Keep sharing good news without ads.
Sermon by Josh Rice from Ecclesiastes 1:1-11.
Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verses 1 through 11. The words of the teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem. Absolute futility, says the teacher. Absolute futility. Everything is futile. What does a person gain for all his efforts that he labors at under the sun?
A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, panting. It returns to the place where it rises. Gusting to the south, turning to the north, turning, turning goes the wind, and the wind returns in its cycles.
All the streams flow to the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are wearisome, more than anyone can say. The eye is not satisfied by seeing, or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. Can one say about anything, look, this is new? It has already existed in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of those who came before and of those who will come after. There will also be no remembrance by those who follow them. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for a Lord's Day where we can come together in freedom and openly worship together, or through the singing of spiritual songs, the proclamation of your word, or in the communion of the saints at your table.
So God, we pray your blessings on this gathering. We pray for the illumination of your word this morning through the words of Pastor Josh, through the power of your Holy Spirit, or that we would be encouraged and convicted, or that we would be changed by the mighty power of your holy word.
God, that you would prepare our hearts to be stalwart for the days ahead, that we would live lives filled with faith and hope, knowing that we run the race with toil, but we run it not in vain. Lord, because you have set the prize before us, and you have accomplished the goal for us on our behalf.
Lord, so that we can run freely. So God, just give us peace and ears to hear as your word is open to us this morning, amen.
Today we start a new book, as you probably have guessed. It is Ecclesiastes, the wisdom of a king, the wisdom of the richest, wisest, marvelous king in all of history. People who hated him, people who disagreed, the enemies of him, came and sought his discernment and his wisdom, so great was it.
And he writes us this, and what struck me as Jake was reading that to set us up is how penetratingly and undeniably true those words are. Think about your life. It never stops until it stops, and then no one will remember.
You toil every day doing the same thing over and over again. You tell your kids the same words over and over again. You eat the same meals at the same table. You go to the same job. You drink the same Diet Coke every day over and over and over and over again.
It never satisfies. You never get the one that just satisfies you. I had a tremendous burger yesterday, and I would love to have another one this week. It satisfied for a couple hours. Solomon gets it, and the reason why is because his wisdom did not come from his big brain.
His wisdom came from the gift of God through the Holy Spirit that gave him a bigger window into the mysteries and the treasuries of God's wisdom than any other man who was before him or who had come after with one very notable exception.
Let me tell you something. Solomon is wiser than you are, much wiser, and it has become fashionable in our age to look at how he broke God's commands by amassing wives for himself, by amassing gold and thinking, well, is Solomon gonna be in heaven?
And I mock that question. Are you going to be in heaven? On what basis would you make that claim? This man was favored by God, and he wrote Holy Scripture, and we study it, and I'm excited to study it.
It's a difficult book. There have been many who want to put it outside of canon. It's been described as being alien to canon because it's strange. You probably already thought of some of the New Testament passages that seem to contradict what Solomon writes, and you are wrong because very fundamentally, this book is not written for you.
It's not, and one of the keys to understanding Ecclesiastes is that we cannot do the modern thing of making everything about ourselves and about thinking to ourselves that we are the smartest, wisest generation that's ever lived.
All you have to do is look around to see that that's not true. We can't even write anymore. We have to make computers to write for us. We are very shallow and very dumb, and this man stands, and to understand this book, you have to understand that it is written by a king for kings, and so when you see these observations and this literary history of pessimism, that this book is really subverting in many ways.
It is a pessimistic letter that has a very optimistic conclusion to it, and that conclusion syncs perfectly with what the rest of Scripture says. This is a book in context. This is not a book alien to Scripture, and it's testified by God because God writes hilarious stories and great stories that there is not a book of the Old Testament that we are more certain has kept its textual tradition than Ecclesiastes.
The manuscript history is impeccable for Ecclesiastes. It's almost like the Lord knew that commentators who didn't get it would want to put it out of canon, and you can't because the manuscript is so intact.
There's no textual variance, really. It's all in place, and it has to be in canon. It always was in canon. It was written by Solomon. People will try to tell you otherwise, and yet in the very first verse, it tells you who wrote it.
