God's Comfort for the Weary

and I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive.

That's hard, that's some serious hopeless despair. To think it's better to be dead than alive because of the pain and oppression. Further, verse three,

but better than both is he who has not yet been alive.

If you've never been born, Because then you would not see the evil deeds done under the sun. We really need to wrestle with why this despair. This is a reality that is present in our world, present closer to home than we probably want to really realize. Well, what are we to do with this despair? What are we to do with this despair? First, recognize this is a true role look at life. He's not speaking of hypotheticals. Second, we gotta wrestle with if there really is no comfort. As he's looking at a Genesis 3 world without special revelation, without knowing how God speaks, or he's speaking as if he doesn't have God speaking, he's preaching as if there's not a special revelation, is there really no comfort? Is there a comfort provided? We've sung of this already, actually. How can we find the comfort? And then we're gonna ask, how can we do better? There is comfort from above the sun. He declares there is no comfort when he sees these things under the sun. I want to make clear there is a comfort if we look above the sun, S-U-N. The God who has the power to speak this world into existence is the same God who sees us after we've rebelled and commits himself to entering into this sinful world that we've corrupted in order to reverse the curse we brought and redeem the dead death we invited by bringing new life. The key thing when it's about God is he's all powerful. And that means he's able to do what he wants to do. And what God has told us he wants to do is save us from our own sin. That's comfort. All the problems that we create, God has promised he commits himself to save us from the problems that we've created for ourselves. He will bring perfect justice. He will provide the perfect salvation. The comfort we need is only if we look beyond the sun, S-U-N, and look to the God who has promised salvation. If you're not a believer this morning, one of those difficult places to be is hopeless, despair. I don't know if this is where you are, I hope it's not, but I want you to know something that's important about God, if you're there or if you are there one day, or if you've been there. Two truths about God. I believe that's true for God in every human being. He sees us. and he hears us. He sees us and he hears us. And there's supposed to be a great comfort in that. He is not a distant observer of pain. He breathed his life into us. He gave us the status of image bearer. He cares about every human being. And when we are in this kind of oppression, when we're in this kind of prayer, he sees. and cares. If we were to cry out to him and pray, he hears. He's not indifferent. I want you to know that there is a God whom you can cry out to in the midst of your pain, trouble, despair, and hopelessness. You are not without hope. There is a God. He sees you and he hears you. There's something else that I think might be helpful for you if you're not a believer. You're probably skeptical of anyone with power. And man, I don't blame you. We see over and over again just patterns of abuse of power. This is the encouraging thing I want to give you. The one who has all power is all good. The one who I have just told you hears you and sees you, he is all powerful and he's all good. And he has never promised there will never be pain or suffering. But what he has promised is that he will end the battle with our greatest enemies, Satan, death, and sin. He has promised to come and act on our behalf. He has given himself fully over to us. He has made those promises. He has kept those promises. He's able to save. What makes God amazing is he sees us and he hears us in our pain and we call out to him. He is able to do what he wants to do. And he has declared he wants to save us from our sin. What we have to do is cry out to him. What we have to do is say, I need help with my sin. I want to believe in the one who can free me of the guilt that burdens me. I want to believe in the one who can save me from the sinful tendencies I constantly fall back into. Well, that one is only Jesus Christ. You can believe in him this morning. and be saved. If you're not a believer, I'm sorry, if you are a believer, I'll just be encouraged. He who has all power has worked for all of your good. He who has all power, he's for you. He's with you. He's promised himself fully to give himself over to you. The power of God is evident in that Christ rose from the dead. The love of God is evident in that Christ died for your sins. Oh, we cannot doubt His goodness or power. Believer, when we have tears, we feel this discomfort, we feel this despair, look up, look up. Don't look in, look up to the Father. Where Christ is seated at his right hand and pray, he hears you. The second thing I want us to consider is what we do with the power we have. It's important to see how God has given power to certain people in certain places. You can go to Deuteronomy and you can see how God gave instruction for the king of Israel. The first thing the king of Israel was supposed to do was to take the word of God and write his own copy. Because the king of Israel wasn't supposed to implement his own rules. No, the king was supposed to receive God's rules and then practice them. Christian, we need to know God's word so that we know how to follow God. so that we know how to use whatever power or authority or position we have for his good purposes. This is how David ended his ministry in 2 Samuel 23. These are the last words of David.

The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me, and his word is on my tongue. The God of Israel has spoken. The Rock of Israel has said to me, when one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.

