Mark Medley: You're ready for the word of God?
Mark Medley: Yeah, me too.
Mark Medley: Me too.
Mark Medley: Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, starting in verse 16,.
Mark Medley: Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness.
Mark Medley: I said in my heart God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.
Mark Medley: I said in my heart, with regard to the children of man, that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are but beasts, for what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beast is the same as one dies, so dies the other.
Mark Medley: They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all his vanity.
Mark Medley: All go to one place, all are from the dust, and to the dust all return.
Mark Medley: Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?
Mark Medley: So I have been in the spirit of the beast.
Mark Medley: The beast goes down into the earth.
Mark Medley: So I saw that there's nothing better than that.
Mark Medley: A man should rejoice, rejoice, rejoice in his work, for that is his lot.
Mark Medley: Who can bring him to see what will be after him?
Mark Medley: Well, father, we thank you for your word.
Mark Medley: We know that it's alive and it's powerful.
Mark Medley: We know it's every bit of it is for our instruction, and we pray for these words of wisdom that you give us this morning.
Mark Medley: We ask for your Holy Spirit to speak to us and let us see the things we need to see this morning.
Mark Medley: We pray for that in Jesus' name, amen.
Mark Medley: All right, so here's a question of the morning.
Mark Medley: If you could go back in time and sit for one day with any person in history Okay, jesus is assumed.
Mark Medley: Okay, besides Jesus, all right, of course, the answer is Jesus, right.
Mark Medley: If you could tear any battleground or any historical landmark with the person who made history there.
Mark Medley: Or if you could go back to any time in history and find the greatest person living at that time.
Mark Medley: Go back to the store, sit down with them, have a personal conversation with them, get wisdom from their mouth, not filtered by history books or anything like that.
Mark Medley: Hear them say this is what I saw, this is what I experienced, this is what I concluded.
Mark Medley: Who would you choose?
Mark Medley: Okay, paul, that's good.
Mark Medley: Yeah, he would have given Martin Luther, abraham Lincoln, adam.
Mark Medley: What would you ask?
Mark Medley: What did you do that for?
Mark Medley: Oh, did not.
Mark Medley: Somebody did not say Elvis, you got all of human history and you're going to go for Elvis.
Mark Medley: Oh man, I feel like that's a low bar right there.
Mark Medley: I feel like it would be pretty cool to get a guided tour of the moon with Neil Armstrong.
Mark Medley: That would be nice, wouldn't it?
Mark Medley: I'd like to sit.
Mark Medley: This is just who I am.
Mark Medley: I'd like to sit on a porch with a glass of sweet tea I sweet tea with Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and talk about the emancipation of slaves.
Mark Medley: That's just who I am.
Mark Medley: Okay, fun question, but you know what?
Mark Medley: It's good to remember that Ecclesiastes is a memoir.
Mark Medley: Solomon is telling us his personal experiences, right, and it's in his own words, and he was the greatest of his time and he's looking back over his life and he's sharing with his readers and many things that he's learned.
Mark Medley: This man is like the guide for life because he's had it all, he's seen it all, he's been in positions of great power, he has great wisdom, he's a great guide, right, and the amazing thing is that we can sit down with him this morning.
Mark Medley: We actually can't hear his words this morning.
Mark Medley: We can see what he saw and hear what he thought about what he saw.
Mark Medley: He's like the guide for life and he asks all these questions that, especially like even here today, he asks questions, we talk, we ask, and mankind asks right Questions about the uncertainty of life and why do unjust things happen, and what is valuable and what happens after we die.
Mark Medley: This is pretty important stuff, right, and he's going for it.
Mark Medley: We see, from the very beginning, like in chapter one, we saw that Solomon reminds us that the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear satisfied with hearing or filled with hearing.
Mark Medley: And so Solomon is saying temporary things do not satisfy my organs.
Mark Medley: Organs only always, ever, want more and more until they fail or never filled up.
Mark Medley: So he uses this word vanity over and over.
Mark Medley: And the word really it's translated emptiness or meaninglessness.
Mark Medley: But it's really it's a picture word and the picture is it's a fog, it's a mist, everything's misty.
Mark Medley: I can't quite make it out or a mist is something that doesn't last for a long time, or a mist is something that really doesn't have much substance to it.
