Keep sharing good news without ads.
Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 4:1-3
Well, I trust most of us have gotten some level of sleep after yesterday's festivities. We are here now in Ecclesiastes chapter 4. As we begin this chapter, of course, we've also begun the third part of what's carried over from the end of chapter 3, and we've read that all together from verses 16 and following in chapter 3.
We began with this theme of injustice. This theme is going to be something that continues into the next chapter, chapter 5, where we'll be able to have a little bit more time and maybe detail on the matters of injustice.
It's not quite going to be the focus this morning, but I do want to hold this all together, which is why I put it in three parts and call that the dust of death. Because we see with verses 16 and 17, the king's despair over injustice, for him, portrays everything that is wrong about life under the sun.
The way that life, as God intended, has become something perverse, something corrupted, and indeed something that he holds with contempt. We see that life under the sun is slowly being swirled around and clouded over with the dust of death, the dust of man's rebellion against God, and with it, therefore, the oppression and misery that occurs between men.
And so, as the king continued to reflect on this matter of injustice, in the very place you expect to find justice, you find unrighteousness, wickedness. And as he begins to meditate and turn over, that leads him to think about the way that this just draws forth the matter of death.
Sin entering into the world, and through sin, death, and the decay of death. Death affecting every good and perfect thing that God created. Every good and perfect gift that comes down from the Father of lives.
And so, he begins in the end of chapter 3 to relate man's end to that of the other animals. What makes them to differ? One day we all return to that dust, this dust of death. And here, as we begin chapter 4, verses 1 through 3, we see he returns to this theme of injustice.
Then I returned, he says, and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun, and look, the tears of the oppressed, but they have no comforter. On the side of the oppressors there is power, but they have no comforter.
Therefore, I praise the dead who are already dead, more than the living who are still alive, yet better than both is he who has never existed, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
Well, this is a despairing passage, isn't it? And the king is despairing. As he surveyed life under the sun, as he's begun to feel the vexation of injustice and look at the lot of man to return to dust as a result of sin entering into the world, he now looks back at oppression and he sees those whose lives are caught up in the oppression and misery of this perversion.
And he realizes there's no one there to comfort them. There's no comfort for the oppressed, and he begins to despair about this reality of life under the sun. Now it's really important that we understand there's revolving themes not only of justice, but again the very framework of being under the sun.
Please notice in verses 1 through 3 how that's the bookend, that's the frame of this passage. I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun, verse 1. Verse 3, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
So we're framing this passage with all of its despair as a perspective that's under the sun. And also within that, this repetition of there being no comforter, no one to come alongside and seek to encourage or edify or bring peace or sympathy to the one who is oppressed.
And this is going to be developed into the theme that carries up the rest of chapter 4, where we look at the need for companionship, that it's not good for man to be alone. Another running commentary on the creation account in Ecclesiastes, and it's going to talk about how two are better than one.
Talk about how one who falls into a pit is able to come forth again, but he's also going to talk about the way companionship goes awry, because alas, even friendship is under the sun. So that will carry us through the rest of chapter 4, and that's going to be the bridge from the oppression we saw in chapter 3, verse 16, into what follows in chapter 4.
Now we have it framed under the sun, looking at verse 1, I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun, and look, the tears of the oppressed, but they have no comforter. On the side of their oppressors there is power, but they have no comforter.
Notice the repetition. Oppression is mentioned three times. I considered all the oppression, the tears of the oppressed, on the side of the oppressors. So this language of oppression appears three times, and the king also repeats this language of a lack of comfort.
They have no comforter. They have no comforter. The king is seeing, and he's asking us to see. Behold, he says, look at the tears of the oppressed. This is heart-wrenching for him to become aware of and be witness to the injustice that's done under the sun, fallen life and all of its vicissitudes and miseries.
It's like the king has tapped into an endless news feed with the most hideous headlines, and as he's so vexed, he begins to see life as almost unbearable. He recognizes that sometimes even the most powerful, even the most noble are not able, not powerful enough, nor can they be present to those who are suffering.
It's the painful insight of this passage as we see it returning to a matter brought forth in the first chapter. What is crooked under the sun cannot be made straight. The scriptures certainly call for justice.
The prophets declare that justice must be wrought by the people of God, and they thirst and long for an end to oppression, and certainly throughout Christian history, Christian salt and light and the advance of the gospel has done much to cease oppression and bring forth justice like the light of the noonday, but we find no call here for justice.
The king, Kohelet, he does not take up the prophet's mantle and demand justice and rebuke the oppressor. He seems rather to succumb to the gritty reality of life under the sun. So rather than making a call, a plea, or bringing a prophetic oracle against the oppressor, he simply takes it all in and begins to mourn.
