Proverbs; Ecclesiastes Part 2 • Dr. Adam Miller • Sept 7-13 • Come, Follow Me

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Welcome to part two with Dr. Adam Miller in the
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book of Psalms and Ecclesiastes. Let me offer
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you a little summary of what I see going on here
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in Proverbs, and then we'll turn left into Ecclesiastes.
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We don't want to make people wait too long for
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that. They've been on pins and needles, I suspect,
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right? They're just dying, yeah. We've seen,
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as I've emphasized, that according to Proverbs,
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happiness doesn't depend on getting something.
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It's a lure. It's a false path. But it depends
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instead on knowing something. It depends on wisdom.
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It depends on seeing the truth, on not falling
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from the self-deception that follows when we
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quite naturally but wrongly try to interpret
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reality in light of our desires, expecting reality
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to match up with and satisfy our desires. That's
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how a child thinks. But it's ignorant and it's
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unserious and it's not sober. And it's not. fearful,
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where faith is fear of the Lord, because faith
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requires us to steer into what we are afraid
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to see. It requires us to steer into what we
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don't want to see and then do what Jesus does,
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which is to sacrifice what we are afraid to sacrifice.
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It turns out that in some sense, the Lord is
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terrifying, because the Lord is on the side of
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reality. The Lord is on the side of sacrifice.
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But seeing what's real, accepting reality, then
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sacrificing what must be sacrificed is in fact
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the only place to find joy because of the way
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that it's the only way to express love. Fear
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of the Lord. You have to steer into that fear
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all the things that we're afraid to see and feel
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and recognize and sacrifice. That left turn will
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get you to where you actually wanted to go. Yeah,
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so it seems ironic that someone who loves being
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duped never really experiences love. Yeah, it's
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a way of avoiding what's actually at stake in
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love. To love being duped is to love the idea
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of being loved, but not to love loving, which
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is always the kind of trap we fall into as human
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beings. As you reminded us, Hank, that's what
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it means to think that love is a reward
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rather than a law. I think that it's something
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that you could get rather than something that
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you need to do and join and participate in. When
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I tried studying Jesus' parable of the sower
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years ago, and I thought, wow, there's so much
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you can learn from the four types of soil. And
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I saw this in Proverbs, and I thought, I wonder
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if this was in the Savior's mind. But look at
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Proverbs 24, starting in verse 30. I went by
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the field of the slothful and by the vineyard
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of the man void of understanding. A little couplet
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there. Lo, it was all grown over with thorns
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and nettles had covered the face thereof and
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the stone wall thereof was broken down. And then
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you get, then I saw and considered it well. I
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looked upon it and received instruction or maybe
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even reproof. Yeah. Because Jesus is like, are
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you overgrown in your soil? Are you rocky? Are
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you deep? I looked and I went, huh. So I thought
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that sounds like somebody learned from looking
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at a garden. And it was useful for maybe interpreting
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where the parable of the four types of soil came
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from. What you said earlier, Adam, is that look
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at these scriptures feeding into other places
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in the standard works here, Old Testament, New
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Testament, maybe. Do you guys see that in there?
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Maybe. Yeah, I like that. It's almost as if Jesus
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read that and said, I'll try that. Yeah, I can
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do that. I'm going to go look at a garden and
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see what I can learn. I received instruction
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by looking at this messed up garden. And I thought,
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huh. I think that's very much the case. Jesus's
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parables come in all different shapes and sizes,
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some of which are very short, like two liners
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as if they were proverbs themselves. Some of
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them are much longer, sprawling narratives. But
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the basic building blocks for all those parables
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are already here in the Old Testament. To be
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able to see and feel the way that Jesus is picking
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up and repurposing and transforming the tradition
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that he's inherited, the tradition of Scripture
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that he's inherited and has internalized, that
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adds a lot of depth and power to the parables
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when you can make those connections. Yeah. And
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when Jesus read the Scriptures, what was he reading?
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Reading this stuff, maybe. Yeah, it was his native
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language, essentially, right? When Jesus thought
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about God, these were his raw materials for thinking
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about God. All right, Ecclesiastes? Okay, I am
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ready. Ready or not. I'm ready to turn left to
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go right. All right, so Ecclesiastes, one of
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our four wisdom books, also interested in the
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nature of wisdom. In some ways, the book of Proverbs,
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going back all the way to the 10th century, is
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probably some of our oldest material, literarily
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speaking, in the Old Testament. Where Ecclesiastes
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almost certainly comes on the opposite end. It's
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probably composed as one of the latest of the
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books that makes it into our Bible. Third or
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fourth century is a common estimation. Third
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or fourth century before Jesus was born. So probably
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some of the latest material that had a chance
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to see and internalize and respond to a lot of
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the tradition that had already begun to accrete
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and gather. So I think it's especially helpful
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then to see Ecclesiastes, not as a kind of outlier,
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but as in active conversation with the rest of
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the biblical canon. It's ascribed to a Solomonic
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-like figure, but the speaker... goes only by
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the name of the preacher or the teacher or something
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like that, and is never explicitly identified
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as Solomon himself. There's certainly a Solomonic
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-type figure the preacher is meant to be. That'll
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figure into the story that the preacher tells
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us about his own experience. It's pretty short,
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just 12 chapters. Those chapters are themselves
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pretty brief. breaks it down into four basic
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sections. You get the very famous prologue in
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chapter one. You get a kind of epilogue in chapter
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12. The remainder of chapter one through chapter
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six, you get the preacher's account of his search
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for meaning and satisfaction with negative results
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reported on either front. Then you get some practical
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advice. chapters 7 through 11 in light of what
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he thinks he's discovered about the nature of
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the world. So if I were to offer a kind of general
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description of what I think the preacher is offering
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to us in Ecclesiastes, is we might contrast Ecclesiastes
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here with something like the book of Lamentations,
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where what you get in the book of Lamentations
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is After the kingdom of Judah has been thrust
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into exile by the Babylonians and they've lost
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everything, you get in Lamentations a series
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of poems that just capture the utter despair
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experienced by these people having lost everything
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that they ever thought was worth keeping. Lamentations
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is heart -rending in that respect to read, to
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feel with them. the despair that comes with having
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lost everything. Ecclesiastes is also a cry of
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despair, but it's a cry of despair that comes
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not from having lost everything, but a cry of
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despair that follows from having won everything.
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It's a kind of cry of despair that follows the
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preacher having succeeded in every possible way,
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won every possible prize. gotten everything he
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ever thought he wanted and then still not finding
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what he was looking for it's a kind of cry of
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despair from the opposite end of the spectrum
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of human experience not from having lost everything
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but from having gotten everything and it still
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didn't work according to the preacher i remember
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one celebrity saying i wish everyone could be
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rich and famous to find out how meaningless it
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is yeah That's exactly the book of Ecclesiastes.
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You and I tend to suffer from the fact that,
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unsuccessful as we are, we are able to maintain
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the fantasy that if we had gotten what we wanted,
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we would be happy. But the preacher is here to
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report that even if you got everything you wanted,
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you would still be sad. Because that's no road
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to happiness. Happiness doesn't work like that.
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It comes through sacrifice. comes through love
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and selfless service. And you can't get there
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through wealth and success and power, no matter
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how much of it you have. In fact, you'll even
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be stripped of the one thing, the one consolation
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that we have from not having succeeded and being
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able to pretend that we would have been happy
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had we got it. They don't even have that, the
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people who are rich and famous. They can't even
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pretend. I've read some of the social research
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on money. And when you take someone out of poverty,
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That does have an impact when they can get medicine
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and they can have somewhere to live. But there
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does reach a point, and no one really wants to
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accept it, where more money does not equal any
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more happiness, any more satisfaction. And what
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you obtain, you have to maintain. And suddenly
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you've got a lot more. Hank, I've told you about
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this book I heard about. called Money for Nothing
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about people who won the lottery. It was like,
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this is the worst thing that has ever happened
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to me. Somebody said, I spend my days with lawyers
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and lawsuits because he made some bad investments.
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And I thought, wow, isn't that interesting? Fiddler
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on the Roof, when his future son-in-law said,
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riches are God's curse. And he said, may God
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smite me with it and may I never recover. I think
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I quoted some of those studies. I was speaking
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once and a woman raised her hand and said, those
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people just don't know where to shop. Exactly.
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If I had that, I would be happy. Ecclesiastes,
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I find it spiritually valuable because I think
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of it as a sort of exorcism. It performs an exorcism
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for us. I've often felt like all my life that
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I've been haunted. by the ghost of a special
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Adam who follows me everywhere and shadows me
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with the promise that if I could only work hard
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enough or be smart enough or be handsome enough
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or be spiritual enough or whatever, special Adam
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is perfect Adam who would get what he wanted
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and deserve getting it. If I could only be special
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Adam. then I would be happy. I'm sorry I'm laughing.
