1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,080 Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Oak Hill podcast, Deep Roots, Conversations about Life and Ministry. 2 00:00:06,120 --> 00:00:15,040 I'm Eric Ortland, and I'm back from sabbatical. And I'm going to be standing in for my colleague, Tim Ward, who's going on sabbatical until the summer. 3 00:00:15,440 --> 00:00:18,480 And I'm joined today by my friend and colleague, Graham. 4 00:00:18,520 --> 00:00:21,680 Graham, would you like to introduce yourself for anyone who might not know you? 5 00:00:21,920 --> 00:00:27,320 Sure, gladly. I'm Graham Bynum. Here at Oak Hill, I am the director of independent training. 6 00:00:27,320 --> 00:00:33,440 I'm at the college a couple of days a week. The rest of my time, I'm pastor of Grace Church in Cambridge. 7 00:00:33,480 --> 00:00:39,680 Now, Graham, you and I were talking together a couple of weeks ago, and you mentioned you had preached through Ecclesiastes. 8 00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:44,160 I had just been working on Ecclesiastes on the sabbatical and been writing about it. 9 00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:51,520 And we thought this would be a good book to bring to the podcast, but not an easy book to bring to the podcast. 10 00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:58,520 No, no, not easy at all. In fact, we had a discussion as elders at our church about preaching series. 11 00:00:58,560 --> 00:01:08,520 It was maybe six months into the pandemic, and someone said we should do Ecclesiastes because everyone's asking questions about meaning of life and everything. 12 00:01:08,560 --> 00:01:12,840 Yeah. And they were really keen. And I was sitting in the corner going, guys, it's really hard. 13 00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:19,240 You don't know what you're asking for. And I know I'm going to have to do most of this preaching. 14 00:01:19,240 --> 00:01:24,680 But they pushed, I relented, and I was really pleased that we did. It was great. 15 00:01:24,720 --> 00:01:26,120 I'm glad. It was really great. 16 00:01:26,640 --> 00:01:30,080 Ecclesiastes is not a book that people have mild reactions to. 17 00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:34,840 You either love it or hate it, but it's a tough book to get through regardless. 18 00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:43,120 My sense is that the book is trying to teach us things that we know are true, but that are hard to listen to. 19 00:01:43,160 --> 00:01:46,360 They're easier to ignore, easier just not to remember. 20 00:01:46,400 --> 00:01:46,800 Yeah. 21 00:01:46,800 --> 00:01:49,320 Does that fit with your experience? 22 00:01:49,360 --> 00:01:55,800 Yeah, it does. It does. And I think that even connects with like how it's written and the experience of reading it. 23 00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:58,760 It's not simply propositional. 24 00:01:58,800 --> 00:02:00,280 Hey, you're going to die, guys. 25 00:02:00,320 --> 00:02:00,600 Yeah. 26 00:02:00,640 --> 00:02:01,600 Life is short. 27 00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:02,160 Yeah. 28 00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:09,360 It takes simple facts like that, but kind of takes you on a journey through them. 29 00:02:09,400 --> 00:02:15,000 And so it's almost like an experience you have in reading through it. 30 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:18,200 And that that experience is part of the point. 31 00:02:18,240 --> 00:02:18,560 Yes. 32 00:02:18,600 --> 00:02:19,920 And you won't get it otherwise. 33 00:02:19,960 --> 00:02:20,520 Yes. 34 00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:21,120 Yes. 35 00:02:21,160 --> 00:02:24,960 Instead of being spoon fed proverb after proverb after proverb. 36 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:25,320 For sure. 37 00:02:25,360 --> 00:02:25,560 Yeah. 38 00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:28,800 You have to journey through the book to the very end. 39 00:02:28,840 --> 00:02:37,120 And I feel often like it's like a camera coming into focus where if I've read it through several times, many questions at the beginning. 40 00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:40,080 By the end, OK, I understand more what he wants to say. 41 00:02:40,120 --> 00:02:40,760 Yeah. 42 00:02:40,800 --> 00:02:42,240 Graham, what would you say to someone? 43 00:02:42,280 --> 00:02:43,720 And I've come across this opinion. 44 00:02:43,720 --> 00:02:46,480 And although I disagree with it, I understand it. 45 00:02:46,520 --> 00:02:56,600 What would you say to a Christian who takes a negative view of Ecclesiastes and says Ecclesiastes is in the canon to show us what we get that life has no meaning without God. 46 00:02:56,640 --> 00:03:01,240 It's taking a secular position to its logical outcome, something like that. 47 00:03:01,280 --> 00:03:03,040 That's one way the book is approached. 48 00:03:03,080 --> 00:03:04,120 What are your thoughts on that? 49 00:03:04,160 --> 00:03:10,520 Yeah, yeah, no, and I've come across that and I can see the attraction because there are lots of passages which read a little like that. 50 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:12,680 Life is meaningless and empty. 51 00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:15,680 And futile and effectively, what's the point? 52 00:03:15,720 --> 00:03:20,120 Yeah, life, you know, life is hard and then you die. 53 00:03:20,160 --> 00:03:24,840 And so they then say, well, there's the problem and the answer is Jesus. 54 00:03:24,880 --> 00:03:30,600 And we have resurrection hope and life is meaningful in him and so on. 55 00:03:30,640 --> 00:03:34,120 Now, all that I've just said in the second half is true. 56 00:03:34,160 --> 00:03:35,120 Yes. 57 00:03:35,160 --> 00:03:40,240 But I think Ecclesiastes is not as negative as that. 58 00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:45,200 I think it's dealing with life in a fallen world. 59 00:03:45,240 --> 00:03:46,200 Yes. 60 00:03:46,240 --> 00:03:52,480 In which the answer will be Jesus, but I think the answer is actually in Ecclesiastes itself still. 61 00:03:52,520 --> 00:04:01,200 And what you'd have to then do is to get into, which we will in a second, I'm sure, get into some of the key kind of interpretive issues. 62 00:04:01,240 --> 00:04:03,440 What is this meaningless thing? 63 00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:04,480 Yeah. 64 00:04:04,520 --> 00:04:07,480 And how do we put the whole book together? 65 00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:08,520 Yeah. 66 00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:14,200 That's going to be some of the detail which would help convince that person. 67 00:04:14,240 --> 00:04:20,440 I've never read a book like Ecclesiastes before ever by any Christian anywhere. 68 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:30,760 I am fascinated by this unique text and especially the way it says some of the most depressing, disturbing things, things I don't want to think about. 69 00:04:30,800 --> 00:04:36,800 Like how quickly my life will be over, how little I am in control of and how little impact I have under the sun. 70 00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:39,440 And that's going to be important that we come back to that. 71 00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:52,760 And yet at the same time, you get this exuberant joy in just earthly things that you will never find anywhere else in scripture just enjoying your work, whatever it is, enjoying your food with your friends. 72 00:04:52,800 --> 00:04:57,360 That doesn't sound like a skeptical, cynical atheist to me. 73 00:04:57,400 --> 00:05:02,280 So I have never found convincing someone who says that's life without God. 74 00:05:02,280 --> 00:05:07,240 When it seems to me the whole point of the book is every day is a gift from God to be enjoyed as such. 75 00:05:07,280 --> 00:05:08,760 That doesn't sound like an atheist talking to me. 76 00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:18,440 No, it doesn't. And what you have to do is try and put together those more, what sound like more despairing passages with the type of passage you've just been mentioning. 77 00:05:18,480 --> 00:05:19,600 Enjoy life. 78 00:05:19,640 --> 00:05:23,960 God has already approved of what you're doing in life, that kind of line. 79 00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:28,360 Put those together and think what picture of life is he painting for us? 80 00:05:28,400 --> 00:05:29,280 Yes. 81 00:05:29,280 --> 00:05:33,520 And what fascinates me is the book wants us to put those together. 82 00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:37,800 And it's not like you leave behind the depressing stuff to get to the happy stuff. 83 00:05:37,840 --> 00:05:39,440 Both always go together. 84 00:05:39,480 --> 00:05:41,560 And even tell me if you would agree. 85 00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:48,000 I get the sense that Ecclesiastes thinks we cannot really enjoy life as a gift from God without the depressing stuff there. 86 00:05:48,040 --> 00:05:49,640 We won't enjoy it as a gift otherwise. 87 00:05:49,680 --> 00:05:50,680 Yeah, no, I think that's right. 88 00:05:50,720 --> 00:05:56,360 It's when you've come to realize things like how transient and brief it is. 89 00:05:56,360 --> 00:06:01,960 That you say, so I want to enjoy each day as a gift each day I have. 90 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:10,680 I Ecclesiastes, one of my favorites in the Bible, because whenever I finish reading it, I feel calm and sort of sane. 91 00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:18,440 And like I can go back to ordinary life and I feel it's it's like physical therapy, you know, where someone's working into your muscles and it hurts. 92 00:06:18,480 --> 00:06:21,000 But when they stop, you just feel great. 93 00:06:21,040 --> 00:06:26,040 And I Ecclesiastes is therapeutic for me in that way. 94 00:06:26,040 --> 00:06:27,480 Now you have the NIV open there. 95 00:06:27,520 --> 00:06:28,280 I do. 96 00:06:28,320 --> 00:06:33,160 And very first word meaningless, meaningless, totally meaningless. 97 00:06:33,200 --> 00:06:35,680 We need to talk about the translation there. 98 00:06:35,720 --> 00:06:36,400 We do. 99 00:06:36,440 --> 00:06:39,240 I don't want to rip on the NIV, but I think the end my opinion. 