Happy New Year!

Amen. Amen.

Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's go ahead and stand, and we're going to be reading out of Psalm 98 verses 1 through 3, and it says, "O sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things. His right hand and His holy arm have worked salvation for Him. The Lord has made known His salvation. He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered His steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God." This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. We thank you for the start of a new year, and we thank you for bringing us through this past year and through all the joys and the hardships and the trials and the praises and everything that you've done for us this year so that we can glorify you and know how to worship you.

And we thank you so much for our church and how you've taken care of it, and we thank you for the people here and the people that are watching online that just are all an encouragement, not just to Brandon and I, but to each other. And we ask that you be with our service today, allow it to glorify you. We thank you for coffee this morning, and in Jesus' name, amen. And there is more coffee coming, just so you know. Alright, we're going to get started with Here I Am to Worship.

The beauty that made this heart adore You. Hope of a life spent with You. Here I am to worship. Here I am to bow down. Here I am to say that You're my God. You're altogether lovely, altogether worthy, altogether wonderful to be. King of old days, all so highly exalted, glorious in heaven above. Humbly you came to the earth you created, all full of sick became whole. Here I am to worship. Here I am to bow down. Here I am to say that you're my God. You're altogether lovely, altogether worthy, altogether wonderful to me. And I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross. And I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross. Here I am to worship. Here I am to bow down. Here I am to say that you're my God. You're altogether lovely. Altogether worthy. Altogether wonderful to me.

Here I am to worship. Here I am to bow down. Here I am to say that you're my God. You're altogether lovely. Altogether worthy. Altogether wonderful to me. Keep moving into our prayer and share time, and Stu's going to do that for us today. And if you're watching online, you'll be able to text us any requests that you have. So please do that if you'd like to share that here. We're going to go ahead and sing "How Great Is Our God." The splendor of the King, hope and majesty. Let all the earth rejoice. All the earth rejoice. All the earth rejoice. He wraps Himself in light. His darkness tries to hide. He trembles at His voice. He trembles at His voice. How great is El God. Sing with me how great is El God. Oh, we'll see how great, how great is El God.

Page to page He stands, and time is in His hands. Beginning and the end, beginning and the end. The God hath breathed in one. Father, Spirit, Son, the Lion and the Lamb, the Lion and the Lamb. How great is our God. Sing with me. How great is our God. Oh, sing. How great. How great is our God. How great is our God. Sing with me. How great is our God. Oh, sing. How great. How great is our God. Name above all names. Worthy of all praise. My heart will sing. How great is our God.

Name above all names. Worthy of all praise. My heart will sing. How great is our God. How great is our God. Sing with me. How great is our God. Oh, we'll see how great, how great is our God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen. Amen. Amen.

I've got to fix something. The whole week between Christmas and New Year's is such a blur that you don't really know what day it is. I don't know if that's for anybody else, but every day this week I woke up and was like, "I think this is Monday, but it was actually Wednesday," and things like that. It's so good to be able to have a point to come and focus and be able to know what day it is and just be able to have a time where we can focus on God and get together and just worship Him together. We're going to move into our time of communion, and we're going to be singing "Blessed Be Your Name," if I did what I did right. Yes, I think so. There we go. "Blessed Be Your Name in the land that is plentiful. Where the streams of abundance flow. Blessed be your name."

"Blessed Be Your Name when I'm found in the desert plain, or walk through the wilderness. Blessed be your name." Every blessing you pour out, I'll turn back to praise. When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say: Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your name. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your glorious name. Blessed be your name. When the sun's shining down on me. When the world's all as it should be. Blessed be your name. Blessed be your name. I'm a room mugged with suffering. Though there's pain in the offering. Blessed be your name. Every blessing you pour out, I'll turn back to praise. When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say, "Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be your name." Blessed be your name of the Lord. Blessed be your glorious name.

