Death The Great Equalizer

From the Book of Ecclesiastes Chapter 9

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We've traversed a lot of uh Ecclesiastes up to this uh Ecclesiastes up to this point, and Ecclesiastes falls under the category of wisdom books in the Bible, along with uh sometimes Job is included in that, but Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, uh Song of Solomon. And um while we might not get exactly the same kind of wisdom that we do from Proverbs or Psalms, nevertheless, and and predominantly because uh Solomon um is looking at life, at least through the first ten chapters of this book, uh nine and a half, he's looking at life. The term is under the sun, God's essentially out of the picture. His name comes up from time to time, as it did in our reading right here. But Solomon is is searching his heart for the way things go on this planet. And for chapter after chapter, for the most part, we see that he's shaking his head and say, I can't make high, I can't make any sense out of this. This is just this is just too much for me. And we know he's looked at all sorts of things, he's looked at folly, he's looked at wisdom, he's looked at a lot of different things, he's looked at the rich and the poor and all sorts of stuff. And he's still struggling to try and put all of this stuff together. And in this chapter, he spends the first few verses talking about death. And uh that's exactly what we're gonna do as well, obviously. Um because this chapter not only opens up talking about death, but also about the uncertainty of life's issues. There is, he he talks in here and he says, you know, the race doesn't always go to the quickest. We don't know why we might sometimes win and lose, even though we might have been the best candidate, or you pick the circumstances. We can't figure that out. Solomon couldn't figure that out. Why wouldn't the guy or the gal that worked from sunup to sundown doing everything necessary to win a race or a weightlifting thing or whatever it is? Why wouldn't he or she win? They did all the work, they did, they worked hard in that. Why wouldn't they win? And Solomon's scratching his head and he's saying, I don't get this. But even before that, he starts out with death. So we have an uncertainty in all of the things that take place in life, but one thing is certain, and that's death. It's a guarantee, should the Lord tarry. It's an absolute guarantee. Um if there was ever, you know, I don't know if anybody read this part of scripture uh before tonight, but this is a, especially the first nine verses or so, it's a sad part of scripture in in many respects. It is not for the believer, uh, but it is a sad part of scripture. It's almost a hopeless thing if you're to read this. And I've mentioned this before. This is an outstanding book to give to a non-believer. Because they will read nine chapters in this book and they will say, that's life. That's the way it is. Yep, you know, the good die young, the old live forever. I deserve more money than this guy makes at the job, and on and on it goes. They're looking at all these uncertainties, nothing they can do about it, they don't understand why everything seems to be going against them. That's what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes. That's what might very well draw a non-believer. Really, this book came from the Bible? Yeah, this book came from the Bible. One of the wonderful things about the Bible is this it doesn't sugarcoat life. It doesn't only, you look at the people that are in the Bible that we get to study, you'd say, well, God's only going to pick those that are holier than thou, right? Well, anything but, right? I mean, you know, you look at Samson. You know, God chose Samson to be a judge. The guy was uh from a character standpoint horrendous, right? And we can go through the Bible. He he chose David, and David was the only man in the Bible that says, here's a man after God's own heart. Look what he did. The Bible doesn't shy away from that stuff. And it's wonderful for you and me as we read the word. We know this is not a Pollyanna book. God, his Holy Spirit had men write these things down so that when we hit tough times, I mean there's a lot of reasons, but when we hit tough times, we can open the word because men and women before us have already had to go through those times. And we see where they made mistakes, and we see where they did things right. We see how God might have to chastise them as he did David, and we see how he lovingly corrects those that are his. And so we know we're never left alone. We're never left helpless or hopeless in this world. He is always with us, and he is always for us. But it's nevertheless a sad part of Scripture because this portion of Scripture says that one day we're gonna die, but before we do, life's filled with evil, and it will be pointless for all, Solomon says, because there's only hopelessness for all of us. That's looking at life under the sun. Remember the bumper sticker years ago, I'll keep it clean, and it said, Life's a dog and then you die. But the word wasn't really dog, right? Life's a dog and then you die. That's what Solomon is saying. That's summing up what Solomon is saying right here. Life's a dog and then you die. Verses one through uh six go like this. I want to repeat them. But all this I laid in my heart. Solomon is really studying this. This is not some superficial thing that Solomon said, Well, I think I'm gonna take a look at this for a couple of days. These thoughts are driving into his very being. Examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man doesn't know. Both are before him. It is the same for all, everybody. Since the same event happens to the righteous, he's talking about death here, and the wicked, to the good