100 00:06:39,280 --> 00:06:40,120 Tell me what you think. 101 00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:45,920 My opinion is that the NIV has put the reader as at a disadvantage by translating that word that way. 102 00:06:45,960 --> 00:06:47,560 Yeah, yeah, I agree. 103 00:06:47,600 --> 00:06:52,120 I agree. And I had to spend my first sermon discussing this word. 104 00:06:52,120 --> 00:07:01,440 So if we say meaningless in English, we tend to think directionless, kind of existential angst. 105 00:07:01,480 --> 00:07:02,680 What are we all about? 106 00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:04,360 And so on. 107 00:07:04,400 --> 00:07:12,040 And the word could be translated breath or vapour or something like that. 108 00:07:12,040 --> 00:07:23,240 And in lots of instances in scripture elsewhere, it's very much to do with the brevity of life, that our life is just a breath. 109 00:07:23,280 --> 00:07:29,560 And there are some instances, I would say in Ecclesiastes, where it's pointed out there's someone know what you think in a second. 110 00:07:29,600 --> 00:07:41,560 But the kind of you enjoy life with your wife all the days of this fleeting life, brief life. 111 00:07:41,560 --> 00:07:50,600 Banish anxiety and cast off the troubles of youth for youth and vigor are fleeting, brief. 112 00:07:50,640 --> 00:07:56,880 But then, but then elsewhere, that kind of idea of transient doesn't quite work so well. 113 00:07:56,920 --> 00:07:57,560 Yes. 114 00:07:57,600 --> 00:08:01,920 So does it have a mixture of meanings or is there a more kind of basic meaning? 115 00:08:01,960 --> 00:08:03,240 Yes. 116 00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:04,640 What did you say in your commentary? 117 00:08:04,640 --> 00:08:16,320 So I think that the man who wrote this is something of a genius who is able to take normal Hebrew and kind of twist it in his own ways, not in utterly unique ways. 118 00:08:16,360 --> 00:08:25,520 But the verse you quoted earlier from the end of chapter 11, enjoy youth because it is, and the word in Hebrew is hebel that gets translated as meaningless. 119 00:08:25,560 --> 00:08:28,080 It can't mean meaningless there. 120 00:08:28,120 --> 00:08:31,040 Because if life is meaningless, that's not a reason to enjoy it. 121 00:08:31,040 --> 00:08:34,640 But if it's transient or fleeting, if it's a breath, well then that makes perfect sense. 122 00:08:34,680 --> 00:08:36,400 Enjoy youth before it's gone. 123 00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:37,480 Fine. 124 00:08:37,520 --> 00:08:47,320 I also get the strong sense, tell me what you think, that elsewhere in the Old Testament and definitely in Ecclesiastes, it's, you never quite get away from the sense of fleeting, 125 00:08:47,360 --> 00:08:53,720 but you have this sense of it doesn't give me what I legitimately expect from it. 126 00:08:53,760 --> 00:09:00,240 It's disappointing and frustrating and in vain, I think, is a good translation in a number of points. 127 00:09:00,240 --> 00:09:05,240 I'm not sure any one word in English quite gets everything he's saying, you have to vary. 128 00:09:05,280 --> 00:09:18,960 But I remember in chapter 2, the man, the teacher, which I think is a good translation from the NIV, it's not that he fails in everything he wants to do in life. 129 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:22,040 We get a kind of mini autobiography in chapters 1 and chapter 2. 130 00:09:22,080 --> 00:09:26,160 He succeeds, he accomplished everything on his agenda, he got done. 131 00:09:26,200 --> 00:09:29,840 And he faced how quickly he was going to have to pass it on to someone else and he was going to be gone. 132 00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:31,360 And this other person might ruin it all. 133 00:09:31,400 --> 00:09:32,600 He has no control over that. 134 00:09:32,640 --> 00:09:33,000 Yeah. 135 00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:35,680 And he says, why then have I been so very wise? 136 00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:39,560 And it's as if he wanted something more from all those accomplishments that he didn't get. 137 00:09:39,600 --> 00:09:44,960 So the brevity and the vanity, the frustration, the futility, that idea seems prominent in the book. 138 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:45,920 Yeah. 139 00:09:45,960 --> 00:09:46,920 Yeah, I think that's right. 140 00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:59,040 And I think that then does have implications for what we might think of as the meaning of life, because it does mean that pursuing things in life is going to be empty and frustrating. 141 00:09:59,040 --> 00:10:06,600 So you can kind of arrive at that existential sense of meaning eventually, but it's not what the word means in the first instance. 142 00:10:06,640 --> 00:10:07,040 Right. 143 00:10:07,080 --> 00:10:12,280 And if we think that, then I think we're already off down an unhelpful path. 144 00:10:12,320 --> 00:10:13,080 Yes. 145 00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:23,200 Particularly down that path of, well, this book is just saying everything's empty and sort of the skeptic kind of approach that you were outlining at the beginning. 146 00:10:23,240 --> 00:10:25,440 And that life is not worth engaging with. 147 00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:29,440 And the book wants to push us exactly in the opposite direction from that. 148 00:10:29,480 --> 00:10:38,800 One of the articles I read in the book pointed out that if he's saying everything is meaningless, there's no reason for him to say something is better than something else, if everything's meaningless. 149 00:10:38,840 --> 00:10:44,680 If it's meaningless, there's no reason for God to bring everything into judgment, whether small or little, that just won't work. 150 00:10:44,720 --> 00:10:50,760 How did you, when you preached Ecclesiastes, what word did you use for Hebel? 151 00:10:50,800 --> 00:10:55,240 Yeah, we varied, because I think it is tricky. 152 00:10:55,240 --> 00:11:01,080 I began just by saying it was like breath and that it was fleeting like breath. 153 00:11:01,120 --> 00:11:05,560 It was insubstantial and you couldn't get hold of it, that kind of sense. 154 00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:06,080 Yeah. 155 00:11:06,120 --> 00:11:06,480 Yeah. 156 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:09,160 It's the very opposite of something being kind of concrete. 157 00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:09,800 Yes. 158 00:11:09,840 --> 00:11:10,360 Yeah. 159 00:11:10,400 --> 00:11:11,000 Yeah. 160 00:11:11,040 --> 00:11:14,000 You mentioned life in a fallen world. 161 00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:25,000 Would you agree with the statement that Ecclesiastes is a commentary on life after Genesis three and wise instruction in how to live in a world that is good, but under God's curse, 162 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:36,880 which I want to explain, but in general, that Ecclesiastes is the one part of the Bible where God says, let me help you deal with life after the fall and the things that have gone wrong with creation. 163 00:11:36,920 --> 00:11:37,440 Yes. 164 00:11:37,480 --> 00:11:38,200 Yeah, I agree. 165 00:11:38,240 --> 00:11:43,600 And I think it's worth just possibly backing up slightly and seeing it as part of the wisdom literature. 166 00:11:43,640 --> 00:11:44,040 Yes. 167 00:11:44,080 --> 00:11:53,280 And just thinking of wisdom literature as different to like the salvation history kind of events. 168 00:11:53,320 --> 00:11:53,720 Yes. 169 00:11:53,720 --> 00:11:59,120 Of what God is doing and different to instruction in law as to how to live. 170 00:11:59,160 --> 00:11:59,720 Yes. 171 00:11:59,760 --> 00:12:04,360 But helping us understand exactly this life in a fallen world. 172 00:12:04,400 --> 00:12:04,760 Yes. 173 00:12:04,800 --> 00:12:20,880 So Job understanding the perplexity of suffering or even not understanding, grappling with Proverbs, perhaps giving us some of the regularities and normalities of how life tends to go. 174 00:12:20,920 --> 00:12:21,680 Yeah. 175 00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:33,440 And Ecclesiastes maybe even as countering that or complementing that some of the other ways life goes in being confusing, you know, life and events happen to everyone and you're not in control. 176 00:12:33,480 --> 00:12:34,480 Yeah. 177 00:12:34,520 --> 00:12:37,520 And that's something that God wants us to read. 178 00:12:37,560 --> 00:12:41,800 That's our Heavenly Father instructing us in this. 179 00:12:41,840 --> 00:12:45,560 I found it really helpful when I was writing to keep Genesis three in the back of my mind. 180 00:12:45,600 --> 00:12:49,800 And when God curses creation, that does not mean he thinks it's bad or awful. 181 00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:51,440 Creation is still good. 182 00:12:51,440 --> 00:12:53,680 Creation, it just curses the opposite of blessing. 183 00:12:53,720 --> 00:13:00,720 It means creation will not work with the same easy success and abundance and fertility that it would have had otherwise. 184 00:13:00,760 --> 00:13:03,400 It's by the sweat of your brow that you eke out. 185 00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:10,400 So within that, I suppose, I mean, we can use the Pauline term frustration. 186 00:13:10,440 --> 00:13:12,760 Ecclesiastes is helping us negotiate life. 187 00:13:12,800 --> 00:13:15,760 It's important to put Ecclesiastes in the context of wisdom literature. 188 00:13:15,800 --> 00:13:20,000 It fascinates me that the altism isn't just a set of rules. 189 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:23,200 Living in God's world is more than just being good and following the rules. 190 00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:28,160 You need this kind of skill in the subtleties of that's fascinating to me. 191 00:13:28,200 --> 00:13:30,960 How would you... 192 00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:33,360 What mistakes might it be easy for... 193 00:13:33,400 --> 00:13:35,000 Let me put you on the spot a little bit. 194 00:13:35,040 --> 00:13:40,640 What mistakes might it be easy for Christians to make if Ecclesiastes was not in the canon? 195 00:13:40,680 --> 00:13:42,400 Hmm. 196 00:13:42,440 --> 00:13:44,680 Yeah, I need an advance warning on these sort of questions. 