Jesus said, "Follow me." Every time Greg is not here, every Sunday when he gets here and starts setting everything up for us, he always sets aside some communion for Derek and I. Sticks mine on top of my Bible. As I was getting ready to walk up here this morning, I realized Greg wasn't here, and just headed out without what I needed. It's one of those small things that Rachel was talking about, how thankful we are for our little church. And it's those small things, those little encouragements that we find from each other that I think makes the family of God a wonderful thing to be a part of. So as we've been singing this morning, one of the things that we've tried to do is focus on God's goodness and on God's greatness. And I want to, as we prepare to take communion this morning, I want to go to Deuteronomy chapter 11, and I want to read from verse 10 down through verse 12.

And this is commandments regarding obedience to God and what will happen when you get into the land. And it says this: "For the land that you are entering to take possession of, it is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it like a garden of vegetables, but the land you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven. A land that your Lord God cares for, the eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year." And as I was reading and thinking, I like to read Spurgeon, one of my favorite preachers outside of the Bible, and one of the things that he said about this passage

that I had never really thought of before, is he says that this presents to us sort of a picture of the two conditions of man, right? There's a condition of man where we don't trust God, where we seek to walk in our own way, and Spurgeon will say, in our own providence, looking to ourselves for all of our needs. He'll go on to say, "Because of that, our cares are heavy. They frequently become so heavy, they drive us to desperation. When we live according to our own strength, we live a life of care, anxiety, sorrow, fretfulness, and disappointment. We dwell in Egypt. We know that there is no joy or comfort or provision if it does not wear out our souls for winning it." In the picture there is a type of striving where we seek to find all of the good things in life in ourself. If I work hard enough, if I plan the best that I can,

if I do everything in my power, if by fortune everything comes together well, maybe someday I will find joy, but it's going to be a struggle. And that's what God says about the land of Egypt, that if you wanted to plant something, you had to work at it, you had to irrigate it, you had to garden it. But the contrast is, the promised land of God that God cares for. And so this is what Spurgeon says, "The spiritual man dwells in another country. His faith makes him a citizen of another land. It is true that he endures the same toil and experiences the same afflictions as the ungodly, but they deal with him after another fashion. For they come as a gracious father's appointments. They go at the bidding of loving wisdom. By faith, the godly man casts his care upon God who cares for him.

And he walks without a care because he knows himself to be the child of heaven's lovingkindness, for whom all things work together for good. God is his great guardian and friend, and all his concerns are safe in the hands of his infinite grace. Even in the year of drought, the believer dwells in green pastures and lies down beside still waters. And I love this picture of God's people. It doesn't mean that we go through life in a different manner or experience different things, but that we have someone who, in the midst of it all, cares for us. And I think we see that most magnificently demonstrated at the cross, where Jesus comes and He takes our place. He bears the weight of our sin, and He dies for us. And so we're going to remember that, as Christians, we see this world from a different perspective.

We don't see it as Egypt, but rather we see it as a God who cares for us even in the midst of those darkest moments. So let's pray, and then we'll partake together. Father in heaven, be with us this morning as we gather together. As we begin a new year, and we know from the end to the beginning, it's all in your hands. The goodness and height of the mountains and the sorrow and the darkness of the valleys, we know that you are at work in all things for your glory and for our good. And so we ask that as we gather this very first day of the year, that you would focus our hearts on your goodness. That you would help us to cling to your grace and to your mercy. That you would remind us of your love for us.

And that we would seek, as we follow you, to trust you and walk with you through all the mountains and valleys that this life brings to us. I ask that you bless this bread and this cup. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. As Jesus did with his disciples, let's take the bread that he said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Jesus." Let's remember Jesus together. And let us take the cup as Jesus did, and he said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do it as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." For as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim our Lord's death until he comes. We're going to be in Ecclesiastes 9, just for a few minutes this morning, if you would like to follow along.

There are some sort of shorter, simplified handouts by the door as you come in. You're welcome to grab one of those if you're watching online. Those handouts are available on the live streaming page on our website. So we're going to go ahead and pray, and then we will jump right into it this morning. Father in heaven, I thank you for your goodness. I thank you for your grace. I thank you for new beginnings, and I thank you that you're a God who brings us to new beginnings. Help us as we look at our lives this morning, that as Solomon seeks to both humble us and encourage us, that we would find our foundation in you and in you alone. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Over the Advent season, we have walked through all of these big, wonderful, joy-bringing themes.

