Well, having checked with regards to what you've been fed with from God's Word in recent months, I noticed that there was not much wisdom literature, those sections of the Bible that come to us from Proverbs and Job and Ecclesiastes, so I've chosen to meditate on Ecclesiastes this morning. It has an important message for us. If you would turn to chapter 1, I'll be reading from the ESV, verses 1 through 11. Or if you care to just listen along, that's fine as well. This is God's very word. Please give careful attention to it. The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanities of vanities, all is vanity. What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes to the north. Around and around goes the wind, and on its circuit, the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full to the place where the streams flow. There they flow again. All things are full of weariness, and a man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new? It has already been in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. Thus the reading of God's word. Kids, have you ever longed for a birthday present or perhaps a Christmas present? Or adults, perhaps you have let a significant other or a spouse know what you want as a gift for an upcoming anniversary or special occasion. And then when the day arrives, you open up the present, and you're disappointed because you didn't get what you wanted. Or perhaps you've been playing a card game, and expecting one hand, based upon the consistency of the game, you only receive another. And then you were wishing you could have a do-over or have been involved in shuffling and dealing out the cards instead of the person across from you. Something like that is what the book of Ecclesiastes is all about and prepares us for, but on a much grander scale. Life can be somewhat like that, disappointment. You see, the book of Ecclesiastes is meant to prepare us for disappointing times of suffering and affliction in this sad world. Recently at our General Assembly, I was sitting next to a minister and trying to encourage him because I had heard very good reports about his preaching. I said, well, what do you do? And he says, well, one thing I do is I tell the congregation what I expect them to get from the sermon right up front. what God wants to say to them. Well, God wants to tell you that this life is fleeting and that you ought to have an attitude that recognizes that. That's not the only thing that God wants you to recognize this morning. He wants you to have another attitude as well. But he wants you to recognize how fleeting life can be. It was G.K. Chesterton, that famous Roman Catholic journalist, who once said, and I quote, The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor that it is even a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is reasonable, but not quite. You see, life is not an illogicality, but it is a trap for logicians. I judge that may be a little bit much to chew off this early in the morning, But think about it. Life is not an illogicality, but it is a trap for logicians. See, what Chesterton is essentially saying was that life doesn't always throw you a softball. Sometimes life throws you a curveball. Sometimes life throws you a 98-mile-an-hour cut fastball, which is almost impossible to hit. And if you try and figure it out, it may drive you crazy. So, this passage, which was Hemingway's favorite, at the beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes is arguably one of the finest pieces of literature in the entire world, if not the Bible itself. The book of Ecclesiastes, whose main speaker I'll be referring to as Kohelet, so I won't be referring, so that I don't cause confusion, to Ecclesiastes, but rather Kohelet. So at verse 1, when it says, the words of the preacher, the son of David, the word for preacher there is the one who calls together. So Kohelet. This Kohelet is the primary speaker throughout the book. And the first thing that I want you to notice from this prologue that Kohelet wants to tell you is that human beings strive for order. And expected order. And regularity in this world. Let me give you a poignant illustration of how this happened to me recently. My neighbor and I were taking out the trash at the same time to put curbside. And I asked him, how's it going? Because he was just returning from Florida where they had married off their first son. And then I found out it was not going well. I received the shocking news that his first son was actually in the hospital shortly after the wedding because he had a collapsed lung and the efforts of the doctors and the surgeons to reinflate that lung had not worked and so he was going back in for more surgery and his wife was getting ready to return to Florida in order to be there and support them. And he said a very shocking thing. I quote, I guess that's what they get for living together before they were married. I'm not judging, I'm just saying, close quote. I just about fell over. I couldn't believe what I had just heard. Do you hear? In his mind, he was putting together deeds and consequence. Anyway, he wanted me to pray. He knows I'm a minister. He knows I teach up the road at Westminster Seminary. And so we prayed together. And the good news is the second surgery went well and his son was brought back