Mark Medley: It's like cotton candy, you know put it in your mouth and it's just gone.
Mark Medley: It's sweet, it's sweet to the tongue, but it never fills the stomach and then it gives you cavities.
Mark Medley: And Solomon, but he's saying the process of trying to figure this life out is like shepherding the wind.
Mark Medley: I think it's a beautiful and kind of desperate word picture.
Mark Medley: Shepherding the wind.
Mark Medley: How do you shepherd the wind?
Mark Medley: How are you going to control the wind?
Mark Medley: There's nothing you can really do to get a handle on the wind right.
Mark Medley: So from one angle this book can seem like it's really cynical and really depressing.
Mark Medley: But I'm telling you, as I'm studying it for these sermons, I don't see it that way.
Mark Medley: I don't think so.
Mark Medley: To me, in the end, solomon's angle is positive.
Mark Medley: But the book does help us understand that asking hard questions and even realism, even maybe skepticism, are important parts of our faith If we want a simple, like supernatural, shallow, kind of faith.
Mark Medley: This book really gets on our nerves.
Mark Medley: But there's some of us that want deeper answers and ask harder questions and can smell a fake from 100 yards away and they've lived long enough to know that life is not as easy as everybody says it's going to be.
Mark Medley: It's not rosy, and I need some real answers.
Mark Medley: I need somebody who will speak reality to me.
Mark Medley: Well, solomon's your man, because he does it.
Mark Medley: But his thoughts are swinging like from pessimism to joy and from living life to the full to it's all vanity.
Mark Medley: What are we supposed to think?
Mark Medley: What do we think about life?
Mark Medley: Is it vanity or is it beautiful?
Mark Medley: Is it worth living?
Mark Medley: And Solomon says it all depends on how you orient yourself toward God.
Mark Medley: That makes the difference.
Mark Medley: So let's look at this passage here a second.
Mark Medley: And we see this.
Mark Medley: This is a pattern that we see in this book.
Mark Medley: I don't know if you've noticed it yet, but it's all through this book and the pattern is I saw.
Mark Medley: And then I said I saw these things.
Mark Medley: And then I said in my heart I saw, I said I saw, I said so, solomon is observing, I'm seeing.
Mark Medley: And then Solomon is drawing conclusions.
Mark Medley: That's what's going on here.
Mark Medley: But you can't always take his first words as his final answer, his conclusions.
Mark Medley: You know, man is like an animal, there's no difference.
Mark Medley: Okay, yeah, but let's keep listening.
Mark Medley: That's not.
Mark Medley: You can't just stop there, because he goes a little further, right, but look what he says.
Mark Medley: He says I saw unto the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness.
Mark Medley: That's verse 17.
Mark Medley: Here's a problem, right, there are institutions that are ordained by God, that were supposed to reflect his character and make life easier for us, like the court of law and the house of worship, the righteous judge and the holy priest.
Mark Medley: These places are supposed to be places of where we are getting some kind of justice and righteousness right.
Mark Medley: So there's no real way to have a sustainable society unless there's law and order and a place that we can get justice and a fair trial and accurate representation.
Mark Medley: Fair representation and institutions are supposed to be the place of refuge and safety.
Mark Medley: But something's broken.
Mark Medley: Something's broken.
Mark Medley: He's just saying it.
Mark Medley: We all kind of see it.
Mark Medley: Right, if you're actually looking, you see it, but he's saying it.
Mark Medley: The Solomon looked at those places where he's supposed to find justice and righteousness and he only found wickedness, prejudice, corruption, bribery, no recourse for justice.
Mark Medley: I thought about Paul when he was on trial in Acts, chapter 24.
Mark Medley: He was before Felix and Felix is having Paul come in.
Mark Medley: And then he lets Paul speak and he says Paul, I'll talk to you later about this and and it says that many times Paul came in to see Felix.
Mark Medley: And it says why.
Mark Medley: It says because Felix thought Paul would eventually offer him some money.
Mark Medley: It slipped him a little bribe to get out of jail, but Paul didn't play the game.
Mark Medley: And Paul spent over two years in custody because he didn't play the game.
Mark Medley: I mean, it was true in Solomon's day, it's true in Paul's day, it's true in our day too, right?
