Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: He has put eternity in the hearts of men. This little book of wisdom walks down the stairway of the centuries singing a little song for a world that's weary of time and its toys. It was written for a man from the Middle East, most believed to be King Solomon. Ecclesiastes 1:1 says the words of the teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem.

He wanted all of us to remember our creator in the days of our youth. That was a theme of the book, to have a whole life to serve him and not wait until we were too old to remember anything. Solomon had been young and now he was old. You could say he'd been around the block a time or two, been there, done that, and got the T-shirt.

This priceless piece of scripture is for all of us. It's totally relevant to our generation just as it was relevant to his generation in his day. I'd like to read a little bit from the end of the book from chapter 12. Whenever I read a book of any sort, I always read the last chapter first.

But funnily enough, you can't really grasp what this little book is all about unless you start at the end. If you start at the conclusion and then go back to the beginning and all the other bits, it will make sense. Not only, verse nine, was the teacher wise, but he also imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered, he searched out, he set in order many proverbs.

The teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true. For the words of the wise are like goads; their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails given by one shepherd. Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. So this is the conclusion, and this is where we start the whole thing, the chief end, the whole purpose of existence is to fear God, keep his word, for we will stand before him one day to answer what we have done with this life, the gift of this life.

Now Solomon wrote this after his apostasy. He had followed God so closely. He had done so well until he forgot to do what God told him to do. Two things mainly brought him down: horses and women. God said don't multiply horses. If you multiply horses and then you go out to battle, everybody will think it's because you've got the biggest army, you've got the most bullets, the most tanks.

I want everybody to know that the battle is the Lord's. So don't do that. I have been in the Holy Land and I have seen the stables still carved out there, testament to a man's disobedience. And he said don't multiply women, especially women that don't know me. Solomon flew right in the face of what God had said.

He multiplied women and women and women and women. He married princesses and queens making political alliances, and most of it just for sex, just for love. It says that Solomon's heart clove to them in love. And of course all the foreign women brought their foreign gods, so he made little shrines and he built palaces and he ended up worshipping with them. Well, I'll come to your church today, and I'll come to your church today.

He had, believe it or not, 700 wives and 300 concubines. But somebody put eternity in Solomon's heart, and somebody gave him time to realize it. If you look here, the front of this pulpit's like the timeline created by God, put in space for you and me and the whole of the human race.

So God is here where I am. He sees us before we were born. That's what it says in Jeremiah: before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, I chose you. He sees us when we're born, he sees what we do with our lives, whether we fear God, obey his word. He sees if we don't. He sees if we fall away from him and need renewing in our faith. And he sees if we keep going and finish well. He sees us of course in eternity with him afterwards. He sees it all.

The Bible says the incredible thing is this time is so short, so brief. All the way through this marvelous piece of scripture it says brief, brief, time is brief. In the NIV you have meaningless, meaningless. The literal word is breath, breath, just a breath, it's a vapor.

Solomon messed up, but he came back to God. The devil stole his heart, the women it says stole his heart away from his God. The devil used that to bring him down. But he repented. Most people believe, most commentators believe, that at the end of his life he said I've only got how many knows who years left, but I'm going to use every single one of them for God.

In his old age, Solomon blessed the world with life experience matched to wisdom. A repentant man said I'm just going to go for it. I've just read you what he did: wearied himself, worked his pen to the bone making sure that making many books or scrolls was what God wanted him to do so that he would share his mistakes with the world, so he would share the answer.

You know, that's one reason I like this book, and I've been in it because I'm an elderly person too. Now elderly people don't know they're elderly. I found out I was elderly in the parking lot. It was winter and Stewart and I were hurrying out to church and I had my church shoes on. They were slippy and my feet went right up. I did, you can see how I nearly did a somersault, I landed on the top of my head, knocked myself clean out.

So Stewart was standing there wondering what to do, praying for me. Fortunately there was a young man just getting into his car and in a minute he knew what to do and he got out his cell phone and he called for the ambulance. I came to hearing him say, "An elderly lady has just fallen in the parking lot." I thought, "What a coincidence! Somebody else has fallen." No, it was me.