to health. But my point here is simple. The conversation illustrates that humankind seeks for order and regularity in life, cause and effect, deed and consequence, nexus, meeting point, if you will. However, Kohelet says it's not that simple. It is true that sometimes people sin and they get the just desserts for their sins. But it's also true in this sin-cursed world that often you don't get your just desserts. And things and trials happen for reasons that we don't know that are beyond even the eclipse of our purview and our horizon. And if you try and figure it out, you might end up in a psychiatrist's office or in your pastor's office. I remember a couple months ago, studying in my morning devotions, Luke 13. Right after the shooting in Poway, where a son of our own congregation went out and murdered a woman just south of us in Poway. And this was just a few short days after that horrific event. And Luke 13, if you remember, talks about the blood of the Galileans being mixed in sacrifices to Pilate. Why? The disciples asked. Or the Tower of Siloam following on 18 and crushing them to death? And the disciples say, why? And Jesus says, why? Do you think they were worse sinners than everybody else in that crowd? And he says, absolutely not. Wrong question. You look for answers. You look for connections. You long and pine for this deed-consequence nexus that may not be available to you or at your fingertips. It's as if our Lord says, no, you are making the wrong surmise. You are asking the wrong questions. You just watch, I told my wife. People will say foolish things about what took place out of our own church. And they'll give foolish reasons for why it happened. And sure enough, it did on a national and international level. Now, this is the case inside and outside the church, and that is why I want to share Kohala's opening message with you. Because of my experience in the ministry, it's a vitally important message to hear. Life is fleeting. And you must be prepared in times of distress and trouble and suffering to recognize that. Well, Kohelet has a radical description of the world in which we live. He basically says there is no order. There's only cyclicality. There's only going round and round. It's absurd, he says, not in your English sense you might think of absurd, more in a French sense, which I'll describe. See, the problem with Ecclesiastes is most people don't even know how to read the book, and unfortunately there's a lot of published books out there that get it completely wrong and don't describe how to read the book. Most Christians have been trained to read Ecclesiastes as if the bulk of the book, all the way up until chapter 12, verse 8, is about a pagan, a skeptic, life without God. This is what it's characterized like. That's not what I'm telling you this morning. This is about a pilgrim life. This is about a Christian who's subjected to all the vexations and afflictions in this sin-cursed world. And he's asking the hard questions. And he's describing not just what goes on in his own mind. He's describing what goes on out there in the objective world. And he says it's absurd. You see, life is full of cyclicality and circularity. And he does this by showing the apparent futility and the tedious sameness of human striving that he describes so eloquently here at the beginning and throughout his book. The opening prologue reads in tone like one who is weary of the aimlessness of life's meaning and purpose. Events don't seem to have any direction. They keep repeating themselves. Many events seem absurd and senseless. And Cahillat wants you to feel this as you go through the trenches of his literature with him, so to speak. And he does this in a variety of ways, if you look with me at your Bible. First of all, he does this by the words he selects, semantic level. Not only the words he selects, but by their arrangement. His opening words, vanity of vanities, says the preacher, that is, Kohelet. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Now this word vanity occurs with a great density and frequency in the book of Ecclesiastes. 64 times in the Hebrew Bible this word appears, 30 of which appear in this book. It has a wide range, puff of breath, ephemerality, vanity, fleeing, nothingness, incomprehensibility, mystery, deceit, senselessness, nonsense, bubble, trace, ceaseless change, etc., etc. And we can't import all those meanings into Kohelet's choice. So the real question is, how does Kohelet use it? And for Kohelet, he uses it to describe something that's absurd. Absurd in the following way. Let me pour definition into that word. You see, for Kohelet, there are flagrant contradictions in the world that cannot be explained away. Things don't always work out as our intuitive sense of justice thinks that they should. There's a real sense in which this life that he's describing so well is absurd and an offense to our intuitive longing for harmony. This does not mean that life is merely incongruous or ironic for Kohelet. For Kohelet, life is tragic. It's oppressive. In other words, Kohelet recognizes that the world in which he lives demonstrates a kind of disparity, a disjunct, if you will, between events that are supposed to be linked by a bond of harmony, but when he looks seriously at the world, he notices that they're not. Therefore, in