In Jesus, there is hope. In Jesus, there is peace. In Jesus, there is love. In Jesus, he's the one who can bring peace between us and God. Like Adam and Eve, we don't have to hide. We don't have to try to fix things. We don't have to make excuses like our first parents did, but that we can come to God in peace, but he also restores peace in our relationships. And so we come to that point where we kind of maybe say, "Well, how do I go about living that way?" And so as we begin the new year, I want to go to a man who's very wise, Solomon, and I want to look at just two verses where he gives us some instruction in how to think about how we live. And one of the things that we often find is that maybe we're really good at knowing things, but maybe we're not necessarily very wise.

And I think that the common illustration, I think it was a British journalist who came up with the phrase, is that knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. Somebody came along later and said, "The philosopher will then ask the question, is ketchup a smoothie?" And so we want to try to take knowledge and put it to practical use, and Solomon is very, very good at doing that. And one of the things that if we have lived for really any length of time, we begin to realize that life doesn't always turn out like we imagine it to. And so as part of my preparation for the new year, I was reading through and trying to organize some old files and some old things I'd written,

and I ran across this kind of exact situation. I think I wrote it back in like 2015, and evidently the situation was that Rachel and I, one evening, were sitting there. She may have been on Pinterest or somewhere and came across this recipe for peach baked French toast. And so I think that the draw behind this is that you make it mostly the night before, and then you wake up and pop it in the oven. And so I'll just give you a quote from the recipe because we all know how floury some of these recipe writers can be. And then I'll just tell you a little bit of what happened. And so it starts, the recipe started like this, "This simple overnight French toast casserole with fresh peaches and a buttery brown sugar and pecan topping is sure to make everyone smile. We love to sit down to an extra

special weekend breakfast whenever we can. And if I'm able to prep the meal the night before, that makes my weekend mornings all the better because it's more sleep, less work, and a better morning." It took me just a few minutes to slice the bread and the peaches and to stir together the cream and the eggs and then tuck the dish into the refrigerator for the night. Now so in our house, and this is what I went on to write about that is that it looks very different in real life, right? Because you're supposed to make this ahead for sort of optimal morning bliss, right? I think we decided on this like 9 or 10 at night. It's like, "Hey, let's make this for tomorrow." And then you go to the refrigerator and realize that you have nothing

that you need to make this dish. And so what do you do? You begin to improvise and you sort of hope that it comes out okay. And so the next morning, the recipe goes on to say this, "The next morning I turned on the oven while I started the coffee. I set the cold casserole in a warm oven and sat down to sip coffee and watch cartoons with the kids while breakfast baked and filled our house with a delicious aroma of baking peaches. And I'm reminded once more how nice make-ahead breakfasts are for a relaxed morning." And so my first question was, "Does this person even have children?" And in this particular case, I was bludgeoned awake far before I wanted to, and I think it was by a two-year-old holding a space shuttle going, "Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy."

Right? There was no gradual slipping into consciousness saying, "Oh, I have beautiful French toast in the refrigerator. I'm going to bake it for a quiet, peaceful morning." And so I groggily sort of stumbled to the kitchen. I pressed the button on the coffee maker. I grabbed this casserole that somehow, by the grace of God, I even remembered was in the refrigerator. And all I remembered was it was supposed to be covered and in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes. And so I managed to get it in there, and I was praying at that moment that my coffee would sort of kick in before I ended up on the nightly news. And so the next step, according to this recipe, was to sit down and sort of calmly watch cartoons. Well, the aroma of fresh peaches filled the house. And to be honest, that didn't happen, because it's not just to make a red recipe.

Right? You now have to make this delicious topping. And so I ran to the refrigerator, and I went and checked, and thankfully we had butter. Somebody in our house doesn't necessarily want nuts on top of their French toast, so I had to substitute out some granola to sort of add that crunch. And so I had to bake and make the sauce. And then I looked at the recipe and realized, instead of 30 minutes at 350, it needed to be 20 minutes at 350. So I hurriedly pulled it out of the oven, added the sauce, and now it has to go back in for another 30 minutes. And so finally, the oven beeps, and we pull out this, and then you read the recipe. Now it has to sit for 10 minutes. And it's still so incinerating that our kids were unable to eat it, right?

