Thank you, Ricky. You are too kind, too kind. So I told Ricky one time when we were having coffee that I'm one of those weirdos whose favorite book is Ecclesiastes, and lo and behold, here I am. So beware when you speak to Ricky. No, I'm honored and I'm truly humbled to be standing here in front of you. A little nervous, right? I'm used to 12 people, not 200. But as I was driving here this morning, I remembered the words of Paul Washer who says, Rocks and donkeys, rocks and donkeys. God can speak through rocks and donkeys. So you'll have to ask my wife whether I'm a rock or a donkey, but either way, I'm thankful that he's willing to speak through me this morning.
So today we're in 2 passages from the same book. We're in Ecclesiastes 7 and Ecclesiastes 11. 7 will teach us to sit in the sorrow, and 11 will teach us to sow the seed. They work together, so I want us to hear them both. Ecclesiastes 7:2-3. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. 11:6, in the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. Church, this is the word of the Lord.
Let's pray. Father, Help us today, Lord. Help us today to learn, to listen, to engage. God, send your Spirit down. Help me. The boast is in you, Lord. Amen.
So, in June of last year, my family and I drove 27 hours to see our dear friends Larry and Cheryl Montesino in Virginia. And in law school, this couple, they were my best friends. And in Sarah and my first year of marriage, they were a lifesaver. 'Cause around them, we felt truly safe, and we felt truly loved. And as soon as we arrived on June 28th, we said our hellos on the porch, we sat down for lunch, and then about an hour later, myself, Wes, his son, and 2 first responders were carrying Larry down his stairs into an ambulance, and he died later that afternoon. And just like that, sorrow was at the lunch table with us. I miss him. He was my friend. And I love them. But on our 27-hour drive back to El Paso, Sarah and I, we were asking the questions, why? Why now? Why not a few more hours, years, a couple days? Why can't we stay with Cheryl a little longer? Why did our kids have to see that happen? You know, Larry and Cheryl would have celebrated their anniversary yesterday. And in a room this size, I know there is someone dealing with sorrow right now. Maybe a grim diagnosis. Maybe an empty chair at the table. A job gone. Bills stacking up. And someone here feels alone. Maybe that someone is you. Sorrow in any form shocks us every time because deep down inside we know it's not supposed to be this way. God didn't make the world with sorrow in it. He called it very good in Genesis 1. Sorrow is the curse. Now we're made for a world with no funerals, and our souls, they know it. They cry out for it. We're made for the garden.
So the real question isn't why is this happening? It's what do I do with it? Now I'm not here because I've figured it all out. It took me a whole year in preparing this sermon to finally sit in the sorrow of losing Larry. But by God's grace, I get to stand here in front of you and be honest with you all about it.
So here's where we're gonna go today. Underneath all the sorrows is one hard truth. We are not in control. And when that hits us, every one of us drifts towards one of two cliffs. The first cliff: escape. We can't control the sorrow, so we numb it. We run to the party, we run to the laughter, and we pretend it isn't there. The second cliff is fear. We can't control tomorrow, so we hide and we hoard. We dig that bunker, we build that barn, and we seal ourselves in tight, and we hold on, and we risk nothing. That's where the 2 chapters come in today. From chapter 7 through 11, the teacher is stacking up his proverbs, his tidbits of wisdom for living a broken world, and our 2 passages are the bookends of that wisdom. Now those 2 bookends are our 2 guardrails today. Those guardrails keep us from falling off the edge into the cliff. Chapter 7, sit in the sorrow, and chapter 11 is sow the seed. So we sit and then sow. 2 cliffs, 2 guardrails, 1 narrow road. But who could keep us on that road? And we'll answer that before we're done today.
6 · The pastor begins expounding Ecclesiastes 7:2, emphasizing the universality of sorrow and death—the 'house of mourning' is an unavoidable destination for every human being
Guardrail number 1, sit in the sorrow. 3 points under this guardrail. First, sorrow will come. Second, don't escape it. Third, let it teach you. So first, sorrow will come. Look back at verse 2 with me. Ecclesiastes 7, verse 2: It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. You hear that? The end of all mankind. Not some, all. The teacher is saying that the house of mourning is that one address every single person will visit. No one is exempt.