Kohelet's mind, all kinds of matters out in the world are heveled, vanity. Matters don't work out as our sense of justice and expectation indicates that they should. And this arises from contradictions between two undeniable realities. He knows this is not the way life should have worked out. And he goes on to describe that with the result of misery that occurs as he describes the consequences of the fall of humanity. And this is all affirmed by Kohelet when he continues in the opening prologue to describe life under the sun. You probably noticed that phrase over and over in verse 3 and following here. It's a common expression in Kohelet to describe our fallen world. He's not describing the world without recourse to God's redemption. As so many Christian Bible scholars have said, these dark sayings are all about a life of a pagan who has no belief. That's not what Kohelet is doing. He's describing a Christian, if you will, a believing Hebrew who looks and says, this world is not the way it's supposed to be. It's like lament psalms, with their brutal honesty, Pouring out their heart to God about the afflictions they experience. You see, it's because of his adherence to the fact that God is a sovereign and he knows that life should be otherwise, that he can be so brutally honest about the disjunct and harmony that he notices and he says it's absurd. See, living as a Christian in this world or living as a believing Hebrew in that time in many ways can be more difficult than living as a pagan in this world and merely suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. You see, if you can see that God is sovereign and bad things happen, and sometimes you cannot explain that, that can cause tremendous consternation and difficulty for a believer in this life. And that's what Kohelet is describing. It's best described as an arresting engagement by the consequences of Genesis 1-3. Koheldt is described in the world as it now exists. The universal experiences of the world, the desire for harmony, the desires for justice. And yet something is terribly bent and something is terribly wrong. It's as it's Westminster Divines hit it on the head when they said, By this sin, original sin, they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God and so became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of their soul and body. But see, it's not just Kohelet's inner mind that you're getting a window into. It's also the objective world that he's describing. So when they produced the Shorter Catechism for study by children, they said the following. Question 18. Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate wherein two men fell? Answer, the sinfulness of that estate wherein two men fell consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all its transgressions which proceed from it. And then moving on to the next question. And what is the misery of that estate wherein two men fell? answer all mankind by their fall lost communion with God and are under his wrath and curse and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and to the pains of hell forever. You see, as we progress through certain passages in Kohelet, we see that Kohelet is deeply, deeply vexed by the inconsistencies that he sees in this world. This life is a fleeting veil of tears. And Kohelet communicates this by his choice of words, his arraignments of words, the semantic level, but also stylistically. He does it through reiteration, communicating the totality of this claim and the dual placements of words. Look at your Bible. Notice how pervasive and total it is. Reiteration abounds. Verses 4 to 7, the verb to go, halach in Hebrew, occurs six times. In verse 6, the verb now in combination to go around, savav, occurs four times, just in a couple of verses. The dynamic is not just partial, it's total according to Kohelet. And he accomplishes this furthermore by putting opposites right next to each other in logical sets. Look at verse 5. Ah, the sun rises in the east and it sets in the west. The wind blows to the south and then circles to the north, verse 6. Every point on the compass has been covered. And Kohelet continues to emphasize the theme of sameness, cyclicality, circularity, absurdness through the dual placements of words. All the basic elements of the universe for the ancient mindset were expressed in this short prologue. Did you notice? Fire, verse 5, sun, verse 6, wind, air, verse 7, all the streams run into the sea, there's water, and yet the sea is not full. All these created things, whether the sun, the wind, the water, generations coming and going, verse 4, all of this coming and going matters not, nor makes any difference, because it's all the same. Things go round and round, and then he gets to verse 8, and he evokes the emotions, because you pick up on his weariness at noticing and describing all this sameness. And when he gets to verse 9, he makes an amazing statement where he obliterates basically any distinctions about time as we know time. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun. Indeed, there is no remembrance. And if someone happens to appear who says, no, I can make that distinction, He's a liar, says Kohelet. And if this is not bleak enough, Kohelet goes on to point out many such other examples in his book. Turn, for example, to the next chapter, chapter 2, and notice what he says. You see, Kohelet is not against traditional wisdom. He's not against Proverbs. Verse 12 of chapter 2, he says, I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can a man do who comes after the king? Only what he has already done. And then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly. Now there's Proverbs. And there is more gain in light than in darkness. And the wise person, he has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks around in darkness. Right? So he says, yeah, it's good to be wise. You might be blessed. It's bad to be wicked. You might be cursed. Acknowledge that. Yes, but more needs to be said. Look at how he goes on. And yet I perceive the same event happens to all of them. And then I said in my heart, what happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart, this also is vanity. for of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance seen that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten how does the wise die just like the fool I hated life because what is done under the sun is grievous to me for all is vanity and is striving after the wind see there is vanity to living wisely. There is an absurdity to our toil. Even seeking to do what God has revealed. So I hated all my toil, verse 18, with which I toiled under the sun seeing I must leave it to the man who comes after me. Oh great, you build up a big nest egg and then as Proverbs says a godly man leaves an inheritance and there burns a hole right in the one's pocket to whom you leave it. It's basically what he's saying. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool, and yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and use my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned, I gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who is a toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone else who did not even toil for it. This is a vanity and a great evil. What is a man from all the toil and striving of his heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of evil and his work is vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This is a vanity. For there is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God. For apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment? To the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is a vanity striving after win. Now, Kohelet's no hedonist. He's not saying just party it up and have a good time while you're here on this earth as an earth dweller. You can read chapter 2 and see that that's the case. Enjoyment of God's good creation can somewhat ameliorate what he's describing, but not ultimately. Or then look at chapter 8, if you will. Remember, I'm trying to give you a reading strategy for Kohelet. So you can go home and do this on your own and not rely on a lot of Christian commentaries out there who just get it blatantly wrong. Look at chapter 8. here we have to start out with verse 12 to see the context. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God because they fear before him. That sounds like orthodoxy. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow because he does not fear before God. Sounds confessional. But now notice what he says. There is a vanity, chapter 8, 14, that takes place on the earth that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked. And there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of righteous. I said this also is a vanity. And I commend joy for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful. For this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life what God has given him under the sun. And when I applied my heart to know wisdom and see the business of what is done under the earth or on the earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out, Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out. So once again, Kohelet says, yeah, it's good to be wise. Don't be wicked. You may get your comeuppance if you are. Yes. But the same fate happens to the wicked and the righteous. Which seems to implode this whole paradigm under which this godly Hebrew is living. Cohella doesn't see the evidence of traditional wisdom working out in the world as he looks around. We see drunk drivers get off with no true justice when they cross over a meridian and wipe out three generations of women in the other car in a head-on collision in a nanosecond, as happened to close friends of our family. And then this murder is released from charges or persecution because of a technicality. It's absurd. We see adulterers get off with a slapped hand, but the trail of injury they leave behind is unbearable for those in the wake. We see strong, able young men reduced to hospital beds, afflicted with diseases susceptible to the grim reaper and the pangs of death. And then there's the horror of war. SIDS. Children who wander from the faith that they were taught so earnestly. It makes no sense. And as if this was not enough and distressing enough, Kohelet says, I'm just a messenger, you cannot find out what God is doing under the sun. You can try, but there's no one out there that can do it. He says, verse 17 and 18. Now nothing escapes the speaker up front, And I'm guessing by this time that you may be wondering about Garrett Brower's or