And I will say this, at no point did our house ever fill with the aroma of nicely baked peaches. And probably most of us have experienced something along these lines where you have this picturesque, beautiful idea of how things should be, right? This beautiful casserole, you with your coffee watching the sunrise, your child sort of contentedly in the corner watching TV, and in no case in our life did that happen. But we've all been there, right? We see something on the menu, and we say, "Oh, that looks amazing," and when it comes out, it looks totally different. Or maybe we have an idea for a family get-together or vacation, and we have all of these dreams and plans, and we get there, and it's nothing like we imagined. And one of the things we learn very quickly in our life is that the picture doesn't always match the reality.

That's Solomon's point in our text this morning. Let me read it to you. "Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge. But time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time like a fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare. So the children of men are snared at an evil time, and suddenly it falls upon them." You may say, "Well, why do we talk about this?" Right? There's this picture of life that for us so often ends up broken. And that's what Solomon's point in verses 11 to 12 is, right? You expect the fastest to win the race, but it doesn't always happen.

You expect the strongest to win the fight, but it doesn't always happen. You expect the wise to succeed, but it doesn't happen. You expect the intelligent to make a profit, but it doesn't always happen. You expect the one with knowledge and usefulness to be well-liked and useful, but that doesn't always happen. Simply being better, whether that's faster, stronger, wiser, more intelligent, more knowledgeable, it doesn't in our life guarantee success. And there is a human tendency that every single one of us have to think that if we can simply change our situation, or change ourselves, then our problems will just disappear. In fact, we have sort of a constant refrain that just simply says, "If only," right? If only this was different, things would be better. If only I had this, then I would be happy.

In fact, if you've ever seen the movie The Wizard of Oz, right? That's the premise of The Wizard of Oz, right? If only I wasn't in Kansas, right? If only I had a heart. If only I had courage. If only I had a brain. If only I had this, everything would be better. And you and I are experts at If only-ing our way into some kind of dream, right? If only I had this. If only I did this. If only life had turned out this way. If only, if only, if only. And we have this idea that if we can just get that thing, then we will be happy. And it's not just in our minds or our movies, but our culture conditions us to think this way, right? If only my guy wins the election. Or think about advertisements, right? If only you have this,

you'll have better hair. If only you have this, you'll have a better car. If only you have this, you'll have a better life. And what Solomon does in this verse, this very first verse, in verse 11, is he takes our if-only's and he turns them on their head. And he says, "If only," right? Faster, stronger, wiser, more intelligent, more knowledgeable. Solomon says, "If only," I've got some news for you. It doesn't always work. The race isn't always to the fastest. The battle isn't always to the strongest. And so what he is saying to us, it doesn't always match the picture that we have. And it may seem to us in this moment that this is a really depressing thing to say as we start a new year. That life will not work out according to our plan. But Solomon here is not trying to discourage us.

What he is doing by humbling us is ultimately leading us to hope. You see, his first message in verse 11 is simply this: What you have and who you are won't guarantee success, right? That's the winning the races and winning wars. What you have and who you are will not bring you satisfaction, right? That's the food and the wealth he talks about. What you have and who you are will not bring you popularity. That's what he means when he says "favor." And the reality is these are the things that most of us are searching for, right? We want to succeed. We want to win. We want to have enough. We want to be liked. We want to be loved. And what Solomon is saying here is a message that stands contrary to the world in which we live.

He's telling us you will not find that in yourself. That you can't improve yourself, you can't resolution yourself, you can't what-if yourself into happiness, right? And we know, I think instinctually, that this is true. Have you ever had that moment where you have dreamed of something, and then you get it, and it doesn't turn out to bring you the joy or the hope that you thought it would? Almost every time that we have made a big purchase, we bought a car, we instantly almost regret it, right? They have a word for it, right? Buyer's remorse. "Man, if I get this, I'll be happy," and we get it. Immediately we have doubts, "Did I make the right decision? Do I do the right thing?" Over time we begin to see flaws, and we think, "Well, if I can get this other thing."

