June 28, 2026-Morning Sermon

Wealth,Death, and Contentment, Ecclesiastes 11:1- 10

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You have your Bibles at your term meetings, the Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 11. We walk through Ecclesiastes. Uh today touches on one of those subjects that sometimes preachers maybe we don't like to talk about too much. And that is uh potentially the the concept of um money. So before you get all worked up and concerned, I'm not about to ask you for money, but what I'm gonna do is talk to you about God's word from a standpoint of what it says about money. And it is a little bit unique talking about this because I'm not a financial planner, I'm not a financial advisor. That is not my forte. My forte is in theological education. That's what I trained to do. So many of you know more about finances than I do, obviously. But we have to remember that Solomon, one of the wisest men never walked the face of the earth, was blessed with wisdom because he asked God for it. But on top of that, he also, God also gave Solomon wealth and everything else. Okay, so the lesson we're gonna hear today from Solomon is gonna be real important. He's gonna talk to us a little bit about wealth, and as he does quite often, he'll even mention death and the idea that we need to be content with both when they come. Uh, before we get started, I wanted to reread the verse that Rusty uh read a minute ago. Every time when we take up offering, we always read a verse or two that has to do with our tithes and offerings. So listen again to what he read this morning, Proverbs chapter 11, verses 24 and 25. It says, One gives freely, yet grows all the richer. Another withholds what he should give and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessings will be enriched, and the one who waters will himself be watered. That reminds me of a phrase I've heard some of you say many times before, the fact that we cannot outgive God. And that is encouragement. There's plenty of scripture that talks about tithes, offerings, and what you should give and how you should give, et cetera, et cetera. But today's verse, today's scripture is not about that. We're not going to say you need to give so much money to the church, you need to do this and this. Today, we're going to look at something that Solomon had on his mind, as he had experienced all of life and had more money than you and I could ever imagine having. He's concerned about the dangers of making money. Now, hear me right. Hear me well. Nothing wrong with making money. God's blessed many people with that ability to make it, make a lot of it, and use it for his glory. But his concern throughout this whole book is that people lived their whole life and they missed the whole point about having a relationship with God because they've been fixated on so many other issues in life. The issues of day would be money, obviously. His concern was that people would be so consumed with work and with wealth that they would miss out on being able to enjoy life. You know people like that? They just get so caught up on making money. Again, nothing wrong with making money. Nothing wrong with uh being very wise. Matter of fact, he's gonna give us advice on how to make money today. But the catch here would be not to be so consumed by it that you miss out on enjoy life and your relationship with God, the one who provides all. The second thing, another danger of trying to make money is the fact that poverty can come and will come, sometimes through pure laziness and other times through pure misfortune that happens to many people. So he wants us to be careful about that. He gives advice so that if this happens, we'll know how to make it through. So let's take a look at this. So first he starts off, he says, Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Now, when you read this literally, I go back to the days of being out by a pond and taking bread from the mimbo store and throwing it out on the deck to the catfish. Casting your bread upon the waters. Well, the way that it'd come back to me, the next time we got there to throw more bread, the fish would be there again. I didn't necessarily eat them, but if somebody were to eat them, well then obviously that would be a blessing. Another way, if you want to get gross about it, that if you cast your bread upon the waters, it'll come back to you. You ever been to a place where there's lots of geese or ducks by the water? You throw the bread out there. Does the bread come back? Oh, yes, it does. The next time you go out there, don't you have to watch where you step? You see what I'm saying? We're just gonna leave that alone because that's really immature, okay? But think about this for a second. Commentators are kind of up in the air about exactly what they're talking about. There's three things to keep in mind. One, it's a concept that people are talking about charity. That if you'll be good to give to others with charity, then that'll come back to you. Okay? Now, there's nowhere else in the book of Ecclesiastes that talks specifically about charity. There's just talk about oppression, wealth, death, life, everything else. So people say that's really not what they're talking about. Others say, well, it has something to do with an investment. You invest and eventually you'll make money, and that's true. But think about it through the eyes of Solomon and his case. What do we know about King Solomon? Well, 1 Kings 10, 22, listen to what it says. It says, for the king, talking about Solomon, had a fleet of ships of Tarshus at sea with the fleet with Haram. Once every three years, the