Somebody gave me a verse not long ago that says something to the tune of, "Forsake me not, O God, in my old age, till I have declared thy power to the next generation." That was Solomon's prayer and that's mine.

So whether we're young and we remember him in our youth and we get going, whether we're middle-aged and we're messing up, there's time to come back because it's such a brief opportunity that we have on this timeline. Somebody's put eternity in everybody's heart. We have so much going for us, we believers.

People don't know what it is, but there's a something out there inside. There's somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, there has to be something more than this. It doesn't matter what culture you're from. Stewart and I have been in six continents. We have been among Buddhists, we have been among Jews, we have been among Muslims, we have been among atheists, we have been among self-proclaimed material people. It's a devastating thing to live in a culture that's an atheistic culture. But I want to tell you something: God has put eternity in the hearts of men and they cannot jettison that. It's impossible.

My interpreter was a little girl in Thailand, brought up in a Buddhist village. Father the biggest Buddhist in the village. Wanted to become a Buddhist nun. So she went to her teacher in school and she said find me a nun to mentor me so that I can become the best Buddhist in the world. So the teacher was found and she began to mentor the little girl of six. Two years she mentored her and then she had a car accident and died—not the little girl, the nun.

So she went back to the teacher, and meanwhile the teacher had come to Christ. She said, "Oh little girl, Noi, Noi, what you need is Jesus Christ," and she led her to the Lord. That's what she'd been trying to do, but something in her heart—we know what it was, eternity, the sense of time and eternity that God has put in the heart of man—kept telling her it's not true, it's not true. When she heard about Jesus, when she heard the gospel, she said it's true, it's all true.

Came to faith, eight years of age, went back, told her dad, told the village. They were horrified. Stood her in the middle of the whole village and said you have to recant, you're a shame to us. Her father said you can't live in our house unless you recant. We love you, you love us; recant for us. She said, "But it's all true. It's all true. How can I recant?"

So Noi was sent away from her home. Didn't even let her go back and get anything. She wandered through the villages until a family took her in. Grew up, found Christians, went to Bible school, ended up on the OM ships and then went back to Thailand. She said to me, "Jill, somebody put eternity in my heart. I knew there was a something else. I knew there was an afterlife."

Somebody put eternity in our hearts. When I came to faith, I was given three books by C.S. Lewis. I found out just lately, because I wrote an essay about him for another book somebody was writing, that he was at Cambridge at the same time I was, but I didn't know. I never heard him, I just read his books. What a waste! Wish I could go back and do that one again.

But in one of his books, I remember very clearly reading this: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." Of course! There's something in my heart, there's something in your heart, and there's something in everybody's heart in the world that says I was made for another world.

And if I find in myself a desire which no experience in the world—and that's what this book tells you about—it talks about Solomon trying all the experiences, all the things that life, the good things and the bad things, folly and wisdom, foolishness and goodness. If you find that at the end of that as Solomon found, meaningless, pointless, emptiness, that's because you were made for another world. There's always something more, and even if you have everything, it's never enough. Was it Iacocca that was asked how much is enough? He said, "Just a little bit more than what I've got." I think it was Iacocca.

We have this intuitive sense that we're made for another world. We're a mist, we're a breath. Other translation says we're a fog, we're a puff of smoke. The merest of breaths says the teacher, the merest of breaths, everything's a breath. Even the oldest person on earth has such little time to contemplate the challenges of eternity because time is excruciatingly short.

Ecclesiastes, the teacher, says we had better therefore pay attention to the most important matters and not presume to listen to the devil telling us we've got all the time in the world. We don't know how much time we've got. I'm nearly into overtime, and some of you might be in overtime and not know it and you're young. We don't know, do we?

Life is brief. Therefore, remember your creator in your youth. If you are young, you have an incredible opportunity not to waste your life, not to waste this breath that God has given you. He's given it to you for one reason: to know him. In Genesis 6, the Bible says that God looked down and saw the imagination of everybody's heart was only evil all the time continually. He said I've had it, I've had it. I'm going to wipe them from the earth. That's literally what it says in Genesis 6.