Remember what we saw at the beginning of chapter three. He knows that there is a time to mourn. He knows that there is a time for war, that there's a time for pain. He knows that there is an unknowable purpose for all of these times.
That's what the beginning of chapter three implied. So this mourning king now, as he's had his full of witnessing and surveying all of the misery, all of the suffering, all of the heartless cruelty between man, he says, I praise the dead who are already dead, more than the living who are still alive.
And even better than both is the one who's never existed, who's never had to see and behold and be a witness to the evil work that's done under the sun. Now what this is beginning in chapter four is what theologians call Tov Spruch.
It's actually a combination of Hebrew and German. It's a better than saying. You see that here in verse three. Better than both is he who has never existed. And through the rest of this chapter, we're going to have a series of better than statements, Tov Spruch statements.
As the king is surveying the kinds of evil that would make Asaph's foot almost slip, he returns to the sentiment he had at the end of chapter two. Therefore I hated life. We said even there at the end of chapter two, we shouldn't too quickly marginalize that kind of sentiment.
What is the king realizing and seeing and privy to about life that is causing him such dread, such miserable depression that he almost despairs of living altogether? It would be better not to have been born.
Is that not the lament of Job when he considers his own affliction and suffering and he says, may the day that I was born perish? It's that kind of anguish in the heart. That kind of suffering that cries out with that lament.
So not the Lord Jesus who says of Judas, the betrayer, it would be better for him that he had never been born. So we think about judgment. We think about injustice. We think about oppression in misery and we recognize where the king is coming from.
If you're tempted to dismiss this as exaggeration or overreaction, perhaps you just have not paid enough attention to the world. You're not doing what the king is asking you to do. Look. Just look around you.
We have no shortage of headlines in our days. Do you not see headlines from day to day that would almost make you weary of life under the sun? Has there not been this case in the headlines in our state over the past week of this court case from a mother who drowned her children?
And you think of all the cries for help and the red flags that were surrounding this family and you think of these little children that were being chased throughout the house and brought one by one to the place of their death and what those moments would have been like, almost unimaginable, the horror of that.
And I think of the first responders to things like that every day. The law enforcement agencies that deal with human trafficking and sex slavery and the insane, ludicrous amounts of money that that generates and the perverse elite who trade this like bubble gum and baseball cards.
And you're privy to that and you get details of that and you feel this nausea about life. And this is why the prophets say, Lord, come, put the earth to right, crush the oppressor, break the teeth in his mouth.
This is what the king is beginning to see. This is the evil work under the sun. The Westminster Catechism puts it this way, blindness of mind, a reprobate sense, strong delusions, hardness of heart, horror of conscious, vile affections, along with every other evil that befalls us in our bodies, in our names, in our estates, in our relations, in our employments, together with death itself.
Brothers and sisters, this is the dust of death, swirling around, suffocating air and light and life. And if we have the wisdom of the king, we too will understand this lament, this visceral reaction against it.
We hate that life has become like this. What God made good has become something so corrupt, so perverse, so abominable. We cannot pretend that all is well. We cannot zippy doodad our way down the corridor of life without experiencing the effects of the fall and the dust of death accumulating all around us.
The wise understand their place in the house of mourning and they understand, as we saw even in chapter three, verse eight, there is a time to hate. The king has come to this time here in the first three verses.
He's cultivated an absolute, abject horror for the misery, the sin, the death, the evil that is done under the sun. And he joins with the psalmist, Oh, you who love the Lord, hate evil. I hate evil so much, I despair of life under the sun altogether.
He's longing for the Lord to bring about a hope and a redemption. Only there will be comfort. Because the matter of injustice and violence and strife is such that sometimes in the grip of death, there's no one to comfort.
The world grows. Eden wasn't groaning, Eden wasn't like this. And so we, like the king, ought to hate the way the world has become. And to the degree we turn a blind eye and we don't have the reaction of the prophets, we don't have the lament of the king in Jerusalem, we have not beheld the evil work that is done under the sun.
Now, there's effects that come with that. There's consequences that come with that. We ourselves will find no comfort in life or in death, nor will we be able to comfort those who experience injustice and the effects of the fall if we don't see and react in the same ways.
We will not have comfort and we will not be of comfort. So really what I want to do this morning is make two points about the hope and the promise of comfort. So the first thing is to look at the place of comfort.
And then the second thing is to look at the promise of comfort. The way that the promise of a comfort yet to come actually reaches down into our daily lives and it becomes an anchor for our soul. And then with that, we'll have three running applications.
Now, again, injustice as a theme, we're going to see in a lot more detail in chapter five. So that's central to these first three verses, but it's not central to the message this morning. I want to bridge together the dust of death over the past three weeks.