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It just sounds familiar. I think I have a special
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John. Have you met special John? He's a dupe,
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but I follow him sometimes, yeah. Exactly. The
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special Adam is what the dupe loves being duped
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by. The idea that there's some version of me
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out there that could or should get what they
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wanted and deserve getting it, that they would
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be happy as a result. It's a siren. It's a, come
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over here, you will be happy. Yeah, and that
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special Adam is not the thing that the gospel
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promises me to live up to. The special Adam is
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the thing that the gospel is trying to free me
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from. The whole idea that I should be special
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in that way, get what I wanted and be loved and
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be more important than other people or whatever.
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And Ecclesiastes performs a kind of exorcism
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performed here by the preacher. As he says, no,
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look, here's the ghost of special Adam. He's
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a sham and he's a lie. It can't work and it won't
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work. You can't get there that way. Here's why.
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I've always found him very powerful and very
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liberating, very salutary in that respect. I've
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always been grateful for Ecclesiastes. It just
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seems very liberating. To put special John to
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bed and to just go about the business of living
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your life and caring for other people. That's
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the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the kind of
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freedom, joy that it promises. You have to cut
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that guy loose. You can't cling to that duping
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fantasy. You have to let him go. Those first
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11 verses of Ecclesiastes 2, I built this, I
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built this, and all was vanity. It was nothing.
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No point. No profit under the sun, I mean. You
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might also think about Ecclesiastes as something
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like medicine. It's hard medicine that I might
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need to take in order to feel much better. To
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get it. Ecclesiastes is not food. You can't live
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on Ecclesiastes. But especially if you're a certain
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kind of person who is attached to the idea of
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your being someone special, which afflicts some
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of us more than others. then Ecclesiastes could
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be just the kind of medicine that you need in
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order to be well enough to eat the real food
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that the gospel offers. You might need Ecclesiastes,
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but you'll want to keep it in conversation with
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Jesus Christ and his teachings. I've often thought,
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for instance, that the book of Ecclesiastes is
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an essential pairing with the book of Romans.
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That if you want to understand what Paul means
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by grace and the grace of God, and how that results
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in our salvation by way of Jesus Christ. You
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read Romans against the backdrop of Ecclesiastes,
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and you see the absolute vanity of attempting
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to save yourself and be someone special. Then
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you pair that with the corresponding offer of
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joining Christ in the work of sacrificing all
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things to find love and grace. They're two sides
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of the same coin, Ecclesiastes and Romans. But
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you need both sides of the coin, or at least
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most of us need the Ecclesiastes side in addition
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to the Roman side. I've read your grace is not
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God's backup plan. That was a paraphrase of Romans,
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was it not? Yeah, I've got a couple of these
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little paraphrases. One is that paraphrase of
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Romans, grace is not God's backup plan. One is
00:15:32.129 --> 00:15:35.509
my paraphrase of Ecclesiastes, which is called
00:15:35.509 --> 00:15:38.509
nothing new under the sun. I have a third little
00:15:38.509 --> 00:15:40.750
paraphrase like that. It's a paraphrase of...
00:15:40.909 --> 00:15:44.049
The Song of Songs of the Song of Solomon. If
00:15:44.049 --> 00:15:47.009
people want kind of a way into the Song of Solomon,
00:15:47.149 --> 00:15:49.870
they might try that too. And those were written
00:15:49.870 --> 00:15:53.649
by Adam, not Special Adam, right? Well, Special
00:15:53.649 --> 00:15:55.830
Adam is always lurking. He'd like to get a little
00:15:55.830 --> 00:15:59.470
credit for doing these things. Brought to you
00:15:59.470 --> 00:16:03.049
by Special Adam. Special Adam. I didn't even
00:16:03.049 --> 00:16:05.429
actually write those books. They're just paraphrases.
00:16:06.850 --> 00:16:08.929
Let's take a look at chapter one, verse two,
00:16:09.070 --> 00:16:12.600
Ecclesiastes. There it is again. You just get
00:16:12.600 --> 00:16:14.879
the superscription in verse 1, the words of the
00:16:14.879 --> 00:16:18.419
preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:21.799
It hints at a kind of Solomon-like figure here
00:16:21.799 --> 00:16:24.440
without coming right out and claiming that it's
00:16:24.440 --> 00:16:28.259
Solomon himself. But the persona is Solomon-like,
00:16:28.299 --> 00:16:31.360
and the persona refers to himself here as the
00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:33.919
preacher. He's going to preach a sermon here
00:16:33.919 --> 00:16:36.700
to us, whether we want to hear it or not, about
00:16:36.700 --> 00:16:40.809
the nature of reality. And the nature of it,
00:16:40.830 --> 00:16:44.190
as the King James has it, is vanity of vanities,
00:16:44.309 --> 00:16:47.610
sayeth the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All
00:16:47.610 --> 00:16:52.490
is vanity. Or as the New English translation
00:16:52.490 --> 00:16:55.289
has it, futile, futile, laments the teacher.
00:16:55.370 --> 00:17:00.149
Absolutely futile. Everything is futile. Or as
00:17:00.149 --> 00:17:04.269
the NIV has it, meaningless, meaningless. Everything
00:17:04.269 --> 00:17:09.759
is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. Alter
00:17:09.759 --> 00:17:15.200
has it, merest breath, all is mere breath. The
00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:18.299
word here in Hebrew that gets translated in this
00:17:18.299 --> 00:17:23.680
whole variety of ways is the word hevel, which
00:17:23.680 --> 00:17:27.500
the root meaning is something like breath, as
00:17:27.500 --> 00:17:31.819
Alter gives it here. It's a word used to describe
00:17:31.819 --> 00:17:41.039
a kind of insubstantial mist. It's a word that's used to describe
00:17:41.039 --> 00:17:45.119
not breath when you inhale, but breath when you exhale, the kind
00:17:45.119 --> 00:17:49.259
of waste carbon dioxide that comes out when you
00:17:49.259 --> 00:17:52.579
exhale. That's hevel. That's what we're talking
00:17:52.579 --> 00:17:55.640
about here. This is what life is, according to
00:17:55.640 --> 00:17:58.839
the preacher. Everything that's involved in the
00:17:58.839 --> 00:18:01.079
world as you and I know it is in some sense this
00:18:01.079 --> 00:18:05.119
insubstantial vapor that's a waste product of
00:18:05.119 --> 00:18:10.160
life that you expel when... You exhale your breath.
00:18:10.680 --> 00:18:14.059
You can't keep it. You can't hold it. It's never
00:18:14.059 --> 00:18:16.420
going to satisfy you. It's never going to be
00:18:16.420 --> 00:18:20.099
what you want. It will always slip through your
00:18:20.099 --> 00:18:24.279
fingers. That's the nature of life, the preacher
00:18:24.279 --> 00:18:30.059
says. Such a fun way to start. Can you imagine
00:18:30.059 --> 00:18:34.000
someone standing up on Fast Sunday and just bearing
00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:37.099
their testimony? I know. That life is meaningless
00:18:37.099 --> 00:18:40.799
and futile and everything that we do is vain
00:18:40.799 --> 00:18:45.480
and mere breath. But in some ways that should
00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:48.279
be a really important part of our testimonies.
00:18:48.640 --> 00:18:52.460
It's hard or maybe even impossible to have real
00:18:52.460 --> 00:18:56.900
hope in Christ, as Paul puts it, unless we've
00:18:56.900 --> 00:18:59.480
first become hopeless about everything else.
00:18:59.940 --> 00:19:03.099
We have to put the whole of our heart and mind
00:19:03.099 --> 00:19:07.019
into our trust. that we place in God and stop
00:19:07.019 --> 00:19:10.000
reserving parts of it or some of it or even the
00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:13.460
bulk of it for things other than God, hoping
00:19:13.460 --> 00:19:15.660
that they might be able to make us happy with
00:19:15.660 --> 00:19:18.420
or without God's intervention, hoping that they
00:19:18.420 --> 00:19:22.720
might be able to rescue us and satisfy our desires.
00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:27.420
But at the end of the day, nothing can. The only
00:19:27.420 --> 00:19:30.140
possible route to happiness is to surrender those
00:19:30.140 --> 00:19:33.299
desires and love and serve the world as it is.