And what Solomon is saying is that it doesn't always turn out. You can work hard, you can work smart, you can fail spectacularly. I remember in high school, and I've shared this with some of you before, but part of our science team, they had a bridge-building competition that took place at Norwich University, which is a military school in Vermont. And you were just allowed a couple of different materials. You could have popsicle sticks, toothpicks, dental floss, and white Elmer's glue. And the idea was to take those things, put them together into a bridge, you go to Norwich University, they put it in a hydraulic press with some gauges on it, and see how much weight your bridge could handle before it cracked. And so I went up there with my friends who were competing, just to watch, and we're sitting there, you know, all the bridges come on,

and they put some weight on them, and it cracks, and some people's little bridge will hold a hundred or two hundred. And they've, you know, intricately designed them, right? You've got support, you've got a suspension bridge with floss. And then some kid who put zero thought into design, just got like a million popsicle sticks, lined them up, glued them together, lined them up, glued them together, until he literally had a two-by-four of popsicle sticks covered in glue, and they put it on the hydraulic press, and it broke the hydraulic press, right? And so then he had to take it, they had to take it down to the basement to the bigger one, and it ended up taking like two tons of weight to actually crack and break this, because he had overlapped it, and woven in dental floss so well, and used so much glue,

this thing just wouldn't break, right? So you have all of these beautiful designs, and then some idiot comes in with a two-by-four, right, and ruins everything, right? The best design doesn't always triumph, right? The best work, best thinking doesn't always triumph. And they ended up, just to give you the appendix to that story, they ended up basically saying that if you bring a two-by-four, you're instantly disqualified every year after that, and they instituted a weight to the weight of your bridge, to the weight of the weight that it would take ratio, in order to actually encourage design, right? But things don't always work out according to our plan. And so these characteristics that Solomon gives us, speed, strength, wisdom, intelligence, and popularity, they're not bad, right? It's not bad to pursue improving yourself. It's not bad to seek to grow as a person. The problem is when we put all of our hope into that thing, right?

These things are not intended to take the weight of our hope. Just like an egg is fragile. If you hold an egg over your floor, and you have a hard floor, and you drop that egg, what happens? The egg cracks, right? It's not meant to take that kind of force. These things are not bad, but they are not intended to take the force and the weight of our life. Or maybe like this, if you've ever walked out on the ice. We did a little bit of a walk or a hike on Tuesday, and there was a bunch of ice in different places, right? And so you walk out on the ice to kind of see how strong it was, and it wasn't very deep. Your shoes are just going to get a little wet, right?

You stand on it, and you kind of hear it crack, and you think, "Well, I'm going to have to walk a mile with wet shoes if I keep jumping on this," right? Because ice doesn't always take our weight. And what Solomon says is if we base our joy and our happiness and our future on these things, that I'm faster, stronger, and better, and I can do all of these things well. If we put all of our hope on those things, we are walking on thin ice, and eventually that ice will collapse. And we will drown. What Solomon is saying is stop trusting yourself. Stop seeking your salvation within yourself. In fact, trust the one who is bigger than the sun. When Solomon says under the sun, what he's saying is the hope that you and I are looking for isn't found here.

It's found in the one who is bigger and greater and more powerful than the sun. You can be the best in all of these things. And you can still fall through the ice. You might say that seems very discouraging, but that's not his point. His point is to point us to the reality that there is one with whom can bear our weight of our hopes and our dreams and our future and ambition. And he's encouraging us to shift our eyes from ourselves to the one who can hold the weight of our hopes and our dreams. And one of the things, and it's so wonderful, you see it in Scripture, there is no one who is too small, too weak, too broken, or too sinful for God to use. And instead of maybe just telling you this, I'd rather, I think, show you this.

