👂Listen - 04/21/2024 - Ecclesiastes 7

Allow a few seconds after pressing play for the audio to load. TRANSCRIPT (Auto-Generated): Horatio Spafford had a high view of God and when we can rest in the arms of God, even in the midst of a terrible tragedy, like he went through to lose his, lose all his Children in that terrible boating accident and write a hymn like that. That's where we wanna be. So one of my favorites, for sure, we're going to continue with our study in the book of Ecclesiastes. And I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Ecclesiastes. Chapter seven. There are 12 chapters in Ecclesiastes and so seven would indicate we are past the halfway point, at least in some regard. So we'll take that as something. This is the 11th installment we have gone through 10 other sermons, getting through chapter six. And we will see how many more will be left. We began this study the very first week of this year. And so here we are into April. The Lord decided to give me two hours of sleep this last night and I don't know why I don't usually have a tough time sleeping. I I think that black tea that I made mom may have been, may have been drank too late in the day. I had one of those nights where you're about ready to fall asleep and then your eyes boop. And I did that all night. So I figured about two hours and I still hadn't finished my sermon yesterday too. I might add. So I got up at five this morning and finished this. God is God is definitely telling me something and that is he's going to do any of this work that is happening here at Havis who lions church in his power and anything that comes from here, If it sounds awesome and, and pure and true to the word that came from the Holy Spirit. And if my tiredness sets in, you might hear the opposite, but by God's grace, we, we rely on him anyway, not only as the as the speaker, but for the hearers as well, sometimes we just don't get enough sleep and we we don't show up fully prepared in that way, our minds aren't prepared. So Solomon has taken us on quite a roller coaster ride. We have seen the depths, we have seen the rises and falls and we keep settling in on this thought process of life under the sun is Habel. It's meaningless. It's, it's vanity as so many translations would would translate the word Habel. It's this vapor, this puff of smoke, the soap bubble or it seems like there's some substance there, there's something to reach out and touch and we find out very quickly that there is not Solomon has recorded for us the findings of an extraordinary life, an unparalleled life, the wisest man to have ever lived, save Christ and the richest man to have ever lived. He lived this long life and he was the ruler over Israel for 40 years somewhere probably toward the end of his life. He wrote down his findings and we have benefited greatly and might I add, Holy Spirit inspired writings. We are reading the word of God. Last week when we were in Ecclesiastes chapter six, we brought to the lowest of lows. We were brought into the pits of despair. If you like the princess bride, the pits of despair. You guys remember the scene, right? We all know the princess bride, right? I've only seen it 15 times or so great movie. It's an old, older one, I guess at this point, we found out last week that no matter what our longings are, our yearnings, our cravings and no matter what we seek in life, satisfaction will never come under the sun. We will always seek more, we will eat and then we will get hungry again, we will desire this thing, we will get it and we will time, we will desire something greater. It is hard to get contentment under the sun. And so again, he brought brought us back to the realities of what death looks like. And we understand that this is not the place we want to dwell forever. This is a temporary home, life under the sun is temporary. And so we have to understand life from a much bigger perspective. The eternal perspective. Chapter seven brings us to a new section of Ecclesiastes that looks a little different than what we have read. We have been reading through and we've seen a few Proverbs here and there. But for the most part, we have read prose, we have read instruction in the form of prose. Now, we are seeing instruction in the form of proverbial language or Proverbs. Now, this does not surprise, it surprise us as Solomon wrote Proverbs, that's what he did. In fact, we have a record of, of what he did from first kings. Listen as I read these what he had written. God. God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure and breadth of mind like the sand of the seashore. So Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the East and all the people of Egypt for he was wiser than all men, wiser than Ethan, the Zerah. He, I don't know who he is, but apparently he was pretty wise. And he and Cal and Darda and all these guys who are known as these great wise men. He spoke 3000 Proverbs, 3000 Proverbs. Now we don't necessarily have every one of those Proverbs written, but he spoke 3000. We have a lot of them written in the book of Proverbs, which he wrote the majority of and his songs, his songs were 1005. He was a songwriter. He was a poet in that sense. And we have some of those songs. If we went to go through the book of Psalms, we would see that. So he was a prolific