Mark Medley: I remember I was in one African country, which will remain nameless, but I was stopped.
Mark Medley: We dropped somebody off at the airport and we were just leaving, drop them off, leaving.
Mark Medley: We're driving out the exit and we were pulled over by the police and the officer came up to the window and while he came to the window, another officer ran behind and clamped our wheel.
Mark Medley: We're stuck, we can't go anywhere until we paid 140 Ghana CDs, which is about 50 bucks, something like that.
Mark Medley: I was in another former communist country, which will remain nameless, and there was a pastor who was driving us to church and he pulled.
Mark Medley: He was pulled over for some reason.
Mark Medley: There was no apparent reason to us.
Mark Medley: He was pulled over and in that country the police officer stays back and you get out of your car and you bring it, and so you bring whatever they're asking for, you go to them, and so the pastor went back and you know what he took with him.
Mark Medley: He took three things with him Vehicle registration, driver's license, wallet and really the officer didn't really care about the first two, he just wanted I think it was 10,000 Kazakhstan-y-tengays, which is about 40 bucks.
Mark Medley: I think 40 bucks is about the going price.
Mark Medley: Basically, 40 bucks is like the price of integrity.
Mark Medley: People sell it out for about 40 bucks, or 30 pieces of silver, maybe I don't know.
Mark Medley: Maybe that's it too.
Mark Medley: The people who are supposed to protect and serve were just running a racket, and it happens.
Mark Medley: It happens here as well.
Mark Medley: Sometimes the stakes are a whole lot higher.
Mark Medley: One of my favorite films of the last five years or so is called Just Mercy, and I don't know if you've seen it or not, but you might want to think about seeing it.
Mark Medley: It's a great film based on a true story, and it's about this defense attorney who moves to Alabama and his intent is to help defend poor people who can't afford proper legal representation.
Mark Medley: What he ends up doing is defending these death row inmates in the South in Alabama, most of them African American.
Mark Medley: Among those were Walter McMillan.
Mark Medley: His nickname was Johnny D.
Mark Medley: He was an African American man.
Mark Medley: He was convicted of killing an 18-year-old white girl, put in prison wrongfully, and through the hard work of the lawyer Stevenson and his team, the injustices were uncovered and eventually he was released.
Mark Medley: But he was released only after he had already spent six years on death row.
Mark Medley: The prejudice and the injustice portrayed in that story are ugly.
Mark Medley: It's a true story and, lonnie, you probably could tell us a lot of stories like that, couldn't you?
Mark Medley: From the prison?
Mark Medley: I mean, there's no justice where there should be justice.
Mark Medley: This is what he's saying and he's calling it out.
Mark Medley: Why is it?
Mark Medley: In places that are supposed to be safe, there's no safety.
Mark Medley: Same in Solomon's day, same as Paul's day, same in our day.
Mark Medley: But he goes further.
Mark Medley: He says something even more disturbing.
Mark Medley: He says even in a place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.
Mark Medley: Man.
Mark Medley: Now there's the rub, right, because even in places where you think there would be righteousness a place like church, there's unrighteousness.
Mark Medley: Even sometimes, the very ones who are supposed to be representing the right sometimes have wrong hearts, and even good institutions can become corrupt, or good institutions can have corrupt people in them, and even sometimes the very leaders are the ones that are corrupt.
Mark Medley: So what happens?
Mark Medley: When we experience something men and women who represent God, contrary to the way that he has revealed himself into scriptures then there's sometimes it's hard to disentangle the God who loves you from the leaders, the immature leaders or believers who have hurt you and sometimes you begin to just be angry with God.
Mark Medley: But that doesn't mean these God-ordained institutions are corrupting themselves, because they're just corrupt people in them.
Mark Medley: I mean, you can't throw them out?
Mark Medley: Well, you can, but it's not a great idea to do that.
Mark Medley: There's a lot of people who've been hurt by people in the church.
Mark Medley: I mean, can we talk?
Mark Medley: Is this okay?
Mark Medley: Good, all right, that's great, because we're going to.
Mark Medley: So it might as well be okay.
Mark Medley: They're hurt by people in the church they don't attend.