197 00:13:44,720 --> 00:13:45,720 Apologies. 198 00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:47,600 We can circle back around to it if you want. 199 00:13:47,600 --> 00:13:50,360 That's fine, I'll have a go and then you can tell me the right answer. 200 00:13:50,400 --> 00:13:51,400 Right. 201 00:13:53,560 --> 00:13:58,040 I think we'll just take that comparison with proverbs, 202 00:13:58,080 --> 00:14:01,200 something like, you know, train a child in the way they should go 203 00:14:01,240 --> 00:14:03,000 and in the future they won't depart from it. 204 00:14:03,040 --> 00:14:04,640 That's my paraphrase. 205 00:14:04,680 --> 00:14:06,160 Yeah. 206 00:14:06,200 --> 00:14:08,880 And it's an observation on some of the regularities. 207 00:14:08,920 --> 00:14:11,720 Now, even that, that's not a promise 208 00:14:11,760 --> 00:14:14,880 that nothing will ever go wrong with your child if you've raised them properly. 209 00:14:14,880 --> 00:14:17,680 But it's an observation of how things tend to go. 210 00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:20,640 And if you multiply those, you're going to tend to think 211 00:14:20,680 --> 00:14:24,560 there's a kind of regularity and normality to life, 212 00:14:24,600 --> 00:14:26,160 which doesn't... 213 00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:30,640 Which does fit because God's world has a sort of order to it. 214 00:14:30,680 --> 00:14:34,120 But it doesn't fit with that frustration and futility. 215 00:14:34,160 --> 00:14:37,920 And we could end up going, what's gone wrong with my life? 216 00:14:37,960 --> 00:14:40,040 I don't understand. 217 00:14:40,080 --> 00:14:41,440 And what did I do wrong? 218 00:14:41,480 --> 00:14:43,440 And therefore, what did I do wrong? 219 00:14:43,480 --> 00:14:44,800 Why am I to blame? 220 00:14:44,800 --> 00:14:48,040 Did I make some mistake or has God against me in some way? 221 00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:50,880 Rather than, you know what? 222 00:14:50,920 --> 00:14:53,040 Life is incredibly mixed 223 00:14:53,080 --> 00:14:56,920 and lots of really rubbish stuff is actually going to happen. 224 00:14:56,960 --> 00:14:59,000 And you're not in control. 225 00:14:59,040 --> 00:15:05,160 And it could feel like you will pass through this world and not leave a mark on it. 226 00:15:05,200 --> 00:15:07,280 But, and we'll get to this, I guess. 227 00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:08,760 But that doesn't mean it's pointless. 228 00:15:08,800 --> 00:15:11,440 And that doesn't mean there's not a good way to live in it. 229 00:15:11,480 --> 00:15:13,400 And that doesn't mean it's meant to be rejected. 230 00:15:13,440 --> 00:15:14,440 For sure. 231 00:15:14,440 --> 00:15:16,720 The cynic who holds back from everything, 232 00:15:16,760 --> 00:15:21,600 who is certain there's something else going on and never wants to be taken in again. 233 00:15:21,640 --> 00:15:26,120 Ecclesiastes is very much not wanting us to go there and trying to protect us from that. 234 00:15:26,160 --> 00:15:27,080 Yeah. 235 00:15:27,120 --> 00:15:33,160 The from verses two and three of chapter one seem to be crucial for the whole book. 236 00:15:33,200 --> 00:15:36,640 Vanity of vanities or breath of breaths, whoever exactly want to say that. 237 00:15:36,680 --> 00:15:41,480 And then one prophet is there for a man in all his toil with which he labors under the sun. 238 00:15:41,480 --> 00:15:45,280 And that under the sun phrase I find really helpful for the whole book. 239 00:15:45,320 --> 00:15:50,760 Sorry, the teacher is not denying an above the sun reality. 240 00:15:50,800 --> 00:15:54,520 One commentary I read helpfully said that part of what it means for God to be God is 241 00:15:54,560 --> 00:15:59,160 that he's not subject to this transience and vanity and whatnot. 242 00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:04,560 But in life under the sun, which is also another way of saying life within this age before the eschaton. 243 00:16:04,600 --> 00:16:05,880 Yes. 244 00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:09,720 They've found graves from ancient Phoenicia, I think, 245 00:16:09,720 --> 00:16:14,280 that talk about the time of the dead persons, the time that they were under the sun. 246 00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:17,960 So it means it's not just spatial, but the time of your earthly life. 247 00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:18,720 Yes. 248 00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:22,600 I think if I were to answer my own difficult question, apologies for putting you on the spot. 249 00:16:22,640 --> 00:16:26,760 I think Ecclesiastes helps us not to have an over realized eschatology. 250 00:16:26,800 --> 00:16:30,120 It helps us be realistic about life in this age before the second coming, 251 00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:36,120 before the new creation and live wisely and and still be able to engage with life 252 00:16:36,120 --> 00:16:40,000 and drink it to the leaves and just relish it. 253 00:16:40,040 --> 00:16:44,960 And the way that the teacher goes about that is just fascinating to me. 254 00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:51,720 Now, all of that means that our whole approach to the book is really significant. 255 00:16:51,760 --> 00:16:57,400 As a preacher, it's one of the dangers of if you just started week one in chapter one 256 00:16:57,440 --> 00:16:59,720 and hadn't decided how you're going to approach the whole thing, 257 00:16:59,760 --> 00:17:01,800 you'd be in real trouble by chapter three or four. 258 00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:03,040 Yes. 259 00:17:03,040 --> 00:17:08,040 Is it worth just outlining some of the different ways people take it 260 00:17:08,080 --> 00:17:11,640 and maybe some of that might connect with some commentaries? 261 00:17:11,680 --> 00:17:15,560 Yeah, I see basically three approaches to the book. 262 00:17:15,600 --> 00:17:18,280 You tell me if this fits with what you've read. 263 00:17:18,320 --> 00:17:19,320 Yeah. 264 00:17:19,360 --> 00:17:23,520 On the one hand, I've read people that I thought mishandled the book 265 00:17:23,560 --> 00:17:27,240 either by not giving enough attention to the frustration in the book 266 00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:29,360 or not enough attention to the joy. 267 00:17:29,400 --> 00:17:30,400 Yeah. 268 00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:31,560 That's the difficult thing. 269 00:17:31,560 --> 00:17:36,560 I say the thing I wrote, you need to keep a sense of bothness in Ecclesiastes. 270 00:17:36,600 --> 00:17:41,120 Life is both really frustrating and really good, both at the same time, always. 271 00:17:41,160 --> 00:17:43,280 And I've read... 272 00:17:43,320 --> 00:17:47,160 I don't think I've read Long Necker actually, but I've read some commentaries. 273 00:17:47,200 --> 00:17:51,800 One, by a very fine Old Testament scholar that just took the word as brief 274 00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:55,640 and took it as a way of saying all the frustrating stuff is going to be over soon, 275 00:17:55,680 --> 00:17:57,320 so it's all okay. 276 00:17:57,360 --> 00:18:00,520 And he didn't do justice to the frustrating aspect. 277 00:18:00,520 --> 00:18:05,520 I've read others by Tremper Longman, which is a name probably many people know, 278 00:18:05,560 --> 00:18:11,800 and another one by James Crenshaw, who only got the frustration and life is bad 279 00:18:11,840 --> 00:18:14,360 and only took it negatively. 280 00:18:14,400 --> 00:18:18,880 And James Crenshaw, in his commentary, actually, on some of the joy passages, 281 00:18:18,920 --> 00:18:21,480 he will just say, this doesn't seem to fit in the book at all, 282 00:18:21,520 --> 00:18:26,000 and maybe somebody added it later, which is completely unconvincing, you know. 283 00:18:26,040 --> 00:18:27,960 And yet I've come across a couple of commentaries 284 00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,120 that I think got the bothness really well. 285 00:18:30,120 --> 00:18:32,280 I think in general, those are the sorts of things I read. 286 00:18:32,320 --> 00:18:35,360 Does that fit with what you've read? 287 00:18:35,400 --> 00:18:37,360 Yeah, it does. 288 00:18:37,400 --> 00:18:39,240 Because I was struggling so much and understanding it, 289 00:18:39,280 --> 00:18:41,560 I think I bought more commentaries on Ecclesiastes 290 00:18:41,600 --> 00:18:44,400 than I have with lots of other books. 291 00:18:44,440 --> 00:18:47,000 And you soon learn that how they take the whole book 292 00:18:47,040 --> 00:18:52,920 and how they take a heavy breath, futility, is really key. 293 00:18:52,960 --> 00:18:58,920 So Longman, for example, basically takes the majority of the book 294 00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:00,680 as basically kind of wrong. 295 00:19:00,720 --> 00:19:01,680 It's kind of heretical. 296 00:19:01,720 --> 00:19:05,040 It's like expressing a sceptical desire that they shouldn't have. 297 00:19:05,080 --> 00:19:07,320 And really only the epilogue corrects everything. 298 00:19:07,360 --> 00:19:08,240 Yes. 299 00:19:08,280 --> 00:19:10,680 Which will make it a very strange book to preach. 300 00:19:10,720 --> 00:19:12,560 Very strange. 301 00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:16,440 Others, it seems to me, take a little bit more of a mixed position, 302 00:19:16,480 --> 00:19:22,280 kind of going, he's kind of almost lapses into scepticism sometimes, 303 00:19:22,320 --> 00:19:24,400 but then kind of brings himself back out of it. 304 00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:27,520 And sometimes they connect that to the under the sun sort of language. 305 00:19:27,520 --> 00:19:31,200 Or now I'm almost like I'm pretending God doesn't exist, so I'm being negative. 306 00:19:31,240 --> 00:19:34,280 Oh, now I'm remembering he does. 307 00:19:34,320 --> 00:19:39,480 But it seems to me the under the sun language doesn't work that neatly. 308 00:19:39,520 --> 00:19:41,960 And then what you end up doing is effectively evaluating, 309 00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:46,040 do I think this is a correct passage or a wrong passage? 310 00:19:46,080 --> 00:19:49,360 And in both of those, you basically end up only ever saying 311 00:19:49,400 --> 00:19:52,080 what you know is true from elsewhere. 