00:19:33.720 --> 00:19:36.279
the way that God does. So those are the opening
00:19:36.279 --> 00:19:40.880
lines. Memorable. All timers. That'll get your
00:19:40.880 --> 00:19:43.920
attention at least, right? Vanity's not a bad
00:19:43.920 --> 00:19:47.200
translation. You do get the sense, as John noted
00:19:47.200 --> 00:19:49.500
earlier, of vanity in the sense of a mirror,
00:19:49.640 --> 00:19:52.279
in the sense that the whole thing is just a hall
00:19:52.279 --> 00:19:55.440
of mirrors. It's just a game of reflections without
00:19:55.440 --> 00:19:58.140
any real substance in the sense of a mirror.
00:19:58.339 --> 00:20:02.119
But also vanity in the sense of things just being...
00:20:02.490 --> 00:20:05.390
futile like you did that in vain or you took
00:20:05.390 --> 00:20:09.829
god's name in vain that sense of vanity as well
00:20:09.829 --> 00:20:12.529
where you did it without real it didn't have
00:20:12.529 --> 00:20:16.369
any real meaning or substance or intention behind
00:20:16.369 --> 00:20:19.190
it all those things combining here and that one
00:20:19.190 --> 00:20:21.730
same little word which is the kind of key word
00:20:21.730 --> 00:20:26.910
at the heart of the whole of ecclesiastes here's
00:20:26.910 --> 00:20:31.750
what we get in verses 3 through 11 then in this
00:20:31.750 --> 00:20:35.289
opening section after the initial cry of despair.
00:20:36.890 --> 00:20:39.970
The preacher says, What benefit do people get
00:20:39.970 --> 00:20:42.630
from all the effort which they expend on earth?
00:20:43.049 --> 00:20:45.690
A generation comes and a generation goes, but
00:20:45.690 --> 00:20:47.710
the earth remains the same through the ages.
00:20:47.990 --> 00:20:51.490
The sun rises and the sun sets. It hurries away
00:20:51.490 --> 00:20:54.730
to the place from which it rises again. The wind
00:20:54.730 --> 00:20:57.009
goes to the south and circles around to the north.
00:20:57.289 --> 00:21:00.009
Round and round the wind goes, and on its rounds
00:21:00.009 --> 00:21:03.019
it returns. All the streams flow into the sea,
00:21:03.119 --> 00:21:05.799
but the sea is never full. And to the place where
00:21:05.799 --> 00:21:08.099
the streams flow, there they will flow again.
00:21:08.660 --> 00:21:12.240
All this monotony is tiresome. No one can bear
00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:16.799
to describe it. The eye is never satisfied with
00:21:16.799 --> 00:21:19.700
seeing, nor is the ear ever content with hearing.
00:21:20.039 --> 00:21:23.579
What exists now is what will be. What has been
00:21:23.579 --> 00:21:26.759
done is what will be done. There is nothing truly
00:21:26.759 --> 00:21:29.529
new on the earth. Is there anything about which
00:21:29.529 --> 00:21:32.329
someone can say, look at this, it's new. It's
00:21:32.329 --> 00:21:35.390
already been done long ago before our time. No
00:21:35.390 --> 00:21:38.210
one remembers the former events, nor will anyone
00:21:38.210 --> 00:21:40.910
remember the events that are yet to happen. They
00:21:40.910 --> 00:21:43.509
will not be remembered by the future generations.
00:21:44.369 --> 00:21:49.309
That in cosmological terms is the initial argument
00:21:49.309 --> 00:21:52.589
where the preacher says, look just at how the
00:21:52.589 --> 00:21:55.740
world in general works. The sun just goes round
00:21:55.740 --> 00:21:58.680
and round and it never gets anywhere. The wind
00:21:58.680 --> 00:22:01.200
just blows in circles and then it leaves and
00:22:01.200 --> 00:22:03.400
then it comes back again and nothing ever changes.
00:22:03.880 --> 00:22:06.640
The river is endlessly empty into the sea, but
00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:08.799
the sea never gets any more full than it was
00:22:08.799 --> 00:22:13.220
before that water went in. That's just how life
00:22:13.220 --> 00:22:15.880
is in general, he says. Nothing new is going
00:22:15.880 --> 00:22:18.579
to happen here. Whatever it is you do is not
00:22:18.579 --> 00:22:20.960
going to make any difference with respect to
00:22:20.960 --> 00:22:25.009
the overall structure of the world. It may feel
00:22:25.009 --> 00:22:27.369
sometimes like you did something new, but that's
00:22:27.369 --> 00:22:30.269
because we have such bad memories that we don't
00:22:30.269 --> 00:22:33.109
remember what anybody did before, which is really
00:22:33.109 --> 00:22:35.049
fine because nobody's going to remember what
00:22:35.049 --> 00:22:39.829
you did anyway. You're right. This preacher. Not normal
00:22:39.829 --> 00:22:46.150
for the Bible. But it is good medicine for special
00:22:46.150 --> 00:22:50.589
Adam. You can see how it's meant to perform a
00:22:50.589 --> 00:22:54.069
kind of exorcism here. If something good happens,
00:22:54.269 --> 00:22:58.410
as Jesus will say, it's because God did it, not
00:22:58.410 --> 00:23:01.029
because I did it. If there's something worth
00:23:01.029 --> 00:23:03.430
remembering here, it's remembering how God delivered
00:23:03.430 --> 00:23:06.470
us, not that I did something to deserve being
00:23:06.470 --> 00:23:09.210
delivered because I'm different or special or
00:23:09.210 --> 00:23:11.769
better than other people. That's not how it works.
00:23:11.829 --> 00:23:13.890
That's not what memory's for. That's not how
00:23:13.890 --> 00:23:18.509
satisfaction or joy or happiness is found. It's
00:23:18.509 --> 00:23:20.779
great because it's so different. You guys are
00:23:20.779 --> 00:23:27.339
a closet iconoclast. Let me give you one other
00:23:27.339 --> 00:23:32.000
verse here from chapter 1. Then we'll look at
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:34.700
what I think is his most wrenching and personal
00:23:34.700 --> 00:23:37.579
set of confessions in chapter 2. Then we'll do
00:23:37.579 --> 00:23:41.240
chapter 3. In chapter 1, well, it's going to
00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:45.359
be 14 and 15. The preacher says, I reflected
00:23:45.359 --> 00:23:47.920
on everything that is accomplished by man on
00:23:47.920 --> 00:23:51.319
earth, and I concluded, Everything he has accomplished
00:23:51.319 --> 00:23:55.880
is futile. It's all like chasing the wind, or
00:23:55.880 --> 00:23:58.779
as Alter has it, it's all like herding the wind.
00:23:59.420 --> 00:24:02.920
What is bent cannot be made straight, and what
00:24:02.920 --> 00:24:07.059
is missing cannot be supplied. It's all like
00:24:07.059 --> 00:24:10.140
herding the wind, as if the whole of life were
00:24:10.140 --> 00:24:13.119
like herding cats, but the cats weren't even
00:24:13.119 --> 00:24:17.420
cats, they were just wind. You don't even get
00:24:17.420 --> 00:24:20.640
the cats in the end of it, right? It's all just
00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:23.079
everywhere all the time. It's constantly slipping
00:24:23.079 --> 00:24:24.859
through your fingers and never goes where you
00:24:24.859 --> 00:24:27.400
want it. If you think that your happiness depends
00:24:27.400 --> 00:24:29.460
on getting it to go where you want it to go,
00:24:29.559 --> 00:24:33.099
good luck, the preacher says. It's not going
00:24:33.099 --> 00:24:36.779
to happen. Then we get in chapter two, almost
00:24:36.779 --> 00:24:39.519
what we could describe in philosophical terms
00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:43.920
as a kind of reductio ad absurdum. Are you familiar
00:24:43.920 --> 00:24:47.529
with this term? A reductio ad absurdum is the
00:24:47.529 --> 00:24:51.970
argument in which you prove that something cannot
00:24:51.970 --> 00:24:55.829
be the case by showing how absurd it would be
00:24:55.829 --> 00:25:00.029
were it to be the case. You prove the contrary
00:25:00.029 --> 00:25:04.750
by the absurdity of the proposed example. So
00:25:04.750 --> 00:25:06.529
he's going to give us an example of that here.
