[0:00] Good evening, a warm welcome to the service this evening. We're going to begin this time of worship. We'll sing to God's praise and we'll sing from Psalm 90, verses 12 and 13, two stanzas of the psalm.
[0:17] And I'll just read it in English. And so to count our days that we, our hearts may still apply, to learn thy wisdom and thy truth that we may live thereby. Turn yet again to us, O Lord, how long thus shall it be?
[0:32] Let it repent thee now for those that servants are to thee. These two stanzas of Psalm 90 will sing in Gaelic to God's praise. And then Father, we'll lead us in a Gaelic prayer.
[0:57] O ChakishkegaiaNINGNING!
[1:23] SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS
[2:53] SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS
[4:23] SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS
[5:53] SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS
[8:33] SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS
[9:41] SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SONG PLAYS SAMNING Thank you.
[11:31] Thank you.
[12:01] Thank you.
[12:31] Thank you. Thank you.
[13:31] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[13:43] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[13:55] Amen. Amen. Amen.
[14:07] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. What a friend we have in Jesus All our sins and grief to bear What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer Oh, what we see often forfeit Oh, what needless faith we bear Oh, because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer
[15:10] Have we trials of temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
[15:23] We should never be discouraged Take it to the Lord in prayer Can we find our friends so good for Who will all our sorrows share?
[15:45] Jesus knows our every weakness Take it to the Lord in prayer Are we weak and heavy laden Cumbered with the Lord of gain Precious Savior, still a refuge Take it to the Lord in prayer Do thy friends despise for sake Take it to the Lord in prayer In his arms he'll take and shield thee Thou would find us all as there If you could turn please now in your Bibles
[16:50] To Ecclesiastes chapter 7 Ecclesiastes chapter 7 And we'll read the whole of this chapter Ecclesiastes 7 and at verse 1 A good name is better than precious ointment And the day of death and the day of birth It 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 It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise Than to hear the song of fools
[17:53] For as the crackling of thorns under a pot So is the laughter of fools This also is vanity Surely oppression drives the wise into madness And a 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 hearts of fools Say not, why were the former days better than these?
[18:22] 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 straight what he has made crooked In the day of prosperity be joyful And 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 In my vain life I have seen everything There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness And there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil doing Be not overly righteous And do not make yourself too wise Why should you destroy yourself?
[19:12] Be not overly wicked Neither be a fool Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this And from that withhold not your hand From the one who fears God For the one who fears God Shall come out from both of them Wisdom gives strength to the wise man More than ten rulers who are in a city Surely there is not a righteous man on earth Who does good and never sins Do not take to heart The things that people say Lest you hear your servant cursing you Your heart knows that many times You yourself have cursed others All this I have tested by wisdom I said I will be wise But it was far from me That which has been far off and deep Very deep Who can find it out I turn my heart to know And to search out And to seek wisdom And the scheme of things And to know the wickedness of folly And the foolishness that is madness And I find something more bitter than death The woman whose heart
[20:13] Is snares and nets And whose hands are fetters He who pleases God escapes her But the sinner is taken by her Behold this is what I found Says the preacher While adding one thing to another To find the scheme of things Which my soul has sought repeatedly But I have not found One man among a thousand I found But a woman among all these I have not found See this alone I found That God made upright Made man upright But they have sought out many schemes Amen May God give us understanding For this chapter We'll sing again now To God's praise Psalm 90 And verses 13 To verse 17 Turn yet again to us O Lord How long thus shall it be Let it repent thee now For those that servants Are to thee O with thy tender mercies Lord Us early satisfies
[21:14] So we rejoice Shall all our days And still be glad In thee We sing down to the end Of the psalm So it's actually verse 14 I think it is No it's verse 13 To the end So what's on the screen Turn yet again Send to us O Lord How long thus shall it be Let every bend Be done for those That servants are to thee O with thy tender mercies Lord
[22:15] A stale Satisfied So we rejoice Shall all our days I'll still be strong In thee According God's The days Have been When we Be OfNINGNING!
[22:56] NING!NING!NING!NING!NING! . . .
[23:26] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[23:38] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[23:50] . . . . . . . The Lord, a God, be us upon, A happy words, established thou, Establish strength, each one.
[24:22] Let's pray as we come back to the passage. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you again for your word and we thank you for the promise that you will be our teacher, that the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who inspired the words that we've read to be written, we thank you that he is our teacher, he is the one who puts the lights on in our minds, who gives us understanding, who touches our hearts and who ministers to us.
