9-14-25 - There Is A Righteous Man Who Perishes In His Righteousness

So this was supposed to be the second sermon on small groups since they're starting today, and I wrote that sermon. It was gonna be on first Corinthians 13, and it was gonna be on loving each other when you get irritated with each other. And maybe we'll preach that sermon next week or a different time, but I've changed my mind. I was thinking yesterday that I ought to make some pastoral announcement or address to what's on all of our minds. And I thought five to seven minutes.

And then I thought, you might as well just not say anything. Because that's not enough time to say anything of meaning and substance given the circumstances. And so I went to bed thinking, well, I'm still gonna preach my other sermon. And then I was in and out of sleep throughout the night and woke up this morning and went, I have to preach a different sermon. And I don't know quite what it is yet, but it's what you're gonna get.

I do have it here, but I did come early this morning. And I am convinced of the things that I'm saying. I am not going to address every question or every response that's out there regarding the circumstances. That would take far longer than we have today. But I've been considering.

I've learned about myself, not just in this situation, but in my life that when when something happens, whatever the thing is, I tend to just go quiet and think for a while. And it looks like I don't care much. And that's not true, though it often looks like that. And my wife would could testify to that and say, you don't talk enough. You don't you don't say what you think.

Figuring out what I think because I I don't know yet. And so I've been thinking. I've been praying. I've been talking some

one

another. And some of the responses and some of the questions that, Christians have had are alarming. They are bad. They're wicked. And it's my conviction that, not all Christians have had the same response or the same questions, and that's to be expected.

There is not a monolithic, one size fits all response to tragedy or conflict. And it's hard to make room for other people having different responses or even to understand why they would have that response or value that response. John, I'm gonna move this. This is too close to me today. I'm gonna kick it.

I know you're always stealing my space. I'm a lot bigger than you, you know? I need more space than you. Anyhow, as I said, I'm not going to be able to address everything and every thought you've had, every Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or wherever you get your news from. We're not gonna be able to talk about all of that.

I don't know that talking about all that's even helpful. My hope this morning is to show you from scripture what you can trust and rely on in situations like this. Okay? Okay. The things that Christians ought to be committed to and agreed about, things that shouldn't be under, debate.

Alright. Now that presupposes something that I think that we struggle with. And it's that scriptural arguments are the most weighty arguments. Logical arguments. And I don't mean to say that scriptural scriptural arguments are opposed at every point to those things.

That's not my contention. But my contention is that if someone makes a scriptural argument to you, answering it with a logical argument or a constitutional argument is inferior. Okay? It's inferior. Revealed will and word And so there's no place for you to swat away, like, as if it's a fly, a scriptural argument, because you have some other Your opinions worthless, if it's contrary to scripture.

Things I'm saying scriptural. But if we're going to talk about it as Christians, our first desire and our first their hearts say. They tell us the minute it comes out. Fear, anger. It's right there.

We know that. What we don't know is whether that's the appropriate response. And what I hope to be able to do this morning is to show what I believe Christian how Christians ought to respond or at least frame this as the process through it. Okay? We're gonna do something a little different in terms of how we work our way through the text this morning.

Our sermon text is Ecclesiastes chapter seven. It's verses five through 18. Normally, I would have you after an introduction, I'd have you stand up. We'd read the whole text. We'd say, thanks be to God.

You'd sit down, and then I would preach my way through. And, I think for I think for, in the interest of time and for clarity, we're not gonna do that this morning. What I'm gonna do is they've got the slides. We're just gonna work our way through the text. He's gonna put up the slides we're talking about.

I'm gonna make comments mostly, somewhat like a commentary, but things that I think are helpful to us on different sections as we work our way through. We'll do that through verse starting with verse five on down through verse 14, and then verses 15 to 18, which was the original text I wanted to preach on. And, where I want us to spend a good bit of time, we'll read as a whole and then work our way through that. But we're going to take the smaller churros as they come to us, before that. These, these, preceding verses, verses five through 14, are written very much like the book of Proverbs.