That's the rule that God gives us. And Christian, we've got to believe in such good rule. And we have to know how to encourage others that good rule exists. And the way you encourage that is by actually exercising it. Be a better testimony. Take whatever kind of role or authority or power you have and think about how is it I can use this to be like dawn in the morning, the light shining through. If you're a professor, a teacher, what an opportunity you have with the students, the children you have. To use what you have, that classroom, to be a light, to exercise goodness and orderliness in a way that reflects God. Parents, what an opportunity to think about what we do at the dinner table, teaching children, loving them, showing kindness. God doesn't exercise his rule this way, but we should by asking for forgiveness. What a way to show goodness and authority and power. It's important, Christian, that we believe there's such thing as good rule. We embrace God's good rule and we seek to be ruled by it, be a testimony to it. And one of their last application, oh, pray for those who have authority. That's what scripture prescribes. Your governing authorities, your police officers, your parents, your pastors, your teachers. Our preacher, He leaves us better off dead, or better off not even living, but we can look up, and I'll encourage you, look at chapter one of 2 Corinthians later. There is a God of comfort, and the comfort comes in that he has saved us. The second point is about work. Four to eight. Work. Now, this is such an important topic. It's important throughout scripture, it's important throughout all of our lives. Work is central to life. Somehow we've lived in this world where we have such engineering and technology advances that work is something that's optional and that's dangerous. You know, it made more sense when work was something that was necessary for survival. It's not always treated as something good today. It's almost as if it's a necessary evil that we should try to get away from. I wanna give us a biblical picture of work before we even jump into this text. In Genesis 2, God had formed Adam, picked him up, and put him in the garden and gave him a command, work and keep. Now context is important. Genesis 1, every day, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was very good. Genesis 2 is taking place in the midst of that Genesis 1 world. If Genesis 1 declares all things good and God declared to Adam he should work, guess what work is? Way to go, Watson. Work is good. Write that down. Say it to each other. Work is good. There we go. We're designed to work. We're also designed to rest. You should be dependable and dependent. We're also designed to be worshipers, and designed to worship should determine work. The bigger picture of who we are, we're designed for worship. We're designed to worship God, and work is part of that worship. What work we do, how we work, why we work, it's all worship. Now, that's looking at work from Genesis 1 through 3 in a nutshell, but let's go back to Ecclesiastes. And if you've been with us, we can go to Ecclesiastes chapter 1. He opens up with a poem. 1-3,

what does man gain by all his toil at which he toils under the sun?

That is a major question that we keep looking at. And then we can go to chapter one, kind of one of these summary statements, verse 13. Well, that's not very encouraging.

I've seen everything done in the sun, and behold, it's all vanity.

And that's speaking of work. Well, we have a double-clicking on work here. We're gonna look a little deeper at work, four to seven, and I want you to see there's some structure to it. Verse four is talking about toil regarding motive and your neighbor. Right?

I saw that all toil and all skill and work comes from a man's envy or jealousy of his neighbor.

Immediately think of

thou shalt not covet.

Okay? Verse seven is about the other problem of motive, and that is it's vanity if one person without a son or brother, without anybody, all you're doing is working for your own self-pleasure. That, too, is vanity. So the loner miser who doesn't have anybody to share what he's working for, that's vanity. The guy who's just working for jealousy, that's vanity. We're gonna deal with the motive of work second. We're gonna begin in verse five and six, two pithy sayings.

The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

The danger of not working. Verse six,

better is a handful of quietness or rest than two hands full of toil and striving after the wind.

The importance of rest. The necessity of work and the importance of rest. Rest, these two pair together. Let's look at this, verse five.

The fool folds his hands.

That's an idiomatic way of saying he's idle, he's not working. He's not producing anything. The consequence is he eats his own flesh. I don't think that's literal. I believe there is showing how self-destructive it is if you do not work. And again, in this day, working was necessary for survival. If someone isn't working, they're actually producing self-harm. Now remember, this is a unique book of the Bible. It's special revelation as God's breathed out words for us that really give us a view from under the sun. And let's just be clear, verse five, we don't need special revelation to understand this. You can read Aesop's fables, right? The Ant and the Grasshopper. The ant labored away to store up all that he needed for the summer, and the grasshopper just parties and makes fun of him, and then when winter comes, what does the ant do? He has all his food, and the grasshopper knocks and says, let me come in, and the grasshopper says, sorry, and the grasshopper dies. This is just common grace knowledge that if you do not work, you're self-destructive. We also see this comes from wisdom here. Or wisdom in Proverbs 6.10,

a little sleep and a little slumber, a little folding of hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man.

