WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:15.599
 Hi, my name is George Sinclair. I'm the lead pastor of Church of the Messiah.

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! It is wonderful that you would like to check out some of the sermons done by Church of the Messiah,

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 either by myself or some of the others. Listen, just a couple of things. First of all, would you pray for us

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 that we will open God's Word well to His glory and for the good of people like yourself?

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 The second thing is, if you aren't connected to a church and if you are a Christian,

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 we really, I would really like to encourage you to find a good local church where they believe the

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 Bible, they preach the gospel, and if you have some trouble finding that, send us an email. We will do

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 what we can to help connect you with a good local church wherever you are. And if you're a non-Christian,

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 checking us out, we're really, really, really glad you're doing that. Don't hesitate to send us

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 questions. It helps me actually to know, as I'm preaching, how to deal with the types of things

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 that you're really struggling with. So God bless.

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 Let's pray.

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 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts

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 be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

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 You may be seated.

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 So, George, the usual preacher, has been preaching on Ecclesiastes for the last few weeks,

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 and I've been learning a lot, getting a lot from it, and a lot of things have stuck out for me from

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 what he's been teaching us, what the Lord has been teaching us through him, more like.

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 But one thing he said, I think it was last week, he said, we should think of Ecclesiastes, the book,

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 as a sort of thought experiment. It's a thought experiment where we look at the world under the sun.

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 That's the expression, under the sun. Which is another way of saying we are seeing the world

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 in Ecclesiastes stripped of any unifying principle.

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 And so it's a world where everything feels like vapor, everything feels fragmented, everything looks broken.

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 Now, that sounds pretty bleak. Why is that in the Bible? Isn't the Bible like a religious book that gives us

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 encouraging little tidbits? No. I mean, sometimes I can do that, but that's not really what the Bible is.

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 The Bible, because it is the Word of God, is bigger than the world, and so it has everything in it.

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 And so it even has this in it. But it's for a specific purpose. And the specific purpose, I think,

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 is that this fragmented, vaporous, broken world is the world most people experience day by day.

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 And it's maybe the world you experience right now. This is maybe what the world looks like and feels like to you.

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 I've seen this world. I've experienced this world. It's like staring into an abyss.

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 A fragmented, broken, vaporous world. So that's the thought experiment. And so the preacher, the writer,

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 is challenging us with the question, what is it that holds life together?

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 Like, what keeps this world from being just a bunch of broken pieces?

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 What's the unifying principle underlying it all? That's the question.

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 And the preacher is going to show us now that when God's Word is obscured, when you don't see that

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 unifying principle, don't know that unifying principle, we'll say more about that in a minute, but

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 when that happens, three distinct, what I'm going to call patterns of disintegration become visible.

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 That's what this text says. Three distinct patterns of disintegration become visible. And it's visible in

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 the sphere of the government, the sphere of the economy, and the sphere of our personal relationships.

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 So we're going to look at some brokenness in the government, the economy, and our relationships.

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 And then we're going to ask about this unifying principle that keeps this place from collapsing into chaos.

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 So first, the preacher wants to talk about oppression, which I said is sort of a collapse of

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 governing structures, ruling structures, governments. And so in oppression,

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 when someone's oppressed, they lose agency. And so the preacher's looking out at the world,

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 he sees the tears of the oppressed. He sees no comforter. He sees power entirely on side of the oppressor.

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 And he sees victims of oppression stripped of agency. They can't choose to be free.

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 There's a powerlessness there. That's what I mean, stripped of agency. You can't choose

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 on your own to fix that. Now, when we think about oppression, that word, we might think about sort of

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 tyrannical governments, authoritarian governments, somewhere else. But any broken institution can

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 embody that brokenness, can show us pieces of that brokenness. And so there are degrees of severity,

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 but if you're stuck and you can't will yourself out, you're oppressed. You are experiencing oppression.

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 And you're hindered in your ability to choose freedom. You are not free. We are not free.

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 And the conclusion here in this first bit, the conclusion the preacher comes to is chilling.

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 Like, you don't even hear this from the most hardened atheist. So here it is. It's better to not be born.

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 Like, if this is all there is, it's better to not be born. I mean, you get some real hardcore atheists that

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 call themselves anti-natalists, and they believe that. And they like going on message boards online and

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 writing books of despair and whatever. But he's saying, hey, you know what?

