July 12, 2026 | Living Life Backwards
Living Life Backwards | Ecclesiastes 6:10–7:12
Ecclesiastes 6:10–7:12
Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?
A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death than 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.
For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
so is the laughter of the 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 heart of fools.
Say not, “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. (ESV)
In Living Life Backwards, Jed Gillis explains that Ecclesiastes 6:10–7:12 calls us to stop trying to control an unknown future and instead trust the God who knows what is truly good. Solomon urges us to live with the end in view, valuing a faithful life and a good name over unrealized potential. He also teaches that sorrow can lead to wisdom, honest weakness can draw believers closer together, and wise correction is better than shallow praise.
Rather than escaping into fantasy, bitterness, or nostalgia, we should pursue wisdom in the present. This means facing difficult truths, welcoming correction from wise people, and refusing to live in anger over a past we cannot change. We do not know what lies ahead, but God does. A wise life rests in His knowledge, follows His patterns, and seeks a good end.
Transcript of Living Life Backwards | Ecclesiastes 6:10–7:12
Are You Ready to Continue in Battle?
I wanna start with this question.
Brothers and sisters, are you ready to continue in battle this morning?
Not fighting against me, hopefully. Or the people next to you. But we're told in scripture that we are engaged in warfare. We're told in scripture that we wage war not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.
And as Isaias just prayed God's word is about to go forward. As you hear God's word, Satan wants to take that seed and snatch it away so that it doesn't do anything in you, so that it doesn't produce fruit.
As you've been singing God's truth, as you've been hearing prayers, God wants to accomplish something in your life through His truth this morning, and Satan wants to oppose it.
So I'm afraid often we look at church as if maybe the music part is what we participate in, and then we can sit and just listen. But it's not just listening. It's spiritual warfare It's the truth of God's word that He wants to change us. And if we were to sit here, if you really thought about that, probably apart from God's empowering presence, you should say, "I have no hope." But thankfully, it's not just spiritual warfare going on Satan against us, it's spiritual warfare God battling for his people.
This morning in Worship Matters class, Brian Todd shared a quote off a video by a man named Robert Rayburn. Said this, "God's presence is always a gift of His love. It can neither be worked up nor prevented by the efforts of men. It is not brought about by the church, nor is it dependent upon the strength of the faith of those who come together. God's presence is the fulfillment of His own promise. When His children assemble themselves to worship Him, there is nothing more certain than His promised presence."
So yes, it's spiritual warfare. Yes, Satan would love to distract you with all the things that went on last week and all the things that will go on this next week. But God's presence is with us to work powerfully through His Word, which is the sword of the Spirit, to do battle against Satan.
So this morning, that's what we're coming to do.
Reading Ecclesiastes
I'd like to read from Eph- Ecclesiastes 6:10.
"Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow?
For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun? A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than 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. 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 heart of fools. Say not, '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."
That's where we're gonna stop for this week, which we could continue next week we'll continue further in the, chapter. So this is really kind of a part one of chapter seven of Ecclesiastes.
A Fear of the Unknown
Two weeks ago when I spoke, I, referenced verse nine primarily where it says, "Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite." Better is the enjoyment of the good gift you have right now than for you to think if I just had this or this I'll be satisfied.
Solomon here has come to this kind of summary statement to say that when we look to try to control our lives, when we look to be satisfied with something that can't truly satisfy us, anything outside of God, it always means we want a little bit more or a little bit more or a little bit more. The appetite wanders to the next thing, to the next thing. We get full for a moment, we think, but we're not really satisfied.
Having said that, Solomon gets to where we started in verse 10, and he basically says this. He's "Look, let me level with you. Let me just give you kinda the bottom line." Some of us are like, "Thank you, Solomon. We... I could use the bottom line more often and a little less philosophizing at times." He says, "Let me just level with you. We know a couple things. Whatever has come to be has already been named. Whatever happens, whatever has come to pass, it was unknown once to you, and now it's known."
He said here, he says, "When we go through life, one reason we want control is we have," what psychologists label, "a fear of the unknown." I kinda laugh at that phrase because of how much is unknown. Where you think, "Well, I'm afraid of the unknown," means, what if something happens? But I don't know what happens in five minutes. I might have a guess. I might have a decent chance of a guess, but I don't have confidence really.