Or Proverbs 10.4,

a slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.

God's word starts us out by making it clear work is good, and then gives us great instruction on why we should work and how we should work. We go to the New Testament and hear Christ speak. Ephesians 4.28,

let the thief no longer steal, but let him labor doing honest work with his hands.

Now you would think that's it, right? Stop stealing work. No, that's not the end goal of the Christian. Produce honest work, do honest work with your hands so that you may have something to share. You see, in sin we take, in Christ we act like Christ, we give. Colossians 3,

whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for man, knowing that from the Lord you receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord in Christ.

You'll work for a paycheck, I hope, but here, We actually have another promise, there's a reward in heaven, an eternal inheritance you're working for. And then finally, Paul warns in 1 Thessalonians to stay away from brothers who are walking in idleness, and he says why.

For even when we were with you,

this is 1 Thessalonians 3.10,

we would give you this command, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

There's helpful instruction here. There's two warnings in five and six. You need to be careful of not working, but we actually have instructions on what work looks like in Christ. There's a terrifying phenomenon in our own country where young men have stopped working. I know this because there's a lot of you looking for employees and you can't find them, and well, the news says so. Why aren't we working? Have we as Christians, are we really valuing work as something that is part of our worship? That is something that is God-given and good? As something we can do so that we can provide for others? Work is good. We're called to admonish the idle. We command and encourage work. There's another command or a concern, verse six,

better is a handful of quietness than two hands of toil and striving after win.

So the first is be careful of being idle, not working. And now it's, well, if all you're doing is work, there's a danger. I believe what we're seeing in verse six is a proverb that we need rest. God created us for rest. God created us to be dependent and we have to sleep and we have to depend upon his creation to show we are dependent. Verse six is for the workaholic. It's important, we all fall off one side of the horse one way or the other. Legalism or licentious, is this helpful to know your tendencies? If you don't, ask the person next to you. We either do too much work or too little. God designed us for rest. It's the way he ended creation so that we know the last day that doesn't have a beginning or an end, the last day that keeps going. It's our purpose. We're supposed to be resting in God. Rest is good. It's good by design. The Sabbath laws were designed to help us order our days according to God's word. The Sabbathols were given to Israel to promote faith, God will provide. It's actually amazing how it ordered all of creation. We get that our months are based upon the moon and the year on the sun, and what are the days based on? God. There's no measure for the days other than God has given them. Now, I'm gonna dip my toe in some interesting territory, we'll see how that goes. I'm not a Sabbatarian. If you are, enjoy not working today. And it's a happy disagreement we can have. I'm a Lord's Day guy. I believe what we're called to do on this day is supposed to be restful kind of work. There's a way in which what we do is important for our souls because we come to rejoice together, sing together, pray together. It's not clear to me Jesus rising on the first day of the week, Sunday, moved that Sabbath day law to that day. But at the same time, I wanna be very clear. I don't believe it erased our need for rest. I don't believe Christ's resurrection removed our need for rest. The Mosaic Holy Day is Saturday. It's marked by what you do not do. Christ's holy day is today, the Lord's day, and it's supposed to be marked by what we do together. Now, there are some who are just too busy at work and too busy at play, and I have some encouraging advice for you. Stop it. If you don't learn to say no for Jesus, you're just practicing saying no to Jesus. Consider how you're using your time. It's God's time, Christ purchased it with his own blood. What patterns are you promoting in your life and with your friends and your family and your church? Are you protecting the most sacred time, and that is time around the table with your family or other believers, time with the other saints and the word and singing together? Are we prioritizing the time brings us the kind of spiritual rejuvenation and rest we need. Now the other two passages on work are about our motivation. There's envy of neighbor, and then there's no one to share it with. We can actually see here there's a jealousy, and we know this one pretty well, keeping up with the Joneses. Right? I see my neighbor has this and his toil, he's gotten a bigger house, another boat, whatever it may be, and I want to work and I'm gonna use what I have to keep up with my neighbor. Well, that's a foolish task. Jealousy is sometimes good in scripture. It's good when it's God towards, God and man. There's a way in which God is jealous for our love. There's a way in which a spouse can be jealous for the other spouse's affection. Jealousy among neighbors is always inappropriate in scripture. This is an inappropriate jealousy. There's an envy. And let's just see it, when you're looking at your neighbor and saying, I need to do this to keep up with him, you're not loving your neighbor. You cannot be jealous of your neighbor and love your neighbor. No, the cure for jealousy is love. Now, when the preacher's saying this, when he says neighbor, he actually means the word neighbor. What I mean by that, the people who live around you, you can see with your own eyes, and you see their whole life, right? Do you know who your neighbors are? Like those people next to you? Not like right now in your homes. You see them, you see what they have, you see the problems, you see the goodness. The problem we have today is our neighbors are these weird, mystical people on social media, where we only post and promote what we think is the best life, and we never show anything bad. Right, the envy and jealousy that social media creates is so much worse, because it's all a lie. The CDC just came out with this report about young ladies and how the suicide rate is so high. That starts with social media. Be careful with the lies. You're allowing your children and yourself to constantly see it's not that good out there. Under the sun, it's all vanity. Only in Christ is it truly joyful. Be careful of the motivations of jealousy. And notice the other danger, and that is just living like this selfish miser. He has all the toil, he enjoys all the pleasure, but it's all vanity and unhappy business because he doesn't have anything to share it with. We're designed by God to do his work, to produce and promote goodness for others. That leads us into this third point. I believe verse nine and 12 is actually some positive instruction in response to that miser. We're gonna call this, though, the problem of isolation. We see here we need to be careful of loneliness or being alone. Notice again, better.

Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil.

Okay, I think we probably understand that. to working alongside, there's going to be more reward, and there's also somebody to enjoy it with. He even gives a rationale.

For if they fail, who will lift them up?

Now, I don't know if you think your work's dangerous. I assume most of you aren't thinking, in my cubicle, I really wish somebody was there in case I fall out of my chair. Right? I mean, to think about this text, like, they're farmers. They're outside cutting logs down. You needed somebody there in case you fell. So the danger is more real, maybe.

What of him who has no one to lift him up?

If two lie together, maybe here's the marriage, who can keep warm. And then if somebody comes to fight, if somebody comes to attack, well, alone you're in great danger, but two can withstand. And then this proverbial statement of the end,

threefold cord is not quickly broken.

The principle there is you take a match and you can break it pretty easily by itself, but can you break a whole box of matches? We know this is true. Even the lone ranger had a sidekick. We understand that we need people. God did not intend us to be alone. Again, if we go back to Genesis 2, God put Adam without sin in the perfect world, in the perfect garden, and then he said the most peculiar thing,

it's not good to be alone.

It's not good to be alone. God has given us these kind of companions in marriage, this kind of help with parents, siblings, friends, mentors. It's not good to be alone. God has designed you to be with others. And if we could just praise God for the kind of others he puts in our lives, the neighbors, the brothers, the sisters, the loved ones, the family, the friends. Now, let me just say something also that I hear too often people who are looking for community, you're not going to find it if you're looking for it. But if you're committed to helping build it, then you'll find it because you're, you're, you don't, it doesn't just happen upon community. You, you gotta be part of it. The only good relationships are ones where you're, you're active in, in promoting the relationship. There's no such thing as someone who's passive in a relationship, but that's called a narcissist. A good relationship expects much of you. A good relationship is a commitment from you. It's better to be with someone. This is God's good pattern. Again, I don't believe what he's saying has not been said by non-Christians. But there's something I think we could even learn from a non-Christian in that we're looking for friendship, and you can wrestle with this if it's true or not, but Aristotle argues You actually have to be a person of virtue to be a friend. I'm more of a Platonist myself, but I think Aristotle's onto something there. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be committed to the same virtues, the same goodness. If you wanna be a Christian or be a good friend, you have to be committed to the way of Christ and invite others to walk alongside of you in the way of Christ. God encouraged us to find others who we're gonna walk with. Now, let's just get into the dangers of this. Lord willing, your friends will be better than Job's, your wife's more faithful than Hosea's, and your brother's better than Joseph's. We're all scared of people because we've all been hurt. Right? Just me? A marriage, that's a commitment to the day I die, can I promise? Oh, how painful it is when that's broken. A church membership, trusting these people with your spiritual good. As I was reflecting upon this, and how vulnerable you make yourself when you love somebody. There was a young lady who joined the church a few years ago, and she had gone through some abuse at a church, verbal. And what she shared in the testimony is,

I've gone through a lot of pain, and I haven't been trusting people, but I think I'm gonna trust myself to you all.