00:25:06.569 --> 00:25:08.789
Now, he's going to offer us a little case study
00:25:08.789 --> 00:25:13.269
that will put all of our fantasies to rest. by
00:25:13.269 --> 00:25:15.769
showing us what would happen even if all of our
00:25:15.769 --> 00:25:19.130
fantasies came true. You think you're sad because
00:25:19.130 --> 00:25:21.269
you're not getting what you wanted, but let's
00:25:21.269 --> 00:25:23.609
say you did get what you wanted, the preacher
00:25:23.609 --> 00:25:26.869
proposes. What would happen then? Then he runs
00:25:26.869 --> 00:25:29.069
us through what happened to him when he did get
00:25:29.069 --> 00:25:33.450
everything he wanted. That's chapter two. I'm
00:25:33.450 --> 00:25:35.450
just going to give this to you more or less straight
00:25:35.450 --> 00:25:38.630
here. I think it's worth the investment. Verse
00:25:38.630 --> 00:25:42.720
one, chapter two. I thought to myself, Come now,
00:25:42.859 --> 00:25:46.099
I will try self-indulgent pleasure to see if
00:25:46.099 --> 00:25:50.460
it's worthwhile. And he did, but I found that
00:25:50.460 --> 00:25:55.019
it is also futile. I said of partying, it's folly,
00:25:55.059 --> 00:25:58.140
and of self-indulgent pleasure, it accomplishes
00:25:58.140 --> 00:26:01.319
nothing. I thought deeply about the effects of
00:26:01.319 --> 00:26:04.559
indulging myself with wine, all the while my
00:26:04.559 --> 00:26:07.450
mind was guiding me with wisdom. and the effects
00:26:07.450 --> 00:26:09.750
of behaving foolishly so that I might discover
00:26:09.750 --> 00:26:12.230
what is profitable for people to do during the
00:26:12.230 --> 00:26:15.410
days of their lives. I increased my possessions.
00:26:15.730 --> 00:26:18.849
I built houses for myself. I planted vineyards
00:26:18.849 --> 00:26:22.089
for myself. I designed royal gardens and parks
00:26:22.089 --> 00:26:24.849
for myself. I planted all kinds of fruit trees
00:26:24.849 --> 00:26:28.009
in them. I constructed pools of water for myself
00:26:28.009 --> 00:26:31.470
to irrigate my grove of flourishing trees. I
00:26:31.470 --> 00:26:34.269
purchased male and female slaves. I owned slaves
00:26:34.269 --> 00:26:37.309
who were born in my own house. I possessed more
00:26:37.309 --> 00:26:39.990
livestock, both herds and flocks, than any of
00:26:39.990 --> 00:26:43.170
my predecessors in Jerusalem. I also amassed
00:26:43.170 --> 00:26:45.750
silver and gold for myself, as well as valuable
00:26:45.750 --> 00:26:48.089
treasures taken from kingdoms and provinces.
00:26:48.369 --> 00:26:51.529
I acquired male singers and female singers for
00:26:51.529 --> 00:26:55.069
myself. What gives a man sensual delight? A harem
00:26:55.069 --> 00:26:59.170
of beautiful concubines? So I was far wealthier
00:26:59.170 --> 00:27:02.210
than all my predecessors in Jerusalem. Yet I
00:27:02.210 --> 00:27:05.710
maintained my objectivity. I did not restrain
00:27:05.710 --> 00:27:08.089
myself, he says, from getting whatever I wanted.
00:27:08.210 --> 00:27:10.890
I didn't deny myself anything that would bring
00:27:10.890 --> 00:27:13.990
me pleasure. So all my accomplishments gave me
00:27:13.990 --> 00:27:17.390
joy. This was my reward for all my effort. Yet
00:27:17.390 --> 00:27:19.730
when I reflected on everything I had accomplished
00:27:19.730 --> 00:27:22.089
and on all the effort that I had expended to
00:27:22.089 --> 00:27:25.549
accomplish it, I concluded, all these achievements
00:27:25.549 --> 00:27:28.849
and possessions are ultimately profitless, like
00:27:28.849 --> 00:27:32.309
chasing the wind. There is nothing gained from
00:27:32.309 --> 00:27:38.259
them on the earth. Well, clearly he just didn't
00:27:38.259 --> 00:27:45.339
try hard enough. The 10-verse long litany of
00:27:45.339 --> 00:27:49.859
all of the pleasures and toys and satisfactions
00:27:49.859 --> 00:27:52.779
and successes that you could possibly earn or
00:27:52.779 --> 00:27:55.720
achieve or acquire or amass as a human being,
00:27:55.819 --> 00:27:58.039
he lays it all out for us and he says, look,
00:27:58.079 --> 00:28:02.119
I had it all. It doesn't work. It's as futile
00:28:02.119 --> 00:28:04.339
and vain as any of the rest of it, and it all
00:28:04.339 --> 00:28:07.200
slips through your fingers just as surely as
00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:11.940
just a small portion of it would. And if there's
00:28:11.940 --> 00:28:14.599
any happiness to be found, you're not going to
00:28:14.599 --> 00:28:17.880
find it here. Of course, we don't believe him.
00:28:17.960 --> 00:28:20.519
Yeah, I was going to say, well, then let me try
00:28:20.519 --> 00:28:22.700
this experiment. Give me all the money in the
00:28:22.700 --> 00:28:25.559
world. We would all be happy to rerun the experiment
00:28:25.559 --> 00:28:30.750
back and see for ourselves. But his testimony
00:28:30.750 --> 00:28:34.190
is, no, it's all vain. It's all futile. It's
00:28:34.190 --> 00:28:38.329
all meaningless. What's the old saying? The tragedy
00:28:38.329 --> 00:28:40.849
isn't that you failed. The tragedy is that you
00:28:40.849 --> 00:28:46.369
succeeded at something that doesn't matter. Yeah,
00:28:46.490 --> 00:28:49.549
that's a lot of our lives. Number one, we don't
00:28:49.549 --> 00:28:52.329
succeed. Most of us just fail most of the time
00:28:52.329 --> 00:28:55.829
in large respect. But even when we do succeed,
00:28:55.930 --> 00:28:58.250
the things that we tend to succeed at don't.
00:28:58.519 --> 00:29:01.119
actually matter at the end of the day and didn't
00:29:01.119 --> 00:29:03.839
deserve what we invested in them. You climbed
00:29:03.839 --> 00:29:07.759
the ladder of success only to find it was leaning
00:29:07.759 --> 00:29:11.599
against the wrong wall. Yeah, that's the message
00:29:11.599 --> 00:29:14.099
here. Wrong wall. Doesn't matter how good you
00:29:14.099 --> 00:29:16.160
are or how fast you climb or how much you get.
00:29:16.660 --> 00:29:21.579
It's the wrong wall. On that happy note. What
00:29:21.579 --> 00:29:24.279
did C. S. Lewis say? That it's not even getting
00:29:24.279 --> 00:29:27.140
stuff that we love, it's having more of it than
00:29:27.140 --> 00:29:30.069
other people. The more stuff you have, the more
00:29:30.069 --> 00:29:32.309
obviously true that becomes to you. Really, all
00:29:32.309 --> 00:29:34.670
you care about is the fact that you have something
00:29:34.670 --> 00:29:37.869
that other people don't. Not the fact that you
00:29:37.869 --> 00:29:40.690
have it. It's a real indictment. But this is
00:29:40.690 --> 00:29:46.329
meant to be good news. If you pair it with what
00:29:46.329 --> 00:29:49.450
Jesus Christ has to say as an alternative, the
00:29:49.450 --> 00:29:51.490
preacher does not lay out the alternative here,
00:29:51.569 --> 00:29:55.190
which is why we tend to find him so hard to bear
00:29:55.190 --> 00:29:58.279
and so distasteful. He doesn't say, look, there's
00:29:58.279 --> 00:29:59.880
a whole separate thing you can do. It's called
00:29:59.880 --> 00:30:02.599
the gospel of Jesus Christ, in which instead
00:30:02.599 --> 00:30:05.420
of losing everything inevitably, you sacrifice
00:30:05.420 --> 00:30:11.019
everything on purpose, willingly. That's the
00:30:11.019 --> 00:30:12.799
gospel of Jesus Christ, but he doesn't lay that
00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:14.819
out. All he points out is the fact that you're
00:30:14.819 --> 00:30:17.220
going to lose it all inevitably, which is the
00:30:17.220 --> 00:30:21.559
gospel of Jesus Christ, in part. But you have
00:30:21.559 --> 00:30:25.039
to pair that kind of world with them. a certain
00:30:25.039 --> 00:30:27.279
sort of religion that Jesus is advocating in
00:30:27.279 --> 00:30:30.559
response. But you can't get there without realizing
00:30:30.559 --> 00:30:33.660
that the preacher is also right. Then you need
00:30:33.660 --> 00:30:35.039
that medicine. You have to take that medicine
00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:37.839
first. You have to be hopeless about everything
00:30:37.839 --> 00:30:40.640
but Jesus in order to put all of your hope in
00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:44.420
Jesus. Adam, as we move into Ecclesiastes chapter
00:30:44.420 --> 00:30:49.819
3, I figured out sometime in high school, maybe
00:30:49.819 --> 00:30:52.759
it was in college, that if I didn't have time
00:30:52.759 --> 00:30:55.220
to read my scriptures, at least I could turn
00:30:55.220 --> 00:30:59.799
on the song by the Byrds, right? Turn, turn,
00:30:59.920 --> 00:31:02.359
turn. And I thought, that whole song is scripture.