and the evil, and to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices, to him who doesn't sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, as he who swears, as he who shuns an oath. That swearing is not vulgarity, but it's it's an oath. This is an evil in all that's done under the sun, that is death, that the same event happens to all. Also the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that's done under the sun. Nobody's blowing up balloons and, you know, uh pounding on drums over this, right? Saying, well, we're gonna have a party over these words. This is life's a dog, and then you die. Solomon is carefully studying life and death here. And he comes to the conclusion in this part of Ecclesiastes that death brings meaningless to life. And I want us to remember that because, you know, as believers, our lives, should we choose to do so, can also be meaningless. Well, they might not be meaningless to our next of kin and our loved ones, but if we don't live a life that pleases Christ, if we don't live our lives the way He has called us to live, we too can have lives that have no legacy for our Lord. So while Solomon is looking at things under the sun, and this surely plays a great part in the non-believers' lives, we get sucked into this as well if we're not careful. Solomon says, no one escapes death. That's not a surprise to anyone here. We all know that we're gonna die. But he goes on to say, you know what? If you're righteous, you're gonna die. If you're evil, you're gonna die too. It is the great equalizer. You can be rich and famous, or you may be a nobody. You may be powerful and mighty, or you may be a serf or a slave. You may be an oppressor, or you may be one that's oppressed. You may be seemingly healthy, or you may have struggled with some debilitating disease, maybe a paralysis or blindness from birth. You can be beautiful or handsome, or you might just be plain. In fact, you can even be very religious, taking your faith very seriously. You worship God properly, you ask forgiveness for your sins, do good to other people, love him with all your heart, and yet, in the end, makes no difference when it comes to death. All your riches, all your power, all your might in the end is worthless against death. You may try to extend your life, but your days have already been numbered. And trust me, I'm not saying that it's not good for us to do things that please the Lord. We all should be doing those things, right? But when you look at the great men and women of faith, as wonderful as they were, some of them giving their lives because they would not back down and recant their position toward the Lord Jesus Christ. They went through the same process that we will all go through, good or evil, and that's death. So I'm confining this to the fact that we are all going to die. Solomon calls this an evil. The fact that the bad one dies is readily understandable and acceptable to most of us, right? There's probably nobody here that would say, I wish that Hitler lived longer. Now we'd all be on the same page with that, right? But good people, we kind of wish that they would live well into their hundreds, maybe never really die at all. Why don't people like our loving parents or our very good children live a long, long, long, long time? Why do they have to suffer maybe with cancer or Alzheimer's or some other debilitating disease? Maybe hit by an automobile or in some accident where they're paralyzed or they die? Why do they have to struggle when they're really doing their very best to do what's right in the eyes of God? Why did the good die young and even and evil people seem to live a longer life? These are the questions that Solomon is struggling with. You know, and frankly, these are questions, we'll talk about this because we already did going back to chapter two. These are the questions we should be asking ourselves because only when we contemplate our death, the fact that our physical bodies on this planet the way they are are going to come to an end, should the Lord tarry, we need to be accountable to the Lord, and that's one way to be able to do it. Jane Fonda is an example, talking about I'm gonna put her in the category of uh someone that is we, I don't think any of us would classify as a good person here. She's in her 80s. She's lived a long life. Um she was recently on on uh what's the name of that show? The View. The View. She was recently on The View. They were talking about abortion, and um, there may be a gal on that dais that that's pro-life, I don't know, but for all intents and purposes, I think they're all pro-abortion. And they were talking about uh what to do about these these people that are pro-life people. And uh Jane Fonda uh recently called for the death of any political person that is pro-life. And of course, by extension, anyone that agrees with that pro-life position. If it was up to her, she'd have him killed. She'd have us killed if we were making too much uh too much noise. And why she would be 80 years old with these attitudes that she's got, and someone else who loves the Lord dies in the mission field, Solomon can't figure out, and we can't figure out. We can work, try to work through it, but it's really very, very difficult. Lord, why, why, why? Now we all know why we have to die, right? Paul said in Romans 3.23, we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And if we go back to the book of Genesis, we read this and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Skipping a few verses, Genesis 2 goes on to say this. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. That's something for us to remember, right? This is before the fall. God put Adam in the garden to work it. Work will be, in my estimation, a part of our heavenly existence. We're not we're not just going to be sitting there with wings and harps and halos over our head. We are, I think we are going to wind up in a when when when Jesus creates a new heaven and a new earth, this is my personal opinion, it is going to be the Garden of Eden before the fall, similar to that, where we will have things to do. Remember that before the fall, Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God. The union and communion, God was perfect. They didn't even have a propensity to sin. That wasn't part of their nature yet. It was glorious, it was wonderful, and yet it wasn't enough. Verse 16 in chapter 2. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree in the garden. Wow, I get this whole place. I can eat anything I want. But wait. Verse 17 says, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Again, Solomon lets us know that death does not care how you or I have lived our lives. With regard to death, I'm talking. Let's make sure we all understand that. Think about it again. Death doesn't care how you've lived your life. It happens to all of us, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who doesn't sacrifice. To the good one and the bad one, they're all going to die. And he who lets his yes be yes, and those who disregard their oaths all find themselves in the same position. Death will eventually come, and Solomon can't get past this. What Solomon is saying here is what we know, but probably don't think too much about. Morality is no protection against mortality. Keeping God's law cannot keep you from Adam's curse. There was a poet by the name of John Don. Here's what he wrote: Earth is the womb from whence all living came, so it is the tomb, all go unto the same. So one thing's abundantly clear. Death is a predator that will track you and me down. We can't outrun it no matter how spiritually good we've been or how physically good we've been. Reiterating once again, we need to live a life that glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what he wants us to do. That's what he's called to do. That's what we should do in obedience to what he's done for us. But death is coming. You know, you think of um Bill Bright. Who did what organization did Bill Bright um big, huge Christian organization? And he wound up with a respiratory disease that eventually took his life. And that's the way it is, you know. You pick them who you want to pick, right? Crew. D. L. Pardon? Crew. Crew, thank you. Yeah. Um D. L. Moody and and and Billy Graham, and the list goes on and on and on. These men and women that we we revere that have done so much for the Lord, yet death comes. And Solomon is struggling with this. And you know, doesn't matter how much spinach we eat. Doesn't matter how many medicines, vitamins, and supplements we take, how many different ways we try to lose weight, how many injections, injections we receive to try to make us look younger, or how many workout programs we get involved in. Death seems to make all of what we do, Solomon is saying, meaningless. And isn't that a word that Solomon uses about a million times in this book? Vanity, vanity, meaningless, meaningless. It's a vapor. Here today, gone tomorrow. Over and over and over, Solomon is telling us these things are meaningless. They're all vanity. Death has veto power over everything that we have accomplished, whether it's good or bad. You work out every day, so does the guy or gal who dies of a heart attack at 39. Person keeps fit and trim, and we find out they die at 59 while some fat chain smoker lives into her 80s. So here's what Solomon is saying. We go back to chapter 2. One commentator wrote this: the human assassin comes looking for us all, and he will find you and me. Death robs your life of value. So how do we handle this issue? You and me, believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Ecclesian, verses one through ten does give us this intriguing analysis and outlook on life and death, but without our Savior in our lives. I've said this many times going through this book. Think about all the people around you who are destined to hell right now, have no real purpose in life as they try to find purpose in riches. They look to the government for direction and protection. They run as hard as they can from diseases, including stuff like COVID-19. They have no moorings in life. They go with the wind. Wherever the wind goes, they go. They're fine as long as their riches hold out, they're fine as long as maybe their political party is in power. They're fine as long as they're healthy. They don't get some debilitating disease. But let any of those things disappear. Fear, anger, hatred begins what drives them. Those emotions coming directly from the heart are now what drives the individual that has no hope beyond the grave. And think about that. They have no hope beyond the grave. I don't care whether or not you're a genius, uh, you know, it doesn't make any difference how high or low you are on any ladder, whatever the topic might be. If you don't have Jesus Christ, you have no hope. Your only hope is to try and stay alive as long as you can on this planet. Because either you've seared your conscience or you refuse to believe in the truth and the one that made you and the one that provided a way for you to have eternal life. And so you don't know what the afterlife brings. So you don't think about it. It's too scary. It's dark, it's unknown. And so what drives them? Fear. Anger. I'm sick. It looks like I'm gonna die. It's like Joseph Stalin in his grave, raising his fist to God because he couldn't live any longer. He was gonna die on that, uh, not his grave, but he was gonna die in that hospital bed. There was nothing that he could do. Anger and and hatred, hatred toward God. Even hatred toward people that are alive while they're