What a mystery, and I read the commentaries. Who wrote Ecclesiastes? Like, duh, idiot. It's right there in the first verse. Is this the word of God or is it not? And if it isn't the word of God, who cares who wrote it?
And that's where we come to. So it has this textual history. It is written subversively about ancient pessimism. This was a tradition in the Middle East, and yet this one has a twist, and the twist is there.
You've probably heard it before if you have familiarity with this letter, with this book, and it is this. There is a contrast. You have what's going on under the sun, under heaven, or on earth, versus what's going on in the heavens, and what's going on in the heavens is different from what's going on under the sun.
We have another twist. Solomon will give his wisdom, and he'll talk often about what he sees, what he's observed, and what he observed is undeniably true, but he's observed all of it under the sun, and he uses what he sees under the sun to describe what he realizes about what is going on in heaven.
This is the duality. Solomon gives wisdom of everything he's seen to his sons who need to hear it. Cory and I have been so excited about this for months. It's a difficult book to look at, but what is so cool about it is that we have a man that God appointed who God gave everything to tell us.
I know you're not gonna believe me, but that stuff that you want, it's not going to satisfy you. It never will, and here's a man who got to crawl out all of those schemes to their very end and learned everything out there is vanity.
All your cars, all your gold, all your women, your yachts, your athletic ability, your righteousness, vanity. I've seen it all. I've done it all. You'll never have the depth of these things that I had, and it doesn't satisfy at all.
That's the wisdom that Solomon can impart to us. All of those schemes that you think, all of those things that you are toiling on, all of those things under the sun that you want to accomplish, no one will remember them.
They are of no eternal significance, and it doesn't matter. You're gonna die, and maybe your great-grandchildren will know your name, and no one else will. Can be depressing unless you have spiritual sight.
See, we don't live in a fantasy world. There is reality. There is natural law. There is the cruel, unending cycle of nature that man passes through, and the trees still grow as we die, and they feed on us as they grow.
Any attempt to build utopia is going to fail. All of our globalist oligarchs today who say that you will own nothing and be happy, they're schemes that seem to progress through governments. Even as we speak, they will utterly fail, and no one will remember who they are.
There'll be a byline in history. Kings and kingdoms follow a pattern that is every bit as predictable as it is boring in the grand scheme of things. How many of you guys like to read about the Byzantine Empire?
One or two, three. I saw some. Hey, listen, I'm gonna tell you, this is a reformed church, so the proportion of nerds is gonna be off the charts compared to other places. I'm gonna tell you something.
If you ask a random person in the street, they're not gonna be able to tell you who the Secretary of War of the United States is right now. This is how irrelevant these things are to the human course of life.
Kings and kingdoms follow a pattern. Is American empire? Yeah, duh, boring. Is America gonna fall? Of course it is. Is there anything that we can do to prevent it? No. Will anybody remember us in 1 ,000 years?
Just some nerds. In Solomon attempts to answer the question, what is a king supposed to work for? What is it all for? What is the point? And really, you could almost subtitle Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes, what is the point?
Corey, I subtitled it to him this week. What have we gotten ourselves into? Here we go. Let's start with the character, the main character. This is the preacher, the son of David. Verse one, that word, it really means the head of an assembly.
That's why it gets translated preacher in some texts. The Greek Septuagint puts it as the Ecclesia. He is the head of the assembly. He is the leader of the congregation. And we're going to backtrack and we're gonna go to a story that many of you know, but you probably haven't read in a long time.
And we're gonna introduce Solomon. This is Solomon from 1 Kings 3. As a young man, he is asked by God, tell me what you want. I will give it to you. Solomon, I loved your father. I honor your father. His throne is eternal.
Tell me what you want and I will give it to you. And this is what Solomon says. Give your slave a listening heart to judge your people, to discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this glorious people of yours?
Were they glorious? They are because they were gods. And it was pleasing in the sight of the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing. And God said to him, because you have asked this thing and have not asked for yourself long life, nor have you asked riches for yourself, nor have you asked for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself discernment to listen to justice.