If you move through Scripture, and in fact, in the first several books of the Bible, you find this phrase, "As God identifies Himself to His people," the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And if you think about those three men, we learn from Joshua that Abraham and his father and his brother worshipped false gods. And so God brings Abraham out of idolatry. And while Abraham is in many ways very faithful and very good, he also makes mistakes. He gives his wife away a couple of times. He seeks to rush God's plan by doing it himself. Isaac, his son, not a very good dad. In fact, he continually plays favorites. Jacob, his son, is a liar and a cheat who also plays favorites. In fact, as he's seeking an heir out of his sons, he goes all the way down to number 11, to Joseph. And through those things, he causes great trouble and struggle and strife

for Joseph. Joseph is eventually ambushed by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt, falsely accused by Potiphar's wife, and he finds himself in jail. And it is from that prison that God lifts him up, puts him as regent, second in command over all of Egypt, saving not just Egypt, but his brothers and his fathers and all of God's people. The Israelites themselves are slaves in Egypt. And God, to deliver them, chooses a man by the name of Moses, who at 40 years old kills a man and runs away into the wilderness. And at 80 years old, God comes and speaks to Moses and says, "Go and free my people." And what's Moses' first excuse? "I don't talk good." And God will speak to him and explain to him, and Moses' final response is, "I just don't want to do it." And God says, "You're going to go do it."

Moses is an 80-year-old murderer who in his mind is not strong enough or good enough to save his people. Joshua seems to have gone through life maybe being a little fearful because God's refrain to Joshua is, "Be strong and courageous." When God comes to Gideon to save his people, Gideon says, "You've got the wrong address. I'm in the smallest tribe, in the smallest family, in the smallest person in this house." Saul was too afraid to attend his own coronation. David wasn't invited to the dinner where Samuel sought to anoint him as king. Solomon, when he begins his reign, God says to him, "I'll give you whatever you want: wealth, long life." And Solomon says, "The thought of governing your people is so overwhelming. I ask that you give me great wisdom." And we can continue through the Old Testament, but we move into the New Testament.

And the salvation that enters our world, John the Baptizer comes to a family that's too old. Jesus comes to a family that's too young. Ultimately, the hometown of his parents and Jesus' hometown, after being born in Bethlehem, will be Nazareth. And the response to that is, "What good comes out of Nazareth?" He chooses disciples, a fisherman, a tax collector, a Jewish rebel, not the smartest group of guys, because on the day of Pentecost, when they began to speak in tongues, what do all the people begin to say? These men are drunk with wine, and they're just babbling. That's the estimate of the crowds, of the intelligence of Jesus' disciples. There's no way these guys can speak another language. They must have had too much wine. That's not a good way to begin the sermon where the people who are listening go, "Did this guy get into the communion wine a little before church started?"

But you see their humility. Everyone looked at these guys and said, "There's no way these guys could be speaking for God." But God uses them to proclaim the gospel to the nations. You have Paul, the persecutor of the church. You see, God using weakness, and brokenness, and hurt, and smallness. And this for us probably boggles our mind, because we have to deserve, we have to achieve. Yet in the midst of this, while we were still weak, Christ died for us. You see, Solomon isn't humbling us, or trying to put us in our place to beat us up. He's trying to tell us that the strength to live in this world isn't found in us. It's not found in our goodness or in our abilities, but it's found in the One who is greater than the heavens.

And he's calling a broken people to take their eyes off of themselves, and to put them on God. He's trying to alleviate our excuses where we say, "I'm too small. Not strong enough. I'm too weak." And he would say to us, "But God is strong enough. God is not weak. God is not small." In verse 12, you have this sober warning. "For man does not know his time, like a fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so are the children of man, are snared at an evil time, and it suddenly falls upon them." He's not against hunting and fishing here. He's not saying it's bad to snare and to fish. What he's saying is that life takes some unexpected turns, right? When you look at your life, are you where you thought you would be?

And in my case, I think about that, and I think that's not where I imagined I'd be. But not necessarily in a bad way, right? God has done remarkable and amazing things in blessing and providing. And I think of all of those good things, and I think, man, that's not where I thought I would be, but I see God's hand in it. But that's not what Solomon is talking about, those good surprises of life. He is talking about the heartbreak of life. Right? He's talking about those surprising moments when everything falls apart. Solomon in these verses is saying there's two ways to walk through this life on thin ice. One is to trust in your abilities and your identity instead of the power and strength of God. But secondly, to think that you have everything planned, and everything will always work according toward your plan.