They are Proverbs. Much of Ecclesiastes written by the same author are Proverbs. Proverbs or, the book of Ecclesiastes are Proverbs concerning life and how it's to be lived in the pursuit of man. And the book of Ecclesiastes has refrains. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

That's one of the one of the themes and the refrains of the book of of Ecclesiastes. Futility is all through it. And you have to remember that Ecclesiastes was written by a man who, when when he was presented with the kingdom and and a request to be made of God, he requested record his wisdom in the book of Proverbs, largely. He didn't isn't the only author of Proverbs, but the primary author of Proverbs, and then the book of Ecclesiastes, as the wisdom given to him, a double portion from the Lord of how we ought to benefit to us, that requires us to say there are people smarter than me. Many of the things you read, even in this text, are going to rub you the wrong way.

You're not it's not naturally immediately going to make sense. I ran into that. Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books. And there are things in there that are what you'd call hard sayings. Not hard because they're mean or hard because they're crass, but hard because they don't just offer themselves up as like, well, yeah, I already knew.

And And so they're to be meditated on there to be And so And so That's what I hope we're able to to do this morning. We're gonna start with five and six. We will be taking these verses. They come in twos until we get to verse 18. So verses five and six, Ecclesiastes chapter seven.

It is better to

listen to the rebuke of a lie. Yeah. And for

one to listen to the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorn bushes under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool. And this two is futility. And so it starts off saying that, and Eric mentioned he didn't know what I was preaching on, but he talked about us listening to wisdom, us listening to wise men, us being willing to sit under the word of God and it's rebukes of us and for us to hear them. And here we find it's Solomon saying the same thing.

It's better to listen to the rebuke of a wise man than one for one to listen to the song of a divorce. Here's the point. You're going to listen to somebody. Any of you who think you come up with all your own ideas, you're just you're just your head is so far in the ground. You don't know any Seriously.

I don't mean to be funny. If you think you are not being shaped and and and pulled in the direction of the people you listen to or the things you give yourself to, you are wrong. And it's not enough for you to forget who you listen to. You would be better off to say, I know who I listen to. I choose who I listen to.

And I choose who I don't listen to. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to tell the difference between whether you're being influenced by a wise man and his rebukes or the song of a fool. Now, who would you rather listen to? A song and laughter or a rebuke? Of course, we would all rather listen to a song and laughter.

That's fun, right? If we were to read a little earlier in this in this, chapter of scripture, it says that it's better to be in the house of mourning than in the house of feast. That we ought to to to give precedence to the to the place where truth and and sobriety reign as opposed to the place where frivolity and carelessness. So what does it mean to listen to the song of fools? Well, I'll tell you.

Most of what has been said lately, at least the initial responses, can be lodged and filed under listening to the songs of fools. Fools because there hasn't been time to understand what's going on or what's to be thought. We all had initial reactions. I know mine were. I saw what some of yours were.

They weren't good. I'm your pastor and I love you, and I didn't see very many any of you have a good response initially. You're angry. You were frustrated. You were scared.

It was they and them. And then the conspiracy theories were about thirty seconds behind it. It was foolish of you to do that. You were participating in the songs of fools and you were you you were we were to be fair, we were all inundated with it. It was it was everywhere.

I don't know how you could have gotten away from it. But here's what you have to know about the songs of fools. It's described in verse five as the song of fools. In verse six, it's described as the laughter of a fool. They are then just attributed or or described as a thorn bush under a pot.

Okay. How many of you like thorn bushes? You like pulling them out? We pulled one out at our house yesterday. No fun.

We don't like thorn bushes. What's the point of a thorn? It's to cause pain. It's miserable. It is the direct result of the fall.

Thorns and thistles that will grow for you. So when you run into thorns, you go, unpleasant, gross, get rid of it. We don't like things with thorns. Right? We want we like roses, but we like the people who cultivate roses that don't have thorns.

Thorns are bad. They're meant to hurt. They're the result of the fall. What is happening to the thorns here? They're under a fire being consumed.

That's what you do with thorn bushes. You cut them down, you dig them up, you remove them, and you burn them. Okay? Fools who are running their mouths prematurely and not not grounded in scripture are as a thorn bush being consumed and they don't realize it. There's been a lot of wicked and foolish things said.

About? In your time, perhaps not. Nothing's fast enough when we're upset, or when we're scared, or frustrated, or had enough. But this proverb teaches us that those who give themselves to foolishness, to laughing in the face of adversity, who reject rebukes, are as a thorn bush. They've become those who are only there to destroy, only those to to cause harm, that they are under a pot.