312 00:19:52,120 --> 00:19:53,280 You sort of read your theology in. 313 00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:53,840 Exactly. 314 00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:55,360 And in the history of interpretation, 315 00:19:55,360 --> 00:19:58,880 it's common to have some people saying, oh, hell, it is arguing with sceptics 316 00:19:58,920 --> 00:20:00,160 and disagreeing with stuff. 317 00:20:00,200 --> 00:20:00,680 Yeah. 318 00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:01,880 But that's way too easy. 319 00:20:01,920 --> 00:20:02,880 Yeah. 320 00:20:02,920 --> 00:20:09,440 And then others take it as a no, this is basically an orthodox book all the way through. 321 00:20:09,480 --> 00:20:14,520 Some statements taken in isolation are hard and perhaps we'll mention some 322 00:20:14,560 --> 00:20:17,760 particularly difficult bits later on. 323 00:20:17,800 --> 00:20:22,000 And yet, actually, it's not just the 324 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:26,480 the epilogue about fearing God and so on and he'll bring everything to judgment. 325 00:20:26,520 --> 00:20:33,320 It's not that that just provides a kind of, oh, there's our final kind of safeguard. 326 00:20:33,360 --> 00:20:36,280 Actually, that drips through the whole book. 327 00:20:36,320 --> 00:20:36,720 It does. 328 00:20:36,760 --> 00:20:41,320 So mentions of fearing God and mentions of judgment come through the book. 329 00:20:41,360 --> 00:20:42,400 Yeah. 330 00:20:42,440 --> 00:20:48,120 And our almost little anchor points, I think, which help us see that we're being 331 00:20:48,120 --> 00:20:55,960 helped all the way through to wrestle with the frustration and the joy in the light of what will come. 332 00:20:56,000 --> 00:21:01,640 It's brilliant to me that the teacher never lapses into cynicism and never says, 333 00:21:01,680 --> 00:21:04,760 oh, it doesn't matter if you obey God or not or what, just do whatever you want. 334 00:21:04,800 --> 00:21:09,680 But he will want to say there are things you could reasonably expect to use new 335 00:21:09,720 --> 00:21:13,080 covenant language from being a good Christian, and they may not always obtain. 336 00:21:13,120 --> 00:21:13,480 For sure. 337 00:21:13,520 --> 00:21:14,400 Your life may not. 338 00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:17,200 It is still absolutely worth obeying God. 339 00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:17,600 Yeah. 340 00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:19,920 But be realistic about the scurriness of life. 341 00:21:19,960 --> 00:21:20,480 Yeah. 342 00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:25,520 It life will not always play out the way you could reasonably expect, but he doesn't go 343 00:21:25,560 --> 00:21:28,480 the direction we expect and say, well, who cares? 344 00:21:28,520 --> 00:21:30,360 Who cares about discipleship or anything? 345 00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:33,680 He still says unambiguously it is absolutely worth doing that. 346 00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:37,040 But he's helping us have realistic expectations about life after the fall. 347 00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:37,400 Yeah. 348 00:21:37,440 --> 00:21:37,800 Yeah. 349 00:21:37,840 --> 00:21:39,240 Yeah. 350 00:21:39,280 --> 00:21:44,480 I was reading a thing from a pastor I liked on Ecclesiastes, and at one point he said, 351 00:21:44,520 --> 00:21:47,480 go ahead and get frustrated and lose your faith. 352 00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:49,640 There's some kinds of faith worth losing. 353 00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:50,400 Huh. 354 00:21:50,440 --> 00:21:57,040 And that stuck in my mind as one of the reasons I warm to this difficult, depressing, 355 00:21:57,080 --> 00:22:04,680 outrageous sort of book, I find my tendency, I'd summarize the book as basically saying, 356 00:22:04,720 --> 00:22:06,400 I don't think it's about meaning so much. 357 00:22:06,440 --> 00:22:07,800 It's about value. 358 00:22:07,840 --> 00:22:09,520 It's about what value does your life has. 359 00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:12,960 In Chapter two, verse three, he makes a search to see what is good for the sons of 360 00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:15,440 men to do in all the days of their life under the sun. 361 00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:15,960 Yes. 362 00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:17,520 What's worth investing your time in? 363 00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:18,920 Yeah. 364 00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:22,760 What's the best life to live? 365 00:22:22,800 --> 00:22:27,400 And I find my own tendency, if you were to ask me, if I haven't read Ecclesiastes for 366 00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:31,880 a while, if you were to ask me, why is all your work worth doing, Eric? 367 00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:34,040 I would probably tend to say I'm making a mark in the world. 368 00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:35,560 I'm making a difference. 369 00:22:35,600 --> 00:22:40,920 And I've just managed to sort of bracket out and not notice very soon. 370 00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:42,080 I'm going to be in the ground. 371 00:22:42,120 --> 00:22:44,760 And although my eschatological reward is sure, 372 00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:47,200 very soon it will be as if I never existed. 373 00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:47,800 Yeah. 374 00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:51,320 And I feel that as a troubling imposition, I sort of think, well, 375 00:22:51,360 --> 00:22:53,480 why am I working so hard then? 376 00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:58,880 And the teacher guides me to say it's only as you resolutely stare at that, 377 00:22:58,920 --> 00:23:01,840 that you will be able to let go of being... 378 00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:03,360 I'm talking about myself here. 379 00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:06,080 I will be able to let go of being obsessed with my own accomplishments, 380 00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:10,080 wondering how much of a mark I'm making and just say the work God has given me 381 00:23:10,120 --> 00:23:12,880 today is a gift from God. 382 00:23:12,880 --> 00:23:15,520 Under the sun, I won't get anything permanent from it. 383 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:20,040 This conversation, enjoyable as it is, will be forgotten sooner or later. 384 00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:25,200 It's still absolutely worth doing because the God of eternity has given you to, 385 00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:27,120 us to, to talk about this today. 386 00:23:27,160 --> 00:23:28,880 That's the value that it has. 387 00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:32,840 I have never read that anywhere, anywhere else in the Bible, any other 388 00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:34,720 Christian book, I've never come across that. 389 00:23:34,720 --> 00:23:35,680 I find that so helpful. 390 00:23:35,720 --> 00:23:36,840 Yeah, very much. 391 00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:41,920 And I think it's particularly helpful for our culture today. 392 00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:44,000 Yes. That's the next thing I wanted to ask you. 393 00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:49,200 Because just, I mean, in terms of denying the reality of death and the transience 394 00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:52,320 of life, and that was one reason it was interesting doing it in the pandemic. 395 00:23:52,360 --> 00:23:53,600 Yes. 396 00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:58,520 And of course, it wasn't the pandemic made death more of a reality. 397 00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:01,920 It only made it a more conscious reality. 398 00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:05,360 We never had numbers of people dying before on the news. 399 00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:06,400 Yeah. 400 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:12,000 And, but the statistics ultimately didn't change one in one die. 401 00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:13,040 Yeah. 402 00:24:13,080 --> 00:24:17,720 And just even in chapter one, that thing about being forgotten. 403 00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:18,760 Yeah. 404 00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:22,160 I told people at the end, one of my applications, I had some unusual 405 00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:25,800 applications in Ecclesiastes, I told people to visit graveyards. 406 00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:30,640 And I told them to visit a graveyard and find a gravestone that had a nice, you 407 00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:31,880 know, engraving on it. 408 00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:32,920 Yeah. 409 00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:36,360 And it was, you know, a name and dates and loving father, whatever. 410 00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:40,600 Okay. Imagine your name on that gravestone and what it would say about you. 411 00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:41,400 Yeah. 412 00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:45,240 And then I said, go and find a really old gravestone where the whole thing is 413 00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:48,840 really weathered and you can't even read the thing. 414 00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:49,640 Exactly. 415 00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:50,760 That's your gravestone. 416 00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:51,560 Exactly. 417 00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:54,880 No one even remembers you existed and knows who you are. 418 00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:58,080 I will do exactly this, exactly the same thing. 