00:31:02.579 --> 00:31:06.000
I read some scripture today as I listened to
00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:09.700
Ecclesiastes chapter three. It actually got me
00:31:09.700 --> 00:31:12.099
interested when I first heard that song. I was
00:31:12.099 --> 00:31:15.079
interested in, what is this? I found out it was
00:31:15.079 --> 00:31:17.680
in the Bible. Did you know that as a teenager,
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:20.660
that the Byrds song Turn, Turn, Turn was from
00:31:20.660 --> 00:31:22.700
Ecclesiastes? When I figured that out, I figured
00:31:22.700 --> 00:31:24.779
it would be scripture study. It took me a second.
00:31:25.980 --> 00:31:27.759
You were way ahead of the curve as a teenager.
00:31:28.259 --> 00:31:30.200
Yeah, I was like, oh, I'm going to go find out
00:31:30.200 --> 00:31:32.539
where this came from. And that was without the
00:31:32.539 --> 00:31:35.099
internet. You had to do actual research? I had
00:31:35.099 --> 00:31:36.839
to do some work, yeah. Because I just thought
00:31:36.839 --> 00:31:39.900
the lyrics were so odd to this song. Found out
00:31:39.900 --> 00:31:43.420
it was scripture. There are two poems embedded
00:31:43.420 --> 00:31:47.599
here in Ecclesiastes. One we get here at the
00:31:47.599 --> 00:31:51.400
beginning of chapter three, which is then becomes
00:31:51.400 --> 00:31:54.200
the lyrics for that famous song by the Byrds.
00:31:54.480 --> 00:31:56.339
And then the other we'll come to in a minute
00:31:56.339 --> 00:31:59.480
here we get in the final chapter of Ecclesiastes.
00:32:00.279 --> 00:32:03.940
But yeah, those famous lines from the opening
00:32:03.940 --> 00:32:06.319
verses of chapter three, to everything there
00:32:06.319 --> 00:32:09.400
is a season, a time to every purpose under heaven.
00:32:09.839 --> 00:32:12.740
A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant,
00:32:12.940 --> 00:32:14.900
and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
00:32:15.140 --> 00:32:18.000
A time to kill, a time to heal, a time to break
00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:20.839
down, a time to build up. A time to weep, and
00:32:20.839 --> 00:32:22.960
a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time
00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:26.440
to dance. A time to cast away stones, and a time
00:32:26.440 --> 00:32:29.059
to gather stones together. A time to embrace,
00:32:29.359 --> 00:32:32.180
and a time to refrain from embracing. A time
00:32:32.180 --> 00:32:35.059
to get, and a time to lose. A time to keep, and
00:32:35.059 --> 00:32:38.240
a time to cast away. A time to rend, and a time
00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:41.230
to sow. A time to keep silence and a time to
00:32:41.230 --> 00:32:44.910
speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time
00:32:44.910 --> 00:32:47.690
of war and a time of peace. That's the song.
00:32:48.130 --> 00:32:51.430
Especially out of context, it seems like the
00:32:51.430 --> 00:32:54.529
preacher's going a little soft on us here as
00:32:54.529 --> 00:32:57.970
he reminisces nostalgically about how everything
00:32:57.970 --> 00:33:01.430
has a time and a season and it all has its place
00:33:01.430 --> 00:33:05.130
and it all has its moment in the sun. But that's
00:33:05.130 --> 00:33:08.150
not actually what he's after here at all. I was
00:33:08.150 --> 00:33:11.210
going to say there's something coming. Yeah,
00:33:11.329 --> 00:33:15.549
his point in running us through all these continual
00:33:15.549 --> 00:33:18.029
transformations of one thing into its opposite,
00:33:18.089 --> 00:33:21.509
love into hate, getting into losing, keeping
00:33:21.509 --> 00:33:24.869
into casting away, being born into dying. His
00:33:24.869 --> 00:33:27.109
point in running us through that whole circular
00:33:27.109 --> 00:33:31.809
litany is to draw the conclusion that he does
00:33:31.809 --> 00:33:35.470
in verse nine, what profit then hath he that
00:33:35.470 --> 00:33:40.059
worketh? in that wherein he laboreth. Because
00:33:40.059 --> 00:33:42.599
everything, as he outlined in the opening verses,
00:33:42.839 --> 00:33:45.400
everything comes back to the place where it started.
00:33:45.779 --> 00:33:48.779
Nothing changed, and nothing mattered, and it
00:33:48.779 --> 00:33:54.640
didn't make any difference. It's such a happy,
00:33:54.680 --> 00:33:58.140
cheery song, the Byrds song, especially when
00:33:58.140 --> 00:34:01.180
you hear the music in the back of your head as
00:34:01.180 --> 00:34:03.430
you run through the lyrics. But that's not what
00:34:03.430 --> 00:34:08.070
the preacher had in mind with those verses. He
00:34:08.070 --> 00:34:09.809
wouldn't love the song. He'd be like, wait, wait,
00:34:09.829 --> 00:34:12.889
wait, tell the end. Yeah, I don't think verse
00:34:12.889 --> 00:34:16.530
9 is in the song, is it? Yeah, it's not. Everything
00:34:16.530 --> 00:34:19.210
just goes back to the way it was. I love it.
00:34:19.969 --> 00:34:22.570
Those stones that you threw, they all gathered
00:34:22.570 --> 00:34:26.269
together again at some point. And maybe the newspaper,
00:34:26.570 --> 00:34:29.750
the Times and Seasons in church history was drawn
00:34:29.750 --> 00:34:33.400
from this phrase at the beginning. Oh, that's
00:34:33.400 --> 00:34:37.239
a good question. Yeah, times and seasons. Yeah,
00:34:37.260 --> 00:34:39.340
I don't know. I don't know where that phrase
00:34:39.340 --> 00:34:42.500
came from for the newspaper. The end of chapter
00:34:42.500 --> 00:34:48.820
3, verses 18 to 22, the preacher goes out of
00:34:48.820 --> 00:34:52.780
his way here to point out something that is obviously
00:34:52.780 --> 00:34:56.480
true, like so many of these things, that we really
00:34:56.480 --> 00:34:59.559
tend not to like to hear, but is perhaps quite
00:34:59.559 --> 00:35:03.550
important to hear. He says in verse 18, I also
00:35:03.550 --> 00:35:06.630
thought to myself, it's for the sake of people
00:35:06.630 --> 00:35:10.989
so God can clearly show them that they are like
00:35:10.989 --> 00:35:14.349
animals. For the fate of humans and the fate
00:35:14.349 --> 00:35:18.230
of animals are the same. As one dies, so dies
00:35:18.230 --> 00:35:22.030
the other. Both have the same breath. There is
00:35:22.030 --> 00:35:24.989
no advantage for humans over animals, for both
00:35:24.989 --> 00:35:28.250
are fleeting. Both go to the same place. Both
00:35:28.250 --> 00:35:31.389
come from the dust and to dust. both return.