dying. They're jealous of the fact that their life is about to come to an end. You think of COVID again because it's been so in the such uh close distant a close past, and um out of fear we find that our government's locked us down. Why? Because this life is all. They have. And so they push their faith, which is a secular humanistic faith, on all of us. It got to the point where individuals in government wanted non-vaccinated people to be corralled into places where we, I'm unvaccinated, where we would be segregated from the rest of society. That's fear, that's hatred, and that's anger. Finally, the godless, some of the godless, would yell that we should all die, those of us that chose not to get a vaccination, because they blamed us for the spreading of the disease. And others said that those that were unvaxxed should not be allowed to even get into a hospital to get well. They should not be allowed in there. They didn't get the vax, let them pay the price. Turns out, this is an aside, you were better off not going to the hospital. All right, it was very bad if you went there. Fear, hatred, overwhelming anxiety, and anger now drive their lives. And I'm just talking about one specific instance in our history, COVID-19, but it goes for everything to the non-believer. Why? Because they're living life under the sun. That's why. There is no real hope. They're trying to turn their heads away from thinking about death because ultimately they're scared. They may never admit it, they're scared. That's why they don't think about it. And that's why we do need to think about it as Christians. We do need to think about one day, death is coming. How do we want to leave this planet? Do we want a legacy for Jesus Christ? That when someone says, you know, Joe Smith just passed away, not he was a great guy, provided well for his family, and had a great job and a big house and a boat and all this stuff, and was a kind man, all those things are fine if that's how the Lord blesses you. But that Solomon tells us in this chapter, that goes away like this. There may be a couple of people on the planet that keep remembering you. Pretty soon it's gone. Nobody remembers who you were or what you did. That's why it's important for us to say, you know what, our days are numbered. Now we don't want to live our lives like this is our last day, and we'll get into that. But we do want to be cognizant of our deaths. Remember, Solomon back in chapter two said it's better to go to the house of mourning than a party. I'm paraphrasing, right? Why? Because he said you go to a funeral service, you look at that person in that casket. That's final. That's death. It's coming to you and it's coming to me. What are we going to do about it while God gives us more breaths to breathe? Death is like an etch a sketch, Solomon is saying to us. It cleans off all of our works. But he's forcing us to look at the reality of death so he can now tell us how to handle the inevitable. You know, Solomon was the wisest of men, other than our Lord Jesus Christ. There was no one wiser on the planet. He's carefully examining the reality of death in a fallen world. He has looked at the righteous, the wise, and all sorts of other things, and he's drawn the conclusion that the righteous and the wise actions are in the hands of God. And that's entirely true. Remember what Jesus said? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? That's the NKJV, if you read the ESV. And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? The NLT puts it this way in verse 1 in Ecclesiastes 9. I like the way they put it. This too, I carefully explored. Even though the actions of godly and wise people are in God's hands, no one knows whether God will show them favor. Now, he's not talking about favor from a heavenly perspective, from a salvation perspective. He's talking about, oh, you're doing good and godly and wise things. That should automatically mean you live a long life. And it doesn't. It doesn't. It's the way we should live. We don't ignore our Lord, but he doesn't guarantee us a long life. He guarantees us the exact number of days that he ordained before the foundation of the world for each and every one of us. I also don't mean don't pay any attention to your body. You know, I brought up the fat 80-year-old lady that was a smoker. You know, we don't want to be that person either. There's nothing wrong with working out. It's good. Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost. We should take care of them. Certainly, humanly speaking, the more we take care of our bodies, the longer we are going to live. And at least while we're alive, the better we're going to feel taking care of our bodies. The person that's the right physical weight when they step on the scale is certainly better off than a blob like me. I'm trying to change that. But that's just a fact, right? You know, how do any of us know if God will show us favor with long life or a healthy life or a wealthy life? How do we know if he will allow pain and suffering in our lives? We don't know these things until they come upon us. When will death come to us? In most cases, we really don't have the slightest idea. And even if we are very sick, maybe even sick unto death, we can't even say when we will take our last breath. So again, Solomon wants us to think deeply about these things. You know, in Ecclesiastes 3, we remember reading this, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die. And Solomon is forcing us to look at death. Our lives, every part of our lives, are in God's hands. He rules sovereignly over us in conception, in birth, in life, and all the things that our life encompasses and in death. All of these seasons of our lives are under his control and under his perfect timing. Solomon is asking, is he for you