If I stop and think about it, every day you step into is unknown. You have plans. Unknown to you, I should say. Every day, every week, every year, all of it, it's unknown. If you conclude, "Well, I just have a fear of the unknown," you're gonna be afraid of everything if you stop and think about it.
And Solomon wants us to think about the fact that this fear that I have of what's coming in the future, he says, "Look, what's come to be has already been named." You didn't know it, but that doesn't mean that God didn't know it.
You didn't know what would happen, and so you might have been afraid of it, but you really had no idea what was coming because "it is known what man is." That's his second bottom line statement. Man is, as he said throughout the book, limited Man can't know the future. Man can't guarantee the future, and man can't, to use his picture, grab the wind and hold it
Solomon says, "I've spent six chapters laying this bottom line for you that says you don't know the future, you can't change the past. You can't guarantee the future, and every time you try, you're frustrated.
So we might be tempted to say, "Well, if that's true If I can't dispute with one stronger than I am, if the more words, the more vanity, the more frustration, the more we talk about it and try to figure it out, the more I realize I can't know the future and I can't control it. If all of that is true, we might be tempted to just say, "I'm just gonna throw my hands up and forget it. Why try to do anything?"
But that's not what Solomon leads us to. Instead, like we said a couple weeks ago, Solomon says you need to pursue what is good, which leads him to verse 12, which is his question, "Who knows what is good?" You see, if I don't know the future and I can't control the future, how do I decide this is actually good to follow?
He says, "Who knows what is good?" In fact, maybe, a smart aleck pupil at this point in Solomon's class would raise his hands. You guys know those pupils, right? The ones who always have a way to argue with whatever point's being made. Maybe you were one of those. Pretty sure I was. And so you say, "Solomon, okay, if I can't pursue control because I don't know the future, all right, but I'm supposed to pursue good. Well, how do I know what's good if I don't know the future?" You say, "I should pursue good, wise investments." How do I know what's good if I don't know which investments are gonna pan out? So I have to know the future to know good.
That one could be one of the ways we might think, and Solomon actually says, in a way, that's a valid question. You do have to know something about the future in order to know what's good.
So that's why he leads you to this question which should echo in our mind, and he doesn't answer it immediately. Should echo in our mind, "Who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his," frustrating, I'm gonna say that word instead of vain, "frustrating life, which passes like a shadow?" This quick, fleeting life. Who knows what's good?
Think back to your life just so we can feel what Solomon feels Probably all of you can think back to a situation where you thought for sure you knew what was good. And afterwards you said, "I'm so glad that didn't happen." I know I can name some big ones, but even in small ones.
And Solomon, he wants you to think about that experience and say, "Wait, I didn't know what was good for me quite the way I thought I did." Who knows what is good?
And I think he means for that question to echo in our minds as he, he doesn't give you the answer like, "God knows what is good." He doesn't say it that way. But through poetry, through literature, that's what he leads you to.
What Solomon Sees as Good
As he begins chapter seven I'm gonna give you a handful of statements, really paraphrases of what Solomon says here. I'll give you four.
Live Towards a Good End
The first one is to live toward a good end. Live toward a good end.
As often happens in Ecclesiastes, we have to wrestle with, Solomon, are you just being a cynic? "The day of death is better than the day of birth." If you take that out of context, you just say, "Look, your funeral is better than your birthday."
Most of us don't like, we're not like, "Yeah! Go Solomon. Inspiring message," right? No, we don't really do that. Okay, but let's read the Hebrew poetry carefully. Many of you are familiar with the way Hebrew poetry works. You have, two statements that he puts in parallel, and he puts them there so that they each tell you something about the other statement.
So what is he pointing to? He's not praising death exactly. What he's saying is reflected in the first phrase in verse one, "A good name is better than precious ointment." He's saying something finished is in some ways better than a lot of potential.
Let me give you some examples. If you happen to know some of these names. Anybody know the name Ryan Leaf? I knew I'd get at least one or two. He was a, a football quarterback who was drafted number two in 1998. You know who else was drafted that year? Peyton Manning, number one.
Ryan Leaf, they-- Some people were even arguing he should've been drafted over Peyton Manning. I'm willing to bet I'd get a lot more hands on who is Peyton Manning. Because the amount of potential that he had, which looked amazing amounted to nothing.