My heart just broke because that's a valuable child of God put into our stewardship. And he's cared for, healed, protected, provided. And man, she has proven nothing but one tough, sweet, wonderful, teachable young lady. I get why you want to be isolated. I see it's way too easy, and I know it's too easy because it's too often happening. But it's here, it's dangerous. It's dangerous. It's not the way God designed us. There's a catchy song by Simon and Garfunkel,

I'm a rock and I'm an island

, and it's supposed to be a correction. It's about a young man who chose a lonely life because his heart had been broken, and kind of a catch line,

if I never would have loved, I never would have cried.

You can just hear the pain of wanting to protect yourself from ever being vulnerable to somebody again. In the last lyrics,

a rock feels no pain and an island never cries.

Boy, may God's grace never get us to the point where we feel no pain. That is a terrifying place to be. If you make yourself an island so that you try to protect yourself from ever feeling Crying is incredibly dangerous. In Christ, I want to give you great comfort. You're never alone if you're a believer. In Christ, Christ comes to be with us. His Holy Spirit indwells us. That's one of the reasons we're not alone, is to be reminded of those truths. Our fourth and last point, the most complicated, that requires the most explanation. To simplify this point, I want you to see there's a clear contrast in verse 13. Here we're looking at ruler, and there's a wise and a foolish aspect to ruling. Notice it's poor, wise, youth. Then there's the king who's foolish and old, right? So poor, wise, youth contrasted with king, powerful, rich, foolish, and old. Now, there's all kinds of questions about how many characters in this story? So when I run up and I try to make sure I believe the scripture is clear, I believe it's efficient, but there's sometimes I'm like, what's going on? And then I look at commentaries and I'm like, all right, they're gonna help me. And then they say, we don't know what's going on either. All right, thanks for that. So to simplify, I think there's one king in the whole thing. The poor wise youth, he was also, verse 14, in prison. And he went from being in prison, which would be poor, right, to being on the throne. He was born in his kingdom, poor in prison, but he was wise. And as he got older, he was king and foolish. You with me so far? And notice the striking end of verse 13 that defines his foolishness.

He no longer knew how to take advice.

Now this would otherwise be just as incredible rags to riches story. We love this. Somebody pulled themselves up by the bootstraps or they found they were in the right place at the right time, the receiver of the blessing, they went from poverty to power. We see the two and if you're gonna choose one, you're gonna choose power over poverty. But our preacher, it's better to be poor than in power? Then verse 15. He jumps in a hot air balloon, he kind of pulls back to see the whole thing.

I saw all the living who moved about under the sun, along with that youth who was to stand in the king's place. There was no end of all his people.

He had a great, mighty, vast kingdom. I could not see the end of it.

All of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him.

The legacy matters. Why would that not rejoice in him? Well, it has to go back to his foolishness. He no longer knew how to took advice. He stopped listening. Now, let's be very clear. A king has to have principles. A king has to have convictions. We don't want a flip-flopper. We don't want somebody who's blown by the wind, right? There's also a way in which you can have convictions and clarity and direction and still know how to listen to reason. Take advice. This king had become so committed to himself, he closed off to others. We need to be careful that we're not so open-minded that anything gets in there. We need to be careful that we're not so closed-minded that we're not open to reason. Here, he lost the ability. He no longer knew how to be corrected. If no one can tell you you're wrong, guess what you are? Wrong. If no one is able to tell you you're wrong, there's just no good life. Christian, as we've looked at the danger of oppression, the confusing aspects of work and how we mess it up, even though it's been given as a good gift, as we see the need for others in here, as we need to listen, That's just the reflection of we can be thankful that God gives us his word so we can listen. I hope you have friends who you can listen to. I hope you have friends who know they can correct you. But God's word, it's good to promote godliness, to rebuke, to correct, to set up boundaries, to set up a direction. Do we know how to take God's advice? Do we know how to hear His word and long for His wisdom to overcome our foolishness? Do we long to have God speak? Do we want to hear Him? Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that your word tells us that you hold out your hands all day long to a stiff necked and obstinate people. Lord, that you are abundant in mercy, in loving kindness, in patience, Lord, I pray you would do a work to bring us to confess how we have presumed upon this grace and patience. You would do a work to help us see how great you are and enable your ability to give us the new life, an abundant life Christ purchased for us. Lord, I pray that you would give us hearts, minds, and ears to hear you, to be changed by you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.