writer in Proverbs is probably what he's known for the best. So we see this kind of list of proverbial statements in chapter seven verses one through 14. Now I'm gonna look at this section, one chapter verses one through 14 as a whole, but we're not gonna get through all 14 verses. There's just too much to get through, but I want to understand the whole of it before proceeding on. I'm gonna go ahead and read the passage in its entirety. Again, Ecclesiastes chapter 71 through 14, follow along as I read and then we'll, we'll dive in a good name is better than precious ointment. And the day of death than the day of birth is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting for this is the end of all mankind and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter for by sadness of face, the heart is made glad the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Verse five. It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools for as the crackling of thorns under a pot. So is the laughter of the fools. This is vanity. Surely oppression drives the wise into madness and the bribe corrupts the heart better is the end of a thing than its beginning. And the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not quick in your spirit to become angry for anger lodges in the blossom. I'm sorry, the bosom of fools say not why, why were the former days better than these for it is not from wisdom that you ask. This wisdom is good with an inheritance. An advantage to those who see the Sun for the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money. And the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of Him. Who has it? Consider the work of God who can make the straight, make straight what he has made crooked in the day of prosperity, be joyful in the day of adversity. Consider God has made the one as well as the other. So that man may not find out anything that will be after him. At first glance, this passage may seem a little disjointed. There may doesn't seem to be a particular flow. And so I spent some time looking at each of these verses and I was trying to find some unifying themes. And I, so this just kind of helps us collect our thoughts and, and set out a road map. Where are we going? There's two, I'm going to call unifying themes that I've seen that I'll bring up. The first one is the word tove. Now, tove is it's from the Hebrew. In fact, when we were in Israel, we use this word commonly. I, I did a semester in Israel, I was there for 14 weeks. We would greet each other each day. Boker Tov, what does that mean? Means? Good day or good morning. And so Tove is the good part of it. To Tove. What is Tove? Tove is Tove is a very common word in the Old Testament. When God made each thing each day of creation in Genesis, what did he declare to be good, Tove? Now, in this case, when, whenever it's used in a comparative sense, it's really better translated as the word better. In fact, this is not, this is not out of the realm of the way that we think anything that we declare is good. It pretty much has to be compared to something else. You know, this, this sandwich is good. Well, compared to what compared to other sandwiches, I guess. we know what we're talking about. Everything is, is relative and when we use this term good. when I was with, Kyla one time at Walmart, we were looking at, I don't remember what the product was. We were looking at something on the shelf, you know, let's just call it pickles. I don't know. And so we were looking at pickles, it wasn't pickles, but for whatever reason I'm gonna use that. And so I was like, ok, this looks good and she handed me another one and she says this one's better. And I was like, well, what makes that better? Well, she had done some comparison shopping and she looked at the price and she not only looked at the price, but she looked at the price per ounce, right? The smart way to shop. And she said here this one's better. Her mother trained her well. So she found the better price. This is a passage full of this word better or toad. And so Solomon is working in, in terms of juxtaposition. In fact, this is a common way that Proverbs are given. If you go through the book of Proverbs, you're gonna read a lot of this comparison shopping. And so that's the first thing I want to highlight is that we, we have a whole bunch of comparisons. Second one, second unifying theme would be the eternal perspective. Now you can see this in a number of verses, but I want to direct your attention to a phrase in verse eight. In fact, just the first part of verse eight better is the end of a thing than its beginning better is the end of a thing than its beginning. Now, I had to think about this for a little bit. Is that, is that true? Is the end of something? If you go on vacation is the end of the vacation better than the beginning. if you're married is the end of the marriage better than the beginning. Maybe. I don't know. if you go to the movies, is the big, is the end better than the beginning, maybe. I don't know. He's pretty declarative on this. Yeah, you gotta get your money's worth, right. You, you, you know, at the end, if you did or not, it could be better, it could be worse, right? What does he mean by the end? Now? We're, we're using trivial things, you know, like I, I was thinking about all