Question for you: Would you rather have a great health report or an accurate health report?

Quoheleth is not giving us a "great" report on life in this world, he is giving us an “accurate” report on life in this world.

Ecclesiastes 8. We are going to get some other dose of reality from our friend Qoheleth. If you don't know who Qoheleth is, he's the author of this book. He introduces himself in the first couple of verses. It means a person who gathers folks together to give them wisdom. He specializes in wisdom and he is giving it to us now. And he is a very sober minded, serious man. He's not sure about coating stuff for us. I'm reading the new American.

1)“A man's wisdom illuminates him and causes his stern face to beam.

2) I say keep the commandment of the king because of the oath before God. 3) Do not be in a hurry to leave him. Do not join in an evil matter for you, for he will do whatever he pleases.

4) Since the word of the king is authoritative, who will say to him, What are you doing?

5) He who keeps the royal command experiences no trouble. For a wise heart knows the proper time and procedure.

6)For there is a proper time and procedure for every delight, though a man's troubles are heavy upon him.

7) If no one knows what will happen, who can tell him what will happen?

8) No man has authority to restrain the wind with the wind, or authority over the day of death. There is no discharge in the time of war, and evil will not deliver those who practice it.

9) All this I have seen and applied my mind. To every deed that has been done under the sun, wherein a man has exercised authority over another.

Another man to his hurt.

10) So then I have seen the wicked buried those who used to go in and out from the holy place, and they are soon forgotten in the city where they did this. This too is futility.

11) Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly. Therefore the hearts of the men among them are given fully to do evil.

12) Although a Sinner does evil 100 times. And may lengthen his life. Still I know that it will be well for those who fear God, who fear Him openly.

13) But it will not be well for the evil man, and he will not lengthen his days like a shadow, because he does not fear God.

14) There is futility which is done on the earth. That is, there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked. On the other hand, there are evil men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I say that this too is futility.

15) I commended pleasure, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry, and this will stand by him in his toils throughout all the days of his life which God has given him under the sun. 16) When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the task which has been done on the earth, even though one should never sleep day or night,

17) I see every work of God, I concluded that man cannot discover the

work which has been done under the sun. Even though the man should seek laboriously, he could not discover. And though the wise man should say, I know he cannot discover.”

Let's pray, friends.

Father, we're grateful for this chapter. I pray that we will see the truth in it. And beyond that, I pray we will adjust our lives. I pray we would be people who honor you by responding to your book. Thank you for your goodness to us in writing to us. Thank you for preserving this book for 3000 years. It's your generosity to us, and we're very grateful. Guide us now and we pray in Christ's

name, Amen.

There's an outline in your bulletin, folks, if you want to look at that, you're very welcome to. For a long time people would come to me and say, Dave, I'm getting this test result back and I'm afraid of the result and my doctor's going to tell me tomorrow and I would pray let them get a great report.

And then I changed my mind and said no, let them get an accurate report.

Let them really know what's going on, whether it's great or not. Doctor Molly was up here a little earlier. And if a person goes to Doctor Molly and she finds out they have congestive heart failure, cirrhosis of the liver, they have some kind of cancer, I mean, she has two choices. She can say pleasant things to them, which is a great report. Your health is great. I will see you next year.

All the time knowing she won't see them next year.

Or she could say you have a serious health issue. And we need to start addressing it today. That doesn't feel good to hear that, but it's the act of love. It's an act of service to say what's true about your health. And Qoheleth is not giving us a great report about life, but he is giving us an accurate report. He cares about us enough to say this is going to be an unpleasant report, but I might as well tell you what's true about life in this world and so. Qoheleth is giving us a pretty unpleasant report, but an accurate one.

Now, if you want a great report about life, you could read the Humanist Manifesto. You could read a French pharmacist and psychiatrist named Emile Ku who said every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.

Or if you want an accurate report, you could read Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 8. We just read it. “No man has authority to restrain the wind with the wind's authority over the day of death. There is no discharge in the time of war, and evil will not deliver those who practice it. So I said earlier that Qoheleth is in many ways saying life is a gift to be enjoyed and appreciated. It's not a fight to be won. This is not about us. Overpowering somebody or something or winning. This is not about winning. It's a gift to be enjoyed. At the same time, Qoheleth doesn't exactly say it's a bowl of cherries. It's a bowl of cherries, except that a whole bunch of them have rotted and you've got to pick through it. So we're going to get some accurate reports today from Qoheleth, four of them to be exact, about what life is like in this world.