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 If this is all there is, yeah, they're probably right.

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 If this is all there is, then life is fundamentally chaotic, with no underlying principle of unity.

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 And so his conclusion reveals something really troubling here. It's not that when you look at the

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 world you're seeing, oh, a problem there, a broken relationship there, a broken thing there.

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 What's being revealed here is that the brokenness goes all the way down. It's a structural break

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 in the world, which is what the Bible means when it says the power of death. It's a structural break

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 in the world all the way down. Cheerful book, right? Let's see, this isn't the whole picture. We're going to

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 get somewhere here. And so the claim here underlying this is that death has inflicted

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 a profound structural break. And I don't know what metaphor you want to use, but it's tipped the world

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 off its axis, or it's broken things, cracked the foundation, whatever, but it's all the way down.

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 Now, here's an example. So your car is, you take it into the shop, it's all rusty,

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 and you're not going to say like this great powerful force called rust took over my car.

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 You're going to say, no, the chemical composition, you're not going to say this, but you're going to

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 think this, the chemical composition of my car is breaking down. That's what rust is. That's what

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 death is in creation. It's the structural composition of the world breaking down. That's death. And the

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 devil and sin latch onto that and derive whatever, I don't want to say power, because it's really an

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 anti-power, but make life miserable and fragmented and broken. But death goes all the way down.

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 So there's oppression. Okay? You see that in oppressive power structures, governments.

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 You see these structures beholden to death, and people lose agency. So that's the first sort of

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 figure or picture or image is oppression. It's the breakdown of government. Next one is he wants to

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 talk about futile labor. And here you have a failure of purpose, and here I'm saying this is sort of an

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 economic structural break, if you want to call it that. So here's the broken pattern here, the broken

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 picture. You work hard, and you wake up one morning and think, what's this all for? What am I doing?

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 Like, is there any purpose here? Is there any meaning to this?

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 That feeling he calls futility. It's this feeling that I work hard, I'm sweating, I'm stressed, I'm

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 whatever, and there's, I don't know what the purpose of this is. I don't know. And when I die,

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 maybe it won't matter at all.

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 The preacher tells us here that one of the drivers of this feeling of futility in work is envy.

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 Envy is, I want something that you have, and I'm bitter and unhappy because you have it and I don't.

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 That's envy. And so he's a very keen observer of human nature, and he knows that a lot of the time

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 we don't just work to live to get our basic needs. We often work to outdo our neighbor, to outdo the

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 other person. We want to be smarter, richer, more powerful, have a bigger paycheck, have nicer, newer

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 things. Or at least we don't want to be worse. We don't want to be worse than our neighbor, even if we

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 don't want to be better off. He says it's futile. What's that for? What's the underlying principle of

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 unity, of integrity to that? What's that for?

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 Now, I don't want to get the wrong idea. The preacher here is not like a Marxist or an

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 anarchist or something. He's saying, rip down, you know, rip down the current system and we'll

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 build a new one and that'll be better. No, that's futile too. That's going to break.

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 It's like, that's like saying, hey, the foundation on my house is cracked, so I'll take the top level

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 off and do the renovation. No, no. No, no. No, the break goes all the way down. And so what he's

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 saying here ultimately is that all human effort driven by envy is futile. A lot of human effort is

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 that. It's a desperate spiral. And you might think, well, okay, then I'll withdraw and I'll just

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 not participate in that whole system. Yeah, that's futile too. He says the person who's a fool who sits,

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 folds his hands is no better off. There's no passive escape from this kind of futility.

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 It's broken all the way down. And so whether it's hard work or passive withdrawal,

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 the pattern of human labor is broken all the way down. So we got broken governments, broken systems,

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 you know, broken economy, work is broken. And then next he wants to talk about broken relationships.

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 So this is the loss of communion, not holy, like communion being deep relationship we need,

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 of which holy communion is the most central. So the picture here is there's a worker who has achieved

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 success according to the world's terms and got a big house and big bank account and nice clothes and

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 good reputation. And you know what? Their family doesn't remember what they look like.

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 That too is futile. If your work costs you all your relationships, what does he say? All alone, no son nor brother.

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 The community, human community, family, you've seen it. You've seen it. Disintegration

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 before the pressures of the world. Our own achievements actually end up isolating us. Sometimes the worst thing

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 you can get is what you want. Our own achievements isolate ourself and trap us in the fragmented futility of the world.