[24:57] Man shall not live by bread alone, but by your word. And so we pray that you would feed us, that you would guide us, that you would lead us, that you would correct us, that you would rebuke us, that you would encourage us.
[25:09] Lord, that you would meet with us at the point of our need and that you would bless us. Pray for all who are here tonight, for every house that's represented. Lord, you know our trials, our temptations, our struggles.
[25:24] We thank you that we have a friend in Jesus who hears and who answers our prayers. And so we pray for each other, Lord, in all the seasons of life and all the different things that we go through.
[25:36] We pray that we would look to you and that you would help us. We pray for those who are not with us tonight. We pray even for wee Finlay, who went out there just a moment ago with a bad cough.
[25:48] We thank you, Lord, that we can pray about everything. And when we are struggling with illness, when we are struggling with things like a bad cough even, we thank you that we can come to you in prayer.
[26:01] And Lord, that you are the one who is able to help us. And so we pray for him. And we thank you for the young ones, for those who come out, and for the parents who bring them. And we ask, Lord, that you would bless them, and that the young ones here and those who are elsewhere, that they would come to know you and trust you, that they would remember and trust their Creator in the days of their youth.
[26:23] We pray for the YF afterwards. And we ask, Lord, that you would be ministering to these young folks there. We thank you for them. And we pray that in a world that is so confusing just now, in a country that has set aside your word, we pray for those who will speak tonight, Stuart and Ruthie, I think, Lord, that you would give them the words to say, and that you would bring the young ones into the building here.
[26:51] And Lord, that you would bless them, that they would come to see Jesus. And for all those who pass through the doors of the church in the week, from the toddlers on a Tuesday, to the primary school and secondary school young ones and children on a Friday, we ask, Lord, that you would be taking hold of them.
[27:15] Many, the majority who don't go to any church, we pray that they would hear, that they would believe the good news about Jesus. And even through these young ones, that they may be used to reach the older generation.
[27:29] We know, Lord, that our calling as parents is to point our children to Jesus. But often we know that our children are those who may point us to Jesus.
[27:41] And so we pray that there are homes that do not have Christ at the head, that the young ones would look to Jesus in faith and point even the parents to Christ in faith.
[27:54] So hear our prayers and help us, Lord, with this passage. Guide us and lead us. And we to speak, help us to listen and to respond to the truth of your word. We pray this in Jesus' name.
[28:06] Amen. Amen. We sang just a few minutes ago the familiar hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, All Our Sins and Griefs to Bear.
[28:20] And the book of Ecclesiastes, in fact, the whole of the Bible, every book in the Bible, the ultimate purpose in each book is to lead us to Jesus so that we will have Jesus as our Savior and as our friend and as our Lord.
[28:40] And yet the road to faith in Jesus can be a long and a winding road. And the road that we travel on as we seek to follow Jesus can be full of potholes and obstacles.
[28:55] I drove through Skye. No, I didn't. I drove through Ullapool and Westeros last weekend. The rain was piling down. It was quite dark. And you couldn't tell if what you were driving into was a shallow puddle or if it was a seven-foot hole.
[29:11] And sometimes that's the way it can be. Even as we're following Jesus, there are potholes, there are obstacles, there are things that we didn't anticipate. And we have to navigate through these courses.
[29:24] And the hymn that we sang, it acknowledges that too. It says, have we trials and temptations? And we do. Is there trouble anywhere? And there always is.
[29:35] We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Ecclesiastes 7, if you've got it open in front of you. As we step through at least some of this chapter tonight, it's a chapter that begins with the trials and the temptations of life.
[29:56] And it leads us to that place where we are being pointed to the Lord and called to trust, to fear the Lord. So the first point tonight is trials and temptations.
[30:08] If you look at verses 1 to verse 12, Solomon steps through various trials and temptations that we have to encounter as we go through this world.
[30:20] There's four trials and temptations that I've highlighted just to gather our thoughts. There's the trial and temptation of luxury.
[30:33] A life of luxury when we indulge ourselves. There's the hazard of laughter. It's the second thing. A life that's just escapism.
[30:43] We just want to laugh. We just want to focus on shallow things. There's a lack of discipline. It's another hazard that we have to be careful of as we seek to navigate through life.
[30:57] And then there's the danger of a love of money, which is a recurring theme in this book. So first of all, Solomon, he highlights here the danger, the temptation, the trial of luxury.