7 · The pastor connects Ecclesiastes 7 to the Genesis 3 curse, arguing that thorns, thistles, and death are the language of sorrow baked into the fallen world, and that the curse manifests not only in death but in every form of suffering throughout life
And in Genesis 3, God speaks the curse in the very language of sorrow. Genesis 3:18 says thorns, calls them thorns and thistles from the ground. 3:19 says, and to dust you shall return. Return. The dust, that's death. Ian, one day you will either stand beside a grave or be the one in it. Both will bring sorrow. But death, that is the sharpest sorrow. It's the one that cuts the deepest, but it's not the only sorrow. The same curse that ends in the dust is already loose in your life as thorns and thistles. Illness, loss, betrayal, disappointment. It doesn't wait till the end. It hits us all the time.
8 · The pastor uses the local desert landscape—goat heads, tumbleweeds, thorns—as a concrete illustration of the Genesis 3 curse, making the theological reality of the curse physically visible in the congregation's everyday experience
The way through life. Now we live in a desert where the only thing that we can get to grow without water is thorns. We have goat heads, toritos, all over the place. We have tumbleweeds stacking up against the fence. You're dodging them on the freeway on a windy day, right? The ground itself fights you. That's Genesis 3 in your own backyard. The world doesn't work right and it hasn't since the garden. So we, humanity, we have been trying to escape the curse through our own efforts since the garden, but we cannot.
9 · The pastor transitions from the inevitability of sorrow to the second point—the command not to escape it—signaling a structural shift in the argument
So now that you know that sorrow will come, what do you do? Point 2 of guardrail 1: don't escape it.
10 · The pastor reads and frames Ecclesiastes 7:4, establishing the binary contrast between the wise who stay in the house of mourning and the fools who flee to the house of mirth
Look at verse 4, Ecclesiastes 7:4: The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of the fools is in the house of mirth. 2 houses, mourning and mirth. 2 kinds of people, wise and the fool.
11 · The pastor applies the 'house of mirth' to modern escape mechanisms—scrolling on phones, overwork, and even church service—exposing how believers numb grief instead of facing it, and confesses his own year-long pattern of avoidance after Larry's death
The first house I want to talk about is this house of fools filled with laughter, with feasting, with mirth. Mirth is just another word for celebration. The fool tries to escape sorrow and they go off the cliff. Because when it gets quiet enough for sorrow to finally be heard, out come the phones and we scroll and we scroll until we feel nothing. Or you bury yourself in 80-hour work weeks to run away from the sorrow, and we call that Being responsible. It's escaping. Or the sneaky one in a church, you serve and you serve so you're never still long enough to feel the grief. Anything. We do anything to keep that noise up. I tried to escape the sorrow of Larry for a year in all 3 ways. But the sorrow was still there.
12 · The pastor expounds Ecclesiastes 7:6's metaphor of burning thorns—laughter that crackles loudly but provides no lasting heat—to illustrate the futility of escape mechanisms that distract but do not heal
Ecclesiastes 7:6, the teacher says, for as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools. This also is vanity. Have you ever tried the cooking— have you ever tried cooking over burning thorns? What do they do? They catch fast, they crackle loud, they flare up bright, gone in a second. Before the pot even gets warm. That's the fool's cackle. It doesn't last and it doesn't help.
13 · The pastor transitions to the third point—letting sorrow teach you—and shifts focus from the fool's house of mirth to the wise person's house of mourning
So sit in the sorrow, don't try to escape it. 3, let it teach you. Now let's go to the second house, this house of mourning. This is where the wise go to learn.
14 · The pastor expounds the counterintuitive claim of Ecclesiastes 7:2-3—that mourning is 'better' than feasting—by explaining that sorrow makes the heart 'better' (not happier) through the work of teaching humility and sobriety, and that this transformation only happens when grief is faced, not escaped
In Ecclesiastes 7, the teacher keeps saying something strange, that sorrow and the house of mourning are better. How can that be true? Doesn't feel better. Verse 2, it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind. And why? The living will lay it to heart. It's better because it is where the wise lay it to heart. This means it is where you let sorrow teach you, where you let it make you sober-minded. Well, what does sorrow teach? Verse 3 says, sorrow is better than laughter. Why? For by sadness of face the heart is made glad. Sad face, glad heart. See, sorrow teaches you to be glad. The Hebrew made glad actually means made better. Not happier, better. There's a kind of better you can only become on the other side of grief. So sit in it.