Mark Medley: Many of them are now in the process of deconstructing their faith because of experiences that they've had with people in church.
Mark Medley: But you know what their story isn't over God.
Mark Medley: It doesn't mean God's through with them.
Mark Medley: God is very well able to shepherd their souls if they're searching, and you know what, I'm fine.
Mark Medley: You can deconstruct with a good heart or a bad heart too.
Mark Medley: You can ask honest questions, which I think Solomon's asking here.
Mark Medley: He's asking real questions from a real, honest heart, genuinely concerned about these things.
Mark Medley: That's okay.
Mark Medley: You can also have bad motives.
Mark Medley: You can have bad motives anywhere, even deconstructing.
Mark Medley: You can have bad motives.
Mark Medley: But pray for them.
Mark Medley: Pray for them, love them.
Mark Medley: God's not finished with them.
Mark Medley: Yet the story is not over yet.
Mark Medley: It's okay.
Mark Medley: Their hearts are searching.
Mark Medley: That's a good thing.
Mark Medley: It's a good thing.
Mark Medley: God is well able to bring them back.
Mark Medley: When I got hurt by a church, I'm not going to church again.
Mark Medley: It's like you know, people get hurt in marriage and they just quit marriage.
Mark Medley: I mean, they quit that marriage.
Mark Medley: They also sometimes quit marriage.
Mark Medley: Marriage is no good.
Mark Medley: It's no good.
Mark Medley: Well, I mean, that doesn't mean the instant.
Mark Medley: That's not a factual or accurate assessment of the institution of marriage, because God created it and God says it's very good and it is very good.
Mark Medley: But it sometimes goes bad and you can't just throw the institution out because there's some bad hearts in it.
Mark Medley: That's what I'm saying.
Mark Medley: I had a flat tire once and that tire really let me down.
Mark Medley: I said I'm not driving anymore, I'm done with driving.
Mark Medley: That's not true.
Mark Medley: I drove to church this morning.
Mark Medley: Okay, I got food poisoning once.
Mark Medley: I said that's it.
Mark Medley: I am not eating ever again.
Mark Medley: That's kind of silly, isn't it?
Mark Medley: Of course I ate breakfast this morning.
Mark Medley: You know I got hurt.
Mark Medley: I'm quitting church.
Mark Medley: Okay, I've been church hurt.
Mark Medley: You've been church hurt.
Mark Medley: All God's people been church hurt.
Mark Medley: Believe me, your pastors have seen some of the worst of it.
Mark Medley: Believe me, if you want to share stories, we have a cup of coffee, strong, long cup of coffee, and I'm not making light of any experiences you might have, because your pain is real, my pain is real.
Mark Medley: But we have to think correctly about the church.
Mark Medley: The church is a wonderfully strong, resilient, nurturing place, with people in it who've been redeemed, who are healthy.
Mark Medley: The church is also a discourate, can be discouraging, degrading, degrading, toxic place, because there are people in churches that are not healthy.
Mark Medley: But it just surprises us and it disappoints us when it happens in the church because it's not supposed to happen in the church.
Mark Medley: Right, I looked into place of righteousness and I saw wickedness.
Mark Medley: But human beings are complex and sometimes current reactions are tied to past hurts and there's a degree of immaturity and a degree of insecurity.
Mark Medley: And sometimes, yes, there are bad motives.
Mark Medley: There's just bad hearts involved.
Mark Medley: Sometimes Humans are flawed, and I'm one of them.
Mark Medley: But church hurt, parental hurt, job hurt, friend hurt, it's really all.
Mark Medley: People hurt, right, it really comes from people.
Mark Medley: And even though we may have been hurt in church, the fact remains that Jesus Christ loves the church.
Mark Medley: Jesus Christ gave himself up for the church.
Mark Medley: Jesus Christ continues to intercede for his church and he's cleansing his bride and he's making her spotless.
Mark Medley: She's just not spotless yet, but she's gonna be.
Mark Medley: My personal church hurt and it's significant.
Mark Medley: After I've dealt with it, after I've seen it through the lens of Scripture and after I've seen allowed the Holy Spirit to enlight me on things about that hurt has actually caused me to draw nearer to God instead of push me away from God, because it's actually shown me what his heart is, and here's what I've seen about his heart God loves justice, mercy and humility.
