Bible Study 11-13-22

Ecclesiastes Chapter 7:13-14

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SPEAKER_01 0:15

Welcome to our Bible study. We're presently in the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7, and we're going to have read to us verses 13 through 29, which is the whole chapter. Although tonight we're probably only going to get through verses 13 and maybe 14 as well. So I thank you for joining us, and let's get started.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Consider what God has done. Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy. But when times are bad, consider this. God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future. In this meaningless life of mine, I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness. Do not be over-righteous, neither be over-wise. Why destroy yourself? Do not be over-wicked, and do not be a fool. Why die before your time? It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes. Wisdom makes one wise person more powerful than ten rulers in a city. Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you. For you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others. All this I tested by wisdom, and I said, I am determined to be wise, but this was beyond me. Whatever exists is far off and most profound. Who can discover it? So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate, and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things, and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly. I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap, and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare. Look, says the teacher, this is what I have discovered, adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things, while I was still searching but not finding. I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. This only have I found.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Uh that we have to be very delicate with yet very truthful with. And so let me bring these verses from Isaiah chapter 55. It's four verses, and we're familiar with them, but I want us to be refreshed. Seek the Lord. This is from the ESV. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. So the first two verses here are Isaiah telling the lost, those that have either walked away from God or never considered him, saying, Forget your present ways of unrighteousness. Come to the Lord, that he may have compassion on you, for he will abundantly pardon. That's not like us. We don't have the tendency to abundantly pardon and forgive those that have done us wrong, especially egregiously wrong. But this part of this passage starts out this way that we might be reminded that God is not like us. God is not a human being, he does not have our characteristics. Yes, we're all made in his image, but he is not like we are. And that ver that passage goes on to say this. For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Remember that as we study tonight. God's thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways his ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. If you can, keep those four verses in your mind as we study. Normally, I think most of us would uh would say, if we said anything about our God regarding making things straight or crooked, we would most likely say, wait just a minute, doesn't God make straight, or doesn't God make crooked things straight? And why might we say that? Well, because God can take things that are in disorder, in disarray, all messed up, and put them back in order. God can take confusion and make it orderly. And you know, we see him do this because he is a God of reconciliation, and we have a, we all of us also have a ministry of reconciliation, but he is a God that would rather have forgiveness and reconciliation take place than brokenness. And so he repairs relationships, he repairs, you know, husband and wife relationships, uh, mom and dad and kid relationships. He repairs relationships between friends and brothers and sisters and siblings and and fellow believers. He does that. We would say, innately, we would say, yeah, God takes all these crooked, crummy things and he fixes them and makes them straight. And I think that's the right way of thinking for all of us. I think that is overall who God is and what he does. But then we hit a verse like this consider the work of God who can make straight what he has made crooked. And the preacher, Solomon, here is clear that God has made some things crooked, and those things that he's made crooked can't be made straight, apparently, no matter how hard we might try. Now, what type of things might Solomon be talking about? I think he's talking about everyday life. In his book on Ecclesiastes Rediscovering Eden, author Zach a Swine says this when wondering how you and I can make sense of this world outside of the church walls. Here's what he says. How do you maintain a sense of God when we leave God's house and enter the sick soul of the broken boned world? Daily life under the sun is infested with the loveless schemes of human beings. The character and purposes of God shine like an eclipsed sun, radiating light and heat, hidden from view by what looks like dark shadows and feels like cold. Beneath the shadows, he goes on to say, what do you do? Start admitting your inabilities and instead throw your thoughts and affections in God's direction. You cannot fix most of