he says, I know it will be well with those who fear God because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow because he does not fear before the God. In the end, life is heavel. It’s all vanity, it’s all temporary, and even this wicked, evil person who we’re looking at and say, Oh, they’re extending their life, they’re making themselves rich on others, they’re getting praise for men.

You know what? In the end, it’s still gonna all be empty anyway. And it will not be well with them. Because for this temporary time, they seem to be doing well, and people praise them. But when they stand before God, it’s not gonna go well for that person. Right? So from the earthly ground level, things look very different than reality sometimes. And what the preacher’s asking us to do is to elevate our thinking and to realize sometimes what we see with our eyes and the things that we think in our mind are not actual reality. We allow ourselves to be deceived, just like the psalmist, right? Everything looks great for the wicked. How are they prospering? This is Psalm 73, and it all seems fruitless. Why am I doing all this work to obey God?

And of course, then he comes into the house of God and things start to make sense again, right? His senses come back to him. He realizes what truly matters. This is the same kind of idea being presented here in Ecclesiastes.

5. Fear God and Keep His Commandments

After he’s considered all of this, he’s seen life and all the things it has to offer. And saying, This is the conclusion. This is what I’ve I’ve recognized. After everything has been heard, I’ve seen things from all perspectives, that all the things that people think matter in life are insignificant and mean nothing compared to this one thing. That we fear God. And in doing so, keep his commandments. This is our purpose. It is our meaning. And if we live life without that purpose and meaning, it will be empty. We can try the best we can to make ourselves feel good and get those dopamine hits from all the various things that we think matter and are important, but eventually it will run out. And we’ll keep chasing those things.

It’s like addiction, right? You need more and more and more to try to make yourself feel happy, but if it’s not anchored in the fear of God, it will all be for nothing. And so the fundamental point, the essential concept within this book, amidst all of the calls to rejoice and to find joy and all that is very important. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about that, and I still think that is an essential part of the text. But in the midst of all of that, what actually anchors every call to rejoice and find joy in life is this point that we fear God. And without that, we cannot do what the wise man has asked us to do. It will just be gathering and collecting, heaping up.

It will just be the business of work that leads to nothing.

He says, even in the very beginning of this book in chapter 2. He doesn’t say to fear God there, but it’s the same concept. He’s recognizing this reality. That the only way to actually eat and drink and to be merry and enjoy your family and enjoy your life of your youth, and all these things that he says throughout the book is to do this in a perspective in which you’re fearing God as the creator and sustainer of life. And in the midst of this idea and this concept is that in the end there is judgment. Enjoy life as God’s blessing, right? He says this over and over seven times in the text. There’s these breaks, these short summaries. You know, through whatever’s happening, he says, I commend joy.

Rejoice. Enjoy the fruit of your labor, all of that. But here’s the reality. You cannot do that, ignoring the realities of life. And he finally gets to that point in chapter 11, right? As he’s telling the young person to rejoice in their life. We talked about this last time. Let their heart cheer them, follow their desires, walk in the ways of their heart. All of that’s great. I mean, it sounds like a self-help book, right? Find the things you love and you go do those. Yes, do that. But notice where he concludes here. But know that for all of these things, this is chapter 11 and verse 9, but know that for all of these things, God will bring you into judgment. So I’m not telling you this morning to scare you.

It’s not really my goal. It’s just the truth. The message of the wise men here is not to rejoice without condition. He’s not saying, go live it up and just seek pleasure and enjoy the things of. That’s not the message. There are boundaries to this. There are conditions that surround all of this. Rejoice, preparing for the difficult days ahead. You know, when things are good, appreciate that because they’re not always going to be good. This is the sort of thing he says here. And if we learn to appreciate and rejoice in the good days, it’ll make those dark days so much better. And this is the wisdom behind what this preacher has discovered throughout his life. He’s not saying the dark days won’t come or you won’t have difficult days if you learn how to rejoice.

But what he is saying is it’s going to make it a lot more bearable if you have a mind that is centered on the things of God and fearing him and then allowing that to then push you to rejoice in all the great blessings that you have. All of those times when you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, you will realize you’ll fear no evil. He is with you. That’s the message. And what a different perspective that gives us when we know, even through the darkness, God’s there. That’s what he wants us to get. Not that there won’t be any bad times, but that we learn to rejoice in the good and prepare for the difficult days. Rejoice knowing that death is coming to all.