So the first thing is the place of comfort. The place of comfort. The Heidelberg Catechism begins with one of the most profound questions and answers, I think, in all of reformed literature. And I sometimes like to make blank lines and imagine what would I have come up with as an answer to this?
And I don't think I would have done it as well as the theologians crafting the Heidelberg. The question is, what is your only comfort in life and in death? That's how they begin the catechism. What is your only comfort in life and death?
There were German Christians on their deathbed even through the last decades, as a result of being catechized in the Evangelist Church, their dying thoughts were simply to rehearse this question. What is my only comfort in life and death?
And I'll put a blank line under that. What's your answer to that? Some of you might have better answers than others. Some of you might have very scripturally saturated answers, but listen to this answer.
What is my only comfort in life and in death? Here's the answer. That I, in both body and soul, in both life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. That's just the beginning of the answer.
I don't belong to me. I belong to another. My body, my soul, my life and my death are His, and He is my faithful Savior. That is an incredibly profound statement. What does it mean for Him to be a faithful Savior?
What does it mean for Him to possess our body and our soul and our life and our death? It means this. He, with His precious blood, has fully satisfied for all of my sins, set me free from all the power of the devil and preserves me such that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head.
Indeed, all things must now work together for my salvation because I am His. Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him.
What an incredible statement. What an incredible answer to that question. How are you going to live in a fallen world under the sun, surrounded with this kind of vexation, without that kind of hope? You'll be where the king is.
Again, the whole perspective is under the sun. I hate life. It would be better not to be born. There's no comfort for the things that are happening every day under the sun. But here's the comfort. When we don't look under the sun, but look beyond, when we see redemption as God has purposed it, when we understand the fullness of the seasons and the times that God has appointed, we come to this question, what is my only comfort in life and death?
Now, the question that follows that is equally profound and it's equally helpful, and it sets up the structure of the rest of the Heidelberg Catechism. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?
What are they expecting? You think of when this is written and the persecutions that are going about the Protestant Reformation. You think about how people were experiencing not only the normal issues of infant mortality and disease, but the bodily threatenings of the Holy Roman Catholic Church chasing down and persecuting the Protestants, trying to stamp them out, burn them at stakes.
You think about all of these incredible pressures and forces that would take away every hope and every comfort unless it had been stripped down to the gospel comfort. And what does it say? What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?
Not just that you'll have comfort, but you'll have a joy that comes from your comfort. Three things. First, the greatness of my sin and misery. Second, how I am set free from all of my sins and misery.
And third, how I am to thank God for such a deliverance. Now that sets up the framework for the Heidelberg. It presents, first of all, the issue to which the gospel speaks, that we are full of sin and abject rebellion against God in a miserable and helpless estate.
So the first thing to recognize is the greatness of my sin and that misery. And then that opens the door to make the good news the good news, how I am set free from all of my sin and that misery. And then it brings forth this splendid life of worship and sanctification that flows from it, thanking God for such a deliverance, living out my life in response to that deliverance.
Or as some have summarized the Heidelberg, guilt, grace, gratitude. And that's where comfort comes in both life and death. That's what it means to not belong to myself, but belong to my faithful savior.
Who has put grace upon my guilt and given me a life to be lived in gratitude. Now we're in Ecclesiastes territory. Now we hold together the vexation about life under the sun with those carpe diem, those acape diem statements of receiving and being grateful for life such as it is under the sun.
Well, let's look a little more closely at this structure, because this is where comfort comes from for those who have no comfort in the misery and oppression of life under the sun. The first thing is to recognize guilt.
And we want to take that for granted because it's not the most obvious starting point, is it? No, no, no. Ross, you misheard me. I'm looking for comfort. Why are you pointing me to my guilt? So that you'll find comfort, because unless you begin with the guilt, unless you begin with the offense, unless you have something that shows you the need for repentance, there will be no gospel comfort.
There will be no gospel hope. There will certainly be no gratitude. Like Adam, you will stay behind the leaves trying to work and merit your way to acceptance with God. But that acceptance can never come.
God is a holy God, a consuming fire. So you begin with guilt. You recognize who you are, what you're like, how you're not just a victim of evil done under the sun, you're a participant in evil done under the sun.
Horror of horrors. You recognize who you are apart from Christ. At the ceremony reception yesterday, I was just recounting with a brother, do you know how different our lives would be if it weren't for Christ?
Do you shudder to think about that? I thank God he didn't let me go in the way I was going. I'm so thankful he didn't give me the things I was seeking, the relationships I was wanting, the direction I was going.
Thank you, Lord. I know who I am apart from him. I know what I'm like without his indwelling presence. I know the power and presence of sin within my breast. I see it now more clearly as a Christian than I ever saw it beforehand.