Accurate Life Report #1: Life has many overpowering forces (v. 1-9)

● First - even with wisdom life cannot be perfectly sorted out (v. 8:1 & 7:23-24)

● Second - government authorities cannot be resisted. (v. 2-5)

● Third - when we do all proper things, trouble still weighs on us. (v.6)

● Fourth - we don't know what’s coming. (v.7)

● Fifth - there are many forces that can overpower us. (v.8-9)

And he says to us there, life has a lot of overpowering forces, stuff that can overwhelm us and we really can't do anything about it. There's a French

phrase called force majeur. And it means basically an act of God, an act of nature, an overwhelming force. And a lot of times a contract will have a force mayor clause in it that says if something catastrophic happens, the contract is null and void. So he says to us here, that's what's going to happen in many cases. Now, here's the stuff that goes into a contract, like if there's a hurricane, earthquake, fire, pandemic, and war. Terrorist attacks, political upheaval, infrastructure failure and an industrial catastrophe. If that kind of stuff happens, then the contract is null and void. Well, Qoheleth is going to say to us, there's a bunch of things here that are overwhelming force majeur.

They're not stuff we can resist. They're not stuff we can predict. We can't see it

coming. I mean, if we had seen the avalanche coming, we would have gotten

out of the way. But he says accurate report number one first of all. Even with wisdom, stuff can't be perfectly sorted out in verse 1, he said. “Listen.

The wise man knows the interpretation of a matter. A man's wisdom illuminates him and causes his stern face to beam. If you just read that one verse, you're saying, OK, if I'm wise, I can figure this all out. But if you draw back a few verses up to Chapter 7:23, he said, “I tested all this with wisdom and I said I will be wise, but it was far from me. What has been is remote and exceedingly mysterious. Who can discover it? It's better to be wise than foolish, but you can't sort out all of life with just wisdom. You can't resist every evil force by being wise.”

I have a great friend who works at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls and he once solved an amazing problem for this group. They were, they had this machine that wasn't working and if they didn't get this machine working and they weren't going to hit their time window to put some gases in it. And then they will lose millions of dollars and they're pulling their hair out. They can't fix it. And so my friend comes in and looks at it, noodles on it, figures out how to fix it, some mechanical wizardry, and pours a mold down in something and pulls it out and redoes something. And he fixed it. But there's certain things that even my brilliant friend can't fix. Now, I could look at that

machine for 12 years and I had no idea. I can't help you. He could fix it.

There's certain things that even wisdom cannot fix. That we can't make life work by being an extremely wise person. Secondly, he says government authorities cannot be resisted versus two to five.

The short version is you can't fight City Hall.

I mean, if there's a person in power who is evil, has no integrity, has the power of the government, the power of the purse strings, the power of the military, how do you resist that person? You can't resist them. And Qoheleth also says here, don't be too quick to join a rebellion. The king crushes it. Don't be too quick to jump on a baggage wagon and say, yeah, yeah, we're getting here. We're going to deal with this.

Four years and a month ago, to be very precise, friends of mine called me and said, Dave, we want to go to the March in DC on January 6th to protest the election. And they gave me all these reasons. We're on the telephone, husband and wife, all these reasons, and they got done. They said, what do you think? I said, absolutely do not go. Why #1 it won't change anything. And #2 it could be a colossal mess. Don't be too quick to join a rebellion now. They didn't go. They never called to thank me for not going. They would have just gotten out of jail a few weeks ago. But don't be too quick to join a rebellion.

You've got to think carefully about some of these things. A lot of times you should speak up. You should live a model life. You should be silent and pray. But don't jump on a rebellion too quickly and the basic principle is civil disobedience is for when the king or the government is commanding me to do something that violates the law and character of God, then I don't do it. The Hebrew midwives were commanded to kill the Hebrew boys. They said, no, sorry, we're not in for that. The disciples were told, they were told don't speak anymore of this name. And they said, well, whether you think that's right or not, we've got to obey God. We're going to do it.

Now, friends, our government allows abortion. I find it to be absolutely unconscionable. Unconscionable. But they don't command me to do it. If they

commanded me to do it, I would rebel in civil disobedience. But since they allow it to be done, I do other things. I pray. I go to the March for Life. I support 2 abortion clinics, I'm going Thursday to the Stanton Health pastor's lunch. I do other things to try to be a part of dealing with this issue. But don't be too quick to join a rebellion.