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 So it's all broken. Like all the way down to the foundational level of creation.

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 And it's expressed in governments, it's expressed in the economy, it's expressed in community.

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 Broken, fragmented, futile. The end. No. But where do we go from here? What now?

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 What do you do when it's broken all the way down?

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 Well, here's some what I think are flawed answers that Christians have proposed.

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 One is, let's be, let's be escapists. So let's say, yeah, life is broken. This is an

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 accurate depiction of the world. But don't worry. We believe in Jesus. He's going to take us out of this

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 place and we can watch the whole thing burn. Well, I mean, there's some truth to that. Okay.

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 Jesus does promise eternal life. That's a promise more precious than anything. That's true.

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 But in saying that, we devalue the world God has made.

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 If we focus only on escape from the world, then yeah, it really is futile.

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 And there's nothing left but to get out. But see, the Bible gives us a bigger, a fuller, a more hopeful

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 picture than that. Way bigger than that. Way bigger than that. So the escapist route, I don't think, is the way to go.

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 The other one that Christians often do, and this is probably more common you're going to hear now in the church,

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 is the activist.

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 Who says,

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 yes, life is broken.

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 That's true.

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 But we've got to fix it.

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 So let's advocate for more just political arrangements and organize protests and advance this cause and that cause

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 and shame this person and, you know, whatever. Vote this way, whatever.

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 We're going to fix it. And if we can work together, we're going to fix this problem of futility and brokenness in the world.

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 And again, there's some truth to that. God cares deeply about justice. God wants us to care deeply about justice.

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 But the problem isn't fixed.

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 Why? Because we're sinners.

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 And that means that the problem isn't just out there.

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 The problem's in here, which means I'm complicit in the problem.

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 So how can I, who am complicit in the problem, fix the problem out there?

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 The other thing is, when you go down this path of the activist, we're going to fix the world,

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 you're going to find that our efforts fail, chaos overwhelms us, and you fall into despair.

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 We can't fix the world. It's not just a few bad events. It's a break all the way down.

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 And so what we're seeing in this chapter of Ecclesiastes, the government economy relationships,

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 we're seeing these patterns of disintegration that prove the structural integrity of the world has collapsed.

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 All the way down.

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 And death has broken it.

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 All the way down.

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 And sin and the devil exploit that brokenness and pull us deeper into it.

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 So we can't fix the world.

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 We can't fix the brokenness of creation.

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 Our good intentions are not enough.

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 Our willpower is not enough.

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 There's no, we can't escape it.

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 We live here.

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 God's given us this world.

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 We live here.

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 God's given us these bodies.

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 This community.

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 We live here.

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 So where do we go from here?

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 The preacher gives a hint.

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 At the end, he says, two are better than one.

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 And a cord with three strands is not easily broken.

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 So he says that at the end of this diagnosis of the world's structural damage.

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 Here's at least what he means by that.

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 He at least means that any coherence you're going to find is not going to be found in you.

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 It's going to be found in someone else.

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 The answer is not inside you.

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 The answer is not in escape.

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 The answer is not in trying harder.

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 The answer is in someone else.

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 But who?

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 John 1, the Gospel of John, starts out with very famous, you probably know this, these verses.

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 In the beginning was the Word, the Logos.

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 That's a Greek word for word.

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 The Word.

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 And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

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 And then further down it says, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

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 The someone else is the Word made flesh.

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 That's the someone else.

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 Now think about that for a minute.

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 What John is saying there, and it's not just John.

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 I mean, it's in Paul says this too.

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 It's in lots of places.

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 What's being said here is that, okay, God made the world, this world, by His Word.

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 And that same Word, which is fully God, has become human and lived with us.

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 I mean, another way to say that is the structural pattern through which, by which God made the world

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 has a face.

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 And a name.

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 And I'll tell you this name today.

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 It's the most precious name in the world.

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 The name of the structural pattern of the universe that has a face is Jesus Christ.

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 That's the name.

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 And Jesus doesn't just send us a memo with some good ideas.

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 Nor does He cheer from the sidelines saying, you can do it.

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 You can fix it.

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 No, what Jesus does is enters the brokenness of the world and gives Himself utterly, completely,

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 and subjects Himself to the brokenness of the world.

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 And by entering fully into death all the way down, He destroys death at the root.

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 He undoes the fragmentation of the universe and He's restoring it to its original coherence.