I'm going to wipe them from the earth, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. When I get to heaven, the first person I'm going to find is Noah. The reason I have had a chance to accept Christ, to choose life, is because of Noah. God was about to wipe us all off and I don't blame him. Scrunch it up and start another universe somewhere else, and maybe another human race.

But Noah, but Noah, but Noah, one man. One man repented, one man said I'll do it, I'll fear God, I'll obey you. One man. God said well if there's one man there could be others if I let the human life and human race continue. So Noah found grace, something he didn't deserve, one little bit, but God gave it him because God is grace.

We live in the grace place. This is the grace place. We live in the grace place, and we can come to God. We have a chance to know not only the fullness of life, but also the fullness of what's there after death as well. James 4:13 says, "Now listen you who say today or tomorrow we'll go to this or that city, carry on business there and make money. Why? You don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You're a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Indeed you should say if it's the Lord's will, we shall live and do this or that."

Planning on a move? Planning on going to this or that city and do business? Have you referred to God? All that you do, says James, all this boasting and bragging we're going to go here, we're going to do this, we're going to choose a career for ourselves, is evil. Not even ill-advised, evil, because the whole point, the whole thing, is that we should know God and enjoy him forever.

Remember hearing about a little boy who was being catechized. The teacher said, "What is the chief end of man?" Incidentally that question from the catechism comes from this passage, Ecclesiastes chapter 12. "What is the chief end of man?" The little boy said, "Please sir, I think it is to fear God and endure him forever." I think that's what some Christians think it is.

To fear God and enjoy him forever. Do you enjoy your Christianity? Do you enjoy your relationship with God? There is no true joy without ordering our lives after the God of order. So don't let your heart be distracted by time and its toys. Life is brief. Life is boring. You can read this in chapter one: all things are wearisome more than one can say. What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again.

There's nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say look this is something new? Everything's so weary and tiresome. Round and round it goes like the sun goes round the world, like the waters start in the rivers are taken up and make clouds and come back down again. The daily round and round and round, so boring.

Life is brief. Life is boring. One day when I had the twins with me when they were smaller, David and Christie, I was lying them on pieces of paper and drawing round them just for fun, trying to find something to occupy them. Christie was lying down and I said now I'm going to draw round her and then we'll color her in, and then I'm going to draw round David and color him in.

I'd only just started round the top of their head down to here and David, who was watching intently, and Christie, who was lying like this, David says to Christie, "Is this boring?" I thought I've only just started and they're bored. You parents, you grandparents, know that word, don't you? How many times do you hear your kids say, "It's boring"?

Now life is not intended to be boring. That is not on God's agenda for us. The good things of life like crafts and drawing and just the normal things, the eating, the drinking, the working, the labor, that's a theme all the way through this book. This is meant to be enjoyed, not endured. Not only our relationship with God but our relationship with the family, with each other.

The good simple things of life. People have forgotten to enjoy the simple things of life; they think they need the bells and whistles. Let me tell you, let Solomon tell you. He had more bells and whistles than anybody in the world. God said before him or would have after him. He comes to the end and he says it's all meaningless. I surveyed everything, it's all meaningless. No point to it.

Then he says life is brief, life is boring, and life is a bear. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. But somebody put eternity in my heart, says Solomon. Somebody gave me the gift of time though brief to realize it. Somebody whispered to my soul that I was made for another world, and though I live my life this side of the front door of forever, somehow I know that somebody is home in the universe and is waiting to ask me what on earth were you doing.

Will I answer I was chasing the wind? Will I hear him say that's not exactly what I had in mind for you? Or shall it be I will answer him Lord God as best I know how I feared you and kept your commandments, for that is the reason you created and redeemed me and that is my chief end and my highest joy, my highest joy, my highest joy.

I think it was Erma Bombeck, that wonderful theologian, who said if life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits? That's a good line. There is a certain rhythm to life: time to die, a time to be born, a time to mourn, a time to dance. Not that God said it's a good time to mourn, it's a good time to kill, it's a good time to hate. That was not his intention. It's what we did.

We are living on this timeline in a period called after the fall with a sinful nature. That was not what God planned, that was not what God intended. But there is a rhythm to the life he has allowed us to live in order that we might have a chance to find him, to know him, and to enjoy him. There's a rhythm to it. For some it's a bowl of cherries, and for some of you it's the pits.