15 · The pastor clarifies the nature of 'sitting in sorrow'—it is active engagement, not passive wallowing—by likening it to a student learning in a classroom, requiring attention and reflection
But hear what I'm saying, because to sit in sorrow isn't just a slogan for today. And it's not wallowing in it. Sit in it the way a student sits in a classroom and let the sorrow become your teacher. I know we got teachers here. Learning is supposed to be active, right teachers? Yeah, yeah. Learning is active. You lean in. You're supposed to pay attention. You turn the lesson over in your mind. That's how sorrow can teach you.
16 · The pastor identifies the first way sorrow makes believers better—by equipping them to comfort others—citing 2 Corinthians 1:4 and using the example of widows who know how to comfort other grieving spouses
3 ways sitting in your sorrow actually makes you better. One, it makes you a comforter. God— 2 Corinthians 1:4 says, God comforts us so that we may be able to comfort others. The comfort you receive becomes the comfort you give. That's why it— that's the reason why a person that has buried a spouse is the one that knows exactly what to say and what not to say at the funeral. Your grief makes you useful to the next griever.
17 · The pastor applies the principle of comforting by instructing the congregation to sit with grieving people in silence, citing Job's friends as a model and contrasting true presence with the temptation to offer distant advice via text
Do you know someone that's grieving? Sit with them. Sit with them the way Job's friends did when they were at their best, before they opened their big mouths. In Job 2:13, it says, they sat with him on the ground 7 days and 7 nights, and no one spoke a word to him. Presence, not answers. Don't text a Bible verse and disappear. Show up. Stay. When was the last time that you just sat with someone who was grieving?
18 · The pastor identifies the second way sorrow makes believers better—by teaching humility through the painful lesson that they are not in control and God is
2, second way sorrow makes you better, it makes you humble. Sorrow is where you finally learn the thing we fight our whole lives. I am not in control, God is. It's even hard to say. Oh my gosh. I am not in control, God is.
19 · The pastor applies the humility lesson by calling believers to honest lament—unpolished, repeated expressions of grief to God—using Job as a model and giving concrete examples like praying aloud in the car or on a walk
So bring it to God. And I'm not talking about this tidy, polished church prayer, but true lament. Listen to Job. Job 7:11, I will not restrain my mouth. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. What does that look like? Well, on an ordinary Tuesday when you're facing sorrow, It looks like you saying it out loud in your car. Say it. Say it. It looks like going on a walk and talking to God instead of putting in your headphones. Don't escape it. And because grief comes in waves. You'll do it again and again and again. And that's okay. Because every time you hand God your grief instead of trying to escape it, you're admitting the thing that sets you free. You're not in control. He is.
20 · The pastor identifies the third way sorrow makes believers better—by teaching gratitude—arguing that sorrow exposes the vanity of seeking salvation in work, wealth, or knowledge, freeing believers to enjoy those gifts as gifts rather than idols
Third way sorrow makes you better: it makes you thankful. If you let sorrow teach you, you learn what the teacher had to learn the hard way. Work, wealth, pleasure, knowledge, even wisdom— none of them can undo the curse. None of them can save you. And if you grab for those things to get ahead, to feel secure, to stay in control, then they're all vanity, a striving after the wind. But once sorrow has humbled you, once you've stopped demanding that those things save you, you fall back— they fall back into the right place. And finally, finally, you can enjoy work instead of killing yourself with 80-hour weeks trying to outrun sorrow. Or trying to fill your bank account so you feel safe. Now you can find pleasure, true pleasure, in a good meal, a good conversation, a good book, and a good friend. Now you can use wisdom and knowledge to live your life, not to control your life.
21 · The pastor concludes the first guardrail by synthesizing the three lessons of sorrow—comfort, humility, gratitude—into the overarching claim that sitting in sorrow produces spiritual freedom
So sit in the sorrow and let it teach you. Because a heart that sat in sorrow, that heart is finally free. It's free to give, free to risk, free to receive, free to receive every ordinary gift that God gives you every day.