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 Because if the brokenness is all the way down, then the someone else has got to go all the way down to deal with it right there at the root.

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 Now, okay, this is maybe a little bit of an idiosyncratic way of expressing this, but we say this more or less when we confess the creed.

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 So, in the Apostles' creed, say, but also the others, we confess Jesus Christ was crucified, He died, and was buried.

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 And again, not just an idea, that's a real descent of the Word of God through which the world was made, made flesh, submitted to death.

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 And by entering the deepest level of this brokenness, He has undone the patterns of disintegration.

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 So, oppression.

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 Was Jesus oppressed?

00:22:11.799 --> 00:22:12.180
 Yeah.

00:22:13.180 --> 00:22:14.140
 Yeah, was He ever.

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 I mean, the full overwhelming power of the state, the religious authorities, the crushing weight of the law,

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 the Old Testament law, the curse of the law,

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 stripped of all agency and power to death.

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 He went all the way down into oppression, all the way down.

00:22:35.439 --> 00:22:37.339
 How about the futility of work?

00:22:38.919 --> 00:22:39.439
 Yeah.

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 His ministry was His work, and it seemed to end in utter defeat.

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 Rejected, scorned, condemned, betrayed, denied.

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 The people that were supposed to be there with Him, scattered.

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 And so, the cross looks like all His righteous efforts are futile and defeated.

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 And so, He goes all the way down into the futility of work, to the place where all purpose looks lost.

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 All the way down.

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 Loneliness.

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 Was He lonely?

00:23:14.120 --> 00:23:14.620
 Abandoned?

00:23:14.680 --> 00:23:14.920
 Yeah.

00:23:14.920 --> 00:23:15.519
 Yes.

00:23:16.279 --> 00:23:22.080
 I mentioned already the betrayals and the scorn and the condemnation and the rejection and the scattering.

00:23:22.440 --> 00:23:23.840
 And, I mean, He's alone.

00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:25.620
 Yes, there's a couple there.

00:23:26.259 --> 00:23:26.480
 Yeah.

00:23:26.880 --> 00:23:29.400
 But, and what does He say from the cross?

00:23:29.519 --> 00:23:33.700
 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

00:23:33.700 --> 00:23:41.220
 Like, that is to stare into the abyss.

00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:44.000
 God forsakenness?

00:23:45.880 --> 00:23:47.160
 That's all the way down.

00:23:47.160 --> 00:24:00.340
 And so, what's happening is Jesus is embracing these patterns of disintegration and reversing them in His body.

00:24:01.300 --> 00:24:04.900
 Dealing with the anti-power of death at the root by going all the way down.

00:24:05.560 --> 00:24:10.480
 But, of course, if He just went all the way down, He can relate to us, I suppose.

00:24:10.600 --> 00:24:11.860
 But what good is that?

00:24:12.140 --> 00:24:13.519
 No, He's come all the way back up.

00:24:13.519 --> 00:24:14.240
 Right?

00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:18.180
 I mean, the resurrection means death couldn't hold Him.

00:24:18.299 --> 00:24:20.299
 It means that His intervention is successful.

00:24:20.460 --> 00:24:25.259
 It means that the structural integrity of the world is resolved, is reversed.

00:24:27.339 --> 00:24:28.660
 The break is mended.

00:24:30.259 --> 00:24:31.839
 Now, does it look like it all the time?

00:24:32.619 --> 00:24:33.400
 Not yet.

00:24:34.460 --> 00:24:35.200
 Not yet.

00:24:35.759 --> 00:24:37.160
 But it's moving that way.

00:24:38.299 --> 00:24:40.440
 And there will be a day where it will be complete.

00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:41.680
 That work will be complete.

00:24:43.519 --> 00:24:47.680
 So, Jesus has turned oppression into participation.

00:24:48.279 --> 00:24:50.059
 So, He's the crucified King.

00:24:50.779 --> 00:24:53.720
 And it doesn't mean that experiences of oppression aren't painful.

00:24:53.940 --> 00:24:55.099
 But it means they're meaningful.

00:24:55.940 --> 00:24:59.099
 They're participation in the solution Christ brings.

00:25:00.720 --> 00:25:03.099
 Futile labor turns into rest and purpose.

00:25:04.339 --> 00:25:05.660
 Jesus' work is complete.