This is how life works. It’s just the reality. And so we can bemoan that. We can begrudge it and we can complain about it. And as we get older, you know, we all talk about the aches and pains that start. You know, that’s just part of our conversation. And they don’t necessarily think that’s, you know, we’re just complaining all the time. It’s just the realities of life. He talks about that here in chapter 12. But hopefully, even in the midst of all of that, we’re finding the joy in life wherever we are. And we’re aware and we are living life with the reality that death is on the horizon. And so the decisions that we make actually matter. We rejoice knowing that God will judge. And this rejoicing, as I’ve already said, should be anchored to the fear of God.

Why is it so important? Why is it so important where he says, remember your creator in the days of your youth before the Spirit returns to God who gave it?

Life is heavily. Yes, it’s vain, it’s temporary, it’s short, it’s vapor. But that matters because choices have consequences. Even in the midst of a life that is temporary, that is short-lived and will go away, the decisions that we make and the things that we do actually matter. Now, maybe that sounds scary. You can certainly see that. And sometimes we can be motivated by fear. I think there’s a part of that’s certainly okay. But also realize that what that means is your life has purpose. Just, I mean, think for a moment. What if all the things you did didn’t matter? They had no consequence. Right? Your choices have consequences. We can see that in a bad way, like, oh, the judgment bad, you know, God’s gonna judge us.

And God, he doesn’t want to cast us all to hell. That’s not his goal. And so we can see this from a different perspective, that our choices have consequences, and that can be a really good thing. You know how many people in our world live with no meaning in their life? In fact, I think in our day, in our time, this is the number one thing that we have to offer people. Your life has a purpose. You have a meaning. And people are walking around in life with no clue what their purpose or their meaning is. Their mind has been filled with the idea that they’ve come from some animal and they’re gonna die and they’re gonna be nothing, and there’s no point in anything they do.

And the wise man at Ecclesiastes says that is not true. Your choices have consequences. And judgment is coming, and yes, that’ll be a bad thing for some, but it is also a really good thing for people who fear God. It means that my life and your life actually has meaning and purpose. And that can be fulfilled in the reality that our deeds do matter. Our works actually matter to God. He says, For God will bring every deed, every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. God cares about the way I live in this short, confusing, mysterious life. What he wants is my heart to be oriented to him. He wants us to decide to follow him and to trust him, even when things don’t make a whole lot of sense.

6. Take Life Seriously

And so here’s where I want to conclude, and we’re gonna go back to chapter seven to work through some of this. What this means is we should be taking life seriously.

And when I get into this, I what I’m not saying is that you can’t ever laugh or have fun. That’s not the point, and the preacher doesn’t want that either. In fact, that’s the whole point of saying to find joy and to rejoice and to enjoy life. Enjoy those good blessings of God and his gifts. But in the midst of all of that, we should be serious about the things of life. Chapter 7 talks about this. It talks about the things that are better than other things. And what that means is the other things aren’t bad. It’s just some things are better. They help us more, right? A good name or your reputation is better than precious ointment. You know, building your reputation and having a good name is more important than having the excesses of life, living in luxury, enjoying the things that this life has to offer.

That’s great and everything. But what matters a lot more than that is your reputation. It matters a lot more that you’re a person of character and integrity. The day of death is more important than the day of birth. Birth’s great. We love birth. You know, we love to send out the announcements, and the women love to talk about the weight and the length and all that. We always forget that, and then they get upset with us because we don’t know. And we enjoy all those things.

But in a paradox sort of way, right? Because life is heavily, it’s an enigma. What’s actually better is the day of death. The end of a thing is better than the beginning, he’s going to go on to say a little bit later. And strangely enough, it’s better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. We love feasting. One of the things that Titus and I love to do when we travel is to go find one of those all you can eat sushi places. It’s fun to feast. We enjoy that. It’s fun to laugh. You know, we enjoy laughter. You know, some of us, maybe we’ve been to comedy shows or things like that. I don’t know, many of you have.