419 00:24:58,120 --> 00:25:01,240 I will say, go to a grave, read the name 420 00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:06,600 and etch your name there for me, 1976 to whatever. 421 00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:09,360 And then imagine the wind and the weather wiping it away. 422 00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:09,720 Yeah. 423 00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:15,240 And eventually it's just and it's part of God's wisdom for us, God's imposition of 424 00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:19,440 frustration on creation, it's not a rejection of us. 425 00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:21,720 It's not that he hates. 426 00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:28,240 It's so easy to slip into the trickily, sentimentally sort of isn't life wonderful. 427 00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:33,280 Every Christmas time we get these horribly sentimental ads on the one hand or on the 428 00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:36,760 other hand, just sheer cynicism that I'm not going to be taken in anymore and I'm 429 00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:38,040 not going to get my heart broken again. 430 00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:42,040 I will never be disappointed again because I will assume the worst about everything. 431 00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:45,840 And Ecclesiastes gives us a way to hold on to both of those. 432 00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,840 And it's by holding on to both of them. 433 00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:51,960 It's fascinating to me in Chapter two, 434 00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:57,600 the teacher says almost nothing about God as he is out there killing it, doing 435 00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:02,720 everything he wanted to in life and having a great time and succeeding at everything. 436 00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:05,240 I mean, anything you want to accomplish in life, he did it. 437 00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:05,840 Yeah. 438 00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:08,160 He says basically nothing about God. 439 00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:13,840 And if God had not subjected my life to frustration, if I if I tell my students 440 00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:17,720 in Hebrew without the fall, you could just stare at the page and you'd get it. 441 00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:20,360 And you'd be up and reading the Old Testament in about two weeks. 442 00:26:20,360 --> 00:26:23,600 It would be easy with the faults by the sweat of your brow that you get through 443 00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,120 this class, you know, if I could just master my existence. 444 00:26:27,120 --> 00:26:30,520 If there if it had never been subjected to frustration, would I care about God? 445 00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:31,160 Yeah. 446 00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:31,840 Would I? 447 00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:32,160 Yeah. 448 00:26:32,200 --> 00:26:33,000 Probably not. 449 00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:33,720 Yeah. 450 00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:39,760 Uh, in the commentaries as to right, I try to say Ecclesiastes is the best of both 451 00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:42,800 worlds because after sin, God doesn't take our earthly lives away from us. 452 00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:46,280 He gives them to us, but he takes out of them everything that would make them 453 00:26:46,320 --> 00:26:50,880 spiritually dangerous. It's impossible if we're honest to turn them into an idol 454 00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,600 and find our satisfaction there, which is really very kind of us. 455 00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:55,720 But he still gives us each day to enjoy. 456 00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:56,240 Yeah. 457 00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:56,680 Yeah. 458 00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:57,480 Yeah. Yeah. 459 00:26:57,520 --> 00:26:58,320 Very good. 460 00:26:58,360 --> 00:27:01,640 I was thinking of your comment earlier that you don't read the elsewhere in the 461 00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:04,240 Bible, and I agree there's an emphasis here. 462 00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:04,680 Yes. 463 00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:06,520 Ecclesiastes that you don't get elsewhere. 464 00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:07,040 Yes. 465 00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:12,120 But one of the things I was struck by was some of the New Testament resonances. 466 00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:12,880 Tell me. 467 00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:14,520 We've mentioned Romans eight. 468 00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:14,880 Yes. 469 00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:19,640 Futility or frustration is perhaps a bit of a global term for the book. 470 00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:25,240 But for example, the idol of money, for example, I think when Paul wrote 1 471 00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:30,360 Timothy six about the love of money, rid of evil and so on, and you enter the 472 00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:31,880 world with nothing, leave with nothing. 473 00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:33,160 He's been reading Ecclesiastes. 474 00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:33,800 Yes. 475 00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:34,080 Yeah. 476 00:27:34,120 --> 00:27:36,000 Some of it's almost a paraphrase. 477 00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:36,600 Yeah. 478 00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:43,320 And then something like James four and your life is a mist. 479 00:27:43,360 --> 00:27:44,080 Exactly. 480 00:27:44,120 --> 00:27:45,920 Is very much Ecclesiastes. 481 00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:47,160 And so you're not in control. 482 00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:47,560 Yes. 483 00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:50,120 And you can't say what you're going to go and do and not do in life. 484 00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:50,680 Yes. 485 00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,040 It's all subject to other forces. 486 00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:53,480 Yes. 487 00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:54,560 Outside of your control. 488 00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:54,920 Yeah. 489 00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:58,040 And then some of the stuff on good gifts. 490 00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:03,840 One Timothy five, for example, about, you know, 491 00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:07,200 bits of all the creations, good gift from God to be enjoyed. 492 00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:07,760 Yes. 493 00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:10,600 James one about good gifts from our father. 494 00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:11,080 Yes. 495 00:28:11,120 --> 00:28:18,040 Really echoing some of the food and drink of life with your wife and so on is a gift from God. 496 00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:23,040 So just seeing some of those help me both think this isn't unusual. 497 00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:23,480 Yeah. 498 00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,800 And again, and it's not like the New Testament suddenly turns it on its head and goes, 499 00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:28,800 oh, I've got a spiritual answer for you. 500 00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:30,840 And we don't have to worry about Ecclesiastes anymore. 501 00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:31,400 Exactly. 502 00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:31,840 Yeah. 503 00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:33,760 I heard a sermon on Ecclesiastes once. 504 00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:35,600 They gave the most perfect sermon illustration. 505 00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:39,560 I think the preacher went through the text and then he held up his coffee cup. 506 00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:41,320 He said, this is my favorite coffee mug. 507 00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:43,000 And I drank coffee out of it this morning. 508 00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:43,440 Yeah. 509 00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:47,280 And then against the background of everything in your life is a gift. 510 00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:49,120 You didn't win that for yourself. 511 00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:50,920 And it's all going to slip away from you very quickly. 512 00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:52,600 But God gave that to you. 513 00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:54,560 He said, OK, let's think about this. 514 00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:58,800 Five thousand years ago, there was some Sumerian man working the field, 515 00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:02,680 and he sees his son playing around in the mud and he's making different shapes. 516 00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:04,840 And then the sun runs off and the sun is shining down. 517 00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:05,280 It's hot. 518 00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:07,320 And he sees that the mud stays in those shapes. 519 00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:10,840 And he thinks the Sumerian man thinks, that's interesting. 