Living Life Under the Sun in 2021

1:28And then we top that old man. Off with a papier-mâché mask or head that you could buy from different vendors. And the head would always be an effigy of some well-known person from the previous year. So it could be a politician, it could be a sports figure, perhaps someone from pop culture. And you'd put that head on that old man, and at the stroke of midnight, you'd throw the old man on a big bonfire. Symbolically, that old year would turn to ash and smoke. The old is past, and the new had come. If there has ever been a year that we are happy to see go up and smoke, it has to be 2020. And perhaps there can be no better book of the Bible to be studying than the book of Ecclesiastes after a year like 2020. That's because Ecclesiastes is a very honest book. Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, deals with the difficulties and the perplexities of life. But it's also a very challenging book. It's a tough book to read. It's a tough book to understand. And believe me, it's a tough book to preach.

2:43It is indeed a puzzling book for a puzzling age. I believe that's the title of the sermon series. Now, my assignment today is Ecclesiastes chapter 7 and 8. But I will not have near the amount of time to go through all the details that you can. Find in chapters 7 and 8. So, here's my plan this morning. I want to take the section that we just read and let it serve as an outline to help us examine three big themes that we see here in chapter 7 and in chapter 8. And I want to put it all into the context of us entering into a new year.

3:23So, I'm going to go ahead and give you the three points right up front. I'm going to put them on the screen here as I say them. So, here it is. As we enter 2021, let us first of all reflect on the devastating brokenness of our world. And we see that in verse 14. Let us reflect on the devastating brokenness of this world. I simply want us to see that it's important to understand that things are not as they're supposed to be. And I want us to understand why they are not as they're supposed to be and what we should do about that. And then, secondly, my second point, after reflecting upon the devastating brokenness of our world, is I want us to rejoice in the many blessings of our lives.

4:09I want, as we enter 2021, to be a year of joy, that we rejoice in the many blessings of our lives. Once we see the brokenness of our world, we can more readily appreciate the divine blessings that have come into our lives. And so, as we enter 2021, I want us to do it with genuine joy that takes place. Pleasure in the good gifts that God gives us. And we see those, we see that mentioned in verse 15.

4:38And then finally, in verses 16 and 17, as we enter into 2021, I want us to rest in the absolute sovereignty of our God. The only way we can find proper balance of enjoying life while acknowledging that this world is dreadfully broken is by faith, by resting in our God and trusting in His sovereign providential purposes. So let's start here with verse 14 of chapter 8. It says, This, there is a vanity that takes place on earth. Let me just pause right there and remind you guys of what Pastor Allen taught you in the very first sermon in this series. That word vanity is oftentimes translated meaningless or emptiness, but it's better understood really because it can also be translated as vapor or mist, as sort of a fleeting nature, as a temporary, that life is temporary. And there's also another shade of meaning to this word, and it carries the idea that life is a mystery. In Ecclesiastes, we see all those shades of meaning. Life is short. Life is fleeting. And much of what happens in our lives is a mystery. We can't figure it out. We can't explain it. And friends, if we fail to understand, The purpose for which we've been created, then life will indeed seem meaningless.

6:07There is a vanity that takes place on the earth, and now Solomon in verse 14 is going to give us an example of brokenness. That there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. In verse 14, Solomon is asking, this is his way of asking the age-old question: why do bad things happen to seemingly good people, and why do good things happen to seemingly bad people?

6:39We know it shouldn't be like that. We instinctively know that this world is broken. It's the beginning of a new year, so it's a good time for confession. Let me make a little confession to you guys. I like watching those instant karma videos on YouTube, okay? You know, it can be a sports guy who's showboating, and next thing you know, he gets whooped. It can be somebody that's on the freeway that's showing road rage, and next thing you know, they foolishly drive their own car off the side of the road. I love watching those instant karma videos.