00:35:31.849 --> 00:35:34.889
Who really knows if the human spirit ascends
00:35:34.889 --> 00:35:37.550
upward and the animal's spirit descends into
00:35:37.550 --> 00:35:40.590
the earth? So I perceive there's nothing better
00:35:40.590 --> 00:35:42.929
than for people to enjoy their work, because
00:35:42.929 --> 00:35:45.869
that's their reward for who can show them what
00:35:45.869 --> 00:35:50.789
the future holds. This too, I think, a harsh
00:35:50.789 --> 00:35:55.429
but perhaps helpful medicine to reckon with the
00:35:55.429 --> 00:36:01.019
fact that in some weird, strange way, What it
00:36:01.019 --> 00:36:06.079
means to be a son or daughter of God, at least
00:36:06.079 --> 00:36:11.440
in part, means being a mammal. That what I am
00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:16.440
is an animal. I'm a kind of animal. It's true
00:36:16.440 --> 00:36:20.039
that I have a divine nature, but this divine
00:36:20.039 --> 00:36:24.880
nature is of a piece. Somehow, with the fact
00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:30.789
that I, like an animal, am made of dust, am born
00:36:30.789 --> 00:36:35.530
and will die, get hungry, get thirsty, have instincts,
00:36:35.849 --> 00:36:40.969
suffer all manner of biological processes and
00:36:40.969 --> 00:36:44.070
indignities and hormonal pushes and pulls that
00:36:44.070 --> 00:36:47.650
I didn't ask for and can't control. Part of what
00:36:47.650 --> 00:36:50.409
it would mean to reconcile with the reality of
00:36:50.409 --> 00:36:53.650
what I am as a human being, instead of just being
00:36:53.650 --> 00:36:56.190
duped by the fantasy of what I think I ought
00:36:56.190 --> 00:37:00.670
to be, instead, would be to reckon. with the
00:37:00.670 --> 00:37:06.090
truth of how my being an animal is not incompatible
00:37:06.090 --> 00:37:09.210
with my being a son of god that i have to understand
00:37:09.210 --> 00:37:11.449
the truth and reality of both of those things
00:37:11.449 --> 00:37:14.030
in order to understand the truth and reality
00:37:14.030 --> 00:37:16.690
of either of them that's something i think we're
00:37:16.690 --> 00:37:19.590
often quite reluctant to do because we're so
00:37:19.590 --> 00:37:22.269
attached to our fantasies of a special adam who
00:37:22.269 --> 00:37:25.909
would not be an animal and suffer all the indignities
00:37:25.909 --> 00:37:29.320
that go along with being an animal When the realities
00:37:29.320 --> 00:37:33.179
get rid of it or be ashamed about it. It seems
00:37:33.179 --> 00:37:37.420
that in a way, the preacher is describing the
00:37:37.420 --> 00:37:41.559
fall of Adam, that we now experience this world
00:37:41.559 --> 00:37:45.900
and it's very fleeting. And President Benson,
00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:49.039
he said, just as man does not really desire food
00:37:49.039 --> 00:37:51.980
until he is hungry, so he does not desire the
00:37:51.980 --> 00:37:54.599
salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs
00:37:54.599 --> 00:37:58.239
Christ. Maybe Ecclesiastes is. doing that for
00:37:58.239 --> 00:38:00.699
me, helping me understand why I need Christ.
00:38:00.820 --> 00:38:02.920
No one adequately and properly knows why they
00:38:02.920 --> 00:38:04.960
need Christ until they understand and accept
00:38:04.960 --> 00:38:08.199
the doctrine of the fall and its effect upon
00:38:08.199 --> 00:38:12.119
all mankind. Maybe that's part of what Ecclesiastes
00:38:12.119 --> 00:38:17.380
does, is it shows me what the fall really is,
00:38:17.400 --> 00:38:20.860
what reality really is. What is vanity and what
00:38:20.860 --> 00:38:24.190
is lasting and eternal and permanent? What is
00:38:24.190 --> 00:38:27.050
lasting? If all this is vanity, well, what isn't
00:38:27.050 --> 00:38:30.909
vanity then? Yeah, Adam said he doesn't give
00:38:30.909 --> 00:38:34.130
us the alternative. Yeah, he doesn't sketch that
00:38:34.130 --> 00:38:37.030
out for us here. But it's easy, of course, as
00:38:37.030 --> 00:38:41.150
fallen people who suffer from our own ignorance
00:38:41.150 --> 00:38:45.269
and our own love of our own ignorance, it's easy
00:38:45.269 --> 00:38:49.130
to fall in love with a false idea of what salvation
00:38:49.130 --> 00:38:52.190
would look like. It's easy to fall in love with
00:38:52.190 --> 00:38:54.690
a false idea of what salvation itself would involve.
00:38:55.289 --> 00:38:58.869
It's easy to think that, well, if the problem
00:38:58.869 --> 00:39:01.769
here is that I suffer from my unsatisfied desires,
00:39:02.170 --> 00:39:06.030
then the solution must be that God will satisfy
00:39:06.030 --> 00:39:09.429
my desires. That's why we talk about mansions,
00:39:09.449 --> 00:39:12.989
right? And streets paved with gold. Exactly.
00:39:12.989 --> 00:39:16.150
When it turns out, as Jesus describes it, the
00:39:16.150 --> 00:39:19.309
only adequate response to our losing everything.
00:39:19.949 --> 00:39:22.269
is to just go ahead and sacrifice everything.
00:39:22.909 --> 00:39:26.130
That's tough medicine piled on top of tough truth.
00:39:26.489 --> 00:39:31.090
But it turns out it works and is salvific and
00:39:31.090 --> 00:39:33.530
is redemptive and is profoundly liberating and
00:39:33.530 --> 00:39:36.590
deeply joyful and avoids all the problems that
00:39:36.590 --> 00:39:39.389
come from trying to solve things in a backwards
00:39:39.389 --> 00:39:42.789
way that defies the truth about God and that
00:39:42.789 --> 00:39:45.610
defies the truth about the world. Adam, that
00:39:45.610 --> 00:39:48.210
actually brings me to my second question I had.
00:39:49.099 --> 00:39:54.880
Quite a ways back. Foreshadowed. Yes, yes. When
00:39:54.880 --> 00:39:57.940
you started to tell us about, you know, Ecclesiastes
00:39:57.940 --> 00:40:03.159
and how fleeting and vain and meaningless, what
00:40:03.159 --> 00:40:05.179
we're chasing, what, you know, what we think
00:40:05.179 --> 00:40:09.599
will make us happy. And then you said the antidote
00:40:09.599 --> 00:40:11.900
or the answer is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
00:40:12.119 --> 00:40:17.039
It makes me think of the Savior's calling. seeing
00:40:17.039 --> 00:40:19.460
it in a different way. So when the Savior, you
00:40:19.460 --> 00:40:22.400
gave the example of, he says to the man, will
00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:24.980
you sell all that you have, give to the poor
00:40:24.980 --> 00:40:29.000
and come follow me? By the end of Ecclesiastes,
00:40:29.099 --> 00:40:32.280
wouldn't the preacher say, sure, because all
00:40:32.280 --> 00:40:36.679
of that is meaningless anyway. Almost the Savior
00:40:36.679 --> 00:40:38.559
is saying, do you see those things for what they
00:40:38.559 --> 00:40:41.960
really are? Because if you do, this is not a
00:40:41.960 --> 00:40:44.079
difficult question. I'm actually offering you
00:40:44.079 --> 00:40:47.469
substance. I think that's exactly right. It's
00:40:47.469 --> 00:40:52.449
the kind of test to see if the young man can
00:40:52.449 --> 00:40:55.989
look beyond his desires to see the truth of the
00:40:55.989 --> 00:40:59.070
world and the truth of himself as part of it.
00:40:59.670 --> 00:41:03.690
And he can't, at least not yet. But who's going
00:41:03.690 --> 00:41:06.809
to pass that test? I'm doubtful. I don't think
00:41:06.809 --> 00:41:10.070
I am passing that test as we speak. It is being
00:41:10.070 --> 00:41:13.130
given to me. I'm not passing it, but that is
00:41:13.130 --> 00:41:15.750
the test, yeah. There does seem to be a wisdom
00:41:15.750 --> 00:41:19.590
at the end of life, which is kind of sad, but
00:41:19.590 --> 00:41:22.750
President Oaks, good, better, best. He talked
00:41:22.750 --> 00:41:26.190
about breadwinning. He said, many breadwinners
00:41:26.190 --> 00:41:28.250
worry that their occupations leave too little
00:41:28.250 --> 00:41:30.889
time for their families. There's no easy formula
00:41:30.889 --> 00:41:34.210
for this contest of priorities. However, I have
00:41:34.210 --> 00:41:36.409
never known a man who looked back on his life
00:41:36.409 --> 00:41:38.889
and said, I just didn't spend enough time with
00:41:38.889 --> 00:41:42.329
my job. It does seem at the end of life, there's
00:41:42.329 --> 00:41:45.849
at least a wisdom of, where I wished I would
00:41:45.849 --> 00:41:48.690
have spent my time. With all of your getting,
00:41:48.809 --> 00:41:52.050
get understanding. You may have to get other
00:41:52.050 --> 00:41:54.429
things along the way, but at least with that
00:41:54.429 --> 00:41:57.889
getting, still get understanding. You may have
00:41:57.889 --> 00:42:00.710
to go to work, but you can still perform even
00:42:00.710 --> 00:42:03.210
that professional work as an act of love and
00:42:03.210 --> 00:42:06.130
sacrifice and consecration, not as an act of
00:42:06.130 --> 00:42:08.869
acquisition in the hope of satisfying your desires.
00:42:09.190 --> 00:42:12.130
All of that's hopeless, even if you succeed.