They are being burned. They're crackling. They're being done away with. They're perishing. To to to and I don't necessarily mean that they will be killed, but I mean that there will be a that they will be cut low by the Lord.

I could go, but we're gonna move on. The point is, those who run their mouths and those who listen to others run their mouths, who think they're winning, and that applies to both sides, not just one side, wise man mad, and the matter is better than its. And so spirit is better than a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and a, and that many of us have felt, at the senseless violence and oppression that we've witnessed this week and in weeks previous. But the second half of this proverb instructs the wise man in how to respond. Should he take a bribe?

Of course not. What should the wise man do? What do what happens when you get angry? I'll tell you what happens when you get angry. It's the same thing that happens when I get angry.

Not there is no future for an angry man. The only thing that matters is what's right in front of him. He does not consider the consequence of his desires. He does not consider the fallout. He doesn't consider the possibility of success or change.

He's just mad, and he's convinced he's right. This is what happens when you're mad, isn't it? I mean, you you think you you just can't see how you could be wrong. Because your anger blinds us. And many of the responses to this have been have have fit this description.

The anger has blinded wisdom. And so scripture tells us that the end of a matter is better than the beginning. Just get set on the shelf. I hear lots of talk, and we'll come in the next in the very next proverb, we'll talk more specifically about anger. But I want to tell to you, there's a lot of this talk of righteous anger.

I don't give a plug nickel for your righteous anger. If you're just don't give a plug nickel for your righteous anger if you're just mad. Just because you're have justification to be mad, doesn't mean your anger is righteous. It's not like, oh, there's no such thing as sinful anger now because a bad thing happened. Sure there is.

Do you think Satan is gonna be like, oh, sorry. Their anger is all good now. No. You can have a good justification to be angry and still be angry in a sinful way. Do we think that way?

Or do we think, well, I have a reason to be upset, so I'm righteous in it. Don't be so boastful, and don't be so proud, and just to think that you are you're in the right. Just because something bad happened. Patience and humility are the wise man's response in the face of anger and adversity. Another way of saying it is that righteous anger doesn't run its mouth like a fool.

Things when if if upon reflection a week or a month later, we'll be like, what did I do? What is this what I wanted? If you find yourself analyzing your past statements or your past actions and you come away going, what had gotten a hold of me? You can be assured that what got a hold of you was not righteous. But just anger itself.

Inconsequential. They feel like a losing strategy. My point's not to argue with you about whether they're a winning or losing strategy. Scripture here tells us that's how godly men respond. I don't fight back, I'm gonna lose.

Well, okay, you're right, you might lose. I didn't know winning was the primary goal of your life. Comfort and ease and safety were the things that all Christians should should prioritize over all other things. Now I realize none of you are making that case to me or haven't made that case online, but that temptation resides in our hearts. And if you don't see it in your heart, your what does it mean if they say, well, they want him dead.

That means they want me dead too. That's a fearful They killed an

innocent

man. The They killed and innocent, man. The wicked God, the Pharisees and Jews killed Jesus Christ with no cause. And the lies were evident and obvious as they were prosecuting him. And he was silent in the face.

Haughty spirit

is a

proud spirit. A haughty spirit is a proud spirit. It's one that declares itself to be right in the face of any argument. Righteous anger doesn't speak or think or behave that way. So how would you describe the last couple of days and the interactions that you've had and the things you've had going on in your hearts or the things you've observed online?

Spirit of patience or a spirit of haughtiness amongst the Christians? I can understand. I I don't I don't expect the unbeliever, the and and and and and those who are still dead in their sins and enslaved to them to respond with patience and moderation. That's that's a gift of the spirit that they don't have. But the Christians

us. The.

Why is it that the former days were better than these? Wisdom that you ask about this. Who would have known? When we came across this passage, that all the things that go on in our hearts were somebody already thought them and felt them and wrote them down. Because he's just like going right

through me. And so

just as I mentioned earlier concerning righteous anger and the assumption that your anger is righteous because there's a reason to be anger, is not sufficient. You have to ask yourself, am I the sort of person who's just looking for a place to to express the anger that is always burning inside of No but if we were to go into the New Testament, and remember that when one of the lists that says that there are those who are given to fits of anger, like, they're just always mad or always able to get mad like that. It's like it's always just it's, you know, it's it's it's like a stock pot that's always just below boil, you know. And all it takes is just a little a little tick on the on the temperature and it's a boy. It's a naan.