Behold, I have done according to your words. Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning heart so that there has been no one like you before you, nor shall one like you arise after you. I have also given you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there will not be any among the kings like you all of your days.
This man was not like us. It would be hard to imagine what this man was like. No king has really seen the wealth that Solomon saw, and no one ever has understood God's law the way Solomon understood God's law.
He was able to administer it. He knew down to the nitty gritty, the most esoteric applications of the law. He knew how to implement the law, and that's what God gave him, because God gives his people discernment for his law.
Do we want that in the church today? Do you want to be able to discern God's law? Would you ask the same thing that Solomon asked? Because let's paraphrase. What Solomon asked was, Lord, would you help me to understand your law and administer it righteously so that your people would remain glorious and I won't screw it all up?
That's what he wanted. He wanted to reflect God's righteousness among God's people. No one's ever seen anybody like this, except one. His discernment was an early fulfillment of many of the prophecies that give people fits in the Old Testament.
Remember the ones like all of the nations will flock to Mount Zion to see the wisdom of the law that flows from this mountain? That's what happened in Solomon's day. The nations came to Mount Zion to hear the administration of the law that was so foreign to them and was so sweet to them.
Jesus recounts a story in Matthew 12, verse 42. He says, the queen of the south will rise up with this generation at the judgment and condemn it because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.
The contemporaries of Christ did not recognize the son of God who had given Solomon all of his wisdom and who contained so much more wisdom than Solomon and the people missed it because they were pining for another king like Solomon and they missed the king like Solomon.
They didn't see him and so at the judgment, the queen of the south who brought gold to hear the wonderful discernment of Solomon will rise up and condemn all of us in this age who missed the wisdom of the living God.
And let me ask you, Christian, do you seek the wisdom of the living God? Because the Psalms give us no other way. The one who loves God is the one who loves his law. The one who loves God is the one who seeks after wisdom like a treasure and James tells us we have no excuse because if we pray for wisdom, then God will grant us wisdom and the reason we don't have is because we don't ask and even when we do ask, we ask with doubt because we don't have the faith of Solomon, we don't think that God will actually give us wisdom and that is shameful and the queen of the south, the pagan queen will rise up and condemn us in her day.
Sad, isn't it? We have to take heed of this writing in Ecclesiastes. It's not for you except that's a turn of phrase, isn't it? Because we are a royal priesthood. We are to be through the power of the Holy Spirit, discerners of the law.
Christians can't escape it. Remember, I prayed it in the Great Commission, did I not? We are to teach disciples all that Christ has commanded. That is what we have missed in evangelicalism for 100 years.
We wanted to make converts. We wanted to baptize because baptism gives really good counting stats. How successful is your church? Way successful. We baptized 173 people last six months, right? Obviously we didn't.
This is what happens and it gets flashed in bulletins and people become presidents of the SBC because of these counting stats but what often does not get counted is how did you teach them to obey all that Christ commanded them because in the stat nerd world, that is a qualitative measurement and qualitative measurements are more difficult to track and to see what's going on.
It's easy to do counting stats. It's easy to know how much money was given, how many butts were in the seats and how many people got baptized. It's not so easy to see spiritual maturity and administration of the law and Solomon writes this letter to his sons so that they would be able to administer the law not only like he did but better than he did and so he teaches them the lessons that he has learned from crawling through all of the excesses that he was given and that he sought for and he learned what he says at the very beginning.
He doesn't want us to lose the plot, right? What is the main point of this letter? None of it matters. You don't win the crowds in the church by bringing people in and say this is our summer series. Nothing you do matters.
Who cares? Nobody's gonna remember it. You're going to die. You're not gonna change the rivers, the wind blows wherever it will. Christ is gonna build his church however he pleases and you have nothing to do with it and in one sense, that is very much true and in another sense, you are called by this king to do certain things, to think certain ways and I would ask you as we start this and as we start to get into the teeth of this section this morning and man, doesn't it not start with a bang?
