 Okay, do we have a good sound check there? You're on. Yeah, I'm good. Terrific. Well, let me give a quick outline of where we're going. For those of you that are new, what's happening in this class is we're going through the major creation texts of the Bible and we've made it all the way through to Ecclesiastes. It's my goal to try to finish up the book of Ecclesiastes, if not this week, next week. And then we're going to jump into the book of Isaiah. We might actually address the verses in the song of Solomon, but hey, it's not a major creation text, but we're going to do something a little bit different. We get to the book of Isaiah. I've actually prepared a set of questions, study questions for all of you, so you're going to actually be doing a little bit of work as you go through the book of Isaiah. I'm going to begin with an introduction because Isaiah actually had a major impact in my coming to faith in Jesus Christ, so I'm going to kind of set the table for you. And we're not going to go through the book of Isaiah verse by verse. We're basically going to be going through and picking up the apologetics content that's in the book of Isaiah. You've heard me say this before that of all the books of the Bible, it's Isaiah that gives us the most detailed description of the doctrine for the Trinity, but it also gives us the most detailed description on the origin and history of the universe. And these are both things that we can now establish are correct by looking at the record of nature. I've given a brief talk here before about how science only makes sense that God is triune. We'll unpack that in a little more detail as we go through the book of Isaiah, specifically about what he says about that very thing. But before we go into that, I just wanted to show you a couple of things. One is that NASA has released this incredible photo. It will turn the lights off in a minute. And just an announcement, this class is live streamed. So we had someone back there actually feeling the routine questions. If we get a non-routine question, we'll actually address it here in class. But all of you, if you're visitors, you're welcome to ask questions. I don't mind being interrupted because if I don't finish my lessons, I've got next week to finish it. But that also explains why we get through our content as slowly as we do. But I'll try to keep things on pace here as we move through. But yeah, if you step in front of the cameras, you will be live streamed to the internet. And incidentally, we record everything here in this class, both with audio and video. So if people want to pick up on what we've been talking about here, they can download it from paradoxes.org. And that's the website for the class, paradoxes.org. In fact, you can actually go back 30, 40 years and listen to class discussion that we had. We do take the time of editing out all the announcements. However, those people that do the announcements have been asking, could we please have special MP3s, which are announcements only. But so far, we've not had anyone volunteer to pick up that task. And I don't know what kind of audience we would get for that anyway, especially if the announcements are 35 years old. So, but yeah, a couple of things I wanted to show you. And one I deleted by mistake from my computer. But you will see it on my Facebook page. It's an image just released by NASA from the Osasaurus satellite, OSIRIS. Osiris, Osiris Rex. And you say, where did they come up with these names? Well, believe it or not, Osiris Rex has a very complicated acronym. In fact, I don't even remember what it is. Although you will see it on my Facebook page exactly what that acronym stands for. As I understand how a number of you people here work at JPL, what have been told at JPL, you can't start the project until you come up with an acronym. That's step one. You've got to come up with an acronym. And I can't remember that from my radio astronomy days. You wouldn't start an astronomy run until you first came up with an acronym for the project that we were working on. So you want to know why scientists love acronyms, that's why. But yeah, what this, how do you pronounce it? Osiris? Osiris. That's Egyptian. That's Egyptian, Osiris. OK. You can use O-Rex if you want to. OK, yeah, O-Rex works as well. That's good. About halfway, this is a spacecraft. It's on its way to mine an asteroid. They're going to an asteroid. They're going to mine stuff and bring it back. So, and this is actually part of a NASA strategy that maybe they will, this is kind of a test, because they're actually thinking about, maybe we could actually mine some of these asteroids for real. Why? Because there's actually asteroids out there with a metal value that exceeds one quadrillion dollars. There's actually a big asteroid out there that's nothing but platinum group metals. Can you imagine that? And so, yeah, it's tempting. Let's go out there and mine that thing and bring all that platinum and gold and silver back to the Earth. And it's not as ridiculous as it sounds. They said, well, rather than going into the big one, maybe we could find a small one and maybe we can drag it back to an orbit around the moon or around the Earth, which would make it much easier to mine. And as silly as this may sound, they've actually economically priced it out. They could drive the price of these precious metals down by about a factor of 10 if they were actually to go out and grab one of these asteroids. So, yeah. But it also could be a fulfillment of Revelation chapter 6 where it talks about this big star crashing into the Earth and poisoning our fresh water supply. So maybe a NASA accident is going to be the fulfillment of Revelation 6, who knows. On the positive side, it could actually greatly increase our technology and wealth. And keep in mind it's the platinum group metals that actually play a big role in the treatment of cancer. So it's not just increasing the wealth. They could have a major impact on our health. Anyway, I was going to show you that image this morning. I deleted it by mistake with my computer. But if you go to my Facebook page, it's there. And what it shows you is the Earth and the Moon together. It's not the first time we've had a shock from outer space of the Earth and the system. That's the first time I actually see the Moon and the Earth well separated from one another. And