these things that we do in life if I go for a walk is the, is the end better than the beginning. Well, I guess so, if you don't like to walk or if you're tired, if you go to a concert, same thing. And so I was thinking through all these things in life and what is the point of this, this phrase that the end is the end is, better in, in some way than the beginning. And I think that the, the answer to that is found in Romans 828. And that we know that, that for those who love God, all things work together for good, right? The end, the end is in mind for those who are called according to His purpose. For a subset of society, we know that God is in control. This is a, this is a nod to God's sovereignty. He is in control. He does all things according to his own providence. When we were in Colossians, we read these words. If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Now, why would you seek something that's above? Because that's the final destination, right? The end is now better than the beginning. We're still in the beginning, no matter how old you are, you're still in the beginning when it comes to eternity, right? This is, this is just this is just a very short time. You may be toward the end of your life in this world. That's just the beginning. And so we are reminded to have this eternal mindset. So I'm thinking in terms of what, what keeps this, this passage together. And I came up with this phrase, keeping our eyes on the prize, keeping our eyes on the prize. We're gonna see that theme. Now, all I did for some slides this week. So I just put the passages we're gonna try to get through verse six today. So let's take a look at verse one and see how that goes. A good name is better than Precious ointment. A good name is better than Precious ointment. This is another way of saying that a good reputation is better than rich living, living in luxury, your reputation. What is known about you is better than having a lot of money. Think about it for a second. If you had to think about some names, think of the name Coy Tambo, think of Fred Rogers, Florence Nightingale. What comes to your mind? These are good people, these are quality people. These are people of good reputation. They were not known for doing things that that, that bring brought shame to their name. And of course I could do the flip side and talk about Charles Manson. Yeah. Benedict Arnold known for his, his betrayal, known for what he did. in the American revolution time Hitler just need to say one name there or Judas. Yeah. And we don't tend to name our Children after these people, right? I haven't met a lot of Judases in my life. There are some out there for sure. I've met a lot more Johns. That's a great name, right? We have a great association with the name John. And so we, we name our Children after good associations. And in fact, if you're many of you, maybe even most of you have had Children and you have to name your own Children. Right? Well, sometimes when you're going through the baby name book or whatever it might be, you immediately will have a bad association with a certain name. You're like, Nick, we're not naming our kid Nick. I'm sorry if your name is Nick. you know, like I, I can't stand this one guy who named Nick. I picked someone that was trying to not name anyone here. So, and I don't have a bad association with anyone named Ictus. That was purely a hypothetical. So, so we what do, what do names mean? What, what is what is a name? A name is our reputation? Proverbs gives us some insight in this. The memory of the righteous of ri sorry, the memory of the righteous is a blessing but the name of the wicked will rot. What does that mean? The memory of them? What the essence of their character? Proverbs 22 says a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches and favor is better than silver or gold. There's something about having a good reputation, a good name. In fact, if you look at the qualifications for an overseer in a church, they are to have a good name. They are to be known as people of good reputation or with a good reputation. They are to be above reproach. We see that stated both in first Timothy and in Titus that they're to be known well within the community. I was thinking more about what our names mean to us. We don't have the same association where we name ourselves based on the specifics of a person. But our names still bear a little bit of meaning. Our first name is, is the name that I guess you'd say was closest to us. Say so for me, my first name is James and I was named after my father. And so for me to do something to, to bring shame, I'm bringing shame on myself. Of course, people know me as JJ, they'd say JJ, you know, did that thing and now I don't have a lot of respect for him. So I'm bringing shame on myself thinking about what a middle name means. The middle name is often times given to, to a close relative. All of our Children have a middle name that's either comes from my wife or myself or one of the, one of the grandfathers. I believe someone that's close to us in that regard. her father, my dad and all those names are kind of included with the names of our kids. So you're bringing shame on the name of those close to you. And then of course, we have our given name, our last name, the extended family. And so, you know, when my kids