You can do the same thing over and over through sports. You can talk about basketball and you talk about Greg Oden, if you know that name. Really tall center, all the potential in the world. He's gonna have the greatest career. Nope. Injury after injury He was washed out by 25. And instead you could take... Now, we could maybe cheat and compare him to Michael Jordan and be like, "Well, of course, Michael Jordan had this great career." But just think about this. Would it be better to be Greg Oden, who barely played despite all his great potential, or would it better to be a middle-of-the-road journeyman in the NBA who had a good, solid career?
Or we step out of sports. Does anybody happen to know the name Elizabeth Holmes? I saw a couple hands, not many. was once described as the next Steve Jobs. She was a CEO, built a company with a $9 billion valuation. You go, "That sounds more like something finished, not potential." And yet all of you knew Steve Jobs, that name, most of you, maybe not all of you. You didn't know Elizabeth Holmes. Why? Because as it turns out, the main technology, the main advancement that her $9 billion valuation was built on didn't work. There was all the potential, the next Steve Jobs. And it all crumbled.
Is it better to be at the front end of an uncertain potential that could be incredible but could also completely fall apart? Or is it better to have a good name that's finished?
We could talk about careers, we could talk about sports, we could talk about marriage. Is it better to be a couple that's getting ready to get married next week with all the potential to be the best marriage in the world? Or is it better to be a couple that's at 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 years of marriage and faithfully says, "We walk together"?
My grandmother passed away one day shy of their 75th wedding anniversary. And it was better to be finished with something good than to have all the potential in the world that falls apart.
You can do the same thing with our life. That's what Solomon's doing. He's saying, "Look, a good name, the reputation of having you finished." When Paul says he ran the race, he finished the course. Solomon's saying there is a sense in which it is better, it is good to have something finished that's good than to have all the potential but you don't know where it's gonna go.
See, I think we, when we start at the beginning of our lives, especially those of you who are younger in this room it's easy, we, tell you, you hear from everybody around you that you have all the potential to go do whatever you want, and you can dream about all kinds of things. And we can glorify that to the point that even as we get older, often we start to feel depressed. Because you say, "I don't have 80 years of life to look forward to, to try to achieve all this potential."
But if we're honest, all the potential, we look at somebody who's, say, 21 years old, they're starting into their career. You go, "Oh, you could do wonderful things in your career, or you could change careers, or you could marry this person or that person or this person, or you could live here or live there." All these options. And we kind of glorify all the options, and I think sometimes we forget you can't achieve all of them.
You do have choices. It might feel like unlimited possibilities, but in order to achieve some of them, you have to say no to something else. So we glorify, "You have all the choices," and sometimes forget to celebrate the good name or the good career or the good marriage that doesn't have all this future potential, but is settled and finished, and it's good.
A man named David Gibson wrote a book on Ecclesiastes I would recommend if you want to, read. It's not like a commentary like straight through the book. The title of the book is Living Life Backwards. He says instead of starting at birth and going, "Oh, who knows where I'm going? I'll just choose this, choose this, choose this. I don't know where I'll end up." There's no first pause and look at where you're going to end up. If you had a day of birth, you'll have a day of death. Again, Solomon, thank you for the inspiring message, right? But it's good for us to have a sober realization that this life and these bodies and the things that you're pursuing here on this earth, they're not lasting forever.
So when, David Gibson says, "Live life backwards," he says, "Wait, look at this end and see, okay, what's the end actually. Now how do I live for what's good now? In other words, as Solomon pointed out, you do need to know something about the future. But it's not that you can control the future. You need to know what is this end.
Solomon probes our idolatry of potential. We kind of worship, oh, you can go do all of these different things. He probes this idolatry and says, "Think carefully. What is more valuable to you, a finished good name or an unknown huge potential that you won't completely achieve anyway?" Which one's more valuable? To really pursue the good, you need to know that.
So to answer Solomon's question, who knows what is good for man? The one who is beyond our end. God knows what is good. He knows what is good for you and what is good for me.
So I wanna ask you what happened this week that reminded you of the end? Maybe it was a doctor's appointment. Maybe it was a tragedy in a friend's life. Maybe it was just that your knee hurt and it didn't used to hurt. What happened that can remind you there's an end of this life and there's one behind it? There's one beyond it.
Often people ask questions like, "What do you want on your tombstone?" By which we don't mean the pizza, if you get that reference. If your life ended today, what's your honest eulogy? I don't mean the one people make up because they just wanna say good things. I mean, if God called you home, and the people around you in your family, in your church, in your friends honestly were able to say, if they really knew this is the reputation, the name, the honest, this is who this person was, is it a good name that's better than precious ointment?