fleet of the ships of Tarshus used to come and bring gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. Okay. Little interesting story there. The idea, I could see Solomon saying, cast your bread upon the waters, be involved in maritime trade, and you will be blessed from that. Now, today, do we have the opportunity to be involved in maritime trade? Maybe we do, maybe we don't. Okay, we're not necessarily going to send a ship over to somewhere to pick up stuff, but then again, we may pay a company that'll help get stuff shipped here that we can use to make money with. But there's this idea of being involved, of working, knowing that it will be prosperous when the time is right. Verse 2 says, give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you do not know what disaster may happen on earth. Here we see this concept of diversity. And you guys understand this better than I do. There's an old saying, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Okay, now when you come to Easter egg hunting, I'm always getting one basket. I'm not giving nobody else my eggs. But in this case, it's the idea that look at investing in diverse things. Don't have it all in one, spread it out. Doing so, you will save yourself. Why seven or eight? Well, it's a number they put out there. The concept behind that is that you don't know what's going to fail and what's not. You might have two or three that fell, fell, but if you do, then you've got six or five that made it. So the concept is when you're thinking of financial things, be diverse in that. Take the money, invest it in different things. Uh you can think of experiences in the past. Um, I mean the one that comes to my mind way back in the day was Enron. Black people invested in that, and that kind of fell through. If that's all you were invested in, you lost an awful lot, if not everything. So just some things to think about when it comes to investing. Again, financial diversity, the ideas don't put all the eggs in one basket. And again, today's sermon, I'm just giving you what Ecclesiastes says through the eyes of Solomon. If you want deeper information on that, you know, look up Dave Ramsey and others who talk about financial investing. I'm not the one to talk to you about that, but you can certainly look that up. But let's move forward. Look at verse three. It says if the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth. A tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. And what's he talking about here? Obviously, if the clouds get full up, it's gonna rain. And when they empty themselves on the earth, if it's bad enough, there's gonna be disaster. There's gonna be a problem. A tree's gonna fall, whichever way it falls, that way is the way it's gonna go and it's gonna land. Disaster can come, misfortune will come. Are we prepared for it by being diverse in the way we handle our finances? It says there in verse 4 He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap. As we go through life and we're investing, good times are gonna come, bad times are gonna come. An example given here has to do with planting. Is there a certain time to plant, a certain time not to plant? This thought here is if we spend so much time observing, watching the wind, thinking, okay, now's the time we could miss it. And if we miss it, then we won't be able to plant, which means we won't reap. A simple practical illustration I think of is in the grass cutting business. The other day I was trying to plan on having guys to come cut grass, and as you know, it's not the most pleasant thing to do cutting when it's pouring down rain. And you know as well as I do that sometimes the meteorologists don't quite get it right. They really try, but when you get a pop-up storm, sometimes you just can't predict that. So the other day we were planning and saw that it was going to be raining, but I thought, you know what, let's just gamble and just have the guys come anyway. Well, sure enough, the guys came and it didn't rain at all. And we're real excited about it. The next step, we had to cut a graveyard. And it was the day before um Father's Day. We wanted to make sure the graveyard looked nice out there in Roseville. And they were not calling for rain. I said, this is going to be great. We get the guys out there, get them to working. And as a boss, I'm doing what bosses do. I'm sitting on my porch drinking coffee with a mayor. And about that time, the bottom pours out. They had to stop for a few minutes, they had to wait for the rain to pass. If we spend all of our time watching, waiting for the right moment to do things, we can miss out on the benefit of actually doing the thing that God has called us to do. He who observes the wind will not sow because they're so caught up on the circumstances. And then he who regards the clouds will not reap because you didn't take time to sow because you were looking for the opportune time to do it. What's the idea here? Unavoidable times of misfortune will come and they cannot be avoided. But that doesn't give us the excuse to not do any work. Trying to run a handyman lawn care business, if if every day I saw there was going to be rain, well then I wouldn't go out and have the guys cut grass. And if I kept waiting long enough, we'd never get any grass cut and to be two or three feet tall. You can't avoid misfortune. It's gonna come. But you don't sit around and wait on it. You do financially plan for it, but you still have to put in the work. Look at verse 5, it says, as you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones of the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. Now, here we