go around and they bring shame on the Vander Jack name, it's, it's well known. It's one of those Vander Jack kids, ok. Hopefully, it's not the case. Hopefully it's, oh, it's one of those Vander Jack kids. And so we quickly bring shame on our name, but of course, that's not where it stops because all of us, well, maybe not all of us. Hopefully all of us, at least one day would say we bear another name. We bear the name of Christ. We are Christians and so we shame that name as well whenever we do anything that offends him. And I believe of course, this is what the third commandment is talking about. That you do not take the name your Lord God in vain, that you don't do things, you don't take his name on and do things that don't reflect who he is. We are Jesus people. My daughter taught me this that, that I guess in discussions with her friends, we have been declared as Jesus people. I love that. I'm a Jesus person right here. I, I wanna be known by that name and I don't wanna bring shame to that name. So a good name is better than precious ointment. So having precious ointment would mean that you are rich that you, that you bear this richness that you bear, that people can actually smell your riches. Did you actually put it on now that we don't think of these terms. Cologne is not that expensive. Perfumes are not that expensive, but for them a a precious ointment, those precious perfumes that were given to them. They were well known for having been given to rich people. A good name is better than precious ointment. Second half of that verse and the day of death. And I'm gonna add, the term is better than the day. I'm sorry, the day of death is better than the day of birth. I added the it's is better because it's implied in the day of death than the day of birth. Now, what does Solomon have in mind here? That seems a little backwards is the day of death. Better than the day of birth. When we celebrate, we tend to celebrate the day of birth. In fact, there's a birth coming up. We're looking forward to celebrating, right? And we're gonna celebrate, this is, this is wonderful. You know that that God has, has brought a a new life into this world and so did did Solomon gets up and backwards here. I think what it had, what he's trying to get at what he's saying in this regard is that it's not, it's not, you can't be read at face value. I think what it is is the day of death is the better teacher. We learn more from the day of death than we do from one's birth. When we, when we invite a new baby into our midst, when we have a new baby come into our family, we celebrate, we love that child and we see, we see that the child has maybe her father's eyes and maybe her, her mother's chin and, and we're oohing and awing, we're counting toes and, oh my gosh, this is so wonderful and we love it. Right. It's, I mean, I love, I love babies. If you ever wanna hand me a baby, I will hold a baby. Ok. I'm a fan of babies very much. So. In fact, the fact that I, all my babies have grown makes me very sad. I'm sure you understand what I'm saying there. And I miss, and I miss those days. dearly, in fact, last Sunday I was over at a friend's house and a two year old climbed up on my lap and fell asleep and it was just awesome. I love babies, but I mean, goodness gracious, they haven't done anything. They're babies, they're just a, a ball of potential. You might say, what is this baby ever done? Not much. I mean, they spit up and they, and they change your diaper and, and do all that stuff. What, what good has this baby done? What is this baby taught us? Nothing. The baby is just a baby. But when we consider the lifespan of somebody consider what they've done, then we can have that opportunity for rejoicing. We have that opportunity to see that blank sheet come to fruition. What kind of person were they now? For some? That's, that's a bad thing, right? They, they lived AAA life in rejection, rejection to God. And maybe, maybe they were someone in that list of people I had read like Hitler or, you know, it's hard to think, but there was a time when Hitler was born and they were oohing and awing over him. Ok. What did he grow up to be? We didn't, they didn't learn much from that day of birth for Hitler. So do you get the idea here? It that, that at some point we were all born and, and, and we're full of potential. Now, that is not to say that we're a blank sheet. We are still born in sin. The Bible talks about the original sin of Adam being just a part of who we are, our soul and our body. We are born into sin. But yet we have this great opportunity to see Jesus Christ in our lifetime through the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, I'm thinking of this statement that the day of death is better than the day of birth. I thought of something recently. This last week marks the three year anniversary of the death of, of our pastor John Mackey. John Mackey was a man that I admired very much. And I, I've known him for many years. I, when I was in Iwana, I remember being in Iwana with his Children and, and him coming to pick them up or whatever, he wasn't directly involved. He had some other ministries going on. But I remember my parents always speaking highly of John, even in those days, he's even as a child. So I always looked up to him, not just because he was really