It takes that light to expose what we're really like. It takes the contrast of a perfect savior to show us just how desperately we need his salvation. Now, again, as we focus on guilt, it might sound like the sure way to lose comfort.
But unless we actually begin with our guilt, we'll never arrive at true comfort. And so it's the cascade that runs from Romans seven to Romans eight, you begin with, I know nothing good dwells within me that is in my sinful nature.
And you feel the wrestling even as a Christian in my inner being, I delight in God's law. It's just I can't do it. And the things I want to do, I don't do. Sins of commission, sins of omission, sin around, but also sin within.
It's assault on this new nature and this new desire where he sees the effects and the bondage of the fall, pinching his skin, longing and lingering to come after him again. And he recognizes there's no hope for deliverance in myself, in my flesh, nothing good dwells.
My only hope is in Christ Jesus, my Lord, who will deliver me from this body of death. I thank God for Christ, my savior. That's Heidelberg one. The Christian life in this way, just like we see in these first three verses, is a groan for deliverance.
How many of you are living the Christian life as if it was a groan for deliverance? This is the importance of guilt, grace, gratitude. Sometimes we like to sweep all the mess under the rug and think somehow we're holding it all together.
And as long as some pair of eyes thinks we're living the Christian life, that must be good. Do you not sometimes just pause at midnight and go? Oh, Lord, how how can anything that is crooked be made straight?
I see the foxes in the vineyard, Lord, I see a lot more than that. Foxes, I see rhinoceros in my vineyard. It's a groan of deliverance. Can we resonate with Paul's depiction there in Romans 7? Do we resonate with that?
Who will deliver me? I'm wrestling. I'm struggling. I see it. I begin with my guilt because I'm looking for comfort. It's the thing that wants me to not look at my guilt, but I know that's why I can never find comfort.
Maybe you've experienced maybe this is one of your testimonies, it's one of my favorite things that happens in a church. When someone's actually brought to the end of themselves and they see their sin for what it is and they just repent and they are the most free and joyful person in the whole church for that very reason.
Nothing can condemn me now. I've been comforted by God himself. I've repented to him. I've acknowledged my guilt before him and he healed me and he cleansed me and he declared me righteous in his sight.
There's a freedom that comes from that. That is the comfort that we have in life and death, and it begins by acknowledging our guilt. The Christian life, as Stuart Ally says, is both the groan for deliverance and the shout of victory.
These things happen simultaneously. One follows the other. False teachers will teach either the one or the other, but true believers will always acknowledge both. The day for no uncertain sound in the trumpet of victory has not come.
My trumpet of victory is intermingled with the groan for deliverance. The Lord sanctifies. The Lord brings us to repentance. The Lord renews us with his mercy every day. There is a great shout and a strength that brings us from one degree of glory to the next within that.
But in the midst of it all, we're still living under the sun. There is a groan for deliverance. When will the victory be as it ought to be? As the hymn puts it, when will I love you as I ought? Well, perhaps the comfort that the Lord intends to follow our faith in him has disappeared in the midst of oppression.
We're not immune to the miseries. We're not immune to lacking comfort in this life. Sorrow and trial seem to swallow up all the light and hope that is found in the scriptures. We seem to have blind eyes and we're unable to actually walk in the things that we know to be true.
Such can be the experience of oppression, sorrow and trial, heartache, distress. Maybe even temptation, maybe even stumbling into sin and how helpless we can feel in those moments, especially toward each other, not knowing how to comfort one another.
I vividly remember this time at First Baptist there as a young man and I was sitting a few behind this this man who as as the sermon was being preached, he was just going through it. He was feeling the Lord pressing on his heart and his conscience.
And so he just began to to weep into his hands and convulse in mourning. And it was quite audible. And I was the only one around him. There was like no one else around us. I was kind of sitting there not really knowing what to do.
He's going through it. And finally, my mom, from a few years back, goes, Ross, comfort him. I'm like, I don't know how to comfort him. What kind of comfort can you offer like that? What's a hand on the back in a moment like that?
You find yourself despairing. You're looking for some dawning embers of comfort. And what you recognize as you proceed in the Christian life is this comfort that comes to this lifelong groan for deliverance.
It's not a comfort that you can look at pessimistically. Oh, it's just here for a moment. It's gone. Oh, you know, you thought you had arrived and now it's gone. I could only describe it as a as a storm beaten comfort, as a seasoned comfort, as a rugged old cross comfort.
This is not a wet behind the ears, naive, doe eyed with the Christian life type of comfort that we're seeking. This is a tried and true comfort that reaches to the deepest wells of our sorrow. And for that reason, our comfort that comes from the Lord cannot be contained in a current emotional experience.