Third - When you do all the proper things, trouble can still weigh on you.

(V. 6)

You can make all the right choices and still have trouble. There's no guarantee. I can't make life work with obedience. I can't make life work with wisdom. It's better to be obedient. It's better to be wise. It's better to be disciplined, better to be guided by the book. But I can't fix life. With just being the right kind of person, Jesus did everything right, and for his troubles he got crucified. You could do everything right, and for your troubles you can be crucified. There's too many stories about that. Here's another aspect of it in this very same section where he says I can do the right things. I still have trouble, but I should still enjoy my life even in the midst of all the trouble. I can't, I can't wait till trouble goes away to say OK, now we can do my birthday. When are we going to celebrate my birthday if we're waiting for trouble to go away? We're not. We're not. Boise, ID gets between 11 and 13 inches of rain a year. We're about to get that this week. By the way, friends, we may need to build an ark here soon, but between 11 and 13 inches? Ketchikan, Alaska, gets 145 inches a year, about 12 times more than we do if you drive around Ketchikan on a summer evening. Every softball field will have a softball game going in the rain. Every Little League field will have a Little League game going in the rain. There will be people out in the rain playing all the time because if you're waiting for it to not rain in Ketchikan, you're not going to play. It just doesn't ever come.

And so he's saying there's some things in this world you can enjoy even though it's raining. My friend's vocal cord is paralyzed. He can hardly talk.

The doctor can't fix it. It just happened. Should we cancel our trip to Hawaii? No, no, you can either not talk here in Boise or not talk in Hawaii. Go to Hawaii, enjoy stuff that's going on there.

Fourth - You don't know what's coming. (v 7)

We do not know what's coming. Qoheleth has been on this twice before.

What's happening this afternoon? I know what I plan to happen. What is happening? On Tuesday evening, 67 people got on 2 aircraft planning to land safely and go home. I mean, one of those pilots probably said to his wife, “Darling, I've got to go tonight to do a night qualifying run, but I'll be home about midnight.” A bunch of those people said, hey, don't bother to park the car, just pick me up when I come out with my luggage. They had no idea. Pure sadness, pure sadness. We don't know what's coming in our lives. And so we

have to say to ourselves, I don't know what's coming. Famous old chorus. “I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow.” And he's the one that I trust, even though tomorrow is an utter mystery to me.

Fifth -There are many forces that can overpower us. (v8,9)

He says verses 8 and 9. In this first section, he says there are many forces

that can overpower. For us, and here is the list he gives weather death, war, evil, unjust authorities. This is the list of stuff that can overpower us. We could make this list 20 times longer.

Stuff overpowers us. I have a friend in Moscow who was picking up branches in his backyard. He picked them up and pulled them up and there was a rusty wire in the branches that went in his eardrum, punctured his eardrum. He went to the ground instantly, he said. I've never experienced pain like that permanently damaged his hearing and his balance. What's he doing? He's doing the right thing. He's cleaning up his backyard. Boom, we don't know what's going to happen. These kinds of things can just sneak up on us. There are many forces that overpower us that we can not deal with. So the question is, in the face of all this happiness, you're thinking, Dave, you must have got up depressed this morning because we had all these great illustrations about plane wrecks and wire and the eardrum and no, I got up. I'm doing fine. I'm doing just great. I'm not going to jump off a bridge. Slept great last night. Very happy, man. Trying to be honest with what this book says.

And so the question is, what do we do in light of all these overpowering, unstoppable forces? Well, I think what we do is we say to ourselves, I'm going to be a person who does what Jesus did. So in First Peter 2:23, it said “Jesus kept entrusting himself to the one who judges righteously in a fallen world.”

I just keep trusting myself to the righteous God. I don't spin up and let the trouble be sovereign. The trouble is not sovereign, friends. God is sovereign, and so I keep entrusting myself to Him. He'll go, you know, I can go into the wilderness, but I can't go in without God. Every time I go into a wilderness of any sort, He goes in with me. Always. So if you're in the wilderness, please don't. Please don't let the devil make you think I'm alone in here. You are not alone in any wilderness.

So there's your first unpleasant but accurate update. You only have three more to go.

Let me encourage you there a little bit shorter.