7:14Now, let me just say, first of all, karma is not a biblical concept. Matter of fact, this verse we just read shouts against karma. But why do we like videos like that? Because we like it when we see people getting what's coming to them, we like it when there seems to be. Be justice. There seems to be order. There seems to be a reason for things happening. We are created to long for these things. We long for justice. We long for the world to work in the way that it seems it should work.

7:45But we live in a broken world. We live in a crooked world, but we want things to be straight. We want order. We want symmetry. My wife, she cannot stand it if you hang a picture, even a slight millimeter, a fraction of a millimeter, crooked, or if something's not perfectly centered in the wall. You know, so my father-in-law was here this past week, and he was installing these dog bowls outside, and we were trying to figure out where it needed to be to get it out from the rain. It had to be off-centered on the brick wall, and it was driving my wife crazy. It can't be off-centered. She wants there to be symmetry. She wants there to be order. And I think that's the way we all are with life. We want it to make sense. We want there to be symmetry. We want there to be purpose.

8:37But we live in a broken world. We live in a world of oppression, of ethnic strife, of justice, just judicial corruption, of abandoned children, of infertility, of broken marriages, of war, pornography, abortion, sex trafficking. We live in a world of bad bosses and leaky faucets and overdue bills and lost puppies. And project deadlines and rainy vacations and weeds in our garden and splinters and beastings from the big things to the little things. We live in a broken world. And in 2020, we get a heaping dose of political animosity, racial strife, social isolation, lost liberties, and a brand new virus to top it all off.

9:22This is our world. And friends, nothing is new under the sun. This was Solomon's world as well. And Solomon isn't a pessimist, he's a realist. Life's not fair. And I believe that one of the reasons God gives us Ecclesiastes, one of the reasons Solomon writes this book, is so that we can reflect upon that fact. God doesn't just tell us that life's going to be unicorns and dandelions. Go live for me and everything's going to work out great. No, he presents the hard realities to us in books like Ecclesiastes and said, Life is not fair. This is a broken world.

10:05We should see that this world is not the way it's supposed to be, and we should ask why. So I want to jump back to the beginning of chapter 7. And as I said, I'm not going to be able to go through all the chapter. But chapter 7 begins with some proverbs. This book was written by Solomon. Solomon also wrote the Proverbs, so there's no mystery there as to why chapter 7 sounds a whole lot. Like the book of Proverbs. And all of a sudden, in chapter 7, Solomon goes into giving us a bunch of Proverbs where he contrasts wisdom with folly. But in the process of doing that, he's highlighting some things that are broken in our world. He wants us to think about the brokenness of our world. He doesn't want us to just ignore it. He wants us to think about it. And there's nothing more broken than the fact that death is in this world. And that's where Solomon begins. Look at verse 1 of chapter 7. A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth. And what is Solomon talking about here? Well, the scene is one of a funeral. And what Solomon is saying is that funerals are good because it's important for us to reflect upon the reality that guess what? We're all going to die.

11:26And he says in verse 1, there, a good name is better than precious ointment. Precious ointment was a valuable commodity. It was used for a lot of different purposes. But one of the purposes that ointment was used for was to anoint a body after it had died. Why? Because they didn't have the embalming procedures that we have today, and pretty soon that body would begin to stink. And usually only the rich had such commodities. You remember the lady who broke the jar of precious ointment. On Jesus' feet was Mary, and she breaks the jar of ointment on Jesus' feet. It was precious, it was valuable. You remember what the Magi brought to Jesus there after he was born? They brought precious ointments and it symbolized, it foreshadowed his death. And so, what's Solomon saying here? He said, A good name is more important than precious ointment. What he's saying, and what he wants us to reflect upon is this: what's going to matter when you die? How you smell or how you lived?

12:37What's going to matter when death hits you? Because it's coming. Is it how you lived? Are you going to have a good name, or are you just going to have precious ointments covering the stench? Solomon says that the day of death is better than the day of birth. Not because he's some sort of morbid fellow, but because he knows that an even greater commodity than fine ointment is the commodity of time.