Mark Medley: That's Micah 6-8.
Mark Medley: God is for the poor, the grief stricken, the humble, the brokenhearted and the peacemakers.
Mark Medley: That's Matthew 5, verses 1 through 12.
Mark Medley: God stands against the proud and for the humble.
Mark Medley: That's James 4-6.
Mark Medley: Jesus got angry at religious leaders who impeded rather than encouraged the faith of others.
Mark Medley: That's Matthew 21, verse 12 through 12 and 13.
Mark Medley: What I found is that God's heart breaks for the brokenhearted.
Mark Medley: He really cares for you, even in the midst of your broken heart, and I believe that he did not ordain your abuse.
Mark Medley: And so we can't, we can't run from church.
Mark Medley: We can run from church, but we can't really run from church if we're thinking correctly.
Mark Medley: Think about it.
Mark Medley: God gives gifts to the church to mature the church.
Mark Medley: So it doesn't make any sense for me to say, god, make me like you and then refuse to put myself in the context which he uses to make me like him.
Mark Medley: It doesn't make any sense.
Mark Medley: And how am I going to learn how to love unless I'm challenged to either love or hate, to be offended or forgive.
Mark Medley: And now I'm going to use my pain as justification to hate and be bitter toward others?
Mark Medley: I mean, where does it ever stop?
Mark Medley: Where does it stop Unless we humble ourselves?
Mark Medley: I choose to love the church because I have to say this I have to choose.
Mark Medley: I choose to love the church despite her faults, because Jesus Christ chooses to love me despite my faults.
Mark Medley: I receive grace and that's how I can give grace.
Mark Medley: And, honestly, sometimes I think what we're expecting from people is just unrealistic, because we're looking to them for approval or for security or significance or some provision that only God can give, and that's too much pressure for anybody to handle.
Mark Medley: And it's almost.
Mark Medley: It's always going to disappoint when you're putting your trust in people.
Mark Medley: It's always is a.
Mark Medley: I believe we should strive to live in such a way that we bless and not stress other people.
Mark Medley: I believe that that we are able to show Jesus to people, honor people and and give value to people, represent Jesus.
Mark Medley: But we strive to do that.
Mark Medley: But here we are.
Mark Medley: We're humans, right, we're humanity.
Mark Medley: We're the rose and the thorn.
Mark Medley: We're beautiful and we're pain inflicting both.
Mark Medley: So, yeah, there are hypocrites in the church, there are hypocrites on your job, there are hypocrites in politics, there are hypocrites in the media, there are hypocrites in sports, there are hypocrites in your family, and there's a hypocrite in your mirror and in mine.
Mark Medley: It's just the truth.
Mark Medley: So what are we going to do?
Mark Medley: What are we going to do?
Mark Medley: We have to humble ourselves, I think, and and give people the grace that we would want them to give to us.
Mark Medley: And I think Solomon is actually trying to help us learn about ourselves.
Mark Medley: In a lot of this book and here in this passage, even in verse 18, look, he says I set in my heart, with regard to the children of man, that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are butt beasts.
Mark Medley: All those rascals in church, all those unjust judges, all those preachers that are faking it.
Mark Medley: And Solomon is saying that God is challenging us.
Mark Medley: So we can see, we're no different.
Mark Medley: We're no different.
Mark Medley: He's.
Mark Medley: We're not behaving like men and women made in the image of God.
Mark Medley: We're behaving like beasts.
Mark Medley: And the nature of man is corrupted even from the fall.
Mark Medley: It's a fatal flaw.
Mark Medley: We're a crooked timber.
Mark Medley: It's hard to build with that.
Mark Medley: It's tough, tough to work with people, and I am one so and man is not basically good.
Mark Medley: I love this.
Mark Medley: I saw this this week.
Mark Medley: As I was preparing this sermon, my friend, kasia, in in Poland, put this on her Facebook.
Mark Medley: She said man is good.
Mark Medley: That's what cannibals say Awesome.
Mark Medley: It's also what people say who are not really paying attention.
Mark Medley: You know, yeah, there's goodness, of course there's goodness, but we're a mixed bag.
Mark Medley: That's the thing.