[31:10] Verse 1. He says, A good name is better than precious ointment and the day of death than the day of birth. Now, going back in time to Solomon's day, fine perfume was a real status symbol.
[31:28] Precious ointment, rich fragrances. These were luxuries. These were desirable things. And so if you wanted to indulge yourself, if you had the means to indulge yourself, precious ointments was one of the things that would be taken hold of.
[31:48] And I suppose today we measure luxury in different ways. In different ways. There are certain designer brands that would be considered to be luxury, high-end luxury brands.
[32:01] You can pay five, six, seven hundred pounds for a t-shirt. It's ridiculous, but it's a luxury brand and you have the name across the front. Or there are cars, there are certain supercars that cost a fortune.
[32:15] There are luxury vehicles. Or people can spend thousands on luxury watches. Forty, fifty, sixty thousand on something that tells the time. The same as a Timex from Argus for six pounds.
[32:29] And there are people who can spend their lives consumed with chasing luxury. I was watching an interview just a few weeks back and it was Roy Keane, the Manchester United ex-player, now pundit.
[32:48] And he was being interviewed and he was being asked about modern-day football and they were having a discussion about modern-day football. And he was talking about Manchester United, a team that's kind of lost its way a little bit.
[33:01] And he was talking about the money that's in the game. He says, you know, when the boys who are playing, when they focus on the cars and on the watches and on the money, the football suffers.
[33:14] And that's kind of what Solomon is saying in terms of the bigger picture of life. When our focus is on the luxuries of this life, we're going to waste our lives.
[33:30] And there will be suffering in time and there will be suffering for eternity if all we've got is the pursuit of luxury. We want to have achieved more on the day of our death than on the day of our birth.
[33:46] So Solomon says to us in this opening verse, be careful not to live a life of luxury and indulgence.
[33:59] Warren Wearsby, the commentator, says Solomon was not suggesting that it is better to die than to be born. He was contrasting two significant days in human experience.
[34:11] The day a person receives his or her name, the day of birth. And the day when that name shows up in the obituary column, the day of death.
[34:23] The life lived between these two events, says Wearsby, will determine whether that name leaves behind a lovely fragrance or a foul stench. Think of Mary.
[34:38] I didn't know that this Sunday school we're going to be looking at Mary this morning. But think of Mary in John chapter 12. She has precious ointment. And that ointment was worth a year's wages, if I remember rightly.
[34:55] But she didn't use it to indulge herself. What did she use it for? Well, she used it to glorify Jesus.
[35:07] She used it to anoint Jesus. And Mary's name is still remembered all these millennia later. Her life was not wasted.
[35:20] But her life is still used to point people to Jesus. So there's a danger, first of all, of luxury. The second danger is the danger of laughter.
[35:31] We might think that's a strange danger. It's a strange trial or temptation. And we must not misunderstand Solomon. He's not a killjoy. He's not a teacher who's telling us never to be glad and never to laugh.
[35:46] Because remember, it's Solomon who wrote Proverbs. In Proverbs 17, 22, it says a cheerful heart is good medicine. And in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 and verse 4, we studied it a while back.
[36:01] It says, there is a time to laugh. It's good to laugh. It's just not good to laugh all the time. And so in verses 2 to verse 4, we have these very counter-cultural words.
[36:16] He says, it is better, verse 2, to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. For this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.
[36:28] 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.
[36:44] So what does that mean? Well, I think what it means is that sometimes we use laughter as a form of distraction.
[37:00] Sometimes we use just the whole world of entertainment to avoid thinking about serious eternal issues. So the person who's in the comedy club, or the person who watches old comedy shows on repeat, often uses that as a means to avoid thinking about serious things.
[37:27] But when we put the television off, and when we put our phones down, and when we find ourselves sitting in a room like this, or in another church building, and we're at a funeral, in the house of mourning, we see the end for all people, including us.
[37:52] The house of mourning makes us think about life and death, and how to be ready for eternity. And that's a good thing.
[38:04] It's necessary that we give serious consideration to these issues, that we are ready to die, that we know where we're going on the day that we're called from time into eternity.
[38:18] Verse 5, Solomon says, It's 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.
[38:34] This also is vanity. This is basic, but it's profound advice for this world. Solomon teaches us what we know, but we don't always like to experience.
[38:50] It's better for us to sometimes listen to a serious rebuke from a friend who loves us than it is to go to a pub where everybody slaps us on the back and laughs and tells us how great we are, but no one actually loves us enough to tell us the truth that you and I need to hear.