just to give you an idea, the Moon is about 30 Earth diameters away from the Earth. So it's not as close as what you might think. And this image actually shows that. But what I'm going to show you is a set of eight photos released yesterday from NASA of Jupiter. And what's special about this is that they've taken the Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting around Jupiter, and they've lowered the orbit. And what they've released are the highest resolution, most color-detailed photos of Jupiter to date. And we will need the lights off for you to be able to especially appreciate this. Voyager 1 took a good separated shot of the Earth and the Moon as it left here. So that's maybe the second one. Yeah, second one, but there's a little better resolution. OK, this is the Juno craft. And incidentally, Juno is going to make several close fly buys of Jupiter. So it's just the first set of images that we'll see of Jupiter. And for those that are participating in live streaming or downloading it, we're actually going to put this on the Paradox's daughter website. I have all these on a flash drive. So they'll be available on the website. And so this is kind of a shot of Jupiter as the Juno spacecraft comes in. And here we see it a little bit closer. And so these are all going to be closer and closer. And you get to see the detail of the cloud structure of Jupiter like it's never been seen before. And this is looking down on the pole of Jupiter with more detail with the storm structure at the pole of Jupiter. OK, these are all different gases that are being mixed together. You get methane, ammonia. You actually have a little bit of water and carbon dioxide, helium, hydrogen all being mixed there. And you've probably heard of the Great Red Spot, which is a huge hurricane that you see on Jupiter. And what this is showing is there's hurricanes all over Jupiter. And the hurricanes in Jupiter, you get wind velocities of between 200 and 300 miles per hour. But unlike the hurricanes here on Earth which last for a few days, these hurricanes last for centuries. And you see just hurricanes everywhere. And then here's a more detailed look. At the cloud hurricane structure of Mars. Let's drag it through. Are those true colors? These are true colors. And then I think this is, yeah, that's the last one. So this is where the spacecraft zoomed in really close. And you just see the detail. And there's just storms everywhere. You get big hurricanes, little hurricanes. But it's nothing but nonstop hurricanes and the atmosphere of Jupiter all the time. Do you have some idea of the scale of that picture? Yes, I can. Jupiter, let me take it back a little bit. OK, let's go back one more. OK, it would take 11 planet Earths to go from one edge to the other edge of Jupiter. So some of these storms you see are the size of the Earth. So they're not like little hurricanes we have that are a few tens of miles across. These are literally thousands of miles across. So for example, this little storm that you see here, that's the size of the Earth. This one's the size of the Earth. That one's the size of the Earth. So nothing trivial about Jupiter. OK, before we jump into Ecclesiastes, I also want to tell you about a paper that got published in the Royal Society, Proceedings B, a beast and its ideology. And it's a study of this creature. Anybody know what this creature is? It's a lemur, but it's a special kind of a lemur. What happened here? I got some background stuff here that wasn't supposed to be there. So let me just move off on this. OK. This is what's called the Barrow Sepaka Lemur. It's a very special kind of lemur, highly sociable. Probably one of the most sociable of all lemurs. That's why I mean, we would take our kids to the zoo. They loved the lemurs more than they did the monkeys or the baboons because they were such as social creatures. They're very engaging. Of course, they got those huge eyes because they are diurnal in their behavior. And there's been a lot of studies done on lemurs in Madagascar. And this is a species that does live in Madagascar. But it's a huge group, almost 10 authors, 9 or 10 authors here that studied these creatures for years. And it's the most detailed study of the behavior of these animals to date. But they not only studied the behavior of these animals, they were measuring their DNA repeatedly. And what they're able to do is immediately. And what they're able to determine is that this is a species of lemur that actually developed the capacity to digest certain leaves that other lemurs cannot digest. And what they discovered is they've picked up a microbiome that's unique to their species. And a microbiome refers to the friendly or the symbiotic bacteria that are inside your gut. And we humans benefit from bacteria in our gut. They're able to help us digest food. We otherwise couldn't digest. So what they discovered is this borosapaca is actually able to digest poisonous leaves, toxic leaves. And the reason why is they have this microbiome that's actually able to work within the gut and detoxify these deadly leaves so that they can digest them. And the bacteria do two things. They detoxify these poisonous leaves, but they also enable the lemur to digest the leaves. The leaves are so fibrous that if it wasn't for that gut bacteria, they wouldn't be able to digest them. But what's exciting about this paper is figuring out how it is that this particular species of lemurs is able to pull us off whereas other primates can't. And they discovered all to do with their social behavior. They have not like sometimes with the chimpanzees, they'll have a social group that numbers a couple under chimpanzees. In the case of this species of lemur, the social groups are around about 20. So it's a much smaller social group. But the social groups overlap. So for example, in some cases where the primates are territorial. You've got one set of baboons, for example. This is our territory. Nobody else is getting in. With this species of lemur, they do permit overlap of their territories. And so there's actually some social engagement from one group to the other. But what these researchers notice is the intensity of the social interaction within the particular small group. And so a couple of things they notice is that they groom one another constantly. They're always involved in the grooming. And