We enjoy that, and it’s good. It’s good for the soul to do those sorts of things. But you know, laughter, also like sarcasm and mocking and jokes, they also like dismiss life. It’s a way to kind of cope with things, but not actually deal with them. And so we can kind of, and you’ve dealt with this before too, right? You’re talking to somebody, and like you don’t really care what they’re saying, or you’re annoyed by what they’re saying, you just kind of laugh and smile. And like you can dismiss someone through laughter. Right? I mean, this is just a reality. You can’t dismiss sorrow.

Sorrow hits you right in the face, and you have to deal with it. There’s no mocking it or being sarcastic about it or dismissing it. The house of mourning is better than the house of feasting. It is the end. Right? Here’s another end. It’s the end of all mankind. One day someone’s going to be mourning for me, I hope. And you that’s the reality of life. It’s all going to end. And the living will lay it to heart. Here’s the point of all of this. When you go to the house of mourning, when you sorrow, you actually think about the things that matter in life. If you try to skirt around it and just laugh through everything, it’s it’s like these crackling thorns under the pot.

You’ve ever been at a fire. I think for us it’s maybe like the pine needles. You go camping and you take those pine needles and you throw them in there and you know they’re gone. That’s that’s what laughter is. It’s like this quick thing, kind of distracts you for a second, but it doesn’t really necessarily help you deal with the real things of life when they’re in front of you. Right? So the kids love throwing the pine needles in, and it makes that big fire for like one and a half seconds, and then it goes back down, and you’ve got to actually put real wood in there to deal with it if you want it to keep burning. And so there’s there’s times for laughter, there’s times to be happy and to feast and all of that.

And so he’s not saying those are bad, but what is better is to actually face the things of life. And we live in a culture that doesn’t like to do that. We don’t like to face difficulties, hardships, death. We remove ourselves from that as much as possible. And you can do what you want with your kids about things like funerals and all that, but I’ll tell you what, kids know how to handle that stuff. And there’s some good in them facing the realities of life, even from a very young age. And not being sheltered from things that are real. Just Brent’s opinion. But it comes from the principle here in Ecclesiastes 7.

If all we just want to do is have fun and laugh and celebrate, we’re missing some essential things in life that are going to help us be anchored in the fear of God. Take life seriously. Rebuke, he says, is of greater value than the song of fools. Kind of like when we want to discipline our children. We have something and they want to distract from that. You ever been in that situation? You got something important to tell them, or they did something wrong, or you just want to give them some wisdom and they want to crack a joke, right? Laughter. It dismisses the tension.

Conclusion

But sometimes rebuke’s really important. It’s of great value. And an illustration doesn’t mean just for kids, but it just proves the point of how we don’t like that. We want to change the subject. We want to dismiss what’s happening sometimes. But actually, it’s the rebuke that helps me face the things in life that actually matter. So, as we conclude these thoughts from Ecclesiastes, let me just give you three brief sentences. Life is short. Take it seriously. God is great. He gives meaning to life. Trust him. Judgment is certain. Fear and obey him. That is the answer to life. That’s what the preacher wants us to know. These words of wisdom that he has arranged and he has formed, like those nails that are driven that really work, that give structure and substance to life.

That’s what it is. Anchor your life in the fear of God. Know that judgment is coming, and that can be a very good thing for the people who honor God and obey him and fear him. And in the midst of all of that, our choices matter. It makes a difference, and there’s consequences that come with the decisions that we make. This morning you can decide to make your life in alignment with God. You can make a consequential decision, and you are making one either way, to either follow God and do his will or to not. There’s no in between. And for you this morning, that may mean that you’re going to give your life to Jesus Christ. That’s a decision that matters. Even in the midst of all the uncertainty of life, if you decide you’re going to fear God and keep his commandments, you’re going to follow Jesus Christ, that changes everything about your life.

And we would love to help you do that. We have water ready. You can come, you can be buried in the waters of baptism. You can die to yourself. Die to the things of this life. It’s all heaven. It’s all vanity anyway. And see the things that are most consequential. Fearing God, doing his will. You can come out of the water a new person, walking in newness of life, Paul says, prepared for the things of God, for the one who controls all things, including time, and you will be with him for all eternity. Can we help you do that this morning? Come now as we stand and we sing.