tall, but because I, I knew him to be a godly man and of course, eventually I did get to know him as a teenager. We did ministry together, we debated theology together when I knew John, he was Armenian. OK. My mom's gonna reminisce about this. We, we had, we had not heated debates by any stretch. We, we, we had great discussions though about what what salvation looks like, what the sovereign you've got in salvation looks like. one time we invited him to come out to a pastor's conference, we were living in the L A area. We were going to John macarthur's church and, and he came and, and and we were able to spend some time with him and from what I understand that may have been a catalyst to get his thought process to change. But but nonetheless, he just, he loved theology, he loved this church and, you know, you know, the man he meant for, for those who didn't know him. you missed out. But but I also thought of course of my dad who passed away about five years ago. Now it'll be in June and then my brother in law Rico and these are all men of great legacies and of course, Kay Darlene as well recently passed away and, and in that sense, we got together we got together for Kate Darlene and and we, we celebrated our life, we got together and we saw, we saw all these people come who, who had been impacted by who she was. And, and the same with John, the same with my dad. I went to all of these funerals and and there was this rejoicing over what God had done in them. And so we're thankful for that. So truly, we can see how the day of death would be better than the day of one's birth because of what we have learned about Christ. And again, I think about Jesus Christ in this statement in Hebrews, of course, we know this familiar passage that we are to run with endurance, the race set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. So as we go through this life from birth to death, we keep our eyes on him. We keep our eyes forward. And what did Jesus do? Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross? What is the cross, the cross with an instrument of death? He had his eyes on his own death, different circumstance. But we follow in his his path. We understand that our death will come one day. And so we want to live in light of this fact. Now, verses two through four do not move on from the subject in any way. In fact, they are an expansion of that statement that the day of death is better than the day of birth. So let's take a look at verses two through four together, beginning in verse two. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. What is that saying? That's saying if you have a chance to go to a wedding or a funeral and they're the same day, go to the funeral, you're going to learn a lot more from people who are introspective and thinking about the realities of life than people who are jovial in dancing. That is not a knock on weddings. Please don't get me wrong on that. But Solomon is saying, sometimes it is time to sober up and to ponder death. And in fact, throughout Ecclesiastes, we see this theme where Solomon has laid out this open coffin and he has invited us. He's saying, come, you need to look inside because what you see inside reminds you of your own mortality that the end will come. And then of course is, is the place we're all put. I I'm hearing about a lot of deaths re recently, Joy's father just, just died and there's gonna be a funeral and the people who show up for that funeral inevitably are going to be pondering their own mortality they're gonna be pondering their own death. Understanding that's gonna be me someday. I'm gonna be in that box. That's where I'm gonna be. And of course, this w this, this is an opportunity to wake us up to reality. Sometimes jovial laughter is a great thing. Right. But that's not where we want to live. We don't want to live in this, this sort of a stupor, this, this drunken stupor of everything's a joke when I get together and pray with my Children each night. I, especially if we're in an environment, like let's say they're in the living room and they're laughing and dancing and doing all their getting their energy out. I will invite them to a different room for the purpose of prayer to get them into that mindset. And I, and I, I learned that the hard way I, I learned that if you try to calm them down in the environment, they're already in everything just stays jovial and, and, and they're, and they're, and they're just you know how it goes, they just, they, they can't calm down. But if I can get them into a different space and, and say, OK, we're gonna approach God when I pray with my Children, I pray on my knees and, and that's to demonstrate to them the, the realities of what we're about to do. And so I, I also thought about our own corporate worship. Now, there are a lot of ways you can approach, you know, church worship or corporate worship. And I, you know, I think that there is a place for a level of casualness in, in a in a setting like this. There is nothing wrong with, you know, especially in Havasu, we wear shorts all the time and, and this is just kind of what we do and there's, it's great to be, you know, when Chris invited his his friend here, he he felt a little bit more at ease just because it's just a casual environment. And you know, and, and I understand