They're eager to be angry. They they keep it they keep it just under boiling. Now whether they want to or not is not the point. But if you're always angry Yeah. Where God says, don't be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom.

So And I'll tell you, people tend to have one or two responses when when there's trouble. They either tend to get angry or they tend to get fearful. I tend to get angry. It does not take much for me to want to be aggressive or to want to fight or to argue. If you want to argue, we can argue.

That's fine. We can have at it. That's my natural bent. And so I'm not just talking to you. This is me.

But it is also you. And what I find is that those who get are given to who who might not

initially be given to anger, doesn't take much to flip your

despair into anger. It doesn't take much to doesn't take much to flip your despair into And so this is a common which means that we should always be on guard against our anger because we're warned that anger resides in the bosoms of fools. I mean, at least calling you and I'm pointing out to you the foolishness of it, or that script showing you where scripture call points out the foolishness

of it, the foolishness of it, or the showing you

where scripture call points out the foolishness of

the foolishness of it.

Someone might recognize as having been thought about for more than five seconds, and that they could maybe link some way to patience. Angry men, when you know some of the things they tend to get upset about, and here we are with the wisdom of scripture. They say, why is it that the former times are better than these? Behind that statement? That is a statement, that's searching for a fault.

It's searching for blame. Right? What do young people say about why times are harder now? Whose fault is it? It's the boomers fault.

It's it's just the boomers fault. Like, you all know because you're all young. You're like, oh, it's those boomers. They went and created these terrible government policies, and they have social security, and they've ruined our taxes, and the welfare state. All these things, all their fault, they're just selfish.

It's all their fault. Right? What do older people say the problem is? Why aren't things the way they were when they grew up? It's kids these days.

It's their kids. Right? And grandkids. We're always doing this. We're always like, well, there was a better time.

If we could just get back to a better time. Now, I'm not arguing that there aren't better or more favorable times to live in than others. That's not actually the point. The point is that if you are just a discontent true who always has someone to blame or someone else to find fault with when things aren't going the way you are, the problem is with you. Even if the things you're seeing are real.

Question, why is it that the former days were better than these? And you know what? They never answer. Do you know what the people who ask that question never come up with as the answer? Because of me.

Hard. Because I have a mirror. And I can see why my lives are We blame theological tradition we grew up in, or we grew up in the church, and we didn't grow up in the church, or we grew up poor, we grew up wealthier. It's just it's always somewhere. And so if you find yourself blaming other people and other circumstances for the difficulties that you find yourself in, you won't find a good and helpful answer until you look at least to say that everything is your fault.

And that and that and that no there's no there's no there's no failure in any other place. That's not the point. My point is just to say, we never look at ourselves and say, it's with me. I did it. Alright.

Verses eleven and twelve. Wisdom along with an inheritance is good. And an advantage to those who seek the sun. For wisdom is protection, just as money is protection, but the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the lives of its possessors. Here's a question for you.

Aren't poor people the problem? Poor people who don't understand, poor people who don't do right with their money, poor people who have children out of wedlock, poor people who give themselves to drugs, poor people who can't keep the jobs, poor people who who live off of the state and your tax dollars, aren't they the problem? Like, well, I don't know what you want me to say, pastor. Those are problems. Hey.

I didn't say they weren't problems. I'm asking in your heart, are they is it are they all the problem? Do you think that money and if they had a little bit of money, things would be resolved? But we live like it. Wisdom is much more valuable than wealth.

And the primary difference between wisdom and wealth is that wealth only is beneficial in this life. But wisdom, we're told from this proverb, preserves the lives of its possessors. Whether they have wealth or not, it preserves their lives. It prepares them and equips them for the life to come for eternity. And so it ought to be our pursuit grow up?

I don't know. Wealthy. Said every one of our kids. I wonder where they learned that. How much scripture did you teach him?

And that it preserves the lives of its possessors. And I would say it's a blessing to their children to choose to be taught our children these things. Versus thirteen and fourteen, say, the day of prosperity be happy. Which isn't difficult, right? Some of us have trouble.

Like, I often joke with people. I'm like, you're the kind of person who could find a $100 bill on the ground and complain that it was all wrinkled up. But most of us can get along with being happy in the day of prosperity without much effort. But in the day of adversity, consider consider Right? Don't talk.