Mark Medley: But Solomon's paying attention.
Mark Medley: He's paying attention.
Mark Medley: These places, I'm looking, these places where justice and righteousness are supposed to be, and all I'm seeing is this is a reality, is we need a redeemer to change our hearts?
Mark Medley: And he goes even further.
Mark Medley: He says man has no advantage over the beasts.
Mark Medley: Animals and humans all go to the same place.
Mark Medley: That's not talking about heaven and hell.
Mark Medley: That's talking about we came from dust, we go to dust, we all, we all die.
Mark Medley: That's what he's saying.
Mark Medley: And who knows what happens after death?
Mark Medley: Who knows what happens after death.
Mark Medley: Really, only God knows what happens after death.
Mark Medley: I mean, we don't.
Mark Medley: We don't have any empirical evidence about what happens after death.
Mark Medley: Maybe we have some testimonies of people who died and came back, but we're we can't measure it, we can't see it.
Mark Medley: Everybody lives in in faith on this subject, whether you believe there's something after death or you don't believe.
Mark Medley: We're both living by faith here.
Mark Medley: But our faith is informed by the scriptures and also by the very power of God that has transformed us.
Mark Medley: We have experienced the power of God and so it's not really like a visual thing.
Mark Medley: We don't see it.
Mark Medley: We don't know what's beyond death by observation, but we know it by revelation.
Mark Medley: Job talks about it, daniel talks about it, isaiah talks about it.
Mark Medley: The New Testament is full of it.
Mark Medley: Jesus talked about it.
Mark Medley: Our hearts, the spirit of God, bears witness in our hearts about it.
Mark Medley: If there is something after death, we believe it.
Mark Medley: We do believe it.
Mark Medley: But Psalm is saying here you know who knows?
Mark Medley: Only God knows, ultimately All of these questions.
Mark Medley: But it's really curious to me when you look at all of his questions.
Mark Medley: I think Solomon's conclusions in the end are not really about trying to figure things out, because he seems to be really okay with not figuring everything out.
Mark Medley: Have you noticed that?
Mark Medley: Yet he's laying it out here, but he's not figuring every single thing out.
Mark Medley: He's not.
Mark Medley: He's pretty comfortable with attentions, but he's more concerned with what we're doing right now.
Mark Medley: So what?
Mark Medley: What do what we know and what we don't know?
Mark Medley: How does that affect what we're doing right now?
Mark Medley: So that's what he says.
Mark Medley: I saw, I saw.
Mark Medley: I said, okay, I'm seeing all these things.
Mark Medley: And then I said in my heart there's a conclusion here that he's coming to.
Mark Medley: How do we, how does what we know and what we don't know affect how we live?
Mark Medley: And I think what I see him saying here is don't let what you see leads you to the conclusion that life is not worth living, because what he ends up with is not a suicidal thought he's not talking about, it's just worthless.
Mark Medley: Let's just die.
Mark Medley: He says these things are not what they ought to be, but we all are given a lot in life.
Mark Medley: We should rejoice in the lot that we're given.
Mark Medley: A lot means a measure of good things.
Mark Medley: That's what it actually means.
Mark Medley: There's something allotted to you, your family, your job.
Mark Medley: So what else is there for men to do except rejoice in the job that he has, and he goes on.
Mark Medley: Later on he says rejoice in your family, rejoice in the wife that God gives you.
Mark Medley: He tells all through the following chapters it's not, life is worthless and we might as well die.
Mark Medley: And it's not, we might as well live it up because we're going to die.
Mark Medley: It's not just a selfish and self gratifying and narcissistic thing.
Mark Medley: I think what he's saying is live a life centered on God and appreciate every day as it comes as a gift of God from you, and live it, live it, live it.
Mark Medley: What else is there for us to do but to live it?
Mark Medley: It's actually more positive than we think it is.
Mark Medley: It sounds pretty hard, because he's being realistic, he's being real.
Mark Medley: We should patiently and joyfully embrace daily life as it comes to us from God, as a gift.
Mark Medley: And then he says this I said in my heart God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there's a time for every matter and for every work.
Mark Medley: So he goes on to say, though there's wickedness in places where there should be justice and righteousness, ultimately there is a righteous one who will judge righteously, and I believe Solomon is really genuinely concerned about righteousness and justice, and I think he's looking for it.