the, the, the, the arguments behind that. But there's also, I think a place for reverence, for respect for reflection. I think, I think we've really missed out on the fact that our churches used to be these beautiful, beautiful or these buildings with these high pitched roofs and, and you can go in and you can find meaning behind everything they did, everything to bring your focus in and direct it toward God, those high pitched roofs, they direct your attention upward, you're looking upward and you're thinking of lofty heights, whatever the case, there is a time to be jovial and there's a time to be sober. So it's better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. He goes on in verse two to say, for this is the end of all mankind and the living will lay it to heart, be mindful of the realities of death. We live each day with the understanding that we have one fewer day to live. We're given about 27,000 days in our lifespan like 77 years times 3, 65. It's about 27,000. Take it for what it is and once that day is gone, it's gone. We don't go back to it. Learn from those who have gone before you in Psalm 90 which is actually a Psalm of Moses. One of the few Psalms of Moses, it says, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Wisdom comes from contemplating our own mortality, from understanding that our days here are numbered. Verse three. Sorrow is better than laughter for by sadness of face, the heart is made glad, crying, mourning. They have a cleansing effect on us. I remember when I was a child and I would cry that once I was done crying and bawling, there was a sense of, of release. The sense of oh wow. I feel way better. I'll admit, I don't, I don't tear up as I wish I did. Certainly not as I did as a child. I want that tenderness. It does not come natural for me. And I think for a lot of men that that's probably the case. But there's something about sorrow, there's something about the cleansing effect of sadness. We need to learn how to lament. We need to learn how to mourn, need to become good at grieving because there are times for that, we need to learn from our losses from our heartache. From the difficult times we go through. We shouldn't ignore them. About half of the psalms include some form of lament in them. We read one this morning just happened to be the next one in the psalm of the scent. But just to remind you, Psalm 130 the very first words I read out of the depths. I cry to you. Oh Lord, oh Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my plea for mercy. You can hear the heartache in the soul of the Psalm writer. There is an entire book of the Bible that's dedicated to lamenting. It's called Lamentations. It's a good name for it. It's a collection of five poems by Jeremiah. Jeremiah was the the suffering prophet and he expresses that suffering, that humiliation and the despair. What he had seen happen to Jerusalem and, and to the people, the Babylonians came and they destroyed the city and he had to see this with his own eyes and and he was in anguish, they, they provoke this raw expression toward God. And we see that again in those psalms and in other places in scripture where people just cry out to God with that raw emotion, our anger, our confusion, our heartbreak, and we cry out to God. Lamenting is a good thing. I will remind you again of Jesus Christ. Our Lord, he wept few weeks ago. It was a month ago, probably now. we heard about Jesus weeping over his friend Lazarus who he's about to raise from the dead. He wept and he cried over his friend. Sorrow is better than laughter for by sadness of face. The heart is made glad, sadness brings on gladness. That's a bumper sticker for you. When it's time to mourn mourn mourn with those who mourn. And when it's time to laugh, laugh, verse four, the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning. But the heart of fools is in the house of Mirth. So the wise is associated with mourning that has to do with again our crying, this, this all ties together. You can see how this all fits really well. But the heart of fools is in the house of Mirth. What is Mirth? Mirth is like going to a comedy club where people are just laughing with amusement and just carrying on. Maybe they've, they've had a few drinks along the way. They the fool gives himself to, to, to deal with his sorrow by drowning it out in laughter and in drunkenness, the wise will process their grief with tears of sobriety. Understanding that God's in control, that none of these things that happen. None of these tragedies that happen in our life are outside of God's control where the fool will go and they'll get high or they'll get drunk, they'll go to the dance club, the comedy club, they'll, they'll go party with their friends, they'll dance the night away and they will have missed the point of that sadness being in their life in the first place to give them perspective on their own mortality and those pains don't go away. Right. For many the addictions that come about the way of life is just a constant, this constant medicating of pain in their life. It never gets dealt with the proper way. I wanna cover verses five and six quickly verses five and six do take a bit of a turn and they stand alone a little bit more than the last few verses. But let me go through them quickly verse five. Oh Actually