We may be going through the throes of laments. We may be vexed like the king is vexed here. He, of course, is finding comfort when he reflects on the Lord, when he turns his mind to the God who controls all time.
We saw that all the way through chapter three. Now he beholds and looks again at evil done under the sun and he gets back to that place of lament and groaning for deliverance. But his mind again, as he turns to the Lord and contemplates, he will find comfort.
He will find a peace, a stillness for his soul. That's how I would like to describe comfort to you this morning, a stillness for your soul. A stillness for your soul. So this is not a happy-go-lucky, triumphant kind of comfort.
It's a stillness that comes. Or to put it in another angle, it's a peace that surpasses all your understanding, all your perspective, all your experience. It's a deep peace. Let me give an example of this peace.
Psalm 69. And if you want to know where David is when he's writing Psalm 69, you can look at verse 20. Reproach has broken my heart. I am full of heaviness. I looked for someone to take pity and there was no one.
I looked for comforters. I couldn't find any. Verse 29, I am poor and sorrowful. Let your salvation, O God, set me up on high. I will praise the name of God with a song. I will magnify him with thanksgiving.
The humble will see this and be glad. You who see God, your hearts will live. For the Lord hears the poor, doesn't despise his prisoners. So let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them.
God will save Zion. You see where he is and how his mind turns toward contemplating God's control, God's purpose, the hope he has in God and that reaches down into his present distress and it comforts him.
It stills his soul. Think of how this brings guilt and grace together as we go from guilt to grace. David again from Psalm 32. Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and a new spirit. There is no deceit. Let me tell you about the time that I tried to hide it, tried to camouflage it, tried to put a grin on my face and pretend I wasn't where I actually was.
This is what happened in my life. When I grew silent, my bones grew old. Does that does that not vividly depict to you a groaning for deliverance? My bones grew old. Have you seen the kind of discomfort, if not anguish, on an elderly person's face when they have to get out of a chair or ease into something?
That's what David is seeing. Every joint hurts. Everything hurts. And their face almost freezes with that discomfort toward the very end, it's like I can't move without every knuckle, muscle, fiber and tendon somehow hurting.
And that's what he's describing, my bones grew old. And what is he doing? Groaning all day long. He probably couldn't see it then as he was keeping silent, deceiving himself, distracting himself from the reality of his guilt.
But the reality is now he looks back and realizes day and night, Lord, your hand was heavy on me. No wonder I had no health, no light, no peace. No wonder my bones were old and I was groaning and bodily, I was full of heaviness and sorrow.
No wonder I was trying to dull myself and distract myself. It was your hand that was heavy on me. He sees that now as a mercy. He says, my vitality, the energy, the simplicity, the happiness I once had, it was turned into a drought of summer.
Everything began to curl and shrivel with the death of heat. And then I acknowledged my sin to you. My iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I'll just go confess my transgressions to the Lord. And what did the Lord do?
Who are you to come to me? You have no right to come to me. David, what are you thinking? Flee from my presence. Oh, that's not what the Lord does. David, I'm glad you came. Yeah, this is a rough state you're in.
Let's see how hard you can work it out. Here's some things that you can do. We'll see how well you do if you want to get out. Now, what does the Lord do? He says, I acknowledge my sin. I said, I will confess and you forgave.
Guilt, grace. And so his whole response, verse 11, be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you're righteous. Shout for joy, all you upright and hard. He's now including himself in that joyful group. God has declared him upright.
God has made it so. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And he is the one who cleanses us from all unrighteousness. David was acting like a liar. He was living as if he had not sinned.
But if we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar. His truth is not in us. And so David was, in his own way, approaching the finished work of Christ that opened up the floodgates of forgiveness and mercy in his life.
He went from guilt. To gratitude, thy works, Horatius Bonner says, thy works, not mine, O Christ, speak gladness to this heart. So what's the source of comfort? Where is the gladness and the joy that comes from comfort?
It's not what I've done, nor what I could do. Not all my sighs and tears could bear that awful load. It's what Christ has done. What is my only comfort in life and death? That I am not my own, but both body and soul and life and death belong to my faithful savior.
The death that he died, Paul says, he died to sin once for all the life that he lives now, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ our Lord.
So that's the grace that that floods and then yields the gratitude when we face injustice, oppression, when we see ourselves backsliding and drying up, as David reports in Psalm 32, when we feel the dominion of sin advancing under the shadow of a cursed world.
And all of a sudden, our life and our walk feels like a deep dungeon in a dark cell with the thickest chains and the strongest jailer we recognize as Bunyan taught us to recognize. The simple promise that takes us out of Doubting Castle in the dungeon of despair.