We need to live in light of that. Solomon's calling us to live soberly to say, "Don't think about here's all the things I could possibly achieve in my life, and I don't know how they'll all work out." Nothing wrong with setting goals, nothing wrong with making plans. Don't live for that you can't control.
Instead, go, "Wait, what do I want my life to be like at the end?" What has God said is a good life? I wanna pursue that.
If you're someone who likes to write or journal or things like that, I'd encourage you this week, take some time and sit with God and write out. You might wanna burn it or hide it afterwards. You might never wanna read it again. That's okay. Write out, "What is my honest eulogy?" Or go write out, "Here's the one I want to have." I wanna live in light of that.
So his first thing that he says is good that God has told you is live toward a good end.
Don't Live in a Fantasy Land Even If It Makes You Feel Happier Now
Second thing, verse three, "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." I'll paraphrase loosely, don't live in a fantasy land even if it makes you feel happier now.
To put it specifically the way we just described living in light of death, don't live trying to hide from the fact that one day you will die unless Jesus returns. You say, "That feels sad. I don't wanna think about that." Yes, but sorrow the right way is better than laughter because by that sorrow, by that sober reality, actually it brings joy.
Don't live in a fantasy land. Don't be naive and go, "Oh, there's nothing sad out there. I wanna hide away all these bad feelings." Be honest about what's sad and difficult with yourself and with others around you. Be honest with our weaknesses. Some of us really don't like to do this. We like to pretend and put on a face, a mask, and not deal with negative feelings inside us.
Yesterday, a group of men gathered for breakfast right down the hallway over here, and Scott Goss shared his story about his walk with God from early on all the way to his struggle with Parkinson's now. He was honest about sadness and difficulty and weakness and struggles. And it was helpful to me.
One of his concluding statements was something like this: We need to be honest about our weaknesses because when we aren't, we are separated from the body of believers. And when we are separated from the body, we wander where we shouldn't wander, and we face dangers without the protection God intends for us in the body.
If we run from sadness, if we run from our weakness, if we just say, "No, I'm not going to have that sadness. I'm gonna put on a happy face, and that's it." We miss a lot of what God intends for the body around us to be In fact, Paul said, "Not I'm gonna run from weakness, I will gladly boast in my weakness. Because it's in my weakness Jesus is seen as strong." There was much wisdom in that.
It was encouraging to me for a brother to walk through, "Here's something that made me sad," and to share that, and to say, "And here's how I wrestled through some of those sadness. And it's still hard. It was good.
And by the way, when we do things like men's breakfast or gathering on Wednesday evenings as a church body or men or women, when we do those kinds of things, or community groups or Grace Marriage, all these opportunities for the body to come alongside each other, to connect with one another Those aren't like menu items for us to just go "Eh, I kinda feel like that one. I don't feel like that one." They're meant to be opportunities, not that you have to be at everything, but they're meant to be opportunities for you to walk with brothers and sisters and to feel the strength of somebody coming alongside you, of them encouraging you, of them sharing their weakness, to see those, that wisdom of people who are both older than you and younger than you.
I know it's hard to make that commitment to say, "Oh, I'm gonna go connect with those people. I don't know how it's all gonna turn out. I don't know if it'll be a really encouraging time. I don't know all those things," right? Of course. We all know that's hard. But that doesn't mean it's not something good. We pursue what is good.
So to echo back to Solomon's question, who knows what is good for man? When there's sorrow that comes into your life, who knows? Even when that sorrow, that honesty about your weakness feels out of control and scary, who knows it's good for you? The one who feels sorrow himself. The one we name Man of Sorrows. Jesus knows what's good for you.
We often run from sadness 'cause I think it feels like we might drown in it. Solomon encourages you to not run from sadness, but instead To say, what does this sadness teach me about the reality of God's world? And how do I walk forward in it?
I thought about a couple years ago, took some time and did a little yearly personal review, jotted down some different things, spent some time sitting out on House Mountain with a notebook and a Bible which was good. One of the things I did was I wrote down all the things from the last, I think it was two years was my timeframe, that felt really discouraging. I tried to draw back and not go "Well, I kinda felt sad about something two months ago. It was little." I tried to say what were the real, the things that really stick with me? You could do the same thing. You could write down, "Here are the things that were really hard," and then there's just the things that are day by day, they're kinda hard. I also did the other side and wrote down, "Here's the things that were really encouraging."