next slider better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise man to hear the song of fools. This is a way of saying you got two years open one of them and close the other. Ok. Open one ear, close. I don't know how you close an ear. But if you have two ears, one should be open, listening to the w and one should be closed. Listening to the fools. How do we find out who are the wise and who are the fools? Well, think about your friends, think about the friends you have who are the type of friends who are willing to confront you about your sin and who are the ones who are willing to let you continue in sin or will lie for you, allowing you to continue in sin. A true friend will call you to task. I hope you have such people in your life. There's nothing better. You want to surround yourself with people, wise people who are willing to ignore their own comfort, their own, their own trepidation to be able to confront you and talk to you and give you hard truths. It's hard to confront somebody and you need to be that type of friend to others as well. If you are a true friend, you will receive admonition and rebuke, you will also give it when it's appropriate. Proverbs 27 says better is open rebuke than hidden love. It's one thing to love somebody and not say something when the time comes to need that something needs to be said. It goes on to say faithful are the wounds of a friend, faithful are the wounds of a friend. Now in job, job had gone through a lot of suffering, but it was not over sin issue. And he had some very wise friends for seven days. And then those seven day after those seven days, those friends spoke. And so we have the Book of Job and we have this useless loud noise and that's what brings us into verse six as for the crackling of thorns under a pot for the crackling of Thrones of their pots. So, is the laughter of the fools. You're gonna have people in your life who are very foolish and you're gonna have those who are very wise. The foolish people, unfortunately are the ones who talk the most. They're the ones who are willing to just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, crackling of thorns is just, it's just a noisemaker. Now, in this setting, if you, you know, if you're out camping and you, you set some things in the fire and you're about ready to put a pot on there. But there's, but there's thorns in there, they're gonna pop, they're gonna crackle and they don't do anything to help you. They just make a lot of noise. And that, of course, is the, is the idea here. Proverbs 18 says a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. I know that we all know people like that in our life. So it's easy to find people who will tell us what we want to hear. It's easy to, to live in echo chambers and that they don't help us grow. So we see here the beginnings of these, these, these Proverbs of Solomon, these, this practical wisdom and I'll remind you that this is from the second wisest man to have ever lived. He's telling us we are, we are capable of doing nothing ultimately because God is the one in control and we have a mindset of looking forward. And this is where we look to the wisest man who ever lived that Jesus Christ, that's where we keep our eyes that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can have this wisdom. And it's also important to know that as we read through Proverbs, often times we will hear all of this, all of this stuff that comes to us saying we need to be better. We need to do this if we were only a little bit better in this area. But just remember, we have no power within ourselves to conjure up good that when we read these things, our souls should cry out to God. Lord, work this through me. Remember that heavenly mindset, keep your eyes on the prize. I'm gonna close this just by letting God speak through Philippians three. And you'll see why I chose this passage. So I'm just gonna read a few verses from Philippians three and then we're gonna go to communion. So watch, watch for those words as well. Here, brothers join in imitating me. Now this is the words of Paul. Paul is saying, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us, follow the wise for many of whom I have often told you. And now tell you even with tears, sobbing, crying, mourning, even with tears walk as enemies of the the they they walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Do you mourn over those who are enemies of Jesus? Verse 19 says their end is destruction. Their, their God is their belly. They just consume the consume, consume, consume. And we saw the folly of that in Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes and they glory in their shame. You ever see someone do something that's shameful and they're, they're proud about it with minds set on earthly things, living life under the sun. I'm giving you the amplified version by the way. But there's a but verse 20 but our citizenship is in heaven and from it, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who will transform our lowly body. It, it to be like his glorious body. Remember when we started, we talked about death being better than birth. There is something that awaits us an inheritance, a heavenly body, a heavenly realm. That is what we look forward to. And we see that only through what Christ has done on the cross.