what's broken. Unlike mechanical parts and unglued wood, the crooked parts of the people, the places, and the circumstances that you will encounter today or any day are beyond your ability to repair. In contrast, the work of God constantly shows us that broken bones can dance again for him. End quote. So Solomon is saying that God has broken some things in this world. There are some things that are crooked, and there's nothing we can do about it. And as we started out, we don't normally think of God causing things to be broken or crooked. We just don't. We think of him as the fixer, you know, capital F, the repairer, capital R, the putter back together again, or capital P, right? When Humpty Dumpty falls, and he most certainly does in our lives, and he breaks into a thousand pieces, not only can't all the king's horses and all the king's men put him back together again, we can't either. Yet Humpty Dumpty falls. Now, why is it impossible for us to fix what God has made crooked? One, we don't have the ability. Remembering back to the verses that we read out of Isaiah 55. We don't have the knowledge, we don't have the wisdom, and we don't have the power. We lack everything necessary to work in harmony to try and fix what's crooked, and we can't do it because we don't possess the ability to do it. So, what do we do? We're in a broken world. It's all around us, it's in every day of our lives. You know, before sin entered into the world, everything was straight in regard to whether or not it's straight or crooked. Everything that God had created was good. And remember this, it was good in his eyes. He said that it was good. He said that it was very good. If a holy, righteous God says that what he created was good was very good, it was just that. In fact, the Bible tells us when he was done with creation, as he looked upon all that he created. Again, he said that it was very good. Here's the ending passages of creation coming out of Genesis chapter 1. Then God said, Let us make man in our image. We are now looking at straight. Okay? We're looking at straight. Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female he created them, and God bless them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Think about it, guys. There's nothing. Zero. Emptiness, darkness, nothing. And God creates all this just by his word. And God said in verse 21 of Genesis 1, and God said, Behold, I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit, in its fruit, you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day. What wrecked that? We know what wrecked that, right? What wrecked this perfect earth? Sin. Sin came into the world. And with it came spiritual and physical death. Even before God created Eve, the woman. Here's what he said to Adam in Genesis 2. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. That's something to remember. God gave man work even before the fall. And so I think this is how I read Scripture, we don't have to scratch our heads. When God creates a new heaven and a new earth for us to dwell therein with him, you know, are we just going to be singing hymns for all of eternity? No, I believe that God will restore the earth the way it was before sin corrupted it, and that's where we will dwell with him, and he's going to give us work to do. But there won't be any thorns or thistles or anything to wreck any of our progress. It will all be done, still its work, but it'll all be done without the things that took place on the planet because of sin. And in verse 16, he says, And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And I know we all know this story, but it's important to understand as a background and as a foundation for how we get to verse 13 in chapter 7 of Ecclesiastes. God gives Adam and then Eve everything they need to prosper and to multiply. They didn't need to worry about health, death, food, clothing, warmth, disease, rodents, animals, for none of them carried diseases. There weren't any diseases, or were even flesh eating at that time. The lion laid down with the lamb, just like it's going to happen again. God created everything they needed to enjoy and to live forever in a world right here on this planet that's broken and corrupt that we live in right now. For as long as they listened and paid attention and were obedient to their creator. It was all theirs. It was all theirs. And remember, they did not have the propensity to sin like we do. In other words, they did not have our sin nature. You and I have a sin bent to our nature. We lie, we cheat, we steal, we rob, we lust, we covet, we commit adultery, we don't love our neighbor, we don't love our God anywhere near the way he has called us to do. That wasn't the case in the garden before the fall. They were in perfect union and communion with God before the fall. It's beautiful. It's hard to imagine. We can't imagine that there's never going to be an argument, that there's going to be, they're not going to have to focus on how great God is. It's just, it's just a perfect, wonderful life. And I want to, I just want to take pause just for a minute from what we're doing and say, perhaps there has been a time in your life when you felt so close to God that you shook or you wept or you broke out in song. It was almost, it was like almost like Paul had this out-of-body experience getting caught up to the third heaven. And I'm not saying anybody got there, but it's almost like that's