520 00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:11,840 I'm going to mess around with that. 521 00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:13,600 I wonder if I make that clay even hotter. 522 00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:15,880 I wonder what will happen. 523 00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:20,400 And at some point, pottery is invented and it spreads throughout the world and it's refined. 524 00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:25,400 And the preacher said one of the reasons why God gave it to that, 525 00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:29,200 whoever that Sumerian gentleman was, however many thousands of years ago, 526 00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:34,160 was so that I in 2020 could enjoy a cup of coffee this morning. 527 00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:36,680 That's one of the reasons why that happened. 528 00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:44,600 It's kind of staggering to say each half hour I have in my day is a present from God 529 00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:46,360 that he won't give me forever. 530 00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:47,880 But I did not create this. 531 00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:48,920 I can't hold on to it. 532 00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:50,640 I don't know what results it will have. 533 00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,720 He says in chapter 11, work in the morning, work in the evening. 534 00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:56,560 Don't withhold your hand from anything because you don't know what's going to succeed. 535 00:29:56,600 --> 00:29:57,840 Everything might succeed. 536 00:29:57,880 --> 00:29:59,480 It's out of your control. 537 00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:03,520 So throw yourself in and leave it with God. 538 00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:04,520 That is so different. 539 00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:08,320 I naturally tend to think I'm the one in control and I'm going to establish my own 540 00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,520 significance through my works. 541 00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:14,760 It's so liberating for me to be freed from that. 542 00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:16,320 One other New Testament resonance. 543 00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:24,160 I wonder if in the passage from Ecclesiastes 9, God has already approved of everything you do. 544 00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:28,000 I've always wondered if there's not an echo with justification by faith there 545 00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:34,960 because the verb there is ratsa, which often gets used in Leviticus for the Holy God 546 00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:39,880 receiving and accepting and approving your gifts and you are able to enter his presence. 547 00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:44,040 And the word work there in Ecclesiastes means your day job, not religious works. 548 00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:49,560 And yet the message in Ecclesiastes, you don't establish anything permanent through your work, 549 00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:55,080 but God has already approved of everything you do irrespective of your accomplishment 550 00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:57,320 because long term you don't accomplish anything. 551 00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:02,680 Am I crazy to think that sounds close to justification by faith irrespective of all our works? 552 00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:05,480 Am I reaching too much there? 553 00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:08,280 I'm cautious. 554 00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:09,240 That is just fine. 555 00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:12,800 But you have spent longer thinking about it than I have. 556 00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:16,240 The already approving irrespective of accomplishment. 557 00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:16,680 Sure. 558 00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:18,560 It's not the same. 559 00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:18,960 No, no. 560 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:20,000 It feels like an echo. 561 00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:22,720 I can see a parallel idea. 562 00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:23,120 Yeah. 563 00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:27,200 I'm less sure that's immediately what's happening in chapter 9. 564 00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:32,000 What I think is happening in chapter 9 about the embracing your work and working with all your strength. 565 00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:32,440 Yes. 566 00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:37,080 I do think Paul picks that up in spaces like Colossians 3, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart. 567 00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:37,760 Yeah. 568 00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:42,000 And ultimately for the same reason, because you have a heavenly father and a heavenly judge, 569 00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:45,280 a heavenly master who will reward with you for what you do. 570 00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:47,080 Exactly. 571 00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:50,000 Have you read David Gibson's Destiny? 572 00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:50,320 I have. 573 00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:51,520 Learning to Live by Preparing to Die. 574 00:31:51,560 --> 00:31:53,720 I think that's my favorite book on Ecclesiastes. 575 00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:54,080 Yeah, yeah. 576 00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:55,320 No, it's really helpful. 577 00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:57,480 Really helpful. 578 00:31:57,520 --> 00:31:59,480 He doesn't do every passage. 579 00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:00,560 That's right. 580 00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:02,400 So we decided to preach all the way through. 581 00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:03,560 Good for you. 582 00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:06,000 Occasionally he went, David, where's... 583 00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:08,840 Help us out here. 584 00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:14,280 But he takes this kind of approach we're talking about, obviously, and I think is really helpful. 585 00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:17,080 I want to ask you what your favorite passage in the book is. 586 00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:21,760 But before I do, Ecclesiastes talks about religion more than once. 587 00:32:21,800 --> 00:32:22,280 Yeah. 588 00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:33,000 In a new covenant context, let's say there's a Christian who with the best of intentions ignores the difficult but wise teaching of Ecclesiastes. 589 00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:36,800 How might that show up in church on Sunday morning? 590 00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:39,040 How might it be easy for... 591 00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:41,400 I'm putting you on the spot again, Graham, I apologize. 592 00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:50,320 How might it be easy for Christians who perhaps don't take Ecclesiastes to heart the way they should to be unwise according to what Ecclesiastes thinks is wisdom? 593 00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:51,840 Any thoughts? 594 00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:52,680 Yeah, I think so. 595 00:32:52,720 --> 00:33:00,720 Well, I think the section in chapter five on how you kind of come to the temple is really interesting here. 596 00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:08,160 It's basically don't over promise to God because you might not be able to do it. 597 00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:14,760 So, I mean, I guess we have to draw a distinction between what sort of aspirational in terms of what would I like to be able to do. 598 00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:23,280 But don't be, just like with your work and everything else in life, don't be overconfident of what you will achieve and the mark you'll leave. 599 00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:32,360 The person, the enthusiastic and well motivated believer who wants to say, I'm going to change the world for God. 600 00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:34,200 Well, again, I admire the aspiration. 601 00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:36,080 I don't want to dampen that down. 602 00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:36,600 Yes. 603 00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:44,240 But I do want to say Ecclesiastes actually says, don't say that sort of stuff because you don't know what you'll be able to do. 604 00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:48,080 I think that's a really helpful comment and it fascinates me. 605 00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:57,920 It seems to me Ecclesiastes would want to say to that very enthusiastic, energetic young man, you are either going to have to lie to yourself about your range of influence, 606 00:33:57,960 --> 00:33:59,840 or you're going to start hating going to church. 607 00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:04,120 It's going to frustrate you so much because you're going to be saying, why can't I get my agenda done? 608 00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:05,840 Because life resists you, right? 