[39:11] So there's the danger, there's the temptation and trial of luxury and of laughter. The third thing that Solomon highlights is just the danger of a lack of discipline. Remember this morning we were thinking about the calling of the disciples.
[39:26] What's the key word in the word disciple? It's discipline. So the Christian life is a life of discipline. And where there's a lack of discipline, we suffer.
[39:39] Think about it even in terms of the season. We're just moving into spring. And I'm beginning to see the garden, the grass come alive.
[39:52] I'm beginning to see some flowers starting to pop their heads through the ground. Now, as we see things starting to grow, as we see a garden wake up in spring, we might look forward to the beauty of a garden, but what do we need to do if we want to ruin our gardens?
[40:12] What do we want to do? What do we need to do if we want our gardens to go from neat and tidy and beautiful to just shambolic? Nothing. We don't need to do anything.
[40:25] Just neglect it. Just have no discipline. And the garden will be overgrown in time. In no time at all. I mean, even when you think about physical fitness, what do we have to do in order to go from being fit to unfit?
[40:41] Just nothing. Just a lack of discipline. And spiritually speaking, a lack of discipline will take us into a world of trouble. And that's the essence of verse 7 through to verse 10.
[40:55] Solomon says, And so, essentially what Solomon is saying here is, is think before you act and think before you speak.
[41:25] There needs to be discipline. And a lack of discipline in the areas of how we act and how we speak will take us down a road that's unwise and damaging.
[41:42] whether it's, whether it's, whether it's, uh, bribery and corruption. Or whether it's, bad tempered outbursts.
[41:54] We need to be disciplined. The last thing, in terms of trials and temptations, is Solomon, he identifies the love of money. Verse 11 and 12, wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun.
[42:12] For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money. And the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom prefer, preserves the life of him who has it.
[42:22] Now we might, we might rightly ask the question, is it, is it, is it wrong to have money? You know, should we just give all our money away, empty our accounts, and go to the, the desert and live a, a John the Baptist style existence?
[42:41] Is that what we're being called to do in, in, in, in books like, like, um, Ecclesiastes? Well, no. Solomon is actually arguing here that it's an advantage to have money, and if you have wisdom, and you have money, that's a great combination.
[43:01] Over the course of the last few years, um, we've had, I think, two anonymous donations of, I think it was 5,000 pounds each time, to go to youth work.
[43:15] I don't know where they came from, I don't see any of the money. But occasionally you get, uh, good news, where you hear about a donation to the building fund, or a donation, uh, to the, to youth fund.
[43:27] And so, uh, whoever it is that gave that money, that money is, is put to great use. We see a hundred children coming through the church week by week by week. It's a great advantage for, for money to go into the, the, the use of the gospel.
[43:42] We see the kids enjoying themselves. We see the kids listening to the message about Jesus. because we have the combination of wisdom and money. Money's not the problem.
[43:56] It's the love of money that's the problem. It's a, a selfish determination to hang on to our money, to indulge ourself.
[44:07] That's the problem. And Solomon reminds us over and over again that wisdom is more valuable than money. Because wisdom leads us to, to trust the God who's able to give us what money can't buy.
[44:24] Eternal life. So these are a, a few of the trials and the temptations of life under the sun as Solomon steps through them.
[44:37] So point number one, trials and temptations. Point number two, Solomon, he, he exhorts us to trust in God, to fear God. Verse 13 and 14.
[44:51] Consider the work of God. He says, who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful and in the day of adversity consider God has made the one as well as the other so that man may not find anything that, will not find out anything that will be after him.
[45:14] Ever since the fall, ever since Genesis chapter 3, this world has been, has been crooked as it says in verse 13, that, that word crooked, that sin has, has caused this world to become crooked.
[45:32] What God made perfect, sin has, has twisted out of shape and the fall has affected the whole of creation. So in Romans chapter 8, the apostle Paul, he talks about the whole creation growing in.
[45:46] under the crookedness of, of the curse, of sin. So there's environmental decay and there's war and there's famine and there's sickness, there's disease and there's death and all these things can be traced back to the fall.
[46:04] These painful things, these crooked things that we have to suffer, they weren't God's original design. They're, the devil's distortion. And yet, the glorious thing is that God is able to use everything, even the crooked things, to bring good to his children and to bring glory to his name.