how I felt between me and God. If you had something like that ever in your life, and I would, I would quickly say that would be unique and wonderful and may not happen to anybody. I don't know. But if you did and you had that experience, how long would it have lasted? Seconds, maybe five or ten seconds or 30 seconds, but who would ever want to give that up, even if it was that short-lived? That's how Adam and Eve were every moment of the day and night in the Garden of Eden. But nevertheless, the wily serpent tempted Eve, and she gave into her into the temptation, and her husband Adam followed in her footsteps. And with that second of disobedience, Adam, Eve, all living things, and even the earth itself changed completely, and things became crooked. Think about these things as we think about the things that God has made crooked. If things were today as they were before the fall, there would be no hurricanes or tornadoes, no death and destruction caused by them, no tsunamis, no active volcanoes, no death or destruction caused by them, no thunderstorms creating destruction in its paths, no avalanches, whether they're snow or rocks, no quicksand or undercurrents in the ocean to drag people to their death. No animals would ever kill you. No animals would ever carry a disease. There would be no cancer, no diabetes, and COVID-19 would be impossible in this world before it was made crooked by sin. On a personal level, there would be no hatred, no murder, no lusts, no vices, no thefts, no covetousness, no adultery, no lying. We would love our neighbors as ourselves, and we would love our God perfectly as he calls us to do. Again, it's a world that we can hardly imagine. Why? Because we were born in and continue to live in a world that's crooked. And why is it crooked? Because we made it that way. Started with Adam and Eve and continues on because of our sinful nature. But it was God who has actually allowed these things to happen as a result of Adam and Eve's sinfulness and the sinfulness of every creature born since that, every human born since that time. Now, this is very important. Again, we're about to tread into some very tender territory, and so we need to be careful and thoughtful. So as we go through this, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to bring them up. I'm not sure I'll have an answer for you, but I'll dig for an answer for you. Listen to verse for uh Isaiah 45, verses 5 through 7. I am the Lord, God speaking, God is speaking. I am the Lord, and there is no other. Beside me, there is no God. I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none beside me. He starts out by saying, What I'm about to tell you is coming from the only God there is. I am the Lord and there is no other. Verse 7 in Isaiah 45. I form light and I create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. Now while we're here, there's a question that gets begged. Is God the author of evil? If you read the King James Version, I believe it's the King James Version, it will say I'm something like I make well-being and create evil. I think calamity, the Hebrew word there, can be translated into evil. It can also be translated into calamity. I think calamity is a much better translation in this instance, and we'll get into why at least I believe that it is. The assertion in this passage is so bold that God is the creator of both good things and calamity, that there was an early Christian heretic. We don't have to remember who he is. Is because he's a heretic. His name was Marcion. He used this very text to try to prove that the God of the Old Testament was different from the one of the new. He said, God changed. He's different. This is not the same God. And we know that's not true. Because we read in Hebrews that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Thus, the question that arises because of this hard saying is this Is God the author of calamity? Is he the author of evil? Numerous texts flatly declare that God is not and could not be the author of evil. It is absolutely impossible. For example, Deuteronomy 32.4 says this. He is a faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He. Psalm 5.4 says, you are not a God who takes pleasure in evil. And if we read the Bible in its total canonical setting, that is Genesis 1.1 to Revelation 22, 21, we would find quite clearly that God is without evil or any pretense of evil. It is actually directly against his unique holiness. So what does this mean? What does this mean? We'll read a few other verses. Let's read verse out of Lamentations chapter 3, let's read verse 38, where uh we read this Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? Amos 3, 6 says this If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it? Jeremiah 18, 11 says this. Now therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, thus says the Lord, behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return everyone from his evil way and amend your ways and your deeds. All of these things that we are reading about are not moral issues, they're physical issues. The calamities that God is creating are physical ones that may very well affect the life and the lives of people, but they're not moral ones. Thus, when God talks about in these cases talks about doing good, it is physical goodness and happiness, while the catastrophe is physical distress and misfortune, calamity, natural evils such as storms, earthquakes, and