they're basically taking parasites off of the bodies of these creatures. But the way they groom is interesting. How chimpanzees and baboons will groom with their fingers. These lemurs groom with what they call tooth combs. And so they got specialized teeth that act like combs. And so they'll use their mouth and their tongue actually to groom the body. And the other thing they do is they scent mark. And so they will rub themselves against trees to mark their territory. But what they notice is that they will actually check out the markings of every member of their group. And so they're going around the different trees and rubbing against the scent marking of another member of their little tribe. And what that has done as these researchers discovered is it's actually created a far more diverse microbiome in the stomachs of these creatures. Because so much of the contact is oral. And so they're able to transmit bacteria, friendly bacteria from one individual to another. Now what we see in other primates is that happens between a mother and a child. The very process of being given birth transfers a microbiome from the mother to the child. We see that in all primates. But what they're seeing with these lemurs is that in addition to that, there is this transfer of the microbiome from one individual to another. So as one individual picks up something in the environment, it can get communicated to all members of the tribe. And as a final test of this, when they actually did the DNA test of different individuals, what they discovered is that the most social and most loyal members of the group were the ones that had the most diverse microbiome and the one that benefited the most from the microbiome that they had. And you would think with all of this oral contact that they would be more susceptible to disease. And they said, yeah, we actually see some of that, but the benefits far outweigh whatever decrements they discovered from this thing. But what I thought was interesting is the very end, is they said it's the very tight family groups that really enhance the benefit of the microbiome and the loyalty they have to one another. And it's like, you know, that's something that we human beings can emulate as well because after all, we're seeing an erosion of the tightness of the family social groups today, and especially the extended family were involving cousins, aunts, and uncles. That's, you wrote it considerably over the past several decades. And maybe we could take a lesson from the lemurs because they certainly seem to be benefiting from this. So anyway, I'll be writing an article on this on my blog, probably come up in a week or two. I thought I'd give you an advance notice on that. And now let's see how far we can get through the book of Ecclesiastes, yes. I'll comment briefly. While you are gone, I mentioned a scientific discovery which approved one of your models, an RTV creation model. Your creation model doesn't really get as much credit as it really deserves in predicting scientific discoveries. One of the things I remember 25 years ago, you predicting that science would find that the earliest life on Earth would be complex and that it would happen as soon as the Earth could support life. And that was discovered recently on a team of an Australian scientist in Greenland found fossil bacteria dating back 3.8 billion years. It was more than one species, which means you were correct. It's an complete ecosystem, not just a single bacteria-like thing. So I thought it was a major discovery because it proves that your models and what you've been saying for 25 years is correct. Well, thank you. And yeah, we are on top of that. I think Fuzz is the one that's writing articles on it. But there's two discoveries. One is they've actually found fossil parts of life that dates back at least 3.7 billion years and hints of 3.8. That's a major advance because until this discovery, all we had was isotope evidence. And incidentally, I think the isotope evidence is very good because what we notice with living systems is that they will consume carbon 12 more readily than carbon 13. They'll consume nitrogen 14 more readily than nitrogen 15 and sulfur 32 more readily than sulfur 34. Something about life systems, we like the lighter isotopes of these elements. And incidentally, you're wondering they're all non-radioactive and so the decay has nothing to do with it. But what they've noticed is that in the carbonaceous inclusions of these rocks that date back 3.8, the oldest is 3.825, they find the isotope signatures that tell us that that carbon is from the decay products of living material. So they don't have the actual fossils, but they have three different isotope signatures that tell us that life was present. And what Dave was saying about the fact that it's not just the simplest microbes, even the more complex ones, because what's interesting is that the photosynthetic bacteria, which are very complex, the simplest bacterium has about 400 gene products, but the simplest photosynthetic one has 1400 and your typical one has 3000 to 4000. What's interesting is you get a slightly different isotope ratio for the photosynthetic microbes and you do the non-photosynthetic microbes and they see both, which basically makes the point that it's an ecology of microbes that you see at the origin of life, not a single bacterium, like you get in a traditional materialistic model for the origin of life, but all life comes from a last universal common ancestor. We don't see that, we actually see an ecology of microbes and we're not just talking one metabolic pathway or two metabolic pathways, they've identified five different metabolic pathways in the isotope signatures. But what is new is to say we not only have the isotope evidence, we actually have fossil parts. Because before that, the oldest fossil parts we had were 3.47 billion years. And that's a brand new discovery as well. I announced a little more than a week ago how the team that went to Australia from UCLA, Bill Schoff's research group, if you wanna read what he has done, he's on record as having found the oldest fossils on the earth while members of his team have gone back to Australia and have found much more definitive evidence of fossils there that date back to 3.5 billion years. And again, it shows a complex ecology of microbes rather than just a single