Don't take to the social media, the interwebs, and all that type of stuff. Consider think consider God has made the one, the day of prosperity, as well as the other, the day of adversity, so that man, we, will not discover anything that will be after him. So when difficulty comes and anger arises, you're to consider why and what God is doing and teaching us. A Do any of us know for certain what the upshot and the result will be of of this whole situation? You don't.

But I've seen plenty of people online saying that the reason that this is going to turn our nation around and people are going to come to repentance and people are going to show up to churches and they're going to realize finally the the the the the shades are going to come off, right? And they're going to see things the way I see things. I don't know how you can be so sure of that when we count how long it's been in hours. It takes time to consider what God is doing and why he has done it. It's difficult to trust that God has a purpose in everything that comes to pass.

The good, we can accept, but the bad, we we're all glad to say that the good will come of this. You see this at funerals very often. People will say, but good's going to come, but good's going to come, but good's going to come. Wouldn't it be better for us to instead of calling it a celebration of life, say this is a manifestation of our enemy and the result of our enemy. And thanks be to God that he's overcome this thing right here by the power of his son.

Love. -Wow. -But now we have celebrations of life, and we talk about how good they were, and we lie about the people. Where the one we describe isn't, He was angry all the time, or he was a drunk, or he was an adulterer, or he whatever. We just always want to lie to our so that we don't have to consider and sphere.

And they're not the clarity of scripture and the priority that ought to be given to them by Christians are not the same. Abortion and illegal immigration are not on the same field. They're not on the same plane. They are not equally condemned in scripture. One of them is a prime predominantly moral discussion.

Murder of innocent life. Another but it but it it had politics and politicians and law have something to say about how we're allowed to what we're allowed to do in society. But it's a moral issue. Immigration is a political issue. It has to do with a country's view and, process for how they want to be, sustain themselves and what they think would be good or bad.

And there are many different people with different opinions about what would be good, bad, or otherwise regarding that issue. But the Bible is not nearly so clear on how to handle that as it is a bor. So what did Charley Kirk spend his time talking about? Trauma sexuality, transgenderism, race relations, these types of I'm not saying he never talked about illegal immigration. I don't I don't know for certain that he didn't.

I think he probably did at some point or the other. But predominantly, he was talking about moral issues. How can you say that about gay marriage? How can you say that about transgender people? Those are the clips I always saw.

Political context because that's how our world processes it. If he had said, hey, preacher come into town. We want to talk about gay marriage on the college campus. You'd get way less of a of of a following and a bite back and a interest than if a guy comes and says, hey, this is what we're talking about in our society. So here you go.

That's what I think he was doing. You may disagree. That's okay. My point is not to argue those details. My point is to say, category of men of whom the world was not worthy.

Remain Primarily his wife and his children and his parents and those who loved him. And it's a

and so I think we ought to be careful and can

And so I think we ought to be careful and consider what God is doing. And what his purpose is and what his ends are in it. You remember when read the scripture lesson, he said that there's when he's talking about being stiff necked and rejecting knowledge, there comes a point where you because you won't And they're they those are true words. There are times where as a coach my my high school coach who was not at all a believer, my high school football coach, he said, you don't have to worry about us as long as I'm yelling at you. Because if I'm yelling at you, that means I think you can do better.

He says, the problem will actually be when I stop yelling at you to do better. Because I'd be that what that means is I become convinced you're doing as good as you can. You can't improve. Scripturally, we would describe that as throwing our pearls before swine or answering a fool according to his folly. There's a time when we are quiet because there's no there's no way there's no likelihood of what we're saying producing any good thing, except for those that we speak to, to turn and to trample us underfoot.

And so we don't speak. So could it be possible that our brother Charlie was taken away from us because we don't deserve him as a nation? Now we go, that's not how we want it to be, and I don't want it to be that way. But we live in a nation, and do we deserve people who will tell us the truth? And how good are we as Christians if we decide to fight fire with fire and to overcome evil with evil when it's when it's executed against us.

Do we deserve righteous leaders? If that's how we respond, if it that is what's this far below the surface, it's not what we deserve. And so that ought to cause us to consider ourselves in our own ways, in our own angers, in our own frustrations, so that we know what we ought to repent. Now we come to the final section, verses 15 to 18. Solomon wrote this book at the end of his life after he'd spent his life pursuing anything he wanted.