22 · The pastor transitions to the second guardrail by anticipating the objection—if sorrow is certain, why risk anything?—and names this as the second cliff of fear, introducing Ecclesiastes 11 as the answer
Now maybe you're already thinking, well, if sorrow is certain and I can't escape it, then why sow anything at all? Why give? Why risk? Why try if I can't control how it turns out? That right there is the second cliff. That's fear. The answer starts with your hands. So turn with me to Ecclesiastes 11.
23 · The pastor establishes the structural relationship between the two guardrails, framing them as the same posture of open hands—receiving in sorrow, releasing in sowing—and arguing that chapter 7 makes chapter 11 possible
As you turn there, if to sit in sorrow is to open your hands and receive what you can't control, then to sow the seed is to open those same hands and release into a future that you cannot control. See how it's the same hand? Just the opposite direction. So chapter 7, sitting, is what makes chapter 11, sowing, possible. Chapter 11 tells you how to live in a world you can't control. You sow.
24 · The pastor expounds Ecclesiastes 11:1-2, defining 'cast your bread' as deliberately releasing your resources (money, time, presence) into the uncontrollable future, and interpreting 'to 7 or even to 8' as a call to give beyond fullness and to multiple recipients
So first point, open your hand. First of 2 points. The second point will be leave it open. First point, open your hand. Ecclesiastes 11:1-2, cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give up— give a portion to 7 or even to 8, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. Cast. Cast is a stronger word than it sounds. The Hebrew means to deliberately Send it out. Not a careless toss, but an intentional letting go of the bread. What's your bread? That's your money, that's your time, that's your presence. And you let go of that bread out onto the waters. The waters, that's the part of life you just can't control. It goes on to say, and apportion to 7 or even to 8. In the Bible, 7 is the number of fullness. So even to 8 means go past full. Give completely, then some more. And give not to one, but to many.
25 · The pastor expounds the rationale for sowing—because the future is unpredictable, hoarding is futile, so give now rather than storing up against an unknowable tomorrow
So open your hand, send it out. Why? Why would we do this? Verse 2 says it plainly. For you know not what disaster may happen on earth. You don't control tomorrow, so give now instead of hoarding against the day you can't even predict.
26 · The pastor applies the principle of sowing by pointing to the church's own kingdom investments—church planting, school building, leadership development—as a concrete example of holding resources with open hands
Send it to those in need and to kingdom ventures. That's exactly what our church is doing. Planting a church in Horizon, helping build a school in India, raising leaders here at home. We poured into the— and we poured into other people's houses before our own, holding what God gave us with open hands.
27 · The pastor broadens the application of sowing from money to attention and presence, using Larry's final embrace with Sarah as an illustration of someone who lived with open hands, and concludes with Jesus's words about treasure and the heart
And it isn't only your money. It's your attention. You kiss your spouse goodbye, you drop the kids at school, you eat lunch with a friend, all never knowing if you'll get another moment. If you truly believed that, wouldn't you hold on a little tighter? Just a little longer. I know I wish that I held Larry a little tighter that day. I wish I told him how much he meant to me. I wish I would have just taken a picture with him. But Larry, he believed it. He believed it, and that day, at the same stairwell that we carried him down, he stood in front of Sarah, my wife, and he told her how thankful he was for her. And I watched as he gave her this long fatherly embrace. She treasures that moment. What a gift from Larry. So be like Larry. Give it away. The time, the money. Because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, Matthew 6 says. Okay?
28 · The pastor transitions to the difficulty of open-handed living, naming the fear that once resources are released, control is lost
But an open hand, that takes, that takes some nerve. Because once you let something go, now you can't control what happens to it.
29 · The pastor expounds Ecclesiastes 11:3-4, identifying the uncontrollable elements of life (rain, falling trees) and warning against the paralysis that comes from waiting for perfect conditions before acting
Turn with Ecclesiastes 11:3-4. If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth. And if a tree falls to the south or to the north, In the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap. Verse 3 names 2 things you cannot control: one, the rain that falls, and 2, where the tree lands. Much of life is just beyond our grip. Verse 4 tells us what not to do. Don't let it freeze you up. The farmer who waits for perfect weather, he never plants a thing. And guess what? He never harvests a thing.