So, what should we do? (1Peter 2:7)

Accurate life update #2 Life has a great deal of moral perversity, as if we

had to be convinced of that. (V. 10-13)

● First - There's a lot of wicked people and tragically some of them are affirmed by religion or religious people. (v 10)

● Second - because consequences are often delayed, evil acts thrive in people (v. 11)

● Third - one lifetime is too short of a “sample period” to judge the merits of evil (v. 12-13)

● First - There's a lot of wicked people and tragically some of them are affirmed by religion or religious people. (v 10)

Tragically, there are evil people. This verse 10 says they're wicked people who have died and they used to go in and come out of the sanctuary. They did all the right things in Judaism. They brought their offerings, did their hand washing, they were at all the festivals, but they were known for wickedness and they were going to assuage their conscience or they were going in to have the priest sprinkle water on them. And it's painful to watch a wicked person flourish, but it's even worse. To watch them flourish and to watch some religion or some religious leader. Sprinkle holy water on them. Say this is a good person. It's painful. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard when a TV preacher or a Pope says, oh, this is a good person.

I saw a TV interview a couple of years ago where a politician who was a known promoter of abortion was bragging about being a good Catholic. And the TV reporter who has no, no axe to grind for Christ said, wait a minute, how does

that work? And they got into a heated argument. It was a mess because a person had the integrity to say, how can you be a good religious person and support something that the Bible wouldn't support? It's hard to watch a person do that. My success or my fame or my wealth or my or my image doesn't have anything to do with whether I really have a heart that's honoring Christ.

I might. I might not have a clean heart. I might be a person who's coming here on a Sunday morning to get all shiny and fixed up and to look good and not be doing that. I'm not advocating this movie. I probably saw it 30 years ago. It's called the Godfather. Some of you have seen it. It has one incredibly poignant scene in it where the Godfather goes to the church where they're christening his grandchild and the priest has him repeat these lines because he's the godfather. So the priest says his line and then while he's repeating it, it cuts away to one of his men murdering one of his enemies. And then he repeats the second line and it cuts away again. Repeat the third line and cuts away again. And the whole time it's cinematically amazing because it's, you know, I promise to raise this child for Christ or whatever and then boom, boom, boom. It's just cinematically amazing to watch the hypocrisy in that. And the problem is, friends, that can go on in our lives as well.

The problem is that it can go on in our lives.

● Second - because consequences are often delayed, evil acts thrive in people (v. 11)

We can be people of stark hypocrisy, verse 11 because the consequences of evil are often delayed. Than people who do evil. Continue to thrive and they

don't get their just rewards. There is not immediate consequences to most

good behaviors and most bad behaviors. Like my personal nemesis, I have a really good day in fitness. I walk, I do my body weight stuff, my push ups and sit ups. I eat healthy. I don't snack at night and in the morning I'm up a half

pound. That's not right. That's vanity of vanities, friends. All is vanity.

There was no immediate reward. You want me to do this again today?

Or like the guy in a parking lot who knocked down my wife's 90 year old grandmother. They skinned her all up and stole her person left, never to be seen again. There was no immediate consequence. And Qoheleth says part of the reason we struggle is there's no immediate consequence. But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do the right thing. Still do the right thing. It may take a long time. In Psalm 73, a worship leader named Asaph talked about this whole struggle for an entire Psalm about watching evil people thrive. It was tearing him up. He was deeply discouraged about it and he was about ready to speak out about it. And then he comes in verse 17, he says, “I came into the sanctuary of God. Then I perceived their end. Surely you set them in slippery places. You have cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment. They're utterly swept away by sudden terrors like a dream when one awakes, Oh Lord. When aroused, you will despise their form.”

An evil person can thrive for a long time and then be swept away. You know, in the early sailing ships, friends, they took one third more sailors than they needed because they knew a third of them were going to be washed overboard. They're just, they're gone. The big Rogue Wave hits the ship and there's eight guys overboard and they're gone. We're on a sailing ship. We're not going back. We can't go back. They're gone.

● Third - one lifetime is too short of a “sample period” (v. 12-13)

One lifetime is too short of a sample period to judge the merits of evil.

If you see one person living an evil lifespan, let's say they live in 100 years.

And they never seem to be judged for it. That's not a long enough sample period to know if evil is a good thing. I've known people. I know a man right now who is almost 100, and I would say he's not gone about it in a way that in any way honors Christ or helps other people. But he's made it to 100. So Qoheleth says evil people could thrive for a time, but God is going to judge them.

Therefore, he says to us, fear God openly. Fear God openly. Every nanosecond, every place, every interaction. Just let there be no secret about the fact that I am a Christ follower and I will be open and above board about that. Nobody's going to be wondering where I am in terms of my faith. Wickedness has no

benefit. It seems like they're thriving, but it doesn't last. What do we do?