against you? Will he show you favor? And we don't know yet. We continue to be faithful to him and to his word and let him take care of the rest. That's not typically what we do. It's not typically what we do. Now, for the believer, he's never against us. Ever, ever, ever. He's always for us. He's always with us. He's never against us as his adopted sons or daughters through faith in his son, our Lord Jesus Christ. But he might be against us in our decision-making process. That's why we always need to go to him. If we're making decisions that are against his word, he continues to love us. He will never leave our side. He will never not he won't even love us any less. But if we make bad decisions, you know, the book of Hebrews tells us that we may deserve and he may meet out chastisement upon you and me. Not as punishment, but to point us back in the direction he wants us to walk. As a matter of fact, the writer of Hebrews says that if you're not chastised by the Lord, you're not one of his. King James says, you're a bastard. You are an illegitimate child of God if he has never chastised you. So when he does, praise him, because that's more proof that you are his, and then listen to him and follow him. And stop walking in the ways that are away from him and start walking in the ways that glorify him, repenting of your sin, asking him for forgiveness, and there you go. You are now standing as close to your Savior once again as you ever could, basking in his warmth and in his light and in his love and his compassion and in his care for you. To the non-believer, the one who thinks that this world is all there is, the one who presently thinks there is no afterlife, there's no God, there's no judge, they can't look around them and say, hey, look how good I've got it, or look how bad I've got it, and draw any conclusions as to whether God is approving or disapproving of his or her actions or decisions, because they're not looking in that direction and they don't care. There's no concrete evidence that they can ever latch onto. None. They're just going with their gut. What makes me feel good? What brings more into my savings account? And there's an incredible void there. I forgot what pastor caught what one pastor called it, but you know, there's a there's a hole in our heart that only Jesus can fill. And they try to fill things just like all of us did, unless you were saved at a very, very young age, just like all of us did before Jesus became our own Lord and Savior. We tried to fill the voids in our lives with the things that the world allows. And again, it all comes down to the same stuff, right? It's if you want to escape from this world, it's either booze or drugs. If you think you're gonna be happy, so you hop into this bed and that bed and the next bed. You think it's gonna take a bigger house or another car or a boat to make you happy, and so you work harder and longer, or harder and longer, and you wind up killing yourself for something that's worthless. Yet that's all you know. Verse 3 says this. This is an evil, all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil and madnesses in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. One commentator said that the universality of death is the greatest evil in the world. And keep this in mind, guys. Who caused death? Adam. Adam caused. Listen, that wasn't God's plan. He was prepared for it. He knew what was going to happen. That wasn't God's plan. God's plan when he created Adam and subsequently Eve was life forever in perfect union and communion with him. Adam sinned against God. Yes, Eve was deceived, but Adam was the one that sinned because as we read in chapter 2, God gave Adam that command not to eat of that tree. Eve gets duped by the serpent, right? That's not good. She eats the fruit, that's not good, hands it to Adam, and Adam says, Oh, yeah, it does look pretty good. Nothing's happened to you yet. Think I'll take a chomp. And with it, the entire world changed. Everything changed. Everything changed. Think about it: hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, um, adultery, drunkenness, divorce, um, wars. The list goes on and on. The world got turned on its head when Adam did these things. He could no longer till the field and only have perfect crops coming up. Now he's got to get rid of the weeds and the rocks and the stones and everything to try and have a good crop come up. Everything changed when Adam sinned. Everything. Not what God wanted. Adam is responsible for death. And since we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, you and I, we know, deserve death. The thing that Adam gave us was, in our nature, a propensity to sin. We are sinners because we are ultimately offspring of Adam. Fortunately, the second Adam came, he's known as Jesus Christ, and we've placed our faith in him. He does not take away physical death. Now that is the way for us to go to be with him. Our death is a door that opens for us to be with Jesus. And you say to yourself, I know that, you know, if I were taking a test on Christianity, what would I say about death? And I'd have all the right answers, right? Death is going to be glorious, and I'm going to be with my Lord, and heaven's going to be a place where there's no more sorrow or tears or crying, and everything is good and all that stuff. But you know what? I'd like to wait a little while longer. I think of Paul. Actually, I thought of Paul today when I was going over these notes again. Remember what Paul said? For me to live as Christ and to die is gain. There's a man, perhaps the greatest of the apostles, but there's still a man, still a sinful man, still needed a savior. But there's a man that said and lived his life. We could look at the life that he lived and know he meant what he said. When he said, for