Mark Medley: I think he's really searching.
Mark Medley: He wanted to find righteousness, but he also saw that even in his own reign as king and as judge and as God's representative on earth, he was falling short.
Mark Medley: And I say that because he wrote a song about it.
Mark Medley: Did you know?
Mark Medley: Solomon wrote a song about these things?
Mark Medley: We actually read it a few weeks back in our daily Bible app.
Mark Medley: It's Psalm 72.
Mark Medley: And so he wrote this song and it was a prayer to God.
Mark Medley: It seems to me like it's a prayer to God for his own reign, his own position as a king.
Mark Medley: It's a prayer God, give the king justice and let the king rule with wisdom and justice.
Mark Medley: And the Psalm was sung at the coronation of kings.
Mark Medley: It's like a coronation to him.
Mark Medley: When they crowned the king, they sang this song.
Mark Medley: But I think it's pointing to somebody else.
Mark Medley: So see what you think, let's read it.
Mark Medley: Psalm 72, starting at verse one give the king your justice, oh God, and your righteousness to your royal son.
Mark Medley: May he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice.
Mark Medley: Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people and the hills in righteousness.
Mark Medley: May he defend the cause of the poor of the people.
Mark Medley: Give deliverance to the children of the needy and crush the oppressor.
Mark Medley: And in verse eight, may he have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.
Mark Medley: May the desert tribes bow down before him and his enemies lick the dust.
Mark Medley: May the kings of Tarshish and the coastlands render him tribute.
Mark Medley: May the kings of Sheba and Siba bring gifts.
Mark Medley: May all kings fall down before him.
Mark Medley: All nations serve him, for he delivers the needy when he calls and the poor in him, who has no helper.
Mark Medley: He has pity on the weak and on the needy and he saves the lives of the needy from oppression and violence.
Mark Medley: He redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight.
Mark Medley: This song goes beyond Solomon.
Mark Medley: This is not just about the son of David, the physical son of David Solomon.
Mark Medley: This is about the spiritual son of David, jesus Christ.
Mark Medley: This is about the Messiah who was promised to come and reign forever in God's kingdom.
Mark Medley: This is going to be on Solomon's day.
Mark Medley: It goes on forever.
Mark Medley: There is a righteous one, there is a just one.
Mark Medley: Jesus is the great high priest, the righteous one in the place of righteousness, and Solomon looked and he saw only wickedness there.
Mark Medley: But there's a righteous one and he's also the king of kings, the just one in the place of justice.
Mark Medley: He will judge righteously.
Mark Medley: And this is what he's looking for.
Mark Medley: Solomon's looking for him in this book of Ecclesiastes, and we're looking for justice in our own lives.
Mark Medley: We're trying to figure out is there any justice anywhere?
Mark Medley: Is there a just one anywhere?
Mark Medley: Is there a righteous one anywhere?
Mark Medley: And there is, there is.
Mark Medley: It's the king of kings.
Mark Medley: There is a place for recourse.
Mark Medley: There is justice.
Mark Medley: In the end, justice is going to be done.
Mark Medley: God will judge.
Mark Medley: And Solomon ends the entire book with this same thing, the same idea God will judge.
Mark Medley: And Paul said it this way at Acts 17.
Mark Medley: When he was preaching to unbelievers, he said times, the times of ignorance.
Mark Medley: God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he is fixed today, on which he will judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
Mark Medley: Jesus Christ, the righteous will judge in righteousness.
Mark Medley: It's a promise and it's a warning.
Mark Medley: Every one of us will be judged righteously.
Mark Medley: It's a day of beauty for some, triumph.
Mark Medley: It's also a day of terror for some.
Mark Medley: And which will it be for you is the question.
Mark Medley: So we're all looking for justice and there is one who is just and we're all trying in vain to shepherd the wind, and yet there's one that controls the wind in the ways, with his very words.
Mark Medley: It's Jesus, and I think what Solomon is doing is saying ultimately, his message is fear God, the one who shepherds the wind and controls your life and controls your death.
Mark Medley: He has the right to judge righteously, because he is righteous, and take what you've been given, what he gives to you as a gift, every day and live it to the full.