00:42:12.710 --> 00:42:14.469
It'll be more hopeless than you thought it ever
00:42:14.469 --> 00:42:18.489
was. The despair of getting everything you ever
00:42:18.489 --> 00:42:22.449
wanted. I wrote that down. Yeah, please. That's
00:42:22.449 --> 00:42:25.409
Ecclesiastes. I'm thinking of Job again, who
00:42:25.409 --> 00:42:28.389
said, naked came I into this world and naked
00:42:28.389 --> 00:42:30.769
I'll go out. And then what do you have at that
00:42:30.769 --> 00:42:33.690
point? I like that there's been kind of more
00:42:33.690 --> 00:42:37.210
of an emphasis, at least I perceive it, on becoming,
00:42:37.309 --> 00:42:40.289
not just what we know, but what we have become.
00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:45.639
beats me up my what did you call it special john
00:42:45.639 --> 00:42:49.500
you're the ghost my special john beats me up
00:42:49.500 --> 00:42:52.239
my special john reads the first three verses
00:42:52.239 --> 00:42:56.900
of first corinthians 13 and says okay you've
00:42:56.900 --> 00:43:00.219
read more books you've served in more callings
00:43:00.219 --> 00:43:03.480
but are you more charitable and i'm not sure
00:43:03.480 --> 00:43:08.059
if i am so that idea of what have i become that's
00:43:08.059 --> 00:43:10.269
all you got when you leave Because all the rest
00:43:10.269 --> 00:43:14.090
Ecclesiastes is teaching me is vanity. So Job
00:43:14.090 --> 00:43:16.449
says, okay, now I leave now. What if I actually,
00:43:16.570 --> 00:43:19.969
where was my ladder leaning and all that stuff?
00:43:20.170 --> 00:43:23.010
That's a good place to be, but it's a little
00:43:23.010 --> 00:43:27.090
frightening to me. Yeah. If I could move mountains,
00:43:27.170 --> 00:43:29.449
what does Paul say? If you could move mountains
00:43:29.449 --> 00:43:32.889
and had all knowledge and faith that you could
00:43:32.889 --> 00:43:35.889
move mountains and you gave your body to be burned,
00:43:35.949 --> 00:43:38.340
but you didn't have charity. That's the one that
00:43:38.340 --> 00:43:41.079
pushes me against the wall. It's hevel. It's
00:43:41.079 --> 00:43:43.739
vanity. It's futility. It's meaningless. Yeah,
00:43:43.760 --> 00:43:46.820
1 Corinthians 13 is an excellent companion here
00:43:46.820 --> 00:43:49.460
for the book of Ecclesiastes. Paul is making
00:43:49.460 --> 00:43:51.679
the exact same point that the preacher is making,
00:43:51.760 --> 00:43:54.639
but in a deeper, fuller context. Adam, you said
00:43:54.639 --> 00:43:59.420
earlier that wisdom is loving your enemies. Can
00:43:59.420 --> 00:44:02.659
you talk about that a little more? How does Ecclesiastes
00:44:02.659 --> 00:44:06.750
get me there? with its compliment or with its
00:44:06.750 --> 00:44:11.050
answer, the gospel. John noted early on in our
00:44:11.050 --> 00:44:15.590
discussion today that as useful as the book of
00:44:15.590 --> 00:44:20.909
Proverbs can be, it also can be a trap because
00:44:20.909 --> 00:44:25.650
it can build into your way of thinking about
00:44:25.650 --> 00:44:30.889
the world, the expectation that if I do X, Y
00:44:30.889 --> 00:44:35.590
will for sure happen. mechanical quality to the
00:44:35.590 --> 00:44:38.670
world and perhaps even especially a mechanical
00:44:38.670 --> 00:44:42.389
quality of quid pro quo to the gospel such that
00:44:42.389 --> 00:44:45.949
if i obey x or y or z i will get the thing that
00:44:45.949 --> 00:44:50.070
i wanted a b or c money into the vending machine
00:44:50.070 --> 00:44:55.170
object of desire out of the vending machine exactly
00:44:55.170 --> 00:44:58.269
it's easy to fall into that trap when we're thinking
00:44:58.269 --> 00:45:00.309
not just about worldly things but thinking about
00:45:00.309 --> 00:45:03.340
religious things The expectation that there's
00:45:03.340 --> 00:45:08.219
a kind of symmetry between my actions and the
00:45:08.219 --> 00:45:11.440
possibility of satisfaction. The point of the
00:45:11.440 --> 00:45:15.179
book of Ecclesiastes is to disabuse you profoundly,
00:45:15.539 --> 00:45:17.900
deeply, repeatedly.
00:45:17.900 --> 00:45:18.900
It's the exorcism.
00:45:18.900 --> 00:45:21.440
Without mercy. To disabuse
00:45:21.440 --> 00:45:23.780
you of the idea that any such symmetry exists
00:45:23.780 --> 00:45:27.840
between how the world is and what you want the
00:45:27.840 --> 00:45:32.500
world to be, which can be. profoundly liberating
00:45:32.500 --> 00:45:35.260
and useful. It breaks that set of expectations
00:45:35.260 --> 00:45:40.219
that I could treat the laws or commandments of
00:45:40.219 --> 00:45:43.380
the world or of the gospel as a way of getting
00:45:43.380 --> 00:45:46.139
the reward that I wanted, to bring it back to
00:45:46.139 --> 00:45:49.099
that way of framing. I can't treat obeying the
00:45:49.099 --> 00:45:51.280
law of love as a way of getting the reward I
00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:53.139
wanted, even if the reward I thought I wanted
00:45:53.139 --> 00:45:57.039
was love, because God's law does not have that
00:45:57.039 --> 00:46:01.579
structure of quid pro quo. god's own law has
00:46:01.579 --> 00:46:05.019
the same asymmetrical structure that the preacher
00:46:05.019 --> 00:46:09.000
is showing us is at work in the world that asymmetrical
00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:11.480
structure is captured by jesus's commandment
00:46:11.480 --> 00:46:16.619
to love our enemy if you do good good may happen
00:46:16.619 --> 00:46:20.380
in response to your doing good but it might not
00:46:20.380 --> 00:46:24.440
even if it doesn't you are still commanded to
00:46:24.440 --> 00:46:27.579
do good and if someone hasn't done good to you
00:46:27.929 --> 00:46:30.869
If someone has actively done evil to you, you
00:46:30.869 --> 00:46:34.329
are still commanded to respond with good. You
00:46:34.329 --> 00:46:37.030
are still commanded to love in response to that.
00:46:37.190 --> 00:46:40.590
There's a kind of asymmetry at the heart of this
00:46:40.590 --> 00:46:44.250
kind of unconditional gesture of love and sacrifice
00:46:44.250 --> 00:46:48.449
and forgiveness and surrender that can easily
00:46:48.449 --> 00:46:52.090
be obscured by the fantasy of there being some
00:46:52.090 --> 00:46:55.570
kind of controllable, symmetrical balancing of
00:46:55.570 --> 00:46:58.380
the scales. When really what's called for here
00:46:58.380 --> 00:47:03.199
is sacrifice. Not just of some things, of everything.
00:47:03.800 --> 00:47:05.880
Not just in the hope of getting what we'll want,
00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:09.000
but for the sake of loving everyone else. That's
00:47:09.000 --> 00:47:12.260
the gospel. Correct my thinking here, both of
00:47:12.260 --> 00:47:16.320
you. When the Lord says, give your life, give
00:47:16.320 --> 00:47:18.320
up your life and you'll find it. It's not even
00:47:18.320 --> 00:47:20.539
the same life that you think you want when you
00:47:20.539 --> 00:47:24.500
get it back. It's like give up your desires and
00:47:24.500 --> 00:47:26.519
you'll have them and you find out your desires
00:47:26.519 --> 00:47:30.380
have changed. The trade on offer is give up your
00:47:30.380 --> 00:47:35.280
desires and you can have mine instead. That's
00:47:35.280 --> 00:47:37.300
also the trade on offer with respect to our lives.
00:47:37.340 --> 00:47:39.980
Give up your life, Jesus says, not that you'll
00:47:39.980 --> 00:47:41.960
get your life back, but that if I give up my
00:47:41.960 --> 00:47:45.159
life, he says you can have mine. Then I take
00:47:45.159 --> 00:47:48.969
up his life. I take up his name. I live my life
00:47:48.969 --> 00:47:52.010
as if I were him. Then he takes care of whatever
00:47:52.010 --> 00:47:55.630
was me, quote unquote. He's not offering the
00:47:55.630 --> 00:47:59.889
opportunity for me to save my life. He's offering
00:47:59.889 --> 00:48:02.909
me the opportunity to live his life. That offer
00:48:02.909 --> 00:48:05.670
always stands and it's always available and it's
00:48:05.670 --> 00:48:09.889
unconditional. Join him at any moment. He's ready
00:48:09.889 --> 00:48:12.960
and able and willing. When I get to heaven, I
00:48:12.960 --> 00:48:14.880
think, oh, finally, I get all my desires fulfilled.