other disasters. Even when a physical disaster comes through the hand of wicked men or wicked women, we have to remember though, ultimately God permits it, right? And we can think of this in our own lives. Nobody in this room has lived all their years on this planet on a mountaintop. Bad things happen to us. Bad things happen to us. And we know that nothing happens to us that isn't first filtered through the hand of God. So he allows it. And for us as believers, we have specific reasons why those take place, which which we'll talk about. In many of the cases, God creates calamity because of disobedience, willful disobedience over a long period of time where he finally says, My mercy for you has come to an end, my long suffering for you has come to an end. It's over. Here comes the disaster. I want to read this from John MacArthur because I think this helps to solidify what I'm trying to say. He says it better. He says, quote, I I it is helpful, I think, to understand that sin is not itself a thing created. Sin is neither substance, being, spirit, nor matter. So it is technically not proper to think of sin as something that was created. Sin is simply a lack of moral perfection in a fallen creature. All have fallen short of the glory of God. That's it. In one verse, that's what sin is, right? We have fallen short of the glory of God, as MacArthur says. It's not a substance, it's nothing that's got a physical form to it. It's not a being, it's not alive, it's not even spirit, it's not even something, you know, it's not even an apparition, nor is it matter, nor is it comprised of atoms and molecules. It is simply a lack of moral perfection in a fallen creature. Who sets the standard for moral perfection? God does. We don't get to create that. Incidentally, that is a gigantic mistake by, especially, I mean, we're most familiar with people in America, especially American, I'll say Christians in quotes, where they think they can make the rules or break the rules. Right? They they are in willful disobedience to the Lord because essentially what they're saying to themselves is, has God said? And he has. And they turn the blind eye to it. And so they there is a lack of moral perfection whenever any one of us does that to any degree. MacArthur goes on to say, fallen creatures themselves bear full responsibility for their sin. And all evil in the universe emanates from the sins of fallen creatures. All evil in the universe. All the stuff and so much more that I mentioned, right? Volcadoes, tsunamis, thunderstorms, hurricanes, uh, tornadoes, you know, all of that stuff is all, it's crooked. It has filtered through the hands of God. Does God create the wind? God creates the wind. God created the air. God creates the currents in the air. And when he decides that he is going to whip that wind up into something that's more than just a breeze, he can be doing it for a number of reasons. He can be doing it. The worst of it is judgment. He could be doing it to catch our attention, to get us to turn back to him. But in a worst case scenario, it could very well be judgment. I've had enough. Death, pain, disease, stress, exhaustion, calamity, and all the bad things that happened came as a result of the entrance of sin into the universe. All those evil effects of sin continue to work in the world and be and will be with us as long as sin is with us. 1 Corinthians 10.13 promises us that God will not permit a greater trial than we can bear. And James 1.13 tells us that God will not tempt us with evil. God certainly is sovereign over evil. There's a sense in which it is proper even to say, MacArthur goes on, that evil is part of his eternal decree. He planned for it. It did not take him by surprise. It is not an interruption of his eternal plan. He declared the end from the beginning, and he is still working all things for his good pleasure. But God's rule with regard to evil is never as its author. He simply permits evil agents to work, then overrules evil for his own wise and holy ends. Ultimately, he is able to make all things, including all the fruits of all the evil of all time, work together for the greater good. Romans 8, 28. That give us a better handle on this. God is not the author of evil. Evil came to this planet because man sinned against God and continues to do so. And while we remain sinners, and all of us remain sinners until we are resurrected and live with the Lord Jesus Christ, or he returns and and and uh we we meet him in the air, um, there is going to be crookedness in the world. And we can't fix it. We can't fix it. No power, no wisdom, no strength, no understanding. Can't fix it. Back to our passage. Consider the work of God. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? When we now think of the things that God has made crooked, we see that he did not make moral things crooked. He's perfect, he's holy, he's righteous, but natural things he is allowed to be crooked, and it again is the result of original sin as well as the ongoing sin in the lives of all seven billion people that live on the planet Earth. So if we ask ourselves one final time, can we make any of this stuff straight? Can you fix the sinful propensity of natural man? Can you change Putin, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Hochel, Whitmer, Newsom? Can you change your neighbor? Can you change the person sitting next to you in the pew on Sundays? Can you change even your pastor? And most importantly, can you change yourself? You can do a lot of things to make yourself a little bit better. If you're an alcoholic and you go to AA and you become, you know, you're not an you're you don't drink anymore, yeah, you've made yourself better. But can you do anything to stop sinning? Nothing. Nothing. The only hope we have is once you're born again and the Spirit of God dwells within you. Now we have a choice. When we come to that crossroads and say, do I sin by going to the left or don't I? Before the Spirit dwelling within us, not that we sinned every single time we had a decision to make, but the propensity was always to go to the left. And now we have the Spirit of God dwelling within us that gives us that ability to say no to that sin. I'm going to walk in the paths of righteousness to honor and glorify my precious Savior. And He, His Spirit, gives us the power to do that. Other than that, we can't do a thing. So, what do we do in light of this broken, crooked world? We do what I hope we're already doing every day, day in and day out. It is when we do sin that we repent quickly, that we don't hide it, that we don't allow our pride to disguise it, that we don't sweep it under the rug, push it behind us, put it on the back burner. No, no matter how small it is, we need to go to the Lord on a regular and ongoing basis and say, Father, I just sinned against you. Please forgive me. His promise is that he will. But if we don't do that, if we harbor the tiniest, the smallest of sins, they continue to heap up within us. And the next thing you know, we're not even going to repent of anything. That's just how we are in our sinful flesh. Get right with God. Have a short account with God every hour of every day. And they will be small sins if you start to recognize these things. If you determine to yourself that you will allow the Spirit of God dwelling within you to point out to you when you have fallen and sinned against him, transgressed against your holy God, Savior God, that you will run to him and say, Forgive me. I repent, I want to turn from that sin. Help me not to do it again, Lord, and please forgive me. And he is faithful and just to forgive us, your forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Why don't we want to do that? We love to hide our sin. Calvin, Calvin wants, you know, the you know the the the verse in the Bible, your sin will find you out. Certainly, certainly that takes place. God, God knows it the moment it happens, of course. But I remember, and I can't find this, and I I've searched and I I gotta try and locate this. Calvin wrote uh a passage on on that scripture. It was absolutely beautiful, but one of the things he said was, and I've done this, God has the right to expose any and every sin you and I have ever committed before our spouses, before our children, before our neighbors, our friends, our pastor, our elders, our deacons, the person next to us in the pew, the people we think we're better than. He has the right to expose every one of your sins and my sins before the world. That's his right. And Calvin said, give God praise and thanksgiving. That he hasn't done that. If he's kept any of your forgiven sins within your heart, and he's forgotten them. Right? As far as the East is from the West, but hasn't allowed them to be exposed to show people who you really are. Boy, we need to give him an awful lot of thanksgiving. An awful lot of thanksgiving. Learn to pay attention to God at all times throughout your day. In the midst of all that's happening in this world around us, in our own backyard, turn your thoughts and meditations to him and to his work for you. And take your crooked things and my crooked things and lay them at his feet in repentance. How might we do this practically? How might we pay attention to God at all times throughout the day? Well, let's take the easy stuff. When something good happens in your life, no matter how small, acknowledge it and commemorate it. No matter how small it is. Um waking up in the morning. Waking up in the morning, and you're healthy, and you're undercovers, and it's 34 out, and it's 70 in your bedroom. Your house is heated, you've got running water, you've got hot water, you've got food in the pantry and in the refrigerator, you've got gasoline in the car, you've got lights, just blessings that he has given you as you just open your eyes in the morning and then think more profoundly about the fact that you're his kid, that he saved you, that in the midst of this crooked and perverse world and generation that we live in, he has called you out. You still live in this world, but we are not to be of this world. And so when something good happens to you, we just have this tendency to think, well, it's kind of what should have happened, or what does, or it's the same as it was yesterday. Nothing's changed. I had heat yesterday, I had light yesterday, I had a house yesterday, I had a car yesterday, I had a job yesterday, I had hot water yesterday. Today's the same old, same old. And we just kind of be, we're almost like curmudgeons, that we're not giving thanks on a daily basis when good things happen to us. How about I've told this story before, but just quickly, I remember on a missions trip to Romania, these guys had tires on their cars that we wouldn't put on a tricycle that a kid would ride around. They were bald as bald could be. They weren't, uh, there's no