It really does. You're working all the time. Who cares? Doesn't it start that way? Let me ask you this. Do you have a burning, consuming love for the law? Think with me for a second as I slow down. Is the church today characterized by this?
Are we characterized by that? Is God's law a thing to ignore? Is God's law a thing to step around, to find loopholes in or is God's law something that you love? Do we have a desire? Do we have a strong desire?
To seek for wisdom. Like that if we could find wisdom that we would have what we need in this life because that was Solomon's prayer, was it not? If I have wisdom, then I'll be all right. If you'll just give me wisdom.
Do we have a strong desire in this church for obedience? It has to be asked. Friends, if your kids are very disobedient at home, they have a sinful nature to be sure but you know where they're learning that?
They're watching you. The more that we love God's law, the more that we seek to conform to God's law, the more we're going to demonstrate obedience, the more that the people around us are gonna be uncomfortable in their sin and seek righteousness.
There is great wisdom in what the preacher says. So let's look at it. Verse two. Get this right. What is the wisest of all wisdom? The wisest man who ever lived, what does he say? Vanity of vanities or futility.
All is vanity. Everything is meaningless, empty, futile, useless, fleeting, forgotten, that's what he means. All of those things, empty. Just for a minute, it's just a vapor, it's a mist. And so the question we have to ask, right, as faithful Christians is, everything?
Really, everything is vanity? Yeah, it reminds me of Seinfeld, the show's about nothing, right? Well, it's like something has to happen. No, it's nothing. And I can hear Solomon saying, no, it's no, vanity.
But you're like, but my righteousness, no, vanity. But the hard work with my faith, no, empty, vanity. How does that reconcile with Scripture? Well, let's try to answer that question. First of all, we have to see that he starts immediately in verse three, what happens?
What advantage does man have in all his labor? And we get the clue, right, in which he labors under the sun, under the sun. Everything that a man does working under the sun is forgotten. Jesus says to store up your treasures in heaven where the rust is not going to get it, where the thief cannot steal it, where the moth cannot eat it.
Because all of your work under the sun is going to fade away as though it never happened. But all of your work under the sun that is storing up treasures in heaven will never be forgotten, will never fade away, and is yours for eternity.
Jesus said that the sons of this world are more shrewd than the sons of light. They're better at making money because they're ruthless. But the sons of light should learn a little bit and we should use tactics to store up for ourselves friends in heaven.
And that would be the motto. If I have a motto in ministry, it would be that. I want to have as many friends in glory as I can possibly have. I want a lot of people in my community that we meet at the park, that we talk, that we have a great time.
I want a great many friends in heaven. And I hope that my life exemplifies that. I think that that's wisdom. I think that that's what Christ calls us to do. But all of the stuff here, even our friendships here, they'll fade away.
And you guys know this. You've had friends who you thought that you would be with forever. They're with you through the thick and thin. And now you hadn't talked to them in 10 years. And maybe they hate you.
Or maybe you hate them. Fleeting, vanity. If you store up your treasures in relationships here, under the sun, empty. Man slips by as if he wants to accentuate the point. What happens under the sun is that generation of generation of generation goes by.
Men just keep living and dying and being born. And what happens is nature never changes. It's a cold, cruel world that we live in, is it not? This seems like it's often attacking us and trying to kill us.
Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes. If you let your lawn go for a little while, what's gonna happen? The trees are gonna be growing in your windows. There's gonna be snakes running around trying to bite you and kill you.
That is the world that we live in. Nature doesn't care about you. In fact, nature's antagonistic towards you, isn't it? That's because of the curse. Because because of what Adam did, all nature is subjected to futility.
So nature is groaning just like we are. The whole thing, it was messed up. And it's all planned. And the only comfort we get out of a cold, cruel nature that tries to sink ships, that tries to blow houses down, that tries to burn everything up, that tries to invade your space, the comfort that we get is that this has all been appointed for a purpose.
It's all working in concert according to God's plan because when He consummates and fixes all of it, we're not even gonna recognize it. Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a nature that doesn't groan, that's not fighting you?