609 00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:06,440 Yeah. 610 00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:12,320 And Ecclesiastes gives us a way to be frustrated with life without rejecting it. 611 00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:15,080 Which reminds me of something else I was conscious of in preaching. 612 00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:15,520 Yeah. 613 00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:17,040 Tell me what you think of this. 614 00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:22,240 I ended up wrestling because I thought, you know what, this is like a middle-aged person's book. 615 00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:26,840 I'm in my mid-50s and so I have to go, yes, I really, really am middle-aged. 616 00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:31,120 And a man, some of this stuff is resonating with me. 617 00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:41,000 And I'm finding some of the things about being forgotten and stuff, as we've already said, like curiously kind of grounding in kind of going, yeah, that's your starting point. 618 00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:42,720 It's edifying. 619 00:34:42,720 --> 00:34:50,760 And so like very negative and yet curiously grounding, edifying and encouraging. 620 00:34:50,800 --> 00:35:00,960 But what I found myself frustrated with was I kept on wanting to say to like our teenagers and people in their 20s, it's like, you've got to get your head around this. 621 00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:05,520 But I know you won't immediately feel it the way I feel it. 622 00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:12,000 So it felt like a more age and stage of life specific book compared to other books of the Bible. 623 00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:12,840 That's fascinating. 624 00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:13,720 Yeah. 625 00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:21,520 In chapter seven, verse three, the ESV has sorrows better than laughter for by sadness of faith, a face, the heart is made glad. 626 00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:23,800 That seems like a motto for the whole book. 627 00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:32,320 There's a kind of sorrow that leads to a deeper and more solid joy than you would have otherwise, as opposed to just ignoring the things I don't want to think about in life. 628 00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:37,960 And there's a happiness that's easier to get to, but is much more brittle and vulnerable. 629 00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:39,640 What's your favorite passage in the book? 630 00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:44,520 Oh, that's so difficult. 631 00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:47,840 Can I give you sort of some themes and mention some passages? 632 00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:50,720 Like, I think part of the. 633 00:35:50,760 --> 00:36:04,480 A kind of don't try and fight life, I kind of submit, I guess, particularly chapter three, a time for everything, that beautiful, you know, tiny ball on time to die, etc. 634 00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:16,960 I think in my sermon, I called it kind of submit to the seasons so that you don't you know, that time, time your life brings under God all these different elements. 635 00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:17,480 Yeah. 636 00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:18,720 There'll be a time to mourn. 637 00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:20,200 There'll be a time to rejoice. 638 00:36:20,240 --> 00:36:21,600 People get married. 639 00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:23,520 There'll be weddings, there'll be funerals. 640 00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:24,800 Yeah. 641 00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:26,520 There'll be health, there'll be sickness. 642 00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:27,080 Yeah. 643 00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:32,760 And rather than sort of railing against it, saying there is a time for these things. 644 00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:37,960 And the question then is, is how do I live well in that time? 645 00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:41,160 Yeah. 646 00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:53,840 It reminded me, if you'll forgive a cross reference of Lord of the Rings and Gandalf saying to Frodo, something like that is not given to us to decide the times we live in. 647 00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:54,560 Yes. 648 00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:55,840 But to live well within those times. 649 00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:56,800 Yes. Yeah. 650 00:36:56,840 --> 00:36:57,320 Yeah. 651 00:36:57,360 --> 00:36:59,360 Whatever has been given to us. 652 00:36:59,400 --> 00:36:59,880 Exactly. 653 00:36:59,920 --> 00:37:00,280 Yeah. 654 00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:01,480 Yeah. 655 00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:05,400 And then I was just, well, the other one that really comes to mind, it's kind of similar is in Chapter 12. 656 00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:07,400 That's where I was going to go. 657 00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:13,240 So what I think of as the kind of, you know, it's a sort of description of aging. 658 00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:14,840 Yes. 659 00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:23,720 You know, in a sort of metaphorical thing, we had the funniest, funniest moment in this as a lady at our church who heard me preaching this. 660 00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:25,520 It was during the pandemic. 661 00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:29,960 She was listening online at the time because of isolation. 662 00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:34,000 And she said she was sitting at home and she was just getting more and more angry. 663 00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:40,040 And she said, Graham, you're telling me everything that's going on in my life. 664 00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:40,520 Oh, no. 665 00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:42,240 Everything that's going wrong with me. 666 00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:42,520 Oh, no. 667 00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:43,760 Effectively. 668 00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:49,440 So what she was feeling was she was feeling the pain of that description. 669 00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:50,280 Yeah. 670 00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:54,800 And kind of both wanting to say, no, I hate it. 671 00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:57,320 And yet at the same time, you're right. 672 00:37:57,360 --> 00:37:58,360 It's happening. 673 00:37:58,400 --> 00:37:59,000 Yeah. 674 00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:10,480 And that sense again of it just it's giving us, as it were, hard and painful truths, but truths that we will do well to submit to rather than fight. 675 00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:11,720 And we'll be happier in the long run. 676 00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:13,400 And we'll be happy in the long run as a result. 677 00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:14,720 Yeah. 678 00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:17,920 I love chapter three as well, especially eternity in their hearts. 679 00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:18,800 Yes. 680 00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:23,000 But so that we can't find out what God has done from beginning to end. 681 00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:32,440 So God puts our he beautifully orders our lives in different seasons, but he puts an impulse to something bigger and above time in us. 682 00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:36,040 But he never can quite figure out what it is. 683 00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:37,840 He blocks the sight of that. 684 00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:41,200 He gives us very good lives, but he doesn't let us get comfortable in them. 685 00:38:41,240 --> 00:38:45,080 We know there's something more that explains so much about human beings. 686 00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,920 And I can't find anywhere else in scripture that quite says it that way. 687 00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:49,400 I'm thankful for that. 688 00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:56,920 And I find chapter 12 just surreal and really gripping. 689 00:38:56,960 --> 00:38:59,080 And I'm just glad it's in the Bible. 690 00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:01,880 You can read it about the breakdown of the body. 691 00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:13,800 I wonder if it's even a little bit faker than that, if it's just meant to be a series of images communicating an atmosphere of, you know, birds gathering on windowsills and normal work in the town has stopped. 692 00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:17,480 And there's dark storm clouds and it's all getting dark and quiet. 693 00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:28,840 And then in verse five, let's see, grasshopper drags itself alone, desire fails because man is going to his eternal home and the mourners go about in the streets. 694 00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:32,760 It's almost like the town is shut down for a funeral and they're bearing the casket. 695 00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:36,320 You look in it and it's you in that casket. 696 00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:43,280 He is able to make you feel very much that the bell is tolling for you before it does. 697 00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:46,240 It's not the only passage about death in the Bible. 