30 · The pastor applies the warning against paralysis by exposing how fear masquerades as wisdom—believers delay action by demanding perfect conditions, calling it responsibility when it is actually the bunker of control
So where are you frozen, knowing that it's time to sow but not opening that hand? And we dress fear up as wisdom. We say things like, I'll wait till the timing's right. I'll wait till I've saved enough money. I'll wait till I'm sure it will work. We invent these worst-case scenarios and call it being responsible, but that's the bunker, and you're digging it with both hands. It's never the perfect time, so we wait and we never plant.
31 · The pastor transitions to the second point of the sowing guardrail—leaving the hand open after releasing the seed—because believers do not control outcomes but know the God who does
But the teacher says, cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Now you send it out with an open hand. Now leave it open. That's point 2. Leave it open. Because you don't get to pick what comes back or when it comes back. But you know the God who does.
32 · The pastor expounds Ecclesiastes 11:5-6, using the mystery of life in the womb as an analogy for the mystery of God's sovereign work, arguing that believers cannot trace God's purposes and must trust his management of the harvest
Ecclesiastes 11:5-6 says this, as you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. So verse 5 lands that, that humbling blow. You don't know the work of God. You can't even trace how life takes shape in a mother's womb, so what makes you think you can trace what he's doing with your seed? We manage, God makes.
33 · The pastor highlights the hopeful twist in Ecclesiastes 11:6—both seeds may prosper—as a rare moment of optimism in an otherwise sobering book, and traces this optimism to the teacher's correct theology of God's sovereignty
So verse 6 says, in the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand. Sow anyways. Keep at it morning and night, and sow the seed across more than one field. And then the most hopeful line in this whole passage, maybe the entire book. For you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. Did you hear that? Both. May prosper. Both can work out. What an optimistic view from this pessimistic teacher, right? Finally!
34 · The pastor defends the teacher's optimism by grounding it in the correct doctrine of God's sovereignty—God ordains both prosperity and adversity, and believers receive both good and bad from his hand—and corrects two errors: expecting only earthly blessings and expecting no earthly blessings at all
Why does he have this optimistic view though? Because his theology of God's sovereignty is correct. Many people think God only gives bad gifts, only bad things happen, but that That is bad theology. That is a wrong understanding of God's sovereignty. Is that your theology? Ecclesiastes 7:14 says, in the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider God has made the one as well as the other. Both days come from one hand. The good and the bad are both under His sovereignty. Now, if you think good gifts have to come now while on this earth, you are wrong. If you think He doesn't give good gifts now on this earth, you are wrong. He blesses so much of our daily efforts. Just think. We wake, we eat, we walk, we talk, we smile, we think, we speak, we have relationship, we have church, we have life. This is all good. It's a gift.
35 · The pastor synthesizes the doctrine of sovereignty, affirming both the reality of the curse and the reality of God's good gifts, while clarifying that blessing is found in obedience and God's sovereign timing, not in guaranteed outcomes
So the curse is real, but it's not the whole story of what God can hand you. The correct understanding of God's sovereignty is that He gives good gifts. Mind you, God never promised you that you'd get rich, and he never promised you that life would go easy. That tree that fell to the north or to the south, that tree may fall on your house. The good may not come now or even in this life, but the blessing is not your ability to guarantee the harvest. It's in the obedience and in God's working. You sow, he reaps in his time. That's the whole posture. I don't know the future, but I'm not scared to face it.
36 · The pastor applies the doctrine of sovereignty by issuing a series of concrete challenges—start the business, take the job, mend the relationship—grounded in the confidence that God controls outcomes
So do the scary thing you keep avoiding. Start the business, take the job, move to the new city, chase the calling, mend the relationship, ask the girl out. Stop standing at the window watching the clouds and know that no matter how it turns out, what? God is sovereign.