species. So yeah, these are major advances that are telling us, number one, life originated on planet Earth very quickly, not over billions of years, but in a geologic instant. We know that because the conditions just previous to the earliest date for the origins of life rule out the possibility of life existing on the earth. He got an event called the late heavy bombardment which basically sterilizes the planet. And immediately after that, we got life everywhere. So for as one, Niles Eldridge said in his book, he says the very moment that life can possibly exist on the earth, we have life. Life is intrinsic to the earth. It just happens immediately. So it happens very quickly. It's a complex ecology, not just a single species. And we're talking about not just simple microbes but complex microbes as well. And evidently, we're talking a great abundance. It's everywhere. Everywhere where we see these most ancient rocks, we see the signatures of life. It's not just in one or two places. How many gene products again could you call that? Okay, the simplest photosynthetic life form has about 1,450. Your more typical ones, three to 4,000. Now, the isotope signatures are not able to tell you exactly how many gene products. So we know it has to be a minimum of about 1,450. Well, when they talk about the simplest life form having 400 gene products, keep in mind that's a parasitical life form. It can't exist by itself. The simplest life form that can exist by itself has about 1,200 gene products in it. So yeah, but there are parasitical ones that have less because they depend on other microbes to fill in what they can't do for themselves. Yes. The interesting I saw reading the articles is the scientific community obviously very much understood the implications of this last discovery because there were a lot of people upset saying it's too early, it's too complex. You must be wrong. It's too early and too complex. Now, Australia people came back and said, the fossils are there. You can look at them. The rocks were pure. It wasn't mixture, it wasn't contaminated and the fossils were there. So of course they're standing by their discovery. Even though people are very upset at it because they realize the implication that there's no time for evolution. Well, we saw that Fuzeran and I at one of the original flight research conferences we attended where there was a major debate about this fight in Australia. Were these really fossils or were they just things that look like fossils and really had nothing to do with life? And the debate went on literally all day back and forth. What's new about this fight in Australia is it's removed the debate. There's now no question that these really are fossils of living organisms. And so that has settled that debate. But I can remember being present there at the original flight conference and you're right. It was basically atheist researchers coming forward and says this can't possibly be life. Because if it is life, look at the philosophical implications. And none of us likes those implications. So this has got to be wrong. And Bill Shaw stood up and says, I don't like it either. Because he himself is an atheist. He says, I don't like it either. But it doesn't matter whether I like it or not. This is the data. And I believe the data really is the signature of life. So, and I would refer to Bill as a friendly atheist. And we got to talk to him and he just says, you know, this is where I come from. But he says, I'm gonna stand by the data regardless of whether I like it or not. So I found that quite commendable. Yes. So what I understand the evolutionists say is that inanimate material involved in the living material, there's like chemical evolution. And they call that the biogenesis, right? Correct. So there's still no theories about, there's no theories that they have to try to account for that, right? Still, even now, you haven't heard it or run across anything as of lately? Well, late last July, Buzz and I went to the very latest origin of life conference. It was held at UC San Diego. And what we noticed comparing that conference to previous conferences is the ideal biogenesis model is even more troubled today than it was at the previous times. And what I think what was new at that conference is they finally recognize they're really up the creek without a paddle when it comes to trying to get all the amino acids in the left-handed configuration and the ribose sugars right-handed. Because the latest experiments, and they knew this even 20 years ago, that if you want to take a mixture of left and right-handed amino acids and make them all left-handed, you expose it to certainly polarized ultraviolet light. And if it's sufficiently monochromatic, it will destroy the right-handed amino acids at a faster rate than the left-handed. But here's the problem. It does destroy both. It just destroys the right-handed a little more efficiently than the left-handed. But the latest experiments that they announced at this July conference, basically said we've done enough of these experiments now to realize that as you begin to approach purity, in other words, as you begin to get up to 100% left-handed, never got there. They got to about 80-something percent. But what they said is we were able to project and realize that if you actually were trying to go all the way to 100 or close to 100, you wind up with no sample at all. You literally destroy everything. So you mentioned the models in trouble. Did they ever really have a model or did they just kept trying to find it? Well, kind of where they operate from, Doug, is they say, well, you know, one thing we know for sure, God wasn't involved in this at all. So we got to figure out some way to make this work without a God. And so they keep trying these different things, but everything's a dead end. And we're not just talking a problematic dead end. It's, we're looking at intractable problems. You know, and this is one example. Even when you're working in a laboratory where you're controlling everything, you know, what you wind up with, you find the closer you get to purity, the more of the original sample you destroy and nothing's left by the time you get to around 90%. And so it's like, okay, there really doesn't appear to be any materialistic pathway. The other dramatic thing that happened at the conference is they devoted an evening, but