698 00:39:46,240 --> 00:39:49,880 It's beautiful to me that the Bible describes death as falling asleep. 699 00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:53,000 Nothing more strange than that. 700 00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:55,560 Just going to sleep in the hope of waking up in the resurrection. 701 00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:57,080 But this is one of these passages. 702 00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:04,360 It is this deep sense of mourning and that something precious is being lost and the teacher won't let us look away. 703 00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:05,080 Yeah. 704 00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:11,360 And it connects with what you're saying about keeping Genesis three in mind because it has the dust returning to the ground. 705 00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:11,880 Yes. 706 00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:14,880 Echoing Genesis three directly. 707 00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:20,520 And I've actually since preaching it, I've ended up using some sections of chapter 12, 708 00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:27,440 particularly that kind of remembering him before the silver cord is severed and so on, using that at funerals. 709 00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:28,160 Yeah. 710 00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:30,200 Yeah. 711 00:40:30,240 --> 00:40:32,960 And the spirit returning to God who gave it. 712 00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:33,600 Yeah. 713 00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:33,960 Yeah. 714 00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:37,360 Just that hint of a much better world in the new creation. 715 00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:37,760 Yeah. 716 00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:39,520 But that's not what Ecclesiastes is about. 717 00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:40,000 Yes. 718 00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:40,600 Yeah. 719 00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:42,320 We've mentioned frustrating passages. 720 00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:43,040 Yes. 721 00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:46,840 Perhaps we shouldn't end on this note because it would be negative. 722 00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:49,120 But you've had to write something on it. 723 00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:50,240 I've had to preach through it. 724 00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:50,640 Yes. 725 00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:54,800 Were there passages where you ended up just going, I still don't really know what's going on here. 726 00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:56,360 That's a good question. 727 00:40:56,400 --> 00:41:01,520 There are a couple of verses in chapter four, like the king is served by a field and whatnot in verses seven and eight. 728 00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:02,320 Yeah. 729 00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:03,760 I still struggle with those. 730 00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:06,800 I find them very cryptic. 731 00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:14,040 I had to rely very heavily on a book by Zach Eswine who teaches a covenant who writes on Ecclesiastes very helpfully. 732 00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:17,720 Chapter 10 is a bit obscure to me. 733 00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:20,280 I found Zach Eswine very helpful there. 734 00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:22,800 Yeah. 735 00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:23,200 Yeah. 736 00:41:23,240 --> 00:41:29,640 A couple passages in chapter four in the middle parts of the book, chapters one through three, 11 and 12, I feel I have a firmer grasp on. 737 00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:30,080 Yeah. 738 00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:30,920 You? 739 00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:31,400 Yeah. 740 00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:33,040 To be honest, it depended a little bit. 741 00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:39,720 I preached most of it, but I didn't preach every passage and so where I didn't have to do the work in getting into the common trees. 742 00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:40,040 Yeah. 743 00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:47,400 So like I just glance to earlier chapter seven, not being over righteous or being over wise or being over wicked. 744 00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:53,120 It's like, you know, in context, maybe I could make more of that, but at first sight, at least it's like. 745 00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:55,000 It's a shocking thing to say. 746 00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:56,280 It's a shocking thing to say. 747 00:41:56,320 --> 00:41:58,520 Yeah. 748 00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:02,840 I can't help but think of the over righteousness there is that enthusiastic young man. 749 00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:03,480 Okay. 750 00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:07,360 Who is promising himself great results from his piety. 751 00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:07,880 Yeah. 752 00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:12,440 And hasn't factored in the frustration of creation and the curse. 753 00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:17,640 And in, let's see, in chapter seven, it's don't be over righteous. 754 00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:17,960 Yeah. 755 00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:19,080 Don't be overly righteous. 756 00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:20,120 Don't make yourself too wise. 757 00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:22,160 Why should you destroy yourself? 758 00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:28,480 That there's a kind of brittle, naive faith that can give up on God and give up on Christianity. 759 00:42:28,520 --> 00:42:28,800 Yeah. 760 00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:31,760 When it doesn't get what it wants right away, because why isn't this obeying me? 761 00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:32,160 Yeah. 762 00:42:32,160 --> 00:42:34,760 I wonder if the teacher is helping us. 763 00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:35,280 Sure. 764 00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:43,840 Defending us against a kind of naive spirituality that hasn't reckoned with how God disposes this present age. 765 00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:44,480 Yeah. 766 00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:45,760 That's what I wonder. 767 00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:53,640 Well, there's a good example of, you know, a little bit of ecclesiastical where you read it at first sight, you go, what on earth is that? 768 00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:55,680 And even that can't be right. 769 00:42:55,720 --> 00:42:56,440 Yes. 770 00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:56,720 Yes. 771 00:42:56,760 --> 00:43:00,680 I mean, chapter 10, money is the answer for everything. 772 00:43:00,720 --> 00:43:01,920 That can't be right. 773 00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:06,480 And in fact, it can't even be right in Ecclesiastes, because he's already told us how it isn't the answer to everything. 774 00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:07,040 Right. 775 00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:08,720 And you'll leave without it and so on. 776 00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:09,240 Right. 777 00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:15,480 And yet, wrestling with it, you come up with some of the more profound insights. 778 00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:17,000 Yes. 779 00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:21,920 If you read Ecclesiastes and you think that the Bible cannot be saying that, you're not doing anything wrong. 780 00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:22,520 Yeah. 781 00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:25,080 He's trying to provoke you and prod you. 782 00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:28,000 I mean, it says at the end that the words of the wise are like goads. 783 00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:28,280 Yeah. 784 00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:29,800 Which is meant to push you where you don't want to go. 785 00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:30,000 Yeah. 786 00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:32,400 So you're not doing anything wrong if you hear it that way. 787 00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:32,960 Yeah. 788 00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:34,280 But it's worth wrestling with. 789 00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:34,640 Yes. 790 00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:35,680 There is gold. 791 00:43:35,720 --> 00:43:36,400 Yes. 792 00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:38,720 That you will not find anywhere else in the Bible. 793 00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:38,960 Yeah. 794 00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:39,840 It really is unique. 795 00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:40,960 Yeah. 796 00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:42,080 That's a convenient place to stop. 797 00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:43,640 Thank you so much for joining us. 798 00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:46,320 Please feel free to leave a comment with any questions that you have. 799 00:43:46,320 --> 00:44:00,680 Thanks.