He tells us earlier in the book, there's nothing that his mind or his heart desired, that his eyes looked upon that he denied himself. He gave himself everything he wanted, looking for the meaning of life, looking for what was important. And so he writes this down as a A life where there's no nothing keeping you from the things you want. Not money. Not people.

Nothing. Living in peace with all of the wealth and resources of the entire world available to you and all you have to say is I want it. He spent his life getting what he wanted. And then here he describes his life as a lifetime of futility. Shame on us if we want lifetimes of futility.

We should listen to him. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his and not be excessively righteous and not be overly wise. Why should you ruin your It is good that you grasp one thing and also not let go of the other. For the one who fears God, comes forth. Why.

It'll ruin you. It'll ruin you. It's It'll ruin you. It seems like some sort of faithless pragmatic advice. Like, just fly below the radar and just kind of, you know, stay within the boundaries and, you know, that's, that's what I write.

Passage and it just says this weird thing. It's just it is good for you to grasp one thing and also not to let go of the other. And you're like, what two things is he? Is to show that wise, God fearing men live in quite a bit of tension without drawing foolish conclusions like the ones I've just said. And then

and then

he says was futile, but also full of wise observations, many of which he didn't observe or follow himself. But he learned through his own errors. And one of the things he points out at the very beginning is that righteous men perish, law, and In the fifth commandment, he tells us that if we obey the Lord, if we submit ourselves to him, what does he promise? A long life in the land that he gives to you. But that short life's lives in our world are often the result of wickedness and sin.

You think of the man who was born blind and his parents asked, was it him or his parents who sinned? Why does he have this difficulty? It doesn't make any sense. Now here's what you see in that story and in this passage, the connection, the thread that runs through all of it. We all live as though, God is a vending machine.

And that our action, that he is bound to give us or to do certain things if we do other things. Fifth command. We also have Asaph in the in the in Psalm 73 acknowledging that he's kept his way in vain. He's surely, I've kept my way pure and vain. There's no pain in the wicked's death, and their eyes are fat, and they're rich and wealthy.

And they have all the stuff that my flash And he's asking why? Why do I struggle and and and and fight and seek the Lord when they have the comfort that I want? Doesn't seem right. Doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem equal or just.

What Ace have said in Psalm 73 is that when he came into the house of the Lord, that he perceived their end. That he realized there was something more than just what he observing in the moment as to what was going to happen. You remember the parable of the of the the beggar and I think it was it was Lazarus and the and the rich man. He's like begging begging for crumbs. Like, feed me what the dogs eat off the floor.

Like, I'm starving over here. And he the rich guy wouldn't do it. And then he dies. And then he's like, hey. What about my brothers?

And he stays. And he stays. And he's like, his life was

shortened as a result of the adversity and trials that he faced. And he stays.

And he's like, he looks at him and recognizes him because he says, hey, have him bring me some water. He's just a servant. He's just a nobody. He's he's here to he's meant to to get me what I want. And he's just like, there's this huge chasm between heaven and hell.

And he's on one side of it, and he's entered his rest. And you're on the other side of it, and there's no more rest for you. And so when we look at this and we say that there there seems that that the the the righteous man perishes, you have to realize that the that when we look at the righteous dying prematurely and we say they've perished, probably at least a statement of our own grief at losing them. But it's also a short sighted testimony that we don't think there's anything worth living for beyond the grave. Do the righteous perish and are no more?

Do they are they just gone and then and then there's nothing more to them? In this world, yes. But Paul tells us that if we've hoped in this world, in in first Corinthians 15 when he's talking about the resurrection, he says, if we've hoped in this world only, then we above all men are most adiab. That it's a pathetic and unchristian and unbiblical way to think and to process our lives and the lives of those around us in the context of their death. It's a bad question.

Why do the why do the why do the righteous perish early and the wicked live for a while? It only takes into account this life. I had asked you. There's a It only takes into account this life. I'd ask you, does Lazarus have who died and then went and reclined in the bosom of Abraham, does he have a better existence in life and eternity than the rich man who wouldn't give him crumbs?

Undoubtedly. Undoubted. And so it ought to be that when we see the right just taken away from us prematurely, that we shouldn't grieve as though there's no hope of a future resurrection or a life to come For them or for

us.