37 · The pastor transitions to the christological climax by naming the implicit objection—the two guardrails are too hard—and answering with the promised keeper of the narrow road: Jesus
So we've said 2 things today: sit in the sorrow and sow the seeds. And maybe you're sitting there thinking yourself, that's a lot to ask, Jonathan. Sit in the pain on purpose? Give and risk when it's uncertain? How should I do that? How can I do that? Well, at the start I asked you who could keep us on this narrow road. The answer is Jesus.
38 · The pastor introduces the christological thesis—Jesus both sat in the deepest sorrow and sowed the greatest seed—framing him as the perfect embodiment of the two guardrails
He sat in the deepest sorrow this world has ever seen, and he sowed the greatest seed.
39 · The pastor grounds the christological claim in Isaiah 53, identifying Jesus as the prophesied Man of Sorrows
700 years before he was even born, the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 53 described him in one phrase: a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. With grief. The Man of Sorrows, that's who Jesus is.
40 · The pastor expounds the incarnation, citing Philippians 2 and 2 Corinthians 8 to describe what Jesus left behind—equality with God, heavenly riches, a world without sorrow—to enter the cursed world as a servant
Now think with me about what he left to become the Man of Sorrows. He was in the form of God, he was God, but he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. He was rich beyond imagining, yet for your sake he became poor, 2 Corinthians says. He left heaven where there's no funerals, no sickness, no empty chairs, no cross. He left the place our soul aches for. And he stepped down into our world.
41 · The pastor narrates Jesus's encounter with sorrow from infancy (Herod's threat) through his ministry (healing the blind, lame, sick), emphasizing that Jesus never avoided grief but walked toward it
And the moment he arrived, sorrow was waiting for him. A king tried to murder him and his family had to run to Egypt to keep him alive. He was acquainted with grief before he could even speak, but he never stopped Stepping toward sorrow. Everywhere He went, He walked into the wreckage of the curse. The blind, the lame, the sick, the grieving, His own creation, the people He left heaven for, and He watched them suffer.
42 · The pastor cites Jesus weeping at Lazarus's tomb as evidence that Jesus did not escape sorrow but sat in it
He didn't run to the party. No, John 11:35 says He stood at His friend's grave and Jesus wept. He sat in our sorrow.
43 · The pastor expounds Jesus's Gethsemane agony, citing Matthew and Luke to show the intensity of his sorrow and his choice to remain in it rather than escape
And at the very end, in a garden called Gethsemane, Matthew tells us he said this, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death. In Luke, he was in such anguish that his sweat became like great drops of blood. He could have escaped. He could have called it all off. But he didn't. He sat in it.
44 · The pastor connects the crown of thorns to the Genesis 3 curse, arguing that Jesus literally wore the curse on his head, bearing the very thorns that represent sorrow in believers' lives
And then they pressed the crown down onto his head. Matthew calls it a crown of thorns. Thorns, the very first mark of the curse back in the garden, thorns and thistles in Genesis 3. The same thorns that come up free in your backyard, that grow in the desert when nothing else will, The curse that puts sorrow in your life, He took it and He wore it on His head. He didn't just teach us how to sit in sorrow, He sat in ours.
45 · The pastor transitions to the second half of the christological thesis—Jesus sowed—by citing Jesus's grain of wheat teaching and applying it to his death and burial as the ultimate act of casting seed onto the waters
But He didn't only sit in the sorrow, He sowed. Jesus said, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Fruit. John 12:24. Jesus was the seed, and on the cross he cast his own bread— that's his body— he cast it upon the waters. He gave himself away with no earthly return. He was buried like a seed in the dark.
46 · The pastor answers why Jesus sowed by citing Hebrews 12—the joy set before him was the harvest of saved souls
Why did he do that? Hebrews 12 says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured The cross. The joy, the harvest he found? Us. Our salvation.
47 · The pastor declares the resurrection as the harvest of Jesus's sowing, using 1 Corinthians 15 to identify Christ as the firstfruits, and synthesizes the entire christological argument: the Man of Sorrows is the risen Lord who controls the future
And then 3 days later, the seed rose up. Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, 1 Corinthians 15 says. You see, death, that end of all mankind, the one appointment that none of us can escape, could not hold him. The man of sorrows who sat in our grief is the risen Lord who holds our tomorrow.