take a little bit of a transition. We got physicians in the room. Uh most of you, probably 90% of us, have been around at a birth of a baby. I've seen three myself. Okay, that's a special moment. But how does it work that that baby gets its first breath? Here the scripture uh spirit uh can also mean breath. How is it that that first happens with the baby? You can try to explain medically that if you do this and this, if you pop them hard enough in their rear, all of a sudden they'll go, they'll gasp. But that simply put is a gift from God. So we don't understand exactly how this works from conception to birth. So we do not understand the work of God who makes everything. God is God and we are not. He does things that maybe don't make sense to us, but we have to trust him, trust the process of what he's doing during the good times, during the times of misfortune, being wise, knowing that he is in control and that he has a plan. Good happens to all of us, bad happens to many of us, but he is still God. Will we trust him during these times? We don't know his ways, so because we do not know his ways, can we leave the outcome to him? Maybe we shouldn't demand success from him, since we're but human.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Anybody here understand the ways of God fully? I don't.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

God does what he's gonna do. Sometimes we won't fully understand that until we look back.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

You want me to give you an example? Just this morning had a question, and I'll talk about it tonight. But think about the story of Rahab. She's a prostitute, right? She living for Jesus? She wasn't. She was living for herself and make a little side hustle.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

However, they make that kind of money. But when spies are sent out to check out the land, they go and stay with her. Now that that makes absolutely no sense, God telling you to go stay at a prostitute's house. Now, a sinful mind might say, hot dog, but the men of God have to be obedient to what God calls them to do, right? Well, you look at the story, they go, they stay with her, they get protected. She has to be protected when they come in and take over the land. Doesn't she put a string out, a velvet, a red string out, and she saved from that?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Okay, she was not one of the children of Israel. She wasn't. She was part of the land that was to be destroyed.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

But we understand from the beginning in the Old Testament that God is a God of all people, that He loves all people and wants all people to come to know Him. So, what's the big deal about that? We'll talk more about it in depth tonight. So, a little side coat to come tonight if you want to find out what actually happened while they were together. We'll talk about that tonight. But ain't her name listed in the book of Matthew? Oh, that's the New Testament. That's hundreds of years later. She married Boaz, did she not? No, I missed it. Salmon. Sorry, I messed that up. And her name is listed. One of three, four women listed in the genealogy of Christ. Makes no sense looking at it, but God was at work. We're gonna have good times, we're gonna have bad times, times of success, times of uh uh of misfortune. We don't understand how God works, his ways are higher than our ways. Let's live life, enjoy it. As he leads us to do something, let's trust the success to him because he's calling us to do it, and we're gonna do it with his power and not ours, and leave the outcome to him. Because he is God and He's all powerful, He's our creator. Verse uh six says, In the morning sow your seed, and the evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. The idea of you're working in the morning, you come home, you're in diversity, you're doing other things, other ways to make money, you're putting your hand to work, or that also, not knowing which will be successful or which won't be, but trusting that uh the Lord will provide. He talks about wealth, and then he switches over here in verse seven, and we look at life and death. I know you're probably tired of hearing me talking about life and death, but it's in Ecclesiastes, so we've got to talk about it. And for those of you that are tired of hearing about Ecclesiastes, understand that uh after this week there'll only be one more sermon in two weeks on Ecclesiastes, and then we'll be done with that, okay? But this is God's word. And look what he says: he says, light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. What is he talking about here? While we have breath, while we have life, it's great. We're alive, we're enjoying life, or should be enjoying life, and it's pleasant. The light here would be being alive. Then he switches over in verse 8, he says, So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all. But let him remember that the days of darkness will be many, all that comes is vanity. So now let's put this in perspective here for a second. We're looking at life versus death using light versus darkness. So everybody's gonna experience light. We're all breathing, we're all alive, we're all been born, but the days coming when we're gonna step into what he's calling darkness, the idea that life is over. So he's saying here, while you have this many years of life, enjoy them. But remember, you're gonna have more days of darkness. Now, if you think of darkness in terms of gloom, we're missing the point. If we think of darkness in terms of death, we're gonna be dead a whole lot