Our lives as Christians, we are told, are hidden with Christ. Stories. And it's our only point of reference that we've ever seen or experienced. We accept and believe by faith that there is a world yet to come that we haven't seen or participated. And so when our brothers dearly departed leave and are brought

home and enter into their rest through the means of wicked, sinful men. And so when our brothers

dearly departed leave and are brought home and enter into their rest through the means of wicked, sinful

men.

We should not be ready to fight as though this world is all there is to I do want to say something about him as exhortation not to be excessively righteous and overly wise. It's Rebuquer and is in the words excessive and overly. And so if you're, if you're so fearful about screwing everything up if you make the wrong decision or if you Okay? I often tell young people, you'll life will will be easier for you once you make a big mistake, once you really mess something up. You And then in time, what you'll realize is that God is faithful and merciful, and that when you screw stuff up, all hope is not lost.

But when you're young, you don't see it that way. You think, well, we have to raise our kids just like this, and we have to educate them like that, and we have to feed them like that, and we have to do this and do that. And you have to make all those decisions. Do it. It's a it's a it's a by comparison, a a inconsequential example.

You have to make those decisions. But here's the thing, you're gonna screw your kids up. You're going to fail them. And if your whole idea is, no, I won't, because if I do, it's it's it's it's irreparably. And you're the kind of person who wants to be excessively righteous and overly wise.

But it's But it's

because you can't control God by what you do. And you're the kind of person who wants to be excessively righteous and overly wise. But it's

And so we don't have vending machines anymore. But if you're older and you remember them, there are times that you put the right money in and you push the right button and the little curly q thing twisted and the bag of chips, like, you know, it didn't didn't fall. It didn't come out. You gave your money and you didn't get what you wanted. And then here comes your anger.

Smack the machine. Kick the thing. Right? Try to reach up through the, you know, some of you put another dollar 50 in to get the first bag of chips. Like, there's this idea, this cause and effect that was just hardwired into us.

And then we then we do we project that onto God as though he will just always behave that way. And so, a long life in this world is often and usually and promised by God to be considered a bliss. And to those who are around. But in his providence and in his hidden will, sometimes, And we can't explain why. Years ago, sad story.

Sending church, and they were, they were visiting their parents out of state. And some of the kids were in the car with the grandparents, and some of the kids were in the car with the parents traveling behind them. They're in rural, Illinois. And I don't know I don't remember all of the details of it, but there was a train track and then there was a road. They're really close together.

And there there was a they were on a road that was going over the train track and then down to the road. And it was in rural areas. There's not all these cross guards and all that type of stuff. It's just big wide open farm country. And the the parents and the and the grandparents were not right next to each other.

There was some distance. Well, anyway, the grandparents ended up stopping on the train tracks. They were waiting for cars to go, and the train hit the car. And the grandparents both passed away. They were older, and one of their grandchildren passed away.

And and there were other kids in the car that survived. Tragic. Incredibly tragic. Right? And because then the parents come pulling up and it's like, there's a problem, but they don't know what's going on.

It's awful. And it took a while. Does dwarfs, but they were glad for their child who had believed in Christ to be the one who passed away. And that was a comfort to them. But it took them time.

You realize that wasn't their three weeks out. Was in the car and survived and was still all bandaged up and bruised up and had cuts and casts, they weren't there yet. It takes time to to a godly understanding of these things. And so my extertation to a is to take the time to consider it and to see what and with one and with one and a. To sort out how to carry on the work of righteousness without the ones who and And their work was just And their work was just their work was just And so there really isn't anything for the Christian that can happen in this world that will and their work was just

and so there really isn't anything for the Christian that can happen in this world that will and their

commitment to walking in his ways. So be careful what you what way you want to take when your Consider whether it's God's way. And if you're not sure and if someone pushes back and says, no, no, no, no. You're not

without hope in this world. And if someone pushes back and says, no, no, no. You're not without hope

in this world. And evidence of our humanity and our weakness and our dependence on God and his listen right now. They're watching how you respond. And if you respond poorly, they'll take note of it. And if you respond in a way that makes no sense to them, they'll notice it.

And so you have before you an opportunity to testify to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And his power and dominion over sin and death. Don't neglect it. Let's

pray.