48 · The pastor draws the soteriological conclusion—believers can grieve honestly and live freely because Jesus both entered sorrow and conquered it
That is why we can do both, grieve honestly and live freely. Because the God who lets sorrow come in is the same God who walked into it And conquered it.
49 · The pastor cites Jesus's teaching about losing life to gain it, then testifies to his own conversion—he ran to the party for years, but sorrow, not laughter, led him to Christ and repentance
And as Jesus said, whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. John 12:25. And this, this isn't theory for me. For years I ran to the party, and every time the music died down. And it wasn't the laughter that saved me, no, it was the sorrow. Sorrow is what led me to the Man of Sorrows. Sorrow is what led me to repentance of my sins.
50 · The pastor issues an evangelistic call, addressing unbelievers who have been escaping sorrow through distraction, declaring that Jesus bore their sorrow and sin, and calling them to repentance
Now if you've been running your whole life to the party from the funeral, the Man of Sorrows, he carried your sorrow already. He bore your sins. He died the death that is the end of all mankind. And he walked out of that grave. You don't have to escape your sorrow and sin anymore. Why? Because he already sat in it for you. You don't have to fear tomorrow because he already holds tomorrow. So turn to him. Repent.
51 · The pastor reads the book's conclusion, Ecclesiastes 12:13, and distinguishes two kinds of fear—the fear of an uncontrollable future and the fear of God—arguing that fearing God replaces the fear of tomorrow
That's where this whole book And the teacher has been driving. Ecclesiastes 12:13 says, fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Probably my favorite verse in the whole Bible. And there are 2 fears in this verse. One, the fear that drives you to the bunker, the fear of tomorrow you can't control. And there's the fear of God, not being scared of him, but standing in awe of the one who holds all of it. And then trusting him. A fear of God is— that's the only thing that sets you free. So trade the first fear for the second. Fear God and you will never fear tomorrow again.
52 · The pastor issues three concrete action steps for the week—sit with someone grieving, sow by taking a risk, and trust by surrendering control of one specific thing—and adds a fourth instruction to enjoy one ordinary gift as an act of worship
But don't just walk out here and let this fade by lunchtime. Take 3 things with you. 3 things to actually do this week. 1, sit. Find someone that you know is grieving and just sit with them. Sit with them. 2, sow. Take one God-honoring risk you've been putting off. Is that the conversation? Is that the calling? Is that the reconciliation? Do it. 3, trust. Name the thing that you keep trying to control. Is it your future? Is it money? Is it your kids? Is it your health? Is it the relationship you can't fix or you don't have? And pray it into God's hands. And then enjoy one ordinary gift on purpose. Sit with a cup of coffee. Linger at dinner with your friends. Take the walk with the family. Take those things as a gift from God who holds your tomorrow.
53 · The pastor concludes by returning to Larry's example, declaring that because of Jesus he is free to live the way Larry lived—with open hands and full enjoyment of ordinary gifts—and reiterates the sermon's twin guardrails: sit in the sorrow, sow the seed
Because of Jesus, I don't have— I don't have to escape the sorrow of Larry. I don't have to fear Tomorrow, I get to live the way Larry lived. He held every ordinary day with open hands, and he enjoyed it. He enjoyed the cup of coffee, the good conversation, the work that was in front of him. He lived with the end in full view, and so can I. And so can you. That's the freedom of Ecclesiastes. That's the freedom that's— that the teacher has been after all along. The one who has faced sorrow is finally free to live. So don't escape and don't fear. Sit in the sorrow, sow the seed. And receive today for the gift that it is.
54 · The pastor closes in prayer, asking God to fill the congregation with the Spirit, enable them to grieve, take risks, trust, and enjoy ordinary gifts, and affirming God as their boast and foundation
Let's pray. Lord, you are kind. You are a good Father who gives good gifts, and we trust in your plan. Lord, fill us with your Spirit as we go out into the world. May you help us to grieve and grieve with others. May you help us to take those chances, Lord. May you give us the faith to just trust you. And God, we— may we be the person that enjoys the gifts that you give us every single day. It's only through you You are our boast. You are our firm foundation. Amen. Amen. Amen.