me to live is Christ. That's the only thing that mattered to him was pleasing his Lord and preaching to the lost because he loved the lost the way Jesus loved the lost, and preaching to the saved that they wouldn't go awry when they started to mess up on doctrinal issues that Paul said, you can't mess this up. That was his life. Every single day that was his life. He didn't care what he went through. You know, beaten 30, you know, beaten all those times, 39, 40 lashes minus one, shipwreck, uh robbed, all that stuff that he went through. And then he says, and on top of that, I've got this great concern for the church. Every breath this man took was to glorify the Lord Jesus. And what did he say? To die is gain. You remember that one time he says, you know what, guys? I'm paraphrasing, of course, I don't really know. I don't really know if I should stay with you any longer. Yeah, you you need, I think you need me. I think I still have some stuff to do, but I really don't know if I want to be with you anymore because when I'm not, I'm with the Lord. He did not care, according to how I read his words of scripture, what day the Lord had ordained him to go to be with him. That was a glorious day for Paul. That was a day he looked forward to. Do we? I'm not asking for an answer out loud. Do I? Do I? Do I look forward to that day? You know, when you eagerly awaiting. Are we right? Yeah, out of Hebrews, right? Are we eagerly awaiting our heavenly home? Yeah. You think about martyrs, whether they were all the way back in medieval times or today, that will not recant their faith hundreds of years ago, were burned at the stake or put on a rack, tortured. Today, different types of torture taking place. Those people are going through those things, I'm convinced, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to allow them to put up, to have their bodies racked with pain, to probably even have forgiveness in their heart for their captors and love in their heart for their captors. That's not a fleshly thing. Nobody could do that in their flesh. That is a supernatural spiritual thing that the Holy Spirit would give them. And hopefully, us should that ever take place. And you know, sometimes they're longing for their spouses, they're longing for their kids, they want to go back home, but yet they won't stop. Because for them to live is Christ and to die is gain. They've seen it, they're living it, and that's the conclusion that they come to. And we got to think about that, guys. We've got to give that a lot more thought than than we probably have in the past. In this verse, chapter 3, where Solomon tells us that uh, you know, all men are evil, everybody's doing everybody's uh uh doing evil things, the hearts of the children of men are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and then they go to die. Solomon is actually bringing up Genesis chapter 2. He's actually bringing up the fact there's a connection here, there's an unequivocal connection between the fall of mankind through Adam and you and I. How we are still today, thousands of years later, depending on who you go to, five to six thousand years since Adam sinned against the Lord, nothing's changed in our hearts. Blackened, desperately evil. Romans 5, we read this. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, Adam, and death through that sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. Skipping, that was verse 12 in chapter 5, going to 17. For if because of one man's trespass death reigned through that one man, and it does, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. The non-believer doesn't have this. Therefore, as one trespass led to the condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Praise his name. Give him all the glory, all the thanks. He and he alone deserves it all. Here's an example of our sin nature. Two kids playing in the middle of the living room. Let's say they're a year old each. There's a bunch of toys to play with all over the place. The living room's a mask with toys. They're both playing with their own toy and they're kind of involved in their own little game, whatever they're doing. They're having a bunch of fun. And then one of them puts down the toy that she was playing with and starts to grab the toy right out of the hand of the other kid that was playing with the toy. They both kind of get into a tussle, their arms are bouncing around and stuff, because the one doesn't want to give up the toy, and the other one won't stop because she wants it. Mind you, there's a bunch of toys on the floor ready to be played with. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Finally, one of them pushes the other one, and then they both start to cry. They're not crying because they're physically hurt, they're crying because neither got their own way. Where did they learn that? They'd never seen mommy or daddy push each other. They never saw mommy or daddy rip something out of the hand of the other. They didn't need to see anything like that done. That's because they have a sin nature. Just like you and me, they were born with it. And if we go back far enough, we're gonna find that the rebellion of Adam that caused that to be a part of every human being since the fall. And the wages for sin is death, as we already said. Because I sin, death will come to me. Because you sin, death will come to you. I want to end tonight by reading a prayer of Moses. It's Psalm 90. And I'd like us to pay particular attention to the entire psalm. Think of this. Moses wrote this psalm. It's probably the oldest psalm in the Bible. Asaf and David. David wrote most of the Psalms. Asaph wrote, I don't know, five or six of them. He was more or less, I think, a contemporary of David, but Moses wasn't. Alright? So here's an old psalm. And let's see