It's an amazing verse to me. It says that the righteous soul of Lot was tormented by the evil in Sodom and Gomorrah. Now, I don't generally think of Lot as a righteous soul. I mean, he lived in this horrible town and he didn't leave, but he did save the two angels who came in. And, you know, I mean, but he's living in this horrible, evil place and his soul was tormented. Our souls, if we're following Christ, are tormented by the stuff that goes on in our world. They're tormented. But we have to be people who keep saying to ourselves, God judges. God judges. It's his job. He's good at it. He has his own timing. It's God's timing. We are not good at judging, friends.

We're not good at it. God is brilliant at it. I keep, I've got to say, God, please do what you're going to do.

So, what should we do? 2 Peter 2:7.

Accurate Life Report #3. Life has a lot of unjust outcomes (v, 14-15)

The basic principle is obey God and get the good benefits, disobey God and get the bad benefits. They're unjust, but they don't happen immediately. There's a lot of righteous people who suffer. There's a lot of unrighteous people who seem to thrive. This stuff doesn't get fixed immediately. So he says to us verse 15. Why, I'm sorry toiling away to make ends meet and then hard stuff happens to us, but you still can enjoy the simple pleasures of life even in the midst of struggle. First Timothy 6:17 God has given us all things richly to enjoy. God gives us stuff richly to enjoy.

God has given us everything richly to enjoy. And so we've got all these good things in life that even if life is not perfect, we should enjoy them as a gift from God. My wife and I had a time 10 years ago before we lived in Boise. We're downtown in a restaurant with a couple of our kids and a bunch of their friends. A bunch of them are here today. And we had a three hour lunch that was so enjoyable and so fun. We talked, we laughed, we joked for three hours. Not one drop of alcohol was involved. It's not like we were, you know, getting progressively more happy. The main topic of discussion was what to do with Dave Gibson's ashes. And it was hilarious. The number two choice was an Ant farm. That's my dad, but the winner was a snow globe. And then we're going to put it on my mantle and hey, somebody go shake up Dad there. It was hilarious fun, friends, hilarious fun. We could enjoy life. Even when we're talking about what to do with grandpa's ashes. It's still, it's, it's still very enjoyable. God designed us to enjoy things and life doesn't have to be perfect to enjoy the gifts.

What should I do? What do I do in the face of these outcomes? Psalm 73:25 to 28. I remind myself of this one fact. The nearness of God is my good.

The good life is not about the American dream or a few weeks ago we talked about the Hebrew dream. That's not the good life. The good life is being close to God. Period. If I'm in a double wide, if I'm in a MC mansion, it doesn't matter. I need to be close to the God of the universe accurately.

So, what should we do? (Psalm 73:25-28)

Accurate Life Report #4: Even for the wisest, life has a lot of unsolved riddles. (v. 16-17)

He says. I can work day and night 24/7 for a lifetime, day and night, and I'm not going to be able to solve everything that happens here. So without God.

Life is a bitter struggle and with God, a lot of times it feels like a scramble in the dark. But being with God is still a better thing. I can't figure out all of this stuff. I can have the same troubles as a lost person, but I can have God walking with me. I can't go into the wilderness without God being in the wilderness with me. Even if life has countless moments in which I say, what in the world was that about? Countless moments that I can look back 2 decades and say I don't know what that was about. God still walks with me. So, friends, what do we do?

So what should we do? (Job 13:13-28, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2:3)

We do what Psalm 23 says: stay close to the shepherd. The wisest sheep or the closest to the shepherd, whether you're going into something difficult or whatever, just stay close to the shepherd because the wisest people are staying close to him. This is Qoheleth's accurate report on life. It's not a bowl of cherries, friends. Some of the cherries have actually rotted, but there's still joy and there's still a shepherd.

Core Idea: I put today is. The strategy for fulfilling life is not winning.

It's abiding. It's not winning, it's abiding. It's not denying, it's not money, it's not looking good, it's not getting baptized by whatever religion. It's not raging or escaping, it is abiding. The nearness of God is my good. Let's pray. Father,

Thank you for these accurate reports from Qoheleth. Thank you for giving us ways to thrive in the desert. We're grateful for that. I pray for each

one of us today that we would be people who understand the nearness of God is my good, even in a difficult and challenging world. Thank you that 1 Qoheleth cared enough to tell us what's true. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.