That was Eden. That was where our first father lived. Romans 8, 20 through 21 says, for creation was subjected to futility. Not willingly. Nature didn't wanna be futile. But because of Him who subjected it.
That's Jesus, by the way. Jesus subjected it to futility in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. If man is subject to corruption because he dies and rots and nature that seems to just go on and on, that's what Solomon says, it's also corrupting and someday it's all going to be fixed.
Solomon gives a few examples here, doesn't he? He says that rivers inexorably flow into an inexhaustible sea. This directly confronts one of the greatest lies of our age. Remember, we're all gonna die because the sea levels are rising.
We have 10 years left. I think that was 12 years ago. We're still here. We have the pictures. And Solomon, all you had to do to confront Algor was just read Ecclesiastes. It never rises. We have these great rivers flowing in.
They never stop. Like this water, it just never stops. You can't stop it. And the sea's like, it's the same level all the time. And the sea was just incomprehensible to the ancient man and it's still incomprehensible to us, isn't it?
We don't know what's going on under there. We don't understand why the waves are happening. It's crazy. It's just a big old chaos mess. And Solomon says it never changes. Even if you try to redirect the river, what's gonna happen?
Your dam is gonna corrupt. It's gonna break down and the river's gonna flow right where it was for a thousand years before that. What happens when the Hoover Dam is given to corruption? That river's gonna flow exactly where it was before that dam was built.
And it's gonna go into the ocean and the ocean's not gonna rise. And you know what's also going on? This is depressing, isn't it? The sun, it just keeps coming up and down. It doesn't care what you're doing.
Does the sunrise care about your plans or the sunset? No. Here it comes, up and down. And what Solomon is saying with that is, you're a speck of dust. The cosmos, it doesn't care. We're spinning around.
It just keeps coming up and coming down. Maybe you want a little darkness. The sun doesn't care. Here it comes. Big deal. And then he says, the wind, the wind. It's just, who knows what the wind's doing?
You go out, you wanna have a great day out there and the wind's blowing 40 miles an hour. Who knows where it's coming from? But we know one thing. It's doing whatever it wants to do. And Jesus equates that in John three to the work of the Holy Spirit, does he not?
Who controls where the wind blows? Man doesn't, but the Holy Spirit, he goes where he wills. And that is a hint, right, of the context is that God controls the wind. God controls the sun. God controls the seas and the rivers.
And then we think of what are we in the psalmist writes? When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established, what is man that you remember him? And the son of man that you care for him.
Isn't that an amazing verse? So the first lesson from the preacher is it's all gonna fade away under the sun. Nature doesn't care about you. The seas don't care about you. There's nothing you can do about it.
The sun is going to rise tomorrow. Whether your day was good, bad, or mediocre, here comes the sun again. Who knows what the wind's gonna do? But I'll tell you this, you don't know what the wind's gonna do.
And you never will. And then he moves on. He's gonna twist the dagger a little bit more. You thought, oh man, that's bleak, Solomon. I'm just a speck of dust in nature. It doesn't care about me. And then he says this.
This is so true, is it not? I see this all the time. And after a week of in-service, which is bent on demoralization of public school teachers, I will just tell you this verse spoke to me this week. And here it goes.
All things are wearisome. I'm tired. And the longer you go, the more tired you get from the same thing. Man is not able to speak of it. We can't even really give a voice to it. We don't understand why we're tired.
We just know we're tired. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which has been done is what which will be. That which has been done is that which will be done. There is nothing new under the sun.
Man is never satisfied on earth. Who would be better to tell us this lesson than Solomon? He was never satisfied. How many women? How much gold? How many horses and chariots? How many people? Talking about how great he is.
Can you imagine the people coming to his throne and he would administer this wisdom? And you know Solomon heard this more than any other man. Oh Solomon, you are great. And it is poison to a man, is it not?
We know this, it's poison. The weak of us can't take very much of that. You are so great. You're so amazing. You're so wise. And our little stinky hearts start to believe it. We judge Solomon. Can you imagine what it was like for Solomon?