How foolish we are to forget we had it with us all along, it's not me, it's him, not my own, it's not my work, it's his work that comforts my soul, that navigates my life. And so we ask if I know this to be true, if I believe that God has done this for me and is active now in my life, why do I spend so little time dwelling on this?
Why do I have such little comfort in my times of sorrow and my seasons of distress? Why do I not long for him out of that groaning for deliverance? Why do I still try to work things out in my own effort and by my own strength?
Why am I not more sanctified? Why am I not more holy and upright? And so I ask you, brothers and sisters, do you know the place of comfort? Do you know the place of comfort? Do you know how to still your soul?
By feeding upon the gospel, do you understand the movement from guilt to grace and gratitude? Are these successive movements a part of your daily life walking with the Lord? And that place gives way to the promise.
If this is the place of comfort, what are these movements bringing us toward? It's bringing us toward the day when there will no longer be guilt, when grace will be fully realized and, in fact, consummated, when now we enter into a gratitude that never varies, never wanes, but is ever established, everlasting.
And that is the promise of comfort. God promises comfort as a fulfillment of the gospel. Comfort and rest ultimately point to the fulfillment of salvation in this way. Comfort, yes, comfort my people, says the Lord.
Let her know the war is over. Her sins have been dealt with. I hold them against her no more. The Lord will comfort Zion. What is he going to do to the waste places of your life? He's going to make it like Eden under the sun.
We can't see it. That's why the king, he contemplates and see, he sees what makes life almost not worth living when you actually see the fall and sin for what it is. Who is the Puritan who said, if I had a pit of hell open before me and a pit of my own sin, as it really is in the sight of God, I would quickly jump into the pit of hell.
We're so dull, so veiled to the hideous strength of sin, so lulled to sleep by the world and the flesh and the devil. We don't have the perspective or the despair of the king. We don't cry like the prophets.
How long, O Lord? In other words, we were far too comfortable with the dust of death, far too comfortable. Jesus lived his whole life with the prospect of what God would do. At the end, he set a joy before him, and then he was faithful to the will of his father unto the end.
He had all of the scriptures that prophesied and spoke to him that became his exercise of faith and devotion unto this will of his father. And he knew what that will required. A day was fixed and the hour would come.
Where he would be abandoned unto death, constituted in our sin and guilt to face the full measure of the wrath of his father and the joy and the hope that stilled his soul has its traces and fingerprints throughout the biblical story.
You come to a psalm like Psalm 16, which is simply this cry for God's preservation. And it's it's trying to plant a flag in the hope that we have at the end so that our souls can be stilled and our distrusting hearts can be comforted.
But this psalm wasn't just David finding some comfort in the Lord's goodness. It was actually a prophetic psalm. And so it's applied in Peter's Pentecost sermon. And when Paul is preaching at Pisidian Antioch, he also references this passage.
I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I will not be moved. Therefore, my heart is glad. My glory rejoices. My flesh will rest in hope because you will not leave my soul in shale.
You will not allow your holy one to see corruption. For all the dust of death around me, the Lord Jesus knew I won't be returning to dust. You will raise me forth victorious, and so my flesh now rests in that hope, my flesh will not return to the dust of death.
I will be the firstfruits of life everlasting to all those you have given me. We sometimes take for granted that because Jesus was the Messiah and the son of God, he didn't actually have to live as we live.
But this is the very thing that qualifies him to be our faithful high priest, one who knows our every weakness. And therefore, we can come boldly to a throne of grace in times of need. He lived as we live in every respect, yet without sin.
I don't think we dwell on that enough. Do you not recognize so obviously throughout the Gospels that there were times Jesus needed to still his soul? If we couldn't see it between the lines, we see it clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane when his robe is having blots of his own blood sweat out in the anxiety and dread of what was to come.
As he said, Father, if there's any way, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. And as he's contemplating and fixing his eyes in this way, recognizing whatever will come, you will not allow your holy one to see corruption, though I be slayed, though I can count all my bones, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
You will not allow me to return to the dust. And it's in that way that he was stilling his soul. It was his comfort in life and in death. What does it mean to you that Jesus had to go the way you must go and live by faith and find comfort in both life and death?
He has not gone a direction you must not go. He simply called you to follow him and walk in the way that he's walked. Some questions for us as we close. The first question to answer this enveloping question, what is your only comfort in life and death?
Here's the first question. Are you waiting? Are you waiting? You won't be looking for comfort in life and in death unless you're eagerly waiting for a comfort that does not come under the sun. Are you eagerly waiting for that day?
Are you looking and beholding like the king in these first three verses? I don't even want to live. It's that Professor Farnsworth. I don't want to be on this planet anymore. Are you waiting? Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many Hebrews 928 to those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear a second time.