Now my personality, what I tend to do I don't wanna think about that bad list. And if I did think about it, I'd wanna say, "Oh yeah, those made me sad, but I'm just glad I don't have to think about that right now."
But what I found was when I went through that list and said, "God, why are all these things discouraging?" God used sorrow, sadness, discouragement, and I started to see, oh, these kind of all connect, at the time, to areas where I'm trying to rely on myself to accomplish something that only God can do. So God used me sitting for a moment in sadness to bring a step of spiritual growth that I needed to take. If you run from sadness every time it comes up, you won't get there.
When Solomon says, "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad," he's telling you there's a time when each of us, for our spiritual growth, for our walk in a fallen world, sorrow comes. Don't run from it and say, "No, I'm not gonna be around that. I'm gonna try to forget that it exists." Instead, step with God, walk with God in the sorrow, in the sadness. Don't live in a fantasy land pretending like there's not sadness just because it makes you feel happier now. Sit with God in his reality.
Pursue Uncomfortable Good
Verse five, the third thing. It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. Pursue the uncomfortable good.
See, we all like to pursue good when it feels easy. Any of you like to exercise, you'll know that comfortable exercise doesn't help you that much Pursue the uncomfortable good, especially when it's uncomfortable because someone is helping you sharpen something that's difficult.
The rebuke of the wise. Someone comes and says, "Here's an area when I don't think you're doing well." He gives us this cool picture too. it's kind of funny. You look at verse six, "As the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools."
Back where I lived in Florida, we had a couple banana trees, which was not a real fun experience, but that's a different story. If you pull the leaves, the little pieces, the leaves or pieces of the bark off the banana tree, and you're starting up a fire, and you throw those in, you know what happens? It burns bright. It looks like, "Oh, I got this fire started," and you know what? 20 seconds later, nothing.
If you go out and you take a bunch of thorn bushes and you go, "All right. I'm gonna throw these brambles down here, and I'm gonna start a good fire, and it'll roar up real big. Oh, good. Fire's going. Let's put the pot on it to cook our food." Walk off, leave it, come back. It's not gonna work. It looks like all the potential of a raging fire, right? But it's not gonna cook your dinner.
In the same way You can have laughter of people who are foolish around you. You can have this great conversation, "Oh, it seems great. This is really gonna help me," but it's not the rebuke that is needed. It's not constructive feedback from a wise person, and you say, "The potential looks really good," but it's not gonna cook your dinner.
Solomon says if you're gonna pursue what's good in life, pursue the uncomfortable good. Constructive feedback where someone around you who is wise is trying to help you to get better is something to run toward, not away from.
And by the way, when he says rebuke of a wise person, I think we have a, we have an unusual thing because we live in our digital world that we might think I get all the correction and the instruction from wise people. I get that from, books and YouTube videos and things like that happen out there. And so we think, "Well, I'm learning 'cause I'm listening to all these wise experts somewhere else in Ted Talks and all those kinds of things. I'm getting all these things from them, so I don't need correction, constructive feedback from anybody who's actually here." And part of the problem with that is that those people online and those people who write the books, they don't know you.
Yes, I learn from books. Yes, I learn from YouTube. It's wonderful. We have an amazing amount of resources. There's a lot of wise people on there. But that's not the same thing as a wise person who walks with me and says, "I think you're struggling in this area, and here's how I've seen it. How can I pray with you? How can I help you?"
And I think we all look at it and go, "That's probably an uncomfortable conversation." Exactly, but that doesn't mean it's not good. Pursue the uncomfortable good things.
So who knows that is good? Who can you trust? The God who said He came, He gave His life for you so that He would present us as the church without spot or wrinkle. The God who's transforming you to be something wonderful. Something beautiful. That's who knows it's good for you to have those conversations.
I wanna encourage you, it's a practical way you can pursue this. You say, "I wanna pursue these kinds of relationships." Pick somebody who you think is wise and who knows you. Go to coffee with them, go to lunch, sit down somewhere, get on a phone call. I don't care how you do it. Pick somebody and say, "Hey, you know me. Where do you think I am weak or am struggling?" And then listen.