what version I'm using. I'm actually reading out of the New Living Translation for this. Here's a prayer of Moses, a man of God, we would agree, right? Here's a righteous guy. Here's a man that God chose to deliver the Ten Commandments and then lead his chosen people through the Red Sea, then into the wilderness, to and toward the promised land. Here's what Moses writes in Psalm 90. Lord, through all the generations you have been our home. You know, where do we go? Where do we go when we're lost? When we're cold, when we're tired, when we're hurt? Where do we go? We want to go home. We want to go home. That's where our loved ones are if we're if we have family at home. That's where the warmth of the home is. That's where the familiarity of everything around us is. That's where our comfort is from a physical standpoint. What is Moses saying right here? Lord, you've been our home. He needs to be our home. Right? He needs to be our home. He needs to be the one that we run to during times of being hurt and discomfort and tired and cold and all the other things that take place in this evil world to us, even those who He has called to be His children. Lord, through all the generations you have been our home. Make our Lord our homes. Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God. What does that mean? He's in charge of everything. Everything. He is creator, sustainer, and savior. Nothing, zero, is outside his understanding, and there is nothing outside his positive will that won't be done. Why would we go anywhere else? He created it all. You read Colossians chapter 1, that great uh dissertation on the Lord Jesus Christ. He created it all, he sustains it all. Jesus holds all things together. He holds all things together. You mean he holds together two cells in my body? Sure he does. You mean he holds atoms of helium together? Yeah. You mean he holds molecules of our atmosphere together? You mean he holds that table together, that candy together, this radio together, this glass and water together? Yeah. Everything. If he ever let go complete and total and utter chaos, why don't we run to him? He's in control of everything. You know, Moses tells us before you even gave birth to the earth and the world, before the mountains were even born, before you created any of this stuff in Genesis 1, Moses says, from beginning to end, which of course is a human way of saying, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. You turn people back to dust, saying, Return to dust, you mortals. See? Gonna die. Gonna die. For you, a thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few night hours. Peter tells us the same thing, right? Thousand years is as a day, a day is as a thousand years. Peter tells us, you know why? God doesn't have a past or a future, everybody. God only exists in the present. Everything is before him. Everything. There's no future with him. When we say I'm gonna do this or that tomorrow, there's no tomorrow with God. None. He is outside of time. There's no midnight, there's no noon, there's no Monday, there's no April, there's no 2023. There's none of that stuff. That's all for us. He lives outside of that time. I forgot who I was talking to, but if you think about sitting on a grandstand in a parade, and a parade uh usually starts on a street that's at a 90-degree angle to the main street that you're on. And the firemen or whoever it is, they're all getting ready. The high schools, whatever it is, they're all getting ready, they're practicing and all that stuff. You're sitting in the grandstand, you can't see them. They're about ready to come around the corner, you can't see them. They come around the corner and they walk past you, you see them nicely, and then they go beyond you, and they go around down another street and around the corner, and you can't see them again. We can only see what's in front of us today. There's no corners with God. There's none. It's all now with him. You sweep people away like dreams that disappear. He's in control. He's in control. You know, a church, Bill knows this at church, we're going through the book of Daniel, and you know, people, people, uh, how many verses have I got here? I'll make it. I'll make it. People spend a lot of time trying to determine, trying to determine what the different parts of the statue that, uh, whether it was Nebuchadnezzar or whoever saw, right? And you you've got gold and silver and bronze and iron and iron mixed with clay and all this stuff, and one guy says, well, the the top one's Babylon, and the second one's the Med and the Persians, and then the third one's Greece, and the fourth one's Rome, and then somebody else says, no, wait a minute, the top one's Greece, but the second one's uh the Persians, the third one's the Medes, the fourth one's Greece, and they're getting all messed up over this. Nobody agrees on any of this stuff, right? Here's the point. Here's the point in Daniel, in this particular area of Daniel. It's not so much what do those different parts of the statue represent, it's the fact that, you know, at the time when Nebuchadnezzar was king in Babylon, it was the greatest nation of the time. And that's why he was on the top. Daniel even told him, that's you. You're the most powerful guy running the most powerful nation on the planet Earth right now. Why? Because God allowed that. And guess what, Nebuchadnezzar? There's somebody coming after you. Don't know if it's the Medes or the Persians or the Medes and the Persians. You're done. So what do we learn from that? God ordains governments and they come and go according to his will and his perfect timing. That's what's important there. And what Moses is saying right here, right? You sweep people away like dreams that disappear. They're gone. Gone. They are like grass that springs