steel belt in them. They weren't that fancy. They're used tires, and I mean used tires. And they prayed when they got in that car, and they prayed when they got to their destination because it was by God's grace. I remember going around a mountain. They were taking us up to the top of a mountain called the Beacos Keys. And he was whipping around that mountain, and my life passed before my because I because I knew what the tires were like on this little Volkswagen. I said, This guy, there's no guardrailings. There's no guardrailings, and this guy's going around like this, and I'm sweating bullets in the back seat. He's like, All he's gonna do is pop a tire, it's all over. They didn't worry about that. Well, we prayed before we got in the car and they prayed when they got out, right? Things like that that we take for granted, they don't take for granted, and neither should we. Listen, about acknowledging and commemorating what God has done good in your life. Our next verse, the first part of it reads, in the day of prosperity, be joyful. In the day of prosperity, are we prosperous? Are we hurting in some ways? Probably. Physically, maybe mentally, maybe relationally, maybe even spiritually a little bit. Maybe we're, and I often think of the man in Mark chapter 9 that says, Lord, I believe help my unbelief. Right? So we've all got things that we have to deal with in our life. It's the crooked things because of sin that we encounter. But how about in the day of prosperity be joyful? When I don't need to see a raise of hands up, when was the last time you were truly joyful? Because God's got you where you are. Just think about that for a minute. God will have good things to come into your life and into my life, and we will tend to dismiss them or not even think of them. He has been so good to us that we in our flesh just sort of expect those things to happen to us. Here's just a couple of, I've given you some examples. Here's a few more. You could think of a hundred yourself. Let these be a starting short list of something that even if it's only one of these things that you think about throughout the day, not just when you wake up. You wake up in the morning and you have peace with God because He saved you.

unknown 42:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

We don't have to, as crazy as this world gets, if the heat gets turned up on nuclear war, right? None of us want to go through that, obviously, but if we do, we know that all that's gonna happen to us is we are gonna be transferred from this journey that's not our home into our final resting place. Most of the world wrings their hands over that kind of stuff. How about the fact that he has tender love? His promise is that he has tender loving mercies for each and every person in this Bible study here today. Every morning. Every single morning. Your health, your family, um, peace over the night. No intruder came in in the nighttime hours. I've said some of these things: a warm bed, clothing, a dry house, running water, hot water, food in the pantry, water that comes out of the faucet and rarely stops, phone, TV, internet, friends, family, money, job, retirement, savings account. The list goes on and on and on. But when was the last time we were joyful for those things? He has given them to you and to me to be prosperous. And our response needs to be joy and thanksgiving. And if we don't do these things, and I'm gonna end with this, and we'll start next week or next time we meet, uh, if we don't do these things, what do we have a propensity to do? Complain. Complain. And by doing that, what are we really doing? We are murmuring at God. I'm tired, I don't want to get Out of bed. The world's a mess. My hot water heater is broken. The car needs fixing. And all those things, or some of those things, might indeed take place in your life. And if you're a responsible individual, you're going to have to address those needs. But if the focus remains on the thing that's broken and not and that's not going right, then we've got a wrong focus. The focus is incorrect. We ask the Lord to help us through that situation, and we remain joyful for the things that He continues to give us. We need to be joyful and grateful to the Lord for all of his provisions and blessings, yielding us prosperity in our lives. Listen, you know well what Job says. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. He takes away a good running car. Are you still blessing the Lord? Or do you stop with the complaints and the murmurings? And that's as far as you go. When we come back in in two weeks, and and we may be uh it might it might not be a session where everybody can make it, because it's the Monday following uh Thanksgiving. But I'm doing that because we're only meeting once in December, and that's really the Christmas party. So if we don't have another Bible study after this one, we're gonna fly into the middle of January before we have another one. And I want to wrap this up. Um and it's it's um we're gonna go back, we're gonna go back to the Exodus, we're gonna turn and back back further into the Old Testament and uh listen to the incredible complaints of God's chosen people after he had done what he had done for them and considering what he was still doing for them, and yet the complaining, the murmuring was the loudest thing that God heard from his chosen people. And there were consequences, there were dire consequences