00:25:05.779 --> 00:25:07.319
 His sacrifice is effective.

00:25:07.559 --> 00:25:08.200
 It worked.

00:25:09.299 --> 00:25:10.099
 It worked.

00:25:10.099 --> 00:25:13.439
 Your work can't be futile.

00:25:13.719 --> 00:25:15.319
 My work cannot be futile.

00:25:16.859 --> 00:25:26.559
 All the purposes that we lack in our self-generated striving is redeemed in His effective sacrifice on the cross and resurrection.

00:25:27.399 --> 00:25:29.000
 You don't need envy.

00:25:29.699 --> 00:25:30.879
 You've got Jesus.

00:25:31.439 --> 00:25:32.199
 Right?

00:25:32.200 --> 00:25:34.539
 So, we're released.

00:25:36.380 --> 00:25:39.319
 You're released from the burden to justify yourself.

00:25:40.200 --> 00:25:42.680
 You don't need to find ultimate meaning in your work.

00:25:43.059 --> 00:25:45.360
 You can find ultimate meaning in Jesus' work.

00:25:46.640 --> 00:25:47.720
 You can rest.

00:25:48.759 --> 00:25:49.420
 You can rest.

00:25:49.420 --> 00:25:53.039
 Loneliness becomes communion.

00:25:53.980 --> 00:25:54.900
 Embodied communion.

00:25:55.900 --> 00:25:58.380
 Of course, Jesus didn't stay buried.

00:25:58.539 --> 00:26:02.539
 And He's at the right hand of the Father, ruling in authority.

00:26:02.640 --> 00:26:03.700
 And He sent the Holy Spirit.

00:26:04.039 --> 00:26:05.200
 And He's gathered us.

00:26:05.259 --> 00:26:08.440
 Which means if you're here, you're here because the Holy Spirit sent you.

00:26:08.440 --> 00:26:12.420
 You might have got out of bed and thought, should I go or not?

00:26:14.420 --> 00:26:15.860
 But, no.

00:26:16.080 --> 00:26:18.519
 You're here because the Holy Spirit is pulling you together.

00:26:19.279 --> 00:26:21.620
 Pulling us together in the love of Christ.

00:26:23.140 --> 00:26:25.200
 That's why everybody's part of a church.

00:26:25.740 --> 00:26:26.940
 Or you're looking for something.

00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:30.640
 You don't know it yet, but the Holy Spirit's speaking to you.

00:26:31.120 --> 00:26:31.700
 Drawing you.

00:26:31.820 --> 00:26:32.259
 Pulling you.

00:26:35.019 --> 00:26:37.620
 And we're going to celebrate communion here in a moment.

00:26:37.619 --> 00:26:39.219
 Or a few moments, I guess.

00:26:39.539 --> 00:26:48.379
 And what I'm talking about, the structural integrity of the world being reversed, being fulfilled, being completed, being fixed.

00:26:48.579 --> 00:26:50.539
 In Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.

00:26:51.759 --> 00:26:55.019
 The scriptures everywhere talk about that, describe that.

00:26:55.719 --> 00:26:58.339
 And communion, when we do it, makes that visible.

00:26:59.219 --> 00:27:01.939
 So, does the world feel incoherent to you?

00:27:03.219 --> 00:27:05.639
 What we're doing right there in a minute?

00:27:05.640 --> 00:27:10.580
 And Jesus died and risen and offers himself to us?

00:27:11.400 --> 00:27:14.560
 Ah, that's the coherence of the world.

00:27:14.900 --> 00:27:16.240
 That is what you're looking for.

00:27:17.140 --> 00:27:19.560
 That is the only coherence you will ever find.

00:27:21.560 --> 00:27:25.320
 Praise be to God for sending his Son and his Spirit.

00:27:25.319 --> 00:27:30.099
 because that is the only hope and the only coherence we can ever find.

00:27:30.700 --> 00:27:31.619
 But it's real.

00:27:32.460 --> 00:27:32.899
 It's real.

00:27:33.619 --> 00:27:34.480
 Let's hold on to that.

00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:34.819
 Amen?

00:27:35.559 --> 00:27:36.159
 Amen.

00:27:36.579 --> 00:27:36.779
 Amen.

00:27:36.779 --> 00:27:36.879
 Amen.

00:27:36.879 --> 00:27:37.339
 Amen.

00:27:37.339 --> 00:27:37.339


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