they had five of the leading origin of life researchers get up and comment on, are we in a position where we can understand where the building blocks of life molecules come from? And all five got up and said, gave a 10 minute talk, summarizing their research. By the end of the conclusion, the moderator said, okay, yes or no? All five of them said no. Moreover, but they said at the very end, not only have we no understanding where these building blocks come from, we don't even know where the building blocks or the building blocks come from. So, yeah, and that was a new concession made at that conference. If you wanna listen to more of the details of that, Buzz and I did do a podcast where we kind of did a review of what happened over that week long conference at the UC San Diego. And any of you who are interested, we actually have a collection of all the abstracts of those. And that's what's interesting because I noticed in the original life research community, they had these conferences and they speak and they put out all these abstracts but it typically takes three to five years before the peer-reviewed research papers show up in the literature. Which is why Buzz and I go to these conferences whenever they're in North America. Now, if they have them in Mongolia or someplace like that, we don't go because it's too expensive to go, but we do go to everyone that's here in North America. But that's one reason we do it is because we realize we're gonna be exposed to material that won't be published for two, three, four, in some cases, five years. Okay, can we get into Ecclesiastes? All right, chapter 11. It says, cast your bread upon the waters. For after many days, you'll find it again. Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land. And then it goes on in verse three. The clouds are full of water, they pour rain upon the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or the north in the place where it falls, there will lie. Whoever watches the wind will not plant. Whoever looks at the clouds will not reap. As you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed within the mother's womb, so you cannot understand all the works of God, the maker of all things. So your seed in the morning and in evening, let not your hand be idle, you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that or whether both will do equally well. Now, typically when you read commentaries on these verse eight verses of Ecclesiastes 11, it's interpreted in the context of economics. In other words, diversify your investments because you don't know which investment's gonna succeed and which one will fail. There you go, money, investor's guide. All right, somebody's already following that advice. Or others will say, well, I think this applies to agriculture and you wanna diversify your agriculture because you don't know which crop is gonna succeed and which crop will fail. And that's particularly true in the early history of humanity when the climate was a lot less stable than it is right now. And so this is often interpreted as investment. But keep in mind the larger context of the book of Ecclesiastes is that it's a guide to help us reach the fool. That's a particular kind of fool. Be careful when you use that word because in our English culture, we kind of interpret it in a negative context every time. As we've mentioned here in the class before, there are five different Hebrew words that are translated as fool. The one of the book of Ecclesiastes is predominantly addressing is the one who says there is no God. The fool said in his heart, there is no God. Now, yeah, the ball, exactly. And that may be a very rational, logical person, maybe a very morally upright person, but it's basically someone as a philosophical worldview, there is no God. And I need to live by life accordingly. And so if we interpret the book of Ecclesiastes and incidentally, this isn't the only interpretation. It's one of many interpretations that this is a handbook and how we who are followers of Jesus Christ can reach people who have this viewpoint that there is no God. Okay, so what I wanna do is kinda take you through these eight verses in that context. How can we interpret this as a guide to help us reach people who say how there is no God? Well, cast your bread upon the waters. I'm basically suggesting what it's saying. And I think this is backed up by what else we see in the book of Ecclesiastes. Don't just use one technique or one method and try to persuade someone who thinks there is no God that there really is a God. Have a variety of tools in your chest. You don't know what's gonna work on a particular individual. After all, everyone that has this feeling in their heart that there is no God, they're all different. You're not gonna reach them with the same tool every time. And being a professional apologist, I kinda see this as a criticism of a lot of my peers. A lot of them go out and train people and say, this is a silver bullet. Use this trick and it'll work every time. Well, it'll work on a certain small segment of the community of people who believe there is no God. This passage is telling us you want a diverse tool chest. So, one of the cards I hand out when I speak in churches basically is a card that says these are the four categories of scientific evidences that typically prove to be helpful in persuading people that there's a God. I purposely put four there because I don't want people to think there's gonna be one that will always work at one time. But they're the four that statistically have had the biggest impact. Namely, talk about the origin of the universe. Talk about the design of the universe and a planetary system that make possible our existence. Talk about the origin of life and talk about the origin of humanity. Those four have always risen to the top with people who have that mindset. Now, there's obviously more than those four, but what I do in purpose is try to communicate to people, hey, don't just look at the origin of the universe as the only tool you need. There's a diversity here and depending on a person's background, one might impact them more than the other. And frankly, as I've been engaging educated people who have this point of view that there is no God, it doesn't take just one bullet. They need many. And so one reason why I developed those four that comes from Anthony