Some of you have come here in a pain pit today or a problem pit or a pressure pit or a pity pit or a penury pit. I'm collecting pits. I had a man tell me in tears, a deacon in a church in Europe, "My daughter has broken my heart; she's fallen in love with a girl. They've moved in together." I had a grandmother tell me, "My heart is broken, there's been a divorce. My children live three blocks away but I'm not allowed to see them, my grandchildren. So I go to the grocery store hoping that I'll bump into them sometime." It's the pits. That's a parent pit.

For some it's the pits, for some it's a bowl of cherries. Some of you are here and you're celebrating and it's bright and it's juicy and it's great. Well, wait a bit round the corner of tomorrow because there is a rhythm of life and time and chance—and that word means events and it's a negative word—happen to everybody, the good and the bad. God sends his rain on the just and the unjust.

But I want to tell you something: God comes to our pits as well as our bowl of cherries. He comes to our bowl of cherries and he says you can't even enjoy them unless I give you the gift and the power to enjoy the good things of life. You need to be connected to me even to enjoy the wealth and the good blessings that God gives you. But I will come to your pit and I will stay there with you, and you will find incredibly you will know joy because we're living in the grace place.

It says in Ecclesiastes 5:18, "Then I realized it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot." Moreover, when God gives me wealth and possessions—there's three things here—when God gives me, notice not you making it, God gives you the power to get wealth the Bible says. When God gives any man wealth and possessions, number one enables him to enjoy them. You can't do that all by your little self apart from knowing God. Enables him to enjoy. Number two to accept his lot in life. Number three and be happy in his work.

This is a gift of God. Another verse: it's a gift of God that every man to whom he has granted wealth and riches and the power to enjoy them—same verse but a different translation—should accept his lot and rejoice in his labor. Contentment, absent in our world and too often absent in the church.

Paul said I'm content with such things as I have for he has said he will never leave me nor forsake me. Joy is the present presence of God. Joy is Jesus, God in Galilean cloth, making my heart smile. I remember at my mother-in-law's funeral we sang her favorite hymn. It was the hymn she discovered the day after she was saved. "Heaven above is softer blue, earth around is sweeter green, something gleams in every hue Christ-less eyes have never seen. Birds with sweeter songs o'erflow, earth-born beauties shine, since I know as now I know that I am his and he is mine."

The good things graced with his presence and even the bad things graced with his presence. He comes to the pit and he enables us to enjoy the bowl of cherries. And when God came to earth in Christ, when he walked in our fields and he sat at our tables, when he wore our clothes and he went to our weddings and he cried at our funerals, when he visited our pits and our bowl of cherries, he wanted us to know joy.

I sat in a room in some Asian country that shall be nameless with 38 pastors' wives. It was the pastor's bedroom, they'd closed his church down. Sat on a hard floor six hours a day, and they told me this was the first biblical teaching they had ever received. When I came back I wrote, "Those sweet women know the difference between hardship and inconvenience." Do we? Happily though not without tears they count ministry a privilege, not a punishment. They don't whine and they show up at church even if it means two hours' walking to get there.

I had a ministry of presence, silence, and tears, and it changed me and hopefully my soul will never return to its original shape. I don't think it will. From their eyes he beckoned me, from their lives his love was shared till I lost sight of them and saw the Christ instead. And I have pictures, you can come and see them, I have them in the back of my file right here.

Oh the joy! Everybody I've shown these pictures to said look at their faces. I asked them what was hard about ministry in their situation and they said, "No salary." Would you work without salary? Would you be dependent on the church supplying your needs? That's hard, they said, but oh what a privilege to suffer with the suffering church and the joy of salvation takes care of the rest.

And incidentally, joy is an evangelist. Once in Africa, I was walking along a path and a group of Africans came, and the African church is a singing church. And a group was coming and they were singing, and the people with me said, "Oh, they're Christians." You always know when the Christians are coming, they're always singing. Singing as they go to the well, singing as they work in the fields. Singing! And joy is an evangelist because when those particular people in that particular part of Africa want to become a believer, do you know what they say? They don't say I want to join the church, they don't say I want to go into new members' class, they don't say I believe, they don't even say I'm converted. They say, "I want to sing."