that they paid. And don't think that we're not exempt from consequences, we're not exempt from consequences of our sin. You know, if we sin, we we might we might wreck our marriage, we might wreck our we might lose a job. Um, you know, the list goes on and on and on. You know, sin can wreck things. It doesn't wreck our relationship with our Lord, it doesn't wreck our salvation, praise God, that we can always have what did David say in Psalm 51? Return unto me the joy of my salvation. When's the last time we were joyous because we're saved? Joyous that we're saved. And so sin, while it will not break our relationship with God, he did everything to create that relationship, he does everything to maintain it. By God's grace, we can't wreck it because if we could, I'd be the first guy online to wreck it. Um, but we're gonna see how God reacted to the complaining and the murmuring of this blessed people that would turn out to be a nation called Israel and Israelites. He was the they were the apple of his eye. They were his chosen people. That's you and me today. The apple of his eye, his chosen people, men, women, boys, and girls, his kids. And we too often, like the Israelites of thousands of years ago in the desert, and they didn't need to be in the desert either. That was just a that was just Morsen that caused that to take place, but how they reacted to God's grace and mercy and provision was was so bad when it finally reached God's ears and he and he reacted to it, that the ones that were over 20 years old that were alive in that desert, not one of them, not one of them. With the exception of Joshua and Caleb saw the promised land that God had promised he would give them. Whose fault was it that they didn't get into the promised land? It was their fault. It was their sin. It was their reckless murmuring against God, and we have exactly the same propensity to do exactly the same stuff. Whine and moan and murmur and complain. Woe is me, nothing's right. I gotta do this and I gotta do that. Instead of focusing on what? The provisions that He's given us and find joy in those things. And you guys know there's probably somebody, maybe you're one of them, and praise God if you are. But if you're one of those people or you know of one of those people that faces the same adversities that you and I face, and they do so with a joyful heart. What an incredible person to be around. Because they're always joyous. No matter what's going on in their life, they're always finding joy in the Lord and what he's given to them. Even if it's a terrible set of circumstances. I'm not saying that they're joyous over what's going on that's bad in their life. They're not joyous over that, but they remain joyful for who God is, what he's done with them and for them, he saved them, and what he's given to them. And through that joy, when bad things happen, they pray and they ask God to fix that situation. And if it's his will, he hears those prayers. But you want to know something? If it's not his will, prayer doesn't go unanswered. It just doesn't go the way we had hoped it would go. But nevertheless, his love continues for us. Now, let me ask you this question. When you're whining and moaning and then going to the Lord in prayer without confessing your murmuring against what he's done for you, what do you think the odds are of him hearing your prayer? You know, the psalmist says that if you hold or I hold sin within our heart, he does not hear us. We gotta think about this, guys. Uh, you know, and I'll end with this because it's it's 7.53. When I was when I was up in in the office today, um I was crying up there as I was going over these passages, and here's why I was crying. I was crying because I said to myself, if we meet here essentially every Monday, three seasons out of four, and the word of God hasn't changed us, that we're the same as we were six months ago, a year ago, two years ago, four years ago. The only thing we've gained is maybe a little bit more knowledge out of the word. I I was crying to the Lord that I just prayed that that wouldn't be true. And and if it has been up to this point, that you would take his word, not anything that I said seriously, but take his word and meditate on it and get on. We all need to get on our faces again, either figuratively or literally, and ask him for forgiveness and ask his spirit dwelling within us to lead us to be a more joyful people, because we need help. We need help in that. And I'll end with this, and I've asked Kevin to close this in prayer. At our Thursday morning Bible study at our church, it's a men's Bible study, there is an elderly man by the name of uh uh Gene, who is the father of our pastor's wife. So he's our pastor's father-in-law. He is a, I believe he's both a Greek and a Hebrew scholar. Um he's at um he's at the Highlands in an assisted care facility, and uh they gave him the ability and the right to have a Bible study, and he has the biggest gathering of people there of anything that they have going. And I remember a story one time where a delivery guy came in and said, uh, I've got a package for so-and-so, and the gal at the front uh front desk said, Can't deliver it now. He's in a Bible study. So one thing you can't interrupt is this Bible study. But here's what he said about when you and I open the book the word of God, open up the good book, the Bible. He said, You need to do it. You need to do it in two ways. One, do it as a student. You want to learn, you know, you want to learn what God has for you in his word, right? 