Blue, who was probably the most famous atheist debater of the 20th century. But he wound up late in his life in his 80s becoming a theist. And what he said to people was the four evidences that changed me from being an atheist to a theist was the origin of the universe, the design of the universe to make possible our existence, the origin of life and the origin of human beings. And he's not alone. Many of his ilk have also named those four. Now, obviously there's more, but that's kind of the point of this text here. Make sure you got a diverse tool chest of apologetics tools, which is why you got more than one book and more than one DVD and the table over there. And you know, people tell me, okay, what's the best thing I can get off the resource table to reach my father who's not a Christian? My response is, well, tell me about your father. Because I mean, not all fathers are gonna be reached by the same tool. And so, you know, they've been raised in the church. They've had an exposure to the Bible. What is their main objection to the idea that there's a God? And then I'll recommend one. Why don't you start with that? But I always tell people that. Start with this particular book. Don't end with that book. That's gonna be the door opener. And then you're gonna want to expose it to other resources. Moreover, don't just give them a book or a DVD. I think that's great. I do that all the time. I mean, I'm giving away stuff to people I meet. They knock on my door, I give them something. And... And... Well, you'd be amazed at how many people I've been able to influence who've come to do some plumbing or some electrical work on their home. Or, you know, the people who have been working on the power poles or trees in the backyard. Almost every time I'm able to engage and figure out what their issue is and say, this is a book I think you need to start with. But here's the trick. When you give them something, arrange to have a follow-up meeting two, three weeks later, not more than a month later, and just say, hey, why don't you think of that resource I gave you? And they might say, oh, I haven't had a chance to pick it up yet. But they'll say, you know what, I've been meaning to pick it up, so no problem. How about if we get together for a month from now? Then it gives them time to get it. And then you get to sit down. And at that meeting, you can figure, okay, what's the next tool I need to give them? And so kind of look at it as a process. And that's kind of what this text is saying. And the last time I was here in class, three of you came up to me and asked me, okay, I've been praying for a relative or a friend to come to faith in Christ. And nothing's been happening. And so you'll tell me about your prayers. And what I've been discovering is that they're basically making the same prayer over and over again. So you know what, God hears you the first time. You don't have to repeat it. And actually there's a couple of texts in Matthew and Luke where Jesus says, don't pray like the Pharisees pray or like the Gentiles pray where they do these repetitious prayers. And you know, that's kind of the common denominator we see with people in other religions. You look at the Buddhists, the Hindus, you look at the Muslims, they do these rote prayers over and over again. Sometimes every day they make the same prayer. And basically we have Jesus telling us in Luke and Matthew, don't pray that way. Or it can take you to this text, diversity, okay? God hears you saying, I want my son to come to faith in Jesus Christ or I want my uncle to come to faith in Jesus Christ. Okay, how do you want that to happen? And then you might say, okay, I think this is how I'd like it to happen. And get God permission to shake his head and say, no, no, no, that's not the way I wanna do it. And then you pray again. And diversity of prayer. God wants you to be engaged with him. He will act when you pray according to his will. But he wants you to work with him on discovering exactly what that will is. And it may be that God says, you know what? I'm gonna do all four of the things that you asked me to do and bringing your mother to faith in Jesus Christ. But I don't like the order. Can we change the order around? And can I add a fifth thing? That requires being involved in God with diverse prayers, specific prayers. Now you say, well, how are you pulling that out of the text? I'm just saying there's a general principle here. And given the larger context of the book of Ecclesiastes, at least in one context is a handbook and how to reach these people to say there is no God. I think it's appropriate to apply it in this particular way. Notice too, as you move from verse three to verse eight, it's basically saying, stay busy. Notice the exhortations throughout here. Don't look for excuses to be idle. Basically make the comment about the farmer. Hey, if you're worried about the wind, you're never gonna plant. If you're worried about the rain, now you're never going to reap. And so things might happen, it might be unpleasant, but keep yourselves busy. So even if it's not working, keep yourself busy. And so again, I think we can apply that to our ministry of trying to reach people who say there is no God. Stay at it, keep busy. Make sure you retain what it says in first beat or three. Be gracious, be gentle, be respectful, but stay engaged. It makes a big impression on the non-Christian when you maintain engagement in their life and where it's not repetitious. You're engaging them in different ways. But that's what you see for verse three and following. Okay, cast your bread upon the waters. Be diverse in what you're trying to do, but don't let yourself be idle. After all, you only got a few decades here in the face of the earth, don't waste your time. Stay busy, or you do not know what will succeed. And so again, it's making the point, don't worry about the failures. It's through failures that you actually come up with success. And that was a tip I got when I first started my undergraduate physics research. As they said, you know, it's through your failures that you're actually gonna be able to solve the problems, that you're engaging. Same thing with these problem assignments they give us. I remember one, we had this one physics professor, and he wanted to be fired for what he did. But what he did is he gave us an assignment December 