Paul says to the church at Philippi, we are such that set our mind not on earthly things. Our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly wait for the appearance of him to come. A Romans 8 when he's talking about the present suffering of life under the sun in comparison to the glory that is yet to be revealed in the next.
And he says we were saved in this hope. This is what speaks comfort to our souls, but hope that is seen isn't hope. Why would one still hope for the thing that they see? I know my hope doesn't exist in this mortal coil.
I know there is no hope and comfort that will last under the sun. My hope, my comfort must be beyond, it must be from the source of eternity. We eagerly wait for that, he says, with perseverance. Do you do you wait?
Are you waiting? Second question, are you walking? Waiting is not something you do by putting up all the apocalyptic charts and wondering what's going on with Iran and what prophecy that fulfilled. That's not eagerly waiting.
Eagerly waiting is walking with the Lord, walking in the things that he's made known to you. What has he shown you? Has he not shown you, oh man, what is good, what he requires? And then individually and intimately to each one of us, he's shown us the season that we're in and his word has specific prompts and commands that we are to follow and obey.
Are we walking? Are we walking in a way that the waiting is the walking and the walking is the waiting? I'm walking that much closer, that much more fervently, that much more longingly, because the only reason I'm walking is I'm waiting.
I'm waiting for the hope that is yet to come. Elsie asked me this great question this past week. I'd love to hear some of your answers about this, but I'm pretty convinced I have the best answer. Elsie asked, Daddy, if you could be anyone in the whole Bible, who would you be?
Anyone in the whole Bible? And I'm like. That's the Sunday school answer you don't want to give, don't say Jesus, that's probably blasphemous. But more than that, no, you don't want to be you want to be the bride of Jesus.
Amen. So quickly, a lot of you would think, oh, I know the Apostle Paul wrong, dead wrong. That's like people who are, you know, what time would you want to have lived in? And people are like, oh, Ross, probably during the Reformation.
Like, no, no, thank you. I don't want to get bubonic plague and be burnt at the stake. I will take 2026. Well, you go to Paul and you're like 2 Corinthians 11 says he was beaten with rod, stone, shipwrecked, left in the sea, robbed in peril, naked, starving.
No, I'll pass. You think of Moses. But he's weary and then in anger, he disobeys God and he dies outside of the land. And then you just think of all the frustration he had in that wilderness journey. That didn't seem to be a life that I would want.
Abraham, father of faith. But living in a tent, decade after decade, all the trouble in his own marriage and household because of Ishmael, I will pass. So I thought just for a moment and then it came to me.
Enoch, I can see you agree, that's a great answer, Enoch. And now he goes, Enoch, why Enoch? And I said, well, let me show you. And we opened up to Genesis five and Enoch lived three hundred sixty five years.
And he walked with God. And then he was not because God took him. And I said, Elsie, Enoch just his whole life was walking with God and he was so close to God that it seems in the way this is presented to us as a as a preview of the resurrection hope, God just took him up.
He didn't actually have to experience or taste death in the way we all have to. God, God took him up right into communion with him because he already had that communion with him for so long. I said, if I could be anyone in the Bible, it would be Enoch.
But the reality is, brothers and sisters, if we're Christians and we've understood guilt and grace and gratitude in more ways than we could fathom, we are like Enoch. The sting of death has been removed.
And now in gratitude, we we simply walk with God and eagerly wait for the day when we're taken up to him with all of the saints. And though because of the consequence of the fall, we must return to death and to the dust of death.
The reason that we grieve not as those without hope is because we know how sure and how profound that hope really is. It speaks comfort to our souls. And that's the third question. So are you waiting?
Are you walking? And the third question, is your soul still? Is your soul still? What is your comfort when oppression and misery and sinfulness around you and sinfulness within you causes you to despair even of life itself?
What is your comfort? Where are you going to find it? What's your comfort? Not just that death. What's your comfort in life even now, because we're living this life under the sun? Well, a wise theologian would have us understand where the stillness of our souls comes from.
And it sounds like this. Be still, my soul, the Lord is on your side. So bear patiently the cross of grief and pain. Leave to your God to order and provide in every change, the changes that you can't control, the seasons that you can't prevent.
He faithful will remain. Be still, my soul, your best, your heavenly friend through thorny ways leads to a joyful end. We're talking a lot about friendship in chapter four. Be still, my soul, your God does undertake to guide your future just as he has the past.
Has he not been faithful to you up to this point? Can you not see him to be trustworthy? Why doubt now, Christian? Just look, look back and reflect. Count your Ebenezer's, your hope, your confidence. Let nothing shake.