[46:35] think about Joseph. Abused, you could say, within the family, sold into slavery, falsely accused and imprisoned of, of rape.
[46:54] And yet, as Joseph looks back on all these crooked providences, he's able to say to his brothers, his abusers, a little down the line, in Genesis 50 and verse 20, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about so that many people should be kept alive as they are today.
[47:19] It's an example of, of, of crooked things that God can even use them to bring good, to bring glory.
[47:30] And it's, it's hard still to go through the crooked things, but the encouragement is that God is, is able to, to use them. He works in the midst of them all. And Solomon teaches us the, the principle that Joseph shows us by example and that, that's the truth that we're to trust God.
[47:53] And we can trust him on the good days and the bad days. We can, we can trust him on the days when everything seems hard and, and crooked.
[48:05] And we can trust him on the days when the road seems smooth and straight. We often, sing the, the hymn, whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the, the morning comes.
[48:25] Bless the Lord, O my soul. And that's one of the, the lessons that we're being taught in this book that we can, that we can trust God when our hearts are full, when life is a joy, when we feel that, that blessing.
[48:43] Consider God, says Solomon, trust God. And when our hearts are broken and when we're struggling to put one foot in front of the other, consider God, says Solomon.
[49:02] Trust him. Remember, our, our God is the, is the man of sorrows. Our God is not at a distance, remote from everything that we suffer under.
[49:20] Our God is the one who was acquainted with grief. He's the one who came to this world to suffer and to die for us. He's the one who came to make what was crooked straight.
[49:35] So trust him, says Solomon. Trials and temptations, trust in God is the, the message that comes in response.
[49:47] The third thing that we see here is, is truth for life. the truth for life that Solomon gives us is, is that we're to fear God. We're to have that sense of awe and reverence towards God.
[50:05] And we can see that in verses 15 down to, to verse 22. And I'm not going to read these verses because time is against me.
[50:16] But you get a sense as you step through these verses, as you just scan them, you get a sense of the mystery, some of the mysteries of life. I opened the boot of the little car the other day.
[50:31] There is actually a boot in it, amazingly. And, in the boot, I don't know where it came from, but it was a Rubik's cube. It's about all that could fit in the boot right enough. And it was rolling around in the back of the car.
[50:43] I don't like Rubik's cubes. I don't like to see them. And if I see them, I don't pick them up because I can't make sense of them. They frustrate me. Because I spent weeks trying to figure out this, and then somebody showed me a YouTube video with algorithms and stuff.
[51:00] It's easy, they said, you just follow this formula, and that's how you fix the Rubik's cube. I can't do it. I don't have enough of a maths mind to be able to solve the mystery of the Rubik's cube, and so it just frustrates me.
[51:13] And for many people, and Solomon kind of goes into this in these verses, life is mysterious. It's like a mystery, it's a puzzle.
[51:25] And there are painful injustices that never seem to be addressed. And sometimes the good people seem to suffer, and the bad people seem to thrive, and we kind of look in and we can't figure it all out.
[51:46] And in the midst of all that, we see the majority of people and they're living their lives in such a way as to strike the right balance. They see the injustices, they see the mysteries, and as people who are living under the sun, because remember Solomon, he's talking very often about life under the sun, life without God.
[52:06] Those who have no vision of God, they're looking at the world and they're trying to figure it all out, and so they can't figure it out, and so they try to live a life that strikes the balance, not too wicked, not too righteous.
[52:19] They'll say things like, well, you know, I'm not perfect, but I'm trying my best. I do more good things than bad things. Surely at the end of the day they say, God will look at my life and accept me.
[52:34] And that's the majority view of people today. I'm trying my best, I'm trying to be a nice person, I try not to hurt people, I give to charity.
[52:48] Surely if anybody's going to heaven, it's me. And Solomon says that's foolish thinking, it's not wisdom. So what's wisdom? Well, verse 18 is where we see wisdom.
[53:03] to live a life that is wise, to come to a position that is saving and wise, we're to fear God. Our good works won't save us.
[53:21] Because everyone sins. As it says in verse 20, there's not a righteous man on earth, says Solomon. people, they'll curse you.
[53:34] So how can we be saved? How can we live a life that's wise? Fear God. Trust God, says Solomon.
[53:47] Live in order to please God, not to please people, because you'll never please people. People, verse 21, says Solomon, they'll curse you.
[54:01] And then before we get in our high horses, he says, just like you curse them. So don't live trying to get the approval of people.