2 Timothy 2.15, you know, we want to, we just we want to be able to defend the gospel and to be rightly approved. So we need to approach this as a student. And I'm certain that everybody here tonight has done this uh the majority of times here, or maybe all the times here, but he said it doesn't stop there. You need to open the book as a soldier, a student and a soldier. And a soldier takes commands and obeys them. If you're a private or a corporal and you're sergeant, lieutenant, or captain, and you're in the service tells you to do something, you don't question why he says to do it. You just do it. You're commanded to do it by a superior officer. It's a legal command, it's an authorized command. You do it or you face the brig. So you do it. You've taken an oath to do it, frankly. And he said, that's how we have to look at the word of God. Student learn, soldier, obey the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ in here. And we've got two that cover just about everything, right? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. We're probably pretty good students. Maybe we're decent soldiers from time to time. But my guess is certainly in my life, I know this, that that's where I've got to work. The words have to come off the page, not only here, they've got to come here. And then love is an action verb. I've got to go out and proclaim Jesus in one way or another, honestly, truthfully, but whatever circumstance that the Lord gives me. And we all need to do that. To keep quiet around our relatives about Jesus being our Messiah and that they need him to be our Lord and Savior, to be quiet around those we work with, unless we've tried and they've just said, stop. All right? But to be that way because we're afraid, we have to get over that. We have to find, we have to ask the Lord for the strength and the desire and the will to go forth and tell people about Jesus. It is the only thing that's going to change this crooked world. The only thing is to bring Jesus, you know, preach Jesus in love, with grace. Not any better than anybody else, maybe worse than the person we're talking to. But everybody in our family, everybody in our neighborhood, everybody in our workplace needs Jesus. And so that leads me finally to say this. I know probably everybody in here is involved in a ministry that goes outside the four walls of your church. That is a wonderful thing. Keep it up. Keep being used by God in whatever capacity he's using, he's getting glorified by your work. If you're not involved in anything or you feel you're not involved in enough, don't sit on your hands. Be a soldier. Be a soldier. Get out and do something, right? Sue folds envelopes for compass care. Pardon? Papers, whatever. She folds the papers that go into the envelopes, right? I changed light bulbs at Compass Care. Where does that come on the list of doing stuff for the Lord? Certainly isn't Franklin Graham's stuff, right? It certainly isn't the stuff of 99.9% of the other people that are out there. But but they need those things being done on a regular basis. And so we're some of the many volunteers that go and do that stuff to make the burden lighter for somebody else, to allow the letters to get out, to what whatever it is. Guys, there's something for you to do. If you're sitting, if you think that you are your Christian life is wrapped up on an hour and a half on a Sunday, you've missed what the Bible says. As important as it is to continue to fellowship together. Because Hebrews tells us, do not forsake the assembly, uh, getting together and assembling with one another as some are as some are wont to do, as some think they're doing. And we see that. Fewer people are going to church than ever before, believers than ever before. But that's not where we stop. We can get re-energized there, we can get rejuvenized there, we can have great fellowship there, we can pray together there. Those are all good and necessary things to do. Then go out. Do something, guys. You're gonna, we're all gonna stand before God someday and he's gonna say, What did you do with the 10,000, 15,000 days that I gave you since I saved you? What'd you do with them? And of course, it doesn't have anything to do with salvation. It doesn't have anything to do with making it to heaven. Jesus is still preparing a mansion for each and every one of us, right? A room for each and every one of us. But there might be crowns there for us that he wants to give to us, and we won't get them because we didn't do even a little thing for him on a regular basis. We can't be like that. To his glory, we can't be like that. So think about that. Pray on that. Be a soldier for Christ. Be a soldier for Christ. Allow this Bible study, as long as you continue to come here, to change you, not just to make you a more scholarly person, but to move you out by the power of his word to bring glory to his son for what he's done for you and for me. All right. Thank you for joining us tonight at our Bible study. It is our hope and prayer that as you read God's word, you will understand him more, to be able to give him a greater glory, honor, and praise and thanksgiving that he and he alone deserves, and to be better soldiers in the cause of Christ. Thanks again, and uh until next time, may the Lord richly bless you and your family.