All that is now mysterious will be bright at last. Be still, my soul, the waves and the winds still know his voice who ruled them while he lived below. Be still, my soul, when dearest friends depart and everything's dark in a veil of tears.
When the dust of death finally does suffocate and block out even our own existence under the sun, then as a Christian, you shall know his love. His heart. Who comes to soothe your sorrow and your fears, be still my soul, perhaps the most profound line, your Jesus can repay from his own fullness all that he takes away.
Is that your comfort? Anything that's taken from you will be repaid from from what, from where, how? From his own fullness, the one who was abundantly overflowing with blessedness and the glory of communion with the father in the spirit, who emptied himself and became a slave and suffered on the cross.
The one who was so full, being made completely empty, my strength is dried up like a potsherd. If anyone knew what it was like to have vitality turned to a drought, it was Christ suffering on the cross, that fullness and all of its glory, unthinkable glory, becoming abject emptiness.
He says in Psalm 22, you've brought me to the dust of death. You brought me all the way down into the grave, but he pins his hope, you won't allow me to see corruption. He went as low as any could ever go under the weight of the wrath of God.
And it's from that emptiness that God fulfilled every purpose of redemption. And he rose forth victorious, as we sang heading into this up from the grave, he arose and from his own fullness. Now he repays anything he'll take from you from his own fullness.
This is the marvel, brothers and sisters. John hears the lion of Judah, but when he looks, he sees the slain lamb, we hear the shout of victory and we turn and we see a suffering savior. He knows my every need, he's felt my every weakness, he knows my every sorrow, he traces it through and bottles it up, sacred wounds he bears yet visible above.
Is this not where you draw your comfort, Christian? Sacred wounds he bears, yet visible above. Is that not profound to you? That's not inspired by the Lord so that we have some apologetic fodder for the Muslims who say that Jesus only appeared to be crucified.
No, that's for us. You think of the Isenheim altarpiece, leaving aside Second Commandment violations for a moment. And that was set up in a wing where you had people dying from plague and this distorted image of the suffering Christ was meant to help them recognize, here's the one who bore my sickness, who knows my illness, who was brought down to the dust of death.
They were drawing comfort from that contemplation. He was well acquainted with grief that I might have comfort in death's approaching hour. Does that not still your soul? We are fearfully, wonderfully made.
That my soul knows very well. Does that not still your soul? What more peace could he whisper into your fears and needs? Are you like the psalm? Why are you cast down on my soul? Can you think Jesus praying that at Gethsemane?
Why are you cast down? How would he have stilled his soul against unfathomable forces and currents of suffering coming his way? He would say to his soul, be still, hope in God, you will again praise him.
Brothers and sisters, what is your only comfort in life and in death? Are you waiting? Are you walking? Is your soul still? For all the changing seasons of your life, do you find that your soul is stilled?
Because you've been comforted not with words of men, but with the comfort that only God can give. Is your soul still with him this morning? This we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.
The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And then we who are alive will remain, will be caught up together with him in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air.
And thus we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, brothers and sisters, comfort one another with these words. Be still my soul. The hour is hastening on when we shall be forever with the Lord. When disappointment, grief and fear are gone.
Sorrow forgot. Love's purest joys restored. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord. That from our guilt and the dust of death, you gave forth a promise that bore to fruition in the fullness of time and the person and work of our faithful savior who possesses our body and our soul, our life and our death faithfully unto the end to give us comfort along the weary ways that he walked as he stilled his soul in the hope of your promise.
And as he fulfilled that promise so that every promise is yes and amen in him, may these things comfort us now in a season of distress, a season of trial and facing oppression or injustice without a seeing sin and strife within.
May our comfort come from you. May it be a peace beyond our understanding. May you bring stillness to our soul. Wean us, Lord, like children on a mother's lap. Cause us to taste and see your goodness and be content with whatever you see fit to give, asking no more than your presence grant us such faithfulness, such strength and vigor that we would persevere in life under the sun.
As we behold the things around and the things within that make life so wearisome, Lord, draw our eyes to the comfort and hope yet to come. Help our souls be still before you. And if there's one who has a soul that is not still, but is in anguish and is in torment because of guilt of sin, Lord, reveal to them the gospel, the savior.
Lord, if there's one aloof and distracted who is not sensitive enough to their soul to know whether it's. It's restless. It doesn't know its power, its evil Lord, once you reveal it to them. Shine your light brightly, Lord, that they may see all the shadows and darkness within and so be drawn to light everlasting.
Lord, do this in our midst, we pray. And as we turn to you now in the Lord's Supper, we pray that we would find a deep comfort in contemplating upon our faithful savior's sacrifice. And that we would proclaim his death until he comes and comfort one another with these words, we ask these things in Jesus name.
Amen.