[54:14] Live for the approval of God. God. And I don't think there's ever been a generation that needs to hear that more than this generation. Social media, as people, living for the approval of others continually.
[54:34] And we'll never get all the likes that we want. And sometimes we'll end up getting dislikes, and sometimes we'll be looking at posts, and we'll be reading comments, cruel, critical comments that sting us, that hurt us, that destroy many people.
[54:56] And what we're being taught here is to live not for the approval for the likes of others, but we're to live a fear in God.
[55:07] We're to live with that sense of fear, respect, of reverence, and awe for the God who loves us. who died to save us, and who promises that if we trust him, he will adopt us into his family, and he'll never stop loving us, and he'll never give up on us, and he'll never leave us, and he'll never forsake us.
[55:39] so the truth for life that Solomon teaches is that we are to fear God. Final thing, very briefly, is a testimony.
[55:55] We started with a testimony this morning, and we finished with a testimony this evening. verses 23 down to verse 29, I think what we have here is a testimony.
[56:09] Some people get furious about these verses, some people take these verses as an attack on women, and an attempt to exalt men to higher position.
[56:20] It's not that at all. Actually, the translation of you've got the NIV is not brilliant, and we can step through that, but I don't have time to do it just now. This section from verse 23 to verse 29, I think is a confession.
[56:36] It's the dark part of a testimony that is shared by Solomon. Now, all of us struggle with idols. Calvin talks about our hearts being like a factory where idols are made, and all of us struggle with idols.
[56:56] You know, what you struggle with just as I know what I struggle with. Tim Keller, the late Tim Keller said, the great danger is not that we become atheists, but that we ask God to coexist with the idols in our hearts.
[57:13] And Solomon, he had idols. He had a thousand of them. He had 700 wives. 300 concubines.
[57:29] And what did they do? They turned his heart away from God. And was that their fault? Was that the fault of these thousand women?
[57:40] No, it wasn't. Is Solomon blaming them? No, he's not. He's blaming himself. He's, in verse 27, he's confessing his own sin. He's sharing from his own experiences and his own folly.
[57:57] Solomon had power, he had popularity, he had influence, he had property, and he had any woman that caught his eye. Solomon had a huge selection of idols to choose from, but his testimony was that there was no satisfaction in any of them.
[58:19] so where is their satisfaction? Where is this book leading? Who is this book pointing towards?
[58:33] It's pointing towards Jesus. And for sinners like Solomon, who's confessing his sin in this last section, and for sinners like us, where is their salvation?
[58:45] in Jesus. That's who we've been pointed to. The bad news is encapsulated in verse 20, where Solomon says, surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
[59:09] That's the truth, it's the dark truth, it's the bad news, but the good news is that there was a righteous man who came to this earth, the God man, Jesus.
[59:28] And he lived for us that righteous life, that life that had no sin. And he died for us that death to make an end of all our sin.
[59:41] And the testimony of Solomon is designed to cause us to look in faith to Jesus. So as we prepare to come to the Lord's table, we examine self as we are called to.
[60:03] We do what Solomon did. And as we see our sin, we confess it. as we recognized the idols that we're holding, we cast them off.
[60:20] We examine self, but as Murray McShane said, for every look we take at self, we take ten looks at Jesus. And that's how we come to the table.
[60:34] God's So we'll finish with the words, when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him, Jesus, there, who made an end of all my sin.
[60:54] Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free for God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me.
[61:07] So look to Jesus as we close. Bless the Lord on my soul. We can sing that one. Bless the Lord on my soul, on my soul.
[61:31] Worship his holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul, I worship your holy name.
[61:49] The sun comes up, it's a new day dawning. It's time to sing your song again.
[62:01] Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me. Let me be singing when the evening comes.
[62:14] Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul, worship his holy name.
[62:25] Sing like never before, O my soul, I worship your holy name.
[62:36] name. You're rich in love and you're slow to anger. Your name is great and your heart is kind.
[62:49] For all your goodness I will keep on singing. Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find.
[63:01] bless the Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul, worship his holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul, I'll worship your holy name.
[63:23] And on that day when my strength is failing, the end draws near and my time has come.
[63:36] Still my soul will sing your praise unending. Ten thousand years and then forever more.
[63:48] Bless the Lord, O my soul, worship this holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul, I'll worship your holy name.
[64:10] Worship your holy name. Worship your holy name. And I may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of God the Holy Spirit be with us all now and forever more.
[64:31] Amen.