Can you even begin to imagine? Everybody loved him. Everybody thought he was the greatest. Because he was. And he was not satisfied. And so Solomon tells his sons, you will never see enough, you will never hear enough to be satiated.
You can't see enough wonders or hear enough beautiful singing to be satisfied. You'll always want a little bit more. It'll never stop. You're never satiated. I remember, this is gonna date me, and it's also an embarrassing story, and I haven't talked Lord of the Rings for a while, so here we go.
Back in 1999, I was in the computer lab at the University of Arkansas, and the news flashed, I thought it was a lie. I thought it was, I was like, no, this can't be. And I learned that there would be Lord of the Rings movies done seriously.
Look, we're making fun of myself. Here was my prayer. Lord, help me live long enough to see these. I wish I was kidding. I'm not kidding. The only defense I have is that I was 18 years old, okay? Lord, please let me see this.
And I saw them, and I wasn't satiated. I saw Fellowship of the Ring 10 times in the theater, and I couldn't get enough. And today, I throw stones in a glass house, right? Nerds, I gotcha. Do you know what?
Am I satisfied today? Did it meet all of my desires, and I'm good to go? I've seen everything I wanted now. Of course not, of course not. There is no contentment under the sun, none. Solomon knew, it doesn't matter how many women you have, there will always be another one that's pretty.
There will always be another one that can make this alliance to surify your kingdom. There will always, son, there will always, son, be another one out there that you will make an alliance with that will put this king with you, and you will be a force to be reckoned with.
And yet the law of God says, I made one man and one woman to be together. And Solomon, for all his wisdom, was enticed by what the eye can see and the ear can hear. And he tells his sons, that's vanity.
I know, son, I told you. Look at what I did. He doesn't hide from it. And parents, if you wanna be good parents, when your kids are appropriately aged, tell them. Do we have a generation who's missed that on pornography?
Tyler, do we? Have we missed it? Tell them. Son, this is what I did. I said, there is no fulfillment in this. This is actually what it'll do to you. Your eye will never be satisfied. You will keep looking for the next thing.
And that next thing is gonna get deeper and deeper and deeper, and there will be no fulfillment in it, only death. I know, son, I dug to the bottom of the internet. I know. Don't do what I did. That's Solomon.
Do you get it? Do you hear that? It's not just glib words over the top. Son, I've done it. Nothing you see and nothing you hear is gonna fill you up. Everything that we do is burdensome. I'm just so tired.
All of this seeing and all of this hearing, it just makes me tired. Let me ask you, how much news do you have to take in until you're satisfied? How much sensation? How many shows? How many songs do you have to take in to where you just feel fresh and new?
It's all good. There is no joy in that. Solomon hits it right in the bullseye, does he not? He knows, and he knows because he saw it all to the extent that you never will. What an amazing thing. He moves on.
There's nothing new. Nothing new? Everything that's done will be. Do we believe it? And then he adds on to that. There's no remembrance of anything earlier. How many people, if you asked them on the street, do you think would even know who Solomon is?
I can tell you in Springdale, not many. Because I ask my kids, or I'll relate, and I'll say at school, not my children. They know, right? But when I ask the high school kids that I have at school, hey, that's Abraham.
Who? There's one name everybody knows, and you know that name, don't you? The name of Jesus, because there's no way to avoid that name. But Solomon knows nobody's gonna remember this stuff. It's just gonna fade away.
And we hear it, and we buy the lie time and time again. Do we not? We think there's something new under the sun. Here, let me give you a few of them. This is the most important election of our lifetime.
What Solomon, I think, would say to that is this. The path of decline continues with every president, with every representative, with every new Supreme Court appointee. We can end abortion with just one more Supreme Court justice.
Let's do it. We will end Roe v. Wade, and we will end abortion. One more conservative appointment. We got it. More deaths from abortion than ever before now. Because we exposed the cowardice of leaders who were hiding behind the black robes.
Most important election of our time. I'm gonna tell you what. The next one's probably gonna be worse than this one, and less memorable. And the one after him, nobody will remember him in 50 years. I know Jake can tell me, but can anybody else tell me who the 13th president of the United States is?