15th, and it was 100 problems that we had to solve. And it took about a little more than 100 pages to leave the whole solution. It was due Christmas Eve at his house. And so, and it literally took us, working nonstop all week to finish those problems and deliver them to his door. And he said, I got a Christmas present for you when we delivered the problem assignment. It was a second problem assignment. That was his Christmas present to each one of us. And he says, this one is due New Year's Eve. So this quote time off we had between Christmas and New Year's was all consumed by this one professor. However, I learned something, as I said, the chairman of the physics department wound up firing him for being, quote, cruel to his undergraduate students. So, I didn't complain, but several others did. But I learned something from him. He says, you know, these problems are really difficult. And the only way you're gonna get a passing grade on this assignment is to learn from your failures. So yeah, work on the problems and don't get discouraged when you don't get the right answer. And you know, when you fail, that's gonna show you the pathway towards the correct answer. And sometimes it takes six or seven failures before you finally figure it out. And his comment was, look, I'm wanting to train you not just to be good theoreticians, but to be good experimentalists. Because when you're in a lab, the same principle applies. Don't be discouraged by things that don't work or by your failures. It's through your failures you'll be able to figure out how to actually make the experiment work and not to be resourceful. And incidentally, as one things I really appreciate about my education at the University of British Columbia, they really stress resourcefulness. So for example, we would go into a laboratory setting and there'd be almost no equipment on the table at all and we need to do this complex experiment. That I remember one where we had to measure the surface tension of this fluid that we'd be pulling out of an eyedropper. And I said, okay, we got the eyedropper. What else do we have here? And we quickly realized we needed a thermometer. Well, there's no thermometer. We needed a clock. There was no clock. And so what we had to figure out is, well, you know what? Our blood temperature is about 98.6 degrees and we got this tap here. We did have a little sink with a tap in it. And so we could pour water out of it. And we knew in Vancouver that the water was always the same temperature as it came off of the snow melt off the mountains. So we knew the temperature difference. We actually attached between, what we did is put it underneath our tongue, which is about a degree less than your body temperature and then attached it to the little thing where the water was coming out. So that was our thermometer. And then for a clock, we used our heart rate. And so we were able to figure it out to an in 10% precision. But a lot of the students got nowhere. They just couldn't get started. And they kept doing that to us anyway. That's a walk of subject. But the whole point is you don't know the pathway by which you will succeed. And the only way you're gonna figure it out is keep trying and don't let the failure stop you. The failure to tell you what is wrong, when you figure out enough stuff that's wrong, eventually you'll reach into the path that is right. Kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle, right? The piece doesn't fit, try another piece. That doesn't fit, try another piece. Eventually you'll find the piece that fits. And so how to rule that all out. I don't see Jackie Stewart here. There was one time when we were trying to do, we did a lesson here on how to fit together passages in a consistent way. And this is when I was in my 30s. And people were struggling. So what I did the next Sunday, I came with a jigsaw puzzle box for every person in the class. And basically said, I want you to work up the principles of how to put together a jigsaw puzzle the fastest way possible. There's a procedure. It's basically a procedure whereby you figure out how can I minimize the number of errors I'm making before I find the correct error. And there's a strategy. And so it took the class two separate Sunday lessons before they actually figured out the best strategy for doing this. But afterwards a bunch of them bought jigsaw puzzles. And you know, I used to hate jigsaw puzzles. Now that I can beat all my relatives at this, I think I'm going to start enjoying this. But again, it's kind of a principle here. Keep occupied, don't give up, because that often happens when people are doing hard jigsaw puzzles. They get stuck and they give up. Say no, keep learning from your mistakes and keep trying to figure out the best principles. There's a way to minimize the number of dead ends that you'll come across. Okay, that's the first aid verses. And then it jumps into verses, actually seven through 10. White is sweet and it pleases the eye to see the sun. However, many a year a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is meaningless. Be happy, young man, while you're young and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see. But know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment. So, and then it goes on into chapter 12, which we'll see in the next page, an exhortation to the young man or the young woman. And basically saying, when you're young, all your days look sunny. But in your youth, remember, days of darkness will come. Okay, and for those of you that are young here in the class, talk to somebody who's 20 or 30 years older and say, have you ever had a bad day in your life? I'll bet you they'll be able to tell you about a few bad days of that in your life. And the point to this text is, young man, young woman, it's gonna happen to you too. And for a lot of young people, it's already happened. In fact, my parents said it's a miracle that any teenager makes it to their 20 because of all the risks they take during their youthful years. And now that my sons are in their 20s, they're starting to tell me stories of things that they did that they never told me that they did. And it's like. It's safe now. It's safe now. I'm horrified to learn what they did. It's like, you could have killed yourself doing that. It's like, you don't think about that in the days of your youth. But basically what