up in the morning. In the morning it blooms and flourishes, but by evening it is dry and withered. We wither beneath your anger, we are overwhelmed by your fury. You spread out our sins before you, our secret sins, and you see them all. Question for all of us: how wonderful is it that God doesn't expose all of our sins to everybody else? I'll tell you, if he did, there wouldn't be anybody in this room, including my wife. I'd be a hermit on an island by myself because nobody would believe that anybody could be that evil, and I'm not, this is not hyperbole. But God, in his incredible grace, says, you know what? It's between you and me. And he sees them all. There's no secrets with them. You can close the door and say, I'm doing this behind a closed door or whatever. And uh, yeah, I might not see it. Everybody else might see you are in the wide open eyes of your Savior. We live our lives beneath your wrath, ending our years with a groan. 70 years are given to us, some even live to 80. I've underlined this. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble. Soon they disappear and we fly away. Pain and trouble are part of our lives now because of the fall. Who can comprehend the power of your anger? Your wrath is as awesome as the fear you deserve. You know, Paul tells us in Thessalonians, we will never have to put up with one millisecond of God's wrath. And when you look at what his wrath has done in the past, can, and will do to bring glory to his name and fix all the wrongs, we will not be part of that wrath. And I don't care if you're pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, or no trib. I don't care if you're rapture or no rapture, it doesn't make any difference in this regard, and that's this. You and I will not be exposed or have to be put through one millisecond of God's wrath to his praise and glory. Verse 12, teach us to realize the brevity of life so that we may grow in wisdom. Teach us to number our days, right? For what reason? So that we can grow in wisdom, that we would grow in the fear and reverence of the Lord and become more obedient to Him and try to be more like Christ. Oh Lord, come back to us. How long will you delay? Take pity on your servants, satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so that we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Who sings for, don't raise your hand, who sings for joy to the Lord in the morning? Don't raise your hand. Please don't raise your hand. I'll raise mine saying that I don't, right? Moses, Moses, 5,000 years ago, said, Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love so that we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. You know, the psalmist says in Psalm 37, 4, delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. So when you delight yourself in the Lord, it comes natural that you're doing what your heart is desiring. You will get that, and you won't be yearning for anything more. It will be enough. Give us gladness. Listen to this. Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery. Lord, I've had a tough time. It's been brutal. It really has been. You know it. And Lord God, I want you to be glorified. But I just also want you to ask, you know how bad it's been for me? Maybe it could be that prosperous for me. That's what Moses is saying here, right? Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery. Replace the evil years with good. Let us, your servants, see you work again. Let our children see your glory. And may the Lord our God show us his approval and make our efforts successful. Yes, make our efforts successful. Let me close by saying this. Number one, I lied. We only made it through three verses. But I hope, I hope, guys, and and obviously we're not done with this, but I hope that that all of us we need to reassess how we think about death in many ways. Number one, we we know it's inevitable, but we don't pay a lot of attention to it. Because we just we don't want to think about it. It's something we don't really w wanna, you know, much rather Jesus, please come. I don't want to die, I'd rather you, you know, I I be I be raised up with you, right? But if we have a life that we want to try to take the apostle Paul and say, you know, I want to try to emulate his life, um, the Lord Jesus emulating his life would be exemplary. We obviously can't we can we can emulate it from the standpoint of his love and his compassion. But Paul saying that for him to live as Christ and to die his gain needs to be something we need to meditate on. And and again, not so that we live today like it's the last day of our lives, because that's frankly, that's stupid. Okay? A lot of songs are kind of written around those things and some even fluffy uh sermons from some pastors, and and we'll get into that the next time we meet. But the fact is, we don't want to live today like it's the last day of our lives because we would give up on everything else. Right? I'm not gonna pay my bills, this is the last day of my life, I'm gonna go do this because nobody can catch me, and that's that it's a crazy way to live. But what's not crazy is to say I've got a finite number of days on this planet. God's ordained them, I don't know how long they are, but I want to determine right now that I'm gonna place greater faith in him, that he that I'm really gonna believe that he loves me more than I love myself. C.S. Lewis said this. His wife Joy was dying of cancer. And he wrote a note to his friend, and this is what he said. Think about this. We're not necessarily doubting that God has the best for us. We're just wondering how painful will the best be. Not to run away from it, not to try and escape it, but to remember who's in control, and that God does only have his best for us. But it might be a painful trip as we go through that.