It's not hard theoretically, but it's actually hard. And if nobody fits that category, if you can't think of somebody to say, "There's somebody who's wise, who knows me, that I could have that conversation with," if nobody fits that category, you need to rethink your relationships. Because you should have people like that. You need people like that. So if nobody fits that category in your mind, pray and ask God to open up a relationship like that or 40 relationships like that, however many.
And by the way, if somebody comes and asks you, take that as an opportunity to say, "How can I lovingly minister to them?" You'll probably say, "I'm not wise enough to answer those questions." You don't need to be God. You just need to be a brother or sister walking with them.
Better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools.
Don't Live in an Angry Pity Party, Even If It Feels Safer Now
In the last big category. Don't live in an angry pity party, even if it feels safer now. If some of us like to put on a happy face and pretend sadness and sorrow doesn't exist, others like to live in the negative. You go, "If I always expect things to be bad, I'll never be disappointed."
Solomon says, "Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. Say not, 'Why were the former days better than these?'" Probably the closest thing to the phrase the good old days that gets said in scripture. Like most of the time when we think back on the good old days, we've forgotten a lot, about a lot of the bad things in the good old days.
Just don't look back like that. Instead, live your life in the present. If life is vanity, is hevel, is breath, if that's what life is, then the present is the most important thing you have. You can't change the past, you don't know the future But you have this moment. Don't be angry about the past. Don't go, "Oh, it used to be better. Life used to be so much better. My career used to be so much better." Don't get angry about those things. Solomon says you can't change them anyway. It becomes bitterness and cynicism that ruins you. Don't live that way.
Instead, live with patience pursuing wisdom. Verse eight says, "Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit."
As Solomon continues in this book, this is what he's driving you to. He says you can't control your future, but you can pursue good with wisdom now. Wisdom can't guarantee your outcomes. It doesn't. I think we often don't actually believe that. We think if I invest wisely, then I guarantee I'll reach this financial status.
No. Wisdom doesn't guarantee your outcomes, but that doesn't mean wisdom's not good to follow. We can talk about wise ways to relate to your spouse or your kids, but that doesn't guarantee those relationships end up the way you want them to be in 10 or 40 years. It's not a guarantee. That doesn't mean it's not good.
Solomon says live with patience, with wisdom. Pursue wisdom because verse 11. So if we say, "I can't pursue control. All right, Solomon, but what's good?" Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun.
And as he continues throughout the book, he continues to give you principles of wisdom to say, "This is the way you truly pursue what is good." Our lives are not fatalism. Often we come and we say, "Solomon tells me I can't control the future." And it's easy to say, "Well then, I guess whatever happens. I don't have any meaningful actions to take. I might as well just forget about it all."
Sometimes we hear God's message that says, "You aren't in control." And we say, "Well, if, God just controls everything, why should I try to do anything good?" I don't think that's our real problem, though. I think most of the time our real problem is this: If I am not in control, why try? If I'm not in control, why try to pursue what is genuinely good? And Solomon is working you towards the answer to that question.
I'm not in control, but what is good and wise is actually fitting with the patterns of God's world around us. It's fitting with what He knows to be genuinely good for you beyond this life.
Say, who knows that it's good for me to avoid this kind of anger and bitter cynicism? What is true about God that makes him know that? Well, the one who says, "If you ask of wisdom, I will give it to you." That's the one who knows. The one who says, "If you come and ask wisdom, I give it freely. I don't scold you." When he says, "Pursue wisdom," he's really saying pursue him.
Conclusion
So, if you wanna live life so that you're not pursuing control, here's what this section of Ecclesiastes gives you. Live towards a good end. Don't live towards potential you can't guarantee, you don't know how it'll all work out. Live towards the end of a thing, the completed good name. Live towards that.
Don't live in a fantasy land even if you feel happier about it right now. There is sorrow in a broken world. Be honest about weaknesses.
Pursue the uncomfortable good. Specifically, when people around you, wise people can give you correction and help and instruction and growth.
And don't live in anger about what the past was that you wish it was still. Pursue the good.
I wanna take a moment. Sometimes, I think we get to the end of a service and we really quickly run through a quick response, and it's easy to forget what happened, what was said. It's easy to not take time to really do business with God, and I think especially with the weight of some of what Solomon says in this passage, it's good for us to have time to respond.
So I wanna invite you to respond in prayer. As we do that, Carolyn is gonna come up, and she'll play a little bit as we respond in prayer. And then I'll pray and we'll sing together. So I'll just invite you to respond to God's truth.