Right? No fish ever wakes up in the morning and thinks, "I'm going to be dinner today." No bird ever wakes up and thinks, "I'm going to spend the day in the crock pot." Right? It comes suddenly. And what Solomon is trying to tell us is that our best plans fall apart. None of us wake up and say, "I'm looking forward to some tragedy today." But we still get those moments and those phone calls and those knocks on our door. Life takes us by surprise. In fact, we have advertisements that point us to that, right? Life comes at you fast. And what Solomon is saying about the fish and the birds, that we're the same way. We don't know when we will face disaster. And we can walk through this life on thin ice by trusting in our own ability,

but we can also walk through on thin ice by trusting in our own plan. And Solomon is seeking to focus ourselves outside of ourselves, apart from our abilities and accomplishments, and apart from our plans, and appoint us to the one on whom we can build and we can rest our life with confidence. And the question is, what will we do with this information that the wisdom of Solomon brings to us? Will we choose to walk on the thin ice of our abilities and our plans? Or will we put our strength and our trust in the power and the goodness of God? In Matthew 7, there's a very familiar parable Jesus tells. "Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on the house,

but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house in the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell and great was the fall of it." Jesus here is saying the same thing, just with a different picture. There's two ways of building. One is to build upon yourself. And in that, everything collapses. Jesus is saying build on the true rock. And it's not just knowing the true rock. It's not just knowing where the true rock is. In Luke's Gospel, he will say that the man found the rock and then he did something remarkable. He dug down deep.

Just as Solomon says, your abilities and your goodness is thin ice. Your plans are thin ice. Jesus says the same thing. That if you trust in your abilities and your plans, the storm will come and it will sweep you away. But if you go to the rock, to know the rock, and dig down deep into the rock, those storms will come and you will find a safe place and a shelter. Some of us are maybe hearing that truth for the first time. And I would direct you to Jesus, the one safe place to build your life. Some of us know this, but even though we know it, we've been building our life somewhere else. And the call of Solomon and the call of Jesus is that we would repent. And some of us, in the midst of our storms, need to be reminded and encouraged

that our life, belt upon Jesus, will withstand the storms of life. So I don't know this morning whether you're grieving or rejoicing, hurt or angry, fearful, facing the storms, or in the midst of a beautiful summer day in your life. But I will say this, there will become a time where you'll feel weak and you'll feel small, you'll feel unable. And I want you to know that God is the one who works. So at this point, we're going to pray, and then we're going to sing about building our lives upon Jesus. Father in heaven, I thank you for grace, I thank you for joy in the foundation that's built upon you, that no matter how big storms get, no matter how bleak it looks outside, you sustain us. So help us to trust in you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Let's go ahead and we're going to stand and sing Cornerstone.

I hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly trust in Jesus' name.

I hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly trust in Jesus' name. Christ alone, cornerstone, weak made strong in the Savior's love. Through the storm, He is Lord, Lord of all. The darkness seems to hide His face. I rest on His unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. Christ alone, call us Lord. Weak made strong in the Savior's light. Through the storm, He is Lord, Lord our Lord. When He shall come with trumpet sound, O may I then in Him be found. Dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless than before the throne. Christ alone, call us Lord. Weep and strong in the Savior's love. Through the storm He is Lord, Lord of all. I am thankful that you are here with us. Stop that for right now. I am thankful that you are here with us for our church, and I'm thankful for the good news of the gospel. A couple of things that are coming up this Wednesday. We are beginning a study

in the book of James at 7 p.m., and so we'll be gathering together to walk through that. There'll be a video and some time of discussion, and so I am excited to dive into that. I think it will be a good time for us. Also, just a heads up, coming up on the 28th, we've got a men's breakfast that Saturday morning. We'll have some more details for you, but we want to kind of get this into your head and keep reminding you about that. I'd also encourage you guys, invite some friends, have them come with you, and we'll eat, and we'll spend some time together. So we're going to go ahead and have a word of prayer. I'll read a verse from Colossians, and then we will sing the doxology. Father in heaven, I thank you for taking care of us, for blessing us. I thank you for your goodness. Just be with us. Help us as we move into this new year, and we think about a fresh start and all the things

we want to do differently. Help us to realize that those are our good things, but we only accomplish things through your strength and your goodness. May you be our foundation. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Paul will say to the Colossian church in Colossians chapter 2, "Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving." Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him, above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you.