Wow! Why do they say that? Because all they can see all over the Christians' life is joy. And incidentally this is in one of the poorest of the poor African nations. I want to sing, I want to be like that, I want to know how these people can sing sitting in this rotting village with garbage thrown out of their houses that's never ever been collected. What have they got to sing about? Jesus! The joy of their salvation. Joy is an evangelist.

When we sang my favorite song at the moment, "Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart, teach me to move in the power of your spirit, teach me to walk in the light of your presence, teach me to dance to the beat of your heart," when we sang that I thought of where we sang it: in Jerusalem, in the middle of the bombings. And I looked around at the Messianic church that were singing that song and I said, "Stewart, they are dancing to the beat of his heart. Look at their faces, just look at their faces."

Do you know this joy? This is the whole thing, this is the point, this is what it's all about. And it comes when you fear God. How can fear and joy mix? It's a mystery. But fear really means you stand in awe of him. And the reading that we had said what to do when you go into the house of God: you go to listen, not to offer the sacrifice of fools with your mouth. And when you've listened, you will hear something from the one shepherd that we read about in chapter 12 which will make your heart dance, whether you're in the cherries or in the pits.

Joy comes when we live rightly before God and we please him. And the old devil's a killjoy who was a murderer from the beginning, and he wants to rob you of God and he wants to rob God of you. And too many Christians live in fear. We expect people that don't know the Lord to live in fear, to be looking here and there for external security instead of internal security and eternal security, which is the only security that enables you to live and sleep well.

There is a marvelous verse in the scriptures. Let me read it to you, Ecclesiastes 2:22. "What does a man gain for all the toil and anxious striving with which he is laboring under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is frustrating." And do you know what that literally means? His body lies down, but his mind sits up.

Wow! His body lies down—has that ever happened to you? That's because your mind and your heart and your life and the chief end of it is the gift that God has given you and not the God that gave you the gifts. Who can sleep well? The one who's been forgiven, the one who's been forgiven much, the one who's been restored to God who's fallen away. You won't lie down with your body and your mind sit up. And the old devil will try and make it that way, but it doesn't need to be. And we can banish fear. That's what that verse says. Banish means dispel, send away.

Under the authority, the dictionary says, to send away under the authority of the local government. Well, we have a local government, and the government of God can dispel fear, dispel anxiety, so that you can lie down and your mind doesn't immediately sit up worrying. What Solomon said is your mind sits up worrying about what you're going to do with all these wonderful things that you're leaving to some idiot that's going to blow it all when you've gone. Says that's what causes people not to sleep. Well, I've spent my life making all of this and who's going to and what they're going to do with it afterwards. Said you don't need to worry about that because God keeps you occupied by gladness of heart.

Wonderful verse: what are you occupied with? Gladness of heart! Your past is forgiven and your present is full and your future is assured. You can lie down with your body and put your mind to sleep in his arms. That's how it works. And there's joy.

I don't know where you are on the timeline. Maybe you're in overtime. I remember struggling with my 50th birthday and my husband said, "Were you born at the right time?" Yes. "Have you been living at the right pace?" Yes. "Then you'll be dead on time," he said. Doesn't that help, Joe? No.

So how are we going to spend it? Fearing him, obeying him, enjoying him, or chasing the wind? Incredibly, the choice is ours. Pray with me, if you will.

Somebody put eternity in my heart, and God I believe it was you. And it will not go away. This inner knowledge that time and its toys are not the chief end of man won't let me forget it. And God, there is an eternal dimension about me that cannot be changed, drowned in the pool of agnosticism or jettisoned at will because this is how you made me, and I cannot unmake myself.

In this quiet moment I would invite you to do business with God. Respond to what you've heard him say to you now in the quietness.

Dear Lord, remind us that life will not be empty if you fill it. Life will not be meaningless if you will give it meaning. And brief though our time may be, thank you for the time you have gifted us with: time enough to find you, love you, worship you, fear you, obey you, and enjoy you. Thank you for the grace place and the one who made it possible, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in his name we pray, amen.