this text is saying is, in the days of your youth, you need to think about that. Darkness will come. There will be hard times. That happens to everybody. Nobody has a life that's peaches and cream all the way through. If you live long enough, it will happen. And it doesn't take very many years before you start experiencing those things. But then it says at the very end here, know that for all these things, God will bring you to judgment. Because a lot of the darkness that comes into our life, it's not the fault of our environment. It's our own fault we bring it upon ourselves. Incidentally, that happens to everybody. I could have you come forward and get testimonies. Have you ever done anything in your life that you've really regretted that had consequences that were very painful for you? Even if you're only 20 years of age, I'll bet you you can come up with a story. And if you're my age, you can probably come up with 30 or 40 stories, okay? This does happen. But there's a promise here. God will bring it to judgment. No. I think a good cross-reference to this is what happened to King David, okay? King David sinned and he brought calamity upon his own life. And God sent him a prophet. And David acknowledged what he did. He repented of what he did. And the prophet said, God will forgive. But there will be consequences. And I think that's something we'll need to remember. Yes, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, God forgives all of your offenses past, present, and future. It doesn't mean he removes the consequences of those. And if you look at David's life, what did he do? He took Uriah's life and it took his wife. But what were the consequences? Because that's what the prophet said, is that okay, you're forgiven, but there will be consequences upon you, upon your family, and upon this nation. Anybody remember what those were? Absalon. Absalon. Absalon? Baby that died. He had a baby that died. Okay, how many of his sons were impacted by what he did? All of them. Yeah, well, we don't know exactly how many he had, but the ones that are all named in the Bible, the four big characters, Solomon was the only one that escaped. The other four. Yeah, so it wasn't just Absalon. And you can imagine the grief that brought in to David's life and of his wife as well. So, and it continued on into the next generation. So, Solomon suffered the consequences. Then it went beyond Solomon's life as well. Yes. People say God forgives our sins, and we put them as far as he's from the way. Is that just like a way of describing grace, or I mean, does he actually forget? He's on this, right? He actually forgets, okay? God knows everything, but he says with respect to your sins, I choose to forget. Now that's in comforting because when we pass from this life and enter into heaven with God, it's very tempting to be so embarrassed what we did here on earth, that we start saying, oh, yes, I did this and this, and God's gonna step forward and says, I don't even know what you're talking about. Okay, you may have not forgotten, but you've forgotten. They've been erased by what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross. That's when God chose to forget all the sins that you've ever committed past, present, and future. Now, there are consequences because although God forgives, God everybody else is forgiven. And so this is the problem with David. I mean, he had all these human relationships that were damaged, that were gonna be a problem. And incidentally, I've told you this before, I don't care how good of a Christian you are, when you pass from this light to the next light, you're gonna be going through the first Corinthians three fire. It says, we'll pass through a fire. And what is that fire? It's God taking all the dross out of our life. He basically uses the analogy of taking impure silver and putting it through a fire so you come out with pure silver. And basically making the point, God wants to make sure when you enter into heaven and the new creation, everything obnoxious about you is gone. And so when you pass, you go through this little fire that takes all the obnoxious stuff away. And have you ever met a Christian who's 100% non-obnoxious? Doesn't happen. Every one of us is obnoxious to some degree. And it mentions that first Corinthians three, some more so than others, right? Well, I think that's gonna be true with a lot of us. Well, what happened to you? There are actually some that I wanna be around right now. So, but actually it's making this, this is an echo of all of this text here, is why don't you make that refining fire as least painful as possible? Take care of the obnoxious stuff now. You know, you're young, don't be idle, work on this because it's gonna minimize what you're gonna have to go through with the first Corinthians three fire, incidentally. I'm really grateful we all go through that fire because what a difference is gonna make in our relationships when all that dross has been taken out of our life. But yeah, the exhortation here is, why don't you minimize that now? Because it's gonna make things a lot easier when you go through that refining fire. I see them at a time. However, I think we're gonna wrap up chapter 12 next week and then we're gonna jump into Isaiah. What I hope to do next week is actually give you the handouts of all the questions that I want us to go through so you can actually be pondering this. Because I don't wanna be in a situation where I've been before, where I had no questions. Everybody's got a blank look on their face. So this will be your chance. Like, especially. Yeah. Exactly, okay. Let that down, yeah. We'll begin with a little introduction to that as well. So let me compound prayer, Father in Heaven. We thank you for this time. We've had here this morning and this afternoon. And Lord, we thank you for the life of King Solomon and all the experiences you took him through and all the lessons that through him we can learn and appreciate that we can be delivered from a lot of the pain that he experienced in his life. And Father, I do pray that you'd help us to diversify our evangelistic and apologetic stools, our prayer light in such a way that we can see your hand that's guiding us in how we pray and how we act. So Lord, make us more intimate and fruitful partners with you and our service to you here on earth in Jesus' name. Amen.