the consistory's good judgment, inviting this minister to your pulpit. By this time, Kohelet may have left you wondering whether you really want to consider if it's worth the effort to go home and strive well in your duties to serve God that he's given you to fulfill this week, whether that be parenting, schooling, your jobs, to make money and pay taxes. You may be saying to yourself, thanks, Pastor, I struggle with anxiety enough. I already struggle to find a good night's rest, but this sermon has really blessed my soul. And young people, you may be yourselves wondering about this radical message. Is this really in the Bible? Then why should I persevere in my studies, let alone developing virtue, if this absurd cyclicality is all that I have to look forward to once I hit adulthood? But you remember Psalm 39.7, which we sang earlier. And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. See, Kohel comes with a good dose of reality therapy and says, Life is fleeting. And you must grasp this claim and this truth and fully embrace it. or you will go crazy at some time in your life. But also Kohelet goes on to give us another message that we should hope in God even in the midst of this fleetingness and that we should trust in him and wait for him. He does this in the epilogue where a narrator steps out of the closet and now it's in the third person. And, of course, this points forward to the canonical context, where we see that Christ is the one who ultimately answers the question for an end to the circular nature of the world and the absurdity that we observe. Look at chapter 12. We start at verse 8. One of the most famous bookends in the Hebrew Bible, because he picks up the beginning. Notice what he says. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity. And then verse 9, besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. And the preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads, and they're like nails, firmly fixed, that are the collected sayings. They are given by one shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making in many books there is no end. And of much study it is a weariness to the flesh. The end of the matter all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. See, that same message gets picked up and we could turn, for example, to the New Testament. many places to see that Christ is the pinnacle of the wisdom trajectory and and projects in the whole Hebrew Bible and we see that in the typology for example in the great chapter on typology in Matthew 12 we don't have time to read it keep it short so I'm invited back but there if you just turn to Matthew 12 Jesus our Lord says something greater than the temple is here so he's he's communicating to his disciples the temple was meant to be a shadow of greater things to come. But now that the substance has come namely Christ and he institutes and makes foundational the true temple namely gathered right here his people you see the antitype. The substance has come. All those shadows have passed away. So there you turn from the priestly office to the prophetic office, and you remember he talks about Jonah later on in the same chapter. And he talks about the sign of Jonah. And he talks about Jonah being for three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, and so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And then the men of Nineveh will rise up at judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented of the preaching of Jonah. See, the prophecy with covenantal teeth to it, and an edge. You know, some who are in the audience were convicted in their hearts. He fulfills the priestly sacrifices, all of them. He fulfills the office of priests. He fulfills the prophetic office. But also notice, he fulfills the wisdom trajectory as well. Look at how it goes on. The queen of the south will rise up at the judgment of the generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold, something greater than Solomon, the epitome of wisdom and the wise king, is here in your midst as well. This seems to indicate that our Lord's own consciousness was aware that he was fulfilling these very types and shadows. And then in conclusion we turn to perhaps one of the fullest passages showing this truth that Kohelet and all the wisdom tradition finds its yes and amen in Christ when we turn to Paul's great letter to the Colossians. Colossians 1 verse 15 and I'll read verse 15 through 20. He is the image of the invisible God, Christ, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, and in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. See, Christ is the New Testament wisdom of God, the one who brings order to our otherwise foolish and futile lives in the sin-cursed world. Notice Paul's emphasis here on the invisible image of God, Christ himself, who is even the precursor of the first Adam. There never was a time when he was not. Notice the emphasis on Christ's pre-existent status. But not only does the passage emphasize the pre-existent wise creator, verses 15 and 16, it also shows that Christ is the providential sustainer of our lives. And the preserver of creation, verse 17. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. So, dear Christian and anyone listening in and looking for a stable worldview, where should you turn when life feels like it's so chaotic, even spinning out of control, perhaps not now, but maybe in the future? To Christ. In the midst of all our stories, whether somewhat together and ordered or completely flying out of control and shipwrecked on the shoals of this sad life, the only place to turn is to God and to the Savior who provides order in the midst of the turmoil, consolation in the midst of all the potential bitterness that comes with betrayal, Sickness, disease, relational difficulties, disappointments, injustices, and cruelties. The scriptures, particularly in Ecclesiastes, are very, very honest about the disruption that sin brought into this uncursed world. And this brings pain. And this brings vexation. And this brings mental anguish. especially for Christians, and potential bitterness and disillusionment. It causes so many young people and old to fly to other attempts to answer the absurdities that are really out there in the world when they observe this twisted, bent, sad world which is so fallen. And this fleetingness must be grasped, however equally and more important it is to have that second attitude of confidence in your Lord about which the psalm singer wrote. Now, oh Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you. The redemptive work of God for the benefit of this sin-laden creation and creatures was achieved by the all-wise atoning death of Jesus Christ. Indeed, that's the greatest display of wisdom in the entire cosmos or universe that was ever made. That's the canonical scripture's answer to the absurdity of the cyclicality of misery under the sun that Kohelet so eloquently describes. And we as Christians can say that the scriptures teach that the new creation in Christ's person and work is where God and man and the creator order are finally brought into right harmony and relation to each other, even if not perfectly in this life, in this veil of tears. Yet someday the scriptures teach that it will come to pass because of the penalty paying substitution of the perfect blood of Christ, because of the probation keeping of the second Adam who fulfilled all that the first Adam failed to do. Things have been set in motion which cannot be undone. A day is coming when this new final creation will replace this world and the new heavens and the new earth. It is the sons and daughters of God that are redeemed and which there is continuity. God gives true wisdom to his people as a gift when he sent Christ into the world. And he does this to correct our confused wisdom and even our bewilderment at times. Through his word and his spirit, especially through the preaching of his word and the sacrament. Remember, I began with Chesterton. The world is not an illogicality, but it is a trap for logicians. In other words, the world is often an orderly place, usually, but not always. If you yourself, this morning, you may be in a state of orientation. Things may be going well financially, relationally, in your marriages, raising your children. But maybe you aren't in a state of orientation. Maybe your life is full of brokenness, hurt, pain, bitterness, anxiety. Nevertheless, if you be a Christian, be a good cheer Christian. Christ has redeemed the world and the people for himself And enables us, empowers us by his spirit to live in the midst of the absurdities of this incursed world. Maybe the sermon overreached, laughing in the face of absurdities. Because there are Christians in the world, perhaps even in this place of worship, where there's definitely human beings out there that do not feel like this story is working. It's left them sad, it's left them bitter. Nevertheless, God through his son is reconciling the world and the people to himself. His big story is the only answer to this cyclicality, to this absurdity. Trust in God. He was a powerful creator, redeemer, and consummator. He is a heavenly father that truly cares for his sheep. He will accomplish completely what he set out to do in this sad world. He will protect. He will care for. He will console you. and he will complete the good work which he began in you as his saints. And because of this, Christians can avoid slipping into cynicism or naive optimism. What attitude can Christians hold? Realism. It's an absurd world out there. But what other attitudes should Christians hold? One of faith and hope. God will keep his promises. God will allow stability in the world until Christ comes a second time and brings about the resurrection of the body and the fulfillment of the new creation as he promised. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word. It is so brutally honest, and yet, O Lord, we know that you give it for our health, this manna from heaven, week in and week out. So, Father, we pray that you would make us good listeners when brothers and sisters share about the absurdities of their own lives and the world that they are experiencing. And Father, may our words be salted with grace, as it were, so we might be an encouragement to help one another along our pilgrim way, O Lord. For each day we have a choice to help each other to that destiny. Father, thank you that because of the work of Christ, we can look forward with hope and faith. And we do not need to be left to despair. We praise you for him. What else can be said, we thank you for his word. In Jesus' name we do pray. Amen.