longer than we're alive. All that comes during the time that you're alive is in vain. But why would he mention this life and death and how there be many more days of darkness? Well, the way I see it from a New Testament perspective, when I take my last breath, I'll step into eternity. Faith in Christ tells me I will spend all of eternity with him. How long is eternity? Well, let me put it to you, real simple. Okay? I'm 55. Okay. If I don't make it to 56, if I die at 55, eternity is gonna be longer than 55 years. Okay? You put your age in there, the same concept: eternity without end. The days of living after we're dead are gonna be many more. The catch, though, in this whole contentment with life that Solomon would want us to understand is to make sure that we know that we truly have a relationship with Jesus, that we're walking with him. Because, see, those people who do not have that or who are playing the game, they'll spend the rest of their days, darkness days, days not alive on this earth, separated from God. But what's the big deal about that? Well, if you're separated from God, you'd be in a place they call the lake of fire or hell. And that'll be all eternity. I promise you, that will not be fun. I don't know about you, but I enjoy playing with fire. I just confess, maybe you need to cut the camera, I don't know, but I love playing with fire. Okay. And my neighbor, bless his heart, is going to be with Jesus now, but Mr. Vance Moon taught me how to get rid of ant piles. You take a little bit of gasoline, pour that gasoline on top of that ant pile. Then you get the gas can way out of the way where it's safe. And then you go back with a match and you stand back. This is fun. You take that match, you light it, and you sling it under, and you watch that ant pile go up. And it will poof. And anywhere you had gas vapors, the gas will go. Okay? That's fun. But life in hell, we're a constant burning flame, but you're inside. Scripture says that's gnashing of teeth that is not going to be pleasant. So though the days are going to be longer that we're going to be dead than we are going to be alive, I pray that we would know that we're truly believers and we're walking with him so that we can enjoy his presence and worship him forever. Saying, Holy, holy, holy is a lamb worthy to be slain. Verse 9 says, Rejoice, O young man, in your youth. Let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things, God will bring judgment to you. Now, he's not saying, okay, young people, get out there and live it up. Okay? He's reminding people that no matter how you live your life, you will be held accountable for the things that you do. The catch is for those who are believers, Christ out on the cross for those sins. And that's the good news. So go out there, live life, and enjoy it, but make sure you find contentment in your Maker. Verse 10, remove vexation from your heart, put away all pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity. All this vexation, all this vainness, get rid of that, put away pain from your body. If you figure out how to do that, let me know. I'm not going to tell you my troubles today, but uh not as healthy as I look, just got a little sore hip this morning. But what's the idea here? There's going to be times of trouble, times of anxiety, times of pain. All this is going to be part of life. This is going to be misfortune. But are we enjoying life? Enjoying the life that he gave us. No, it's not easy because lots of pain has come. Loss, financial difficulties, craziness, sickness. But can we still rely on our Maker? Trust that He knows what He's doing. Even though it doesn't make sense now, maybe He's just trying to draw us closer to Him, getting us ready to spend all eternity praising and worshiping His name. Two things to think about, and we'll close. Number one, do you manage your finances in a way that brings glory to God? And again, it's not a sermon on making money necessarily. It's a sermon coming from Solomon saying, hey, I've seen everything. I've got all the money in the world. I've got ships. You need to be diverse in how you make your money and how you invest in it. But make sure we do it in a way that brings glory to God. The second thing, do we enjoy the life that God has given you, given us? And do we thank Him for it daily? Seems like a broken record, time after time after time again. Life's gonna happen, life is short, it's but a vapor, it's vain, as Solomon says. But we need to be happy and content. Are you happy and content? If you don't know the answer to that question, ask your spouse or ask a friend. Hey, do I come across as happy? If not, seek to find the reason why. You think you're having it rough? You probably are. I promise you, there's somebody else having it a lot worse than you. Let's seek to times of difficulty and times of goodness, the valley or in the mountain, to give God the glory and seek his help, his guidance, and understand that he loves us and wants to hold us in the palm of his hands. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you, Father, for your word. Thank you, Father, for uh Solomon, the great wisdom that he shares with us that can be applied even uh today in our own personal lives. Help us, Father, to uh continue to walk with you daily, to enjoy our time with you, and in the midst of stri uh trials or struggles, Father, help us to remember that you're still in control, and even though we don't understand your ways, you're gonna work all things out for your good, for your pleasure. So help us to love you and praise you in all these things. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior. Amen.