Mark Medley: I think, as we're going through the next few weeks, I think we're going to see this message over and over and over.
Mark Medley: The earth is a mess, but it's not hopeless and there's a purpose for us.
Mark Medley: I think we see that because he's honest.
Mark Medley: Solomon's honest here, and this righteous judge is the only one who can take away our sin, take our hearts of stone, give us hearts of flesh.
Mark Medley: He's the only one who's able to touch this crooked timber and bring us up straight.
Mark Medley: He's the only one.
Mark Medley: We need it.
Mark Medley: We need this, savior, amen.
Mark Medley: Let me pray for you, father.
Mark Medley: I thank you that we can hear the words of Solomon, the greatest in his day and the wisest of our world and a man who has had so many experiences and has so much that he's lived, lord, and this place of power he was in this place of wisdom that he sat in and he's able to speak to us, god, and thank you that it's real.
Mark Medley: It's not sidestepping issues, but even as he's looking for justice and righteousness, lord, we can see even in his song he's speaking prophetically about the one who is righteous and just Jesus.
Mark Medley: In Jesus, we look to you this morning.
Mark Medley: You are our righteousness, you're a place that we go for justice and we look to you, lord, to help us to know how to deal with our own hurt.
Mark Medley: Lord, I pray for those of us who are dealing with church hurt right now.
Mark Medley: Well, really, people hurt right now.
Mark Medley: Our institutional hurt of any kind, lord, is that we're supposed to be supportive or safe that have turned out to be unjust and unrighteous.
Mark Medley: Lord, I pray that you would help us to have hearts that are soft, to not harden our hearts and be bitter and hold unforgiveness.
Mark Medley: I pray you teach us how to have victory over those times, lord and Lord, any time that we've put our hope and trust in people and looked to them for things that only really you can give.
Mark Medley: I pray that you would forgive me for that, god and Lord, we pray that you would open up our eyes to see that and help us, god, to put our trust in you completely.
Mark Medley: And I remember the words of Peter about Jesus.
Mark Medley: Lord, he speaking about Jesus, speaking to us, his church, for to this you've been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you as an example so that you might follow in His steps.
Mark Medley: He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.
Mark Medley: When he was reviled.
Mark Medley: He did not revile in return when he was, when we suffered.
Mark Medley: He didn't threaten, but he continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously, and he Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
Mark Medley: By His wounds you've been healed.
Mark Medley: So, lord, I pray for that kind of healing as we pray this morning with a prayer group.
Mark Medley: Lord, that was something that you put on our hearts this morning to pray for healing.
Mark Medley: This morning, we pray for that healing by your wounds.
Mark Medley: We are healed, lord.
Mark Medley: By your stripes, jesus, we're forgiven and we're healed.
Mark Medley: And, lord, I pray that you would give us the out of that place of forgiveness, that courage and the enablement to be able to release people, lord, I just pray that there would be.
Mark Medley: We would be free.
Mark Medley: I pray for a release, god.
Mark Medley: We would release as we have been released and we would forgive as we have been forgiven, and we could walk in freedom, god, and all of those things that have been done to us that we could hold on to.
Mark Medley: Lord, we let go and we trust you.
Mark Medley: You're the one who judges righteously and thank you for showing us Jesus in this passage today.
Mark Medley: Lord, thank you for a wonderful Savior and Father.
Mark Medley: We pray for all the ones that we know who have been hurt and who are deconstructing their faith or who are walking away from the church.
Mark Medley: Lord, I know that you're a great shepherd and you can come, you can bring them back in and we pray for them, lord, as you have gone after us, leaving the 99, and gone after us, and you've brought us back to you, lord, I pray that you would do the same for them, god, that you would bring them back in, that you would draw them by your spirit and in their questions, lord, and in their searching God, you would lead them to the Lamb, we lift all of them off.
Mark Medley: Just if there's someone in your life that is in that position, just lift them up.
Mark Medley: Lord, we all pray together in agreement and ask you Lord, we want to see them back in in the fold, in church, in relationship with you.
Mark Medley: God, we pray for that.
Mark Medley: We ask you to bring people back, lord.
Mark Medley: Thank you for that in Jesus' name, amen.