Not a lot of takers. Who cares? This is all the hand-wringing I see all the time here. How can we maintain the American empire? Well, here's the path of history, friends. Here's what happens. There is oppression, and then violent crusaders come in and win the day.
And then they say this thing. Our children will not have to endure the hardship that we endured. And they accomplish that purpose. And then what sets in is decadence and riches. And then in order to keep the decadence and riches, more oppression.
And what's next? Violent crusaders come in. Blood is spilled on and on and on. And whether you want to pick the Persians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrews, the Ottomans, all of them.
Same cycle. Is America special? We're exceptional, right? No, you can see it happening right now. We all know where we are in this cycle. Can we stop it? No, you can't stop it. Everything will be that has been.
Here we go. This is a good one for us. How can we save the church and be refined? We're a new kind of church. We have doctrinal fidelity and we love each other. And we love other churches. What do we know is gonna happen here?
Let me tell you. We know what's gonna happen. Invaders are gonna come in. Invaders are gonna be tolerated. And then we'll be the same old church that needs reform. Are we exceptional? No. What we have to do, if we want wisdom, is we have to continue simply doing the things that God has told us to do.
And as soon as we compromise a little on that, guess what? Here we go. PCUSA. They were reformed, right, Brian? That's them. Now they are super-de-duper gay. What does the Bible say about homosexuality?
It's like this huge mystery. It's real obvious. But what happens? They thought they were special. They thought they had figured out something a little bit different. We have the best technology ever. Utopia 20 years away.
We're almost there. Maybe even a decade, if we can get the right people in power. We will all be good. It'll be like Star Trek. We'll have replicators giving us all of the healthiest whole foods that we can possibly imagine.
The processed days of the past will be over. The vaccines will be real and they will be glorious. We will heal your blindness and your deafness. We have comfort and ease due to our ingenious supply chain.
Guess what else this utopia is promising us right now? We don't need friends or sex. Why? We have the internet. Woo! We beat the code. Who needs friends? Who needs the messiness that comes with that when you have the internet?
What's happened, though? Birth rates collapse. Suicide rises. We are being invaded in the most advanced country that's ever lived on the earth today. We are being invaded by hordes of people who cannot build two-story buildings.
Glorious! We're so close to utopia. And Solomon says, it's never gonna change. Each of these examples, here's the thing, right? Each of these examples, they have happened countless times. Do you think the Romans thought that they had engineered perfection with their technology?
Of course they did. They had aqueducts. Their road system was unbelievable. They made the world so small. They were glorious. Let's not take anything away from them. The Romans were glorious. There's a reason that people looked at them and thought, we just have to join them.
There's nothing we can do. They're the greatest. And what we see that happened is, how many emperors can you name? The nerds in here can get a few, right? But how many? Nobody cares. Here's the facts.
Here's what Solomon lays out for you. No one's going to remember who you are. You are at best, at best four generations from obscurity. Do I think my great-great-grandchildren are gonna know who I am?
No, they will never have heard of me, ever. They'll not know who I am. Well, I guess I came from Arkansas. If you strive under the sun, get this, friends, and this is the point of the whole sermon today.
If you strive under the sun, you strive in complete vanity, and nothing you do matters. So you might as well pack it up. So what is the rational, wise thing to do? It's to stop striving under the sun.
Is it not? And this is where the context comes in. As we end, I wanna read this for you, and I'm gonna largely do this, if I can, without comment. Here we go. 2 Corinthians 5, one of my very favorite chapters of the Bible.
I'm already commentating, sorry. It's so good. For we know that if the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For indeed, in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed, while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.
Now, he who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge, therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, we walk by faith, not by sight.
We are of good courage, and prefer, rather, to be absent from the body, and to be home with the Lord. Let me sum it up very quickly. Don't work under the sun. Don't put your hopes in the things under the sun.
Groan, like nature does, to be where you're supposed to be. And there is much to be done here, but there's a way to do it here that's wise. Hear the wisdom from Solomon.