00:48:15.059 --> 00:48:18.000
He says, oh, no, that wasn't.
00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:20.000
Not so fast, my friend.
00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:20.760
That was not part
00:48:20.760 --> 00:48:23.780
of it. No, that's not what he was offering at
00:48:23.780 --> 00:48:28.119
all. What will you do in heaven? You'll spend
00:48:28.119 --> 00:48:31.780
eternity ministering to other people, which is
00:48:31.780 --> 00:48:34.519
what God does. You won. You were saved. You became
00:48:34.519 --> 00:48:36.920
just like God. Congratulations. It will forever
00:48:36.920 --> 00:48:40.190
and always never be about you. dislike it forever
00:48:40.190 --> 00:48:44.050
and always is never for God about God. You'll
00:48:44.050 --> 00:48:46.150
bring to pass the immortality, eternal life of
00:48:46.150 --> 00:48:50.630
others. Yeah. That will be your whole soul to
00:48:50.630 --> 00:48:55.130
work forever without a thought to yourself. Being
00:48:55.130 --> 00:49:00.090
a philosopher has to be so unsatisfying. Yes.
00:49:00.170 --> 00:49:02.690
Right. Yeah. But the thing is that I tried not
00:49:02.690 --> 00:49:05.130
being a philosopher and it's also unsatisfying.
00:49:05.469 --> 00:49:11.139
Yeah. You have to give up. You have to give up
00:49:11.139 --> 00:49:15.239
on the idea of satisfaction. Reductio absurdum,
00:49:15.239 --> 00:49:18.420
whatever that was. Yeah, exactly. Reductio ad
00:49:18.420 --> 00:49:24.500
absurdum. Would you like this closing poem from
00:49:24.500 --> 00:49:29.840
Ecclesiastes? This is originally the closing
00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:34.760
words here of the book, chapter 12, verses 1
00:49:34.760 --> 00:49:38.679
through 8. They go like this. Remember your creator
00:49:38.679 --> 00:49:42.500
in the days of your youth, before the days of
00:49:42.500 --> 00:49:45.599
trouble come, and the years approach when you
00:49:45.599 --> 00:49:49.320
will say, I find no pleasure in them. Before
00:49:49.320 --> 00:49:52.260
the sun and the light and the moon and the stars
00:49:52.260 --> 00:49:55.739
grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain,
00:49:55.900 --> 00:49:59.500
when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper
00:49:59.500 --> 00:50:03.380
drags itself along, and desire no longer is stirred.
00:50:04.119 --> 00:50:07.840
Then people go to their eternal home, and mourners
00:50:07.840 --> 00:50:12.159
go about the streets. Remember him, before the
00:50:12.159 --> 00:50:15.440
silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is
00:50:15.440 --> 00:50:18.559
broken, before the pitcher is shattered at the
00:50:18.559 --> 00:50:22.059
spring, and the wheel broken at the well, and
00:50:22.059 --> 00:50:24.239
the dust returns to the ground it came from,
00:50:24.380 --> 00:50:29.139
and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Meaningless,
00:50:29.179 --> 00:50:32.900
meaningless, says the teacher. Everything is
00:50:32.900 --> 00:50:38.829
meaningless. I can hear the silence in the room
00:50:38.829 --> 00:50:42.489
after he gives this. And I can see someone being
00:50:42.489 --> 00:50:45.570
uncomfortable enough to stand up and say, and
00:50:45.570 --> 00:50:48.769
moreover, because the preacher was wise, right?
00:50:49.550 --> 00:50:52.530
The member of the bishopric adds a little grace
00:50:52.530 --> 00:50:56.769
note. A member of the bishopric gives his concluding
00:50:56.769 --> 00:50:59.190
thoughts. Oh, that's funny. Did you have anything,
00:50:59.369 --> 00:51:04.239
President? Yeah, just a minute. But there is
00:51:04.239 --> 00:51:08.820
something to be said for what Mormon calls sobriety,
00:51:08.820 --> 00:51:12.880
for a capacity for a certain sort of soberness,
00:51:13.019 --> 00:51:16.579
for being able to look all of this loss and suffering
00:51:16.579 --> 00:51:19.619
and death in the eye rather than avoid it and
00:51:19.619 --> 00:51:22.539
pretend it's not the case. Or there's something
00:51:22.539 --> 00:51:25.019
to be said for what in that same spirit we might
00:51:25.019 --> 00:51:29.019
call a kind of divine melancholy that doesn't
00:51:29.019 --> 00:51:32.449
succumb to hopelessness. because it retains hope
00:51:32.449 --> 00:51:36.929
in Christ, but still with clear eyes, sees the
00:51:36.929 --> 00:51:39.969
hopelessness in all the things that we normally
00:51:39.969 --> 00:51:42.849
place our hope in. That is an important divine
00:51:42.849 --> 00:51:46.730
attribute that I think God himself embodies,
00:51:46.730 --> 00:51:51.570
this capacity for divine melancholy that tinges
00:51:51.570 --> 00:51:54.969
and colors everything that he sees and understands
00:51:54.969 --> 00:51:59.250
about the world, because he has absorbed and
00:51:59.250 --> 00:52:02.429
experienced the whole, of all of the suffering
00:52:02.429 --> 00:52:05.389
and all of the universe from beginning to end
00:52:05.389 --> 00:52:08.889
without avoiding it or running from it or imagining
00:52:08.889 --> 00:52:13.409
that it wasn't the case, but took it on and changed
00:52:13.409 --> 00:52:16.469
it, transformed it, redeemed it by sacrificing
00:52:16.469 --> 00:52:19.630
in response to it. That kind of divine life is
00:52:19.630 --> 00:52:22.889
hard work, but it's also, at the end of the day,
00:52:22.929 --> 00:52:25.349
as the preacher says, the only kind of life that
00:52:25.349 --> 00:52:30.309
would be possible, that was worth living. Adam,
00:52:30.349 --> 00:52:33.429
Dr. Miller, thanks for your time today. My pleasure.
00:52:33.650 --> 00:52:36.630
Thank you. It's always, John, what'd you call
00:52:36.630 --> 00:52:39.530
it? Mind expanding, soul expanding. Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:39.530 --> 00:52:41.909
I want to talk again. Patience testing. It's been great. Yeah.
00:52:44.230 --> 00:52:46.610
No, I'm going to have a talk with special John,
00:52:46.750 --> 00:52:51.269
but yeah, this has been great. You got to go away for
00:52:51.269 --> 00:52:55.010
a while. With that, we want to thank Dr. Adam
00:52:55.010 --> 00:52:58.289
Miller for joining us today. It has been beautifully
00:52:58.289 --> 00:53:02.639
difficult. Good, harsh medicine. We want to thank
00:53:02.639 --> 00:53:04.980
our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen, our
00:53:04.980 --> 00:53:07.860
sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And every
00:53:07.860 --> 00:53:11.059
episode, we remember our founder, Steve Sorensen.
00:53:11.780 --> 00:53:14.900
We hope you'll join us next week. The timeout
00:53:14.900 --> 00:53:19.760
is over and we head back in to the Old Testament
00:53:19.760 --> 00:53:23.600
on followHIM. As a thank you to our wonderful listeners,
00:53:23.600 --> 00:53:28.200
we'd love to gift you the digital version of our book,
00:53:28.200 --> 00:53:32.900
Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. It offers short,
00:53:32.900 --> 00:53:36.900
meaningful insights drawn from our past Old Testament episodes.
00:53:36.900 --> 00:53:40.500
Visit followhim.co, that's followhim.co, to download your free copy today,
00:53:40.500 --> 00:53:43.539
and you'll also find the link to purchase the print edition.
00:53:43.539 --> 00:53:46.800
Thank you for being part of our followHIM family. Of course, none of this could
00:53:46.800 --> 00:53:49.039
happen without our incredible production crew.
00:53:49.179 --> 00:53:53.400
David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts,
00:53:53.400 --> 00:53:57.500
Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika,
00:53:57.500 --> 00:54:02.059
Sydney Smith, and Annabelle Sorensen.
00:54:02.059 --> 00:54:06.059
Whatever questions or
00:54:02.059 --> 00:54:06.059
problems you have, the answer is always found
00:54:06.059 --> 00:54:10.320
in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Turn
00:54:10.320 --> 00:54:12.519
to Him. followHIM.