Celebrate Life! (Part 1 of 2)

The financial advisors often encourage their clients to diversify their investments tend to stick with the plan, the market may fluctuate from day to day but they say in the long run, we should see a profit will today on Truth for Life Alastair big uses similar advice to teach us how to make the most out of every opportunity that God places before us. From Ecclesiastes chapter 11 verse one cast your bread upon the waters far, after many days you will find it again. Give portions to seven yes 284. You do not know what disaster may come upon the land if clouds are full of water. They pour rain upon the air without a tree falls to the south or to the north in the place where it falls there it will lie.

Whoever watches the wind will not plan to have her looks at the clouds will not reap as you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in the mother's womb so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things. So your seed in the morning and evening. Let not your hands be idle for you do not know which will succeed whether this or that or with her. Both will do equally well lightly sweetened it please the eyes to see the sun.

However, many years a man may live let them enjoy them all, but let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many everything to come is meaningless. The happy young man while you're young and your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your I see, but know that for all these things, God will bring you to judgment. So then banish anxiety from your heart, and cast off the troubles of your body for youth and vigor are meaningless if you keep your Bibles open on your lap.

Father we pray now that with the help of your spirit.

We may be able to study the Bible in a way that is true to its teaching challenging and helpful to our lives seek your help. In Jesus name on then last time. In chapter 10 we said that the material fell under the cautionary note which we summarized as B sensible when you read from 10 in 211, you discover that that cautionary note has given way to what is largely an invitation to be enterprising. Indeed, the B sensible is now replaced with a summons to the reader to be bold, be bold and if you read to the end of chapter 12 you will sense that it quickening of the pace as our author moves to what he refers to in verse 13 of chapter 12 as the conclusion of the matter is I read these verses again and again I found myself scribbling down on my pad beside my Bible being bold, be happy. Be warned being godly. These staccato expectations and marriage from the text. At least I think they do and your sensible people.

You're going to have to study along with me to see whether this is accurate is about to remind his readers that too much study we raise the body.

Of course some of us have as parents have been hearing from our children as they prepare for their finals this next week. There are too many books and not enough time. He understands that and so it is imperative that you seize the moment, you've got to give a little take a little like your old hard break a little as the story on that's the glory of love and it's also the story and the glory of life itself. If you want a heading for the whole chapter into words within! It is this celebrate life, celebrate life and what I like to try and do his work through these verses in a way that provides a summary which is not press down upon the text, by which I hope you will see in marriage is clearly from the text structure is as follows are not to give you three statements followed by a qualifying statement, followed by three more statements, followed by three more statements, followed by a qualifying statement. Sir goes 313-313-1331 are not impressed with it either is no reason for you. I'm only telling you what I'm doing. Verse one in the first of the three go for it goal for others is not a phrase that I brought across the Atlantic Ocean. This is a phrase that I've learned since I arrived here. It's an American phrase that is being given to the world, but it's a good phrase and of all peoples on the nations of the nations and their Americans know how to go for it and that is what we find in this rather curious piece of advice with which Chapter 11 begins cast your bread upon the waters for after many days you will find it again.

Charles Bridges commenting on this in an earlier date suggests that we are not to think of it in terms of bread as a finished product, but rather in terms of the green or the seed which, when thrown into the lonely bed of the river, apparently going away never to be seen again actually emerges.

Later on in a luxurious harvest, and he suggests that we are to think of it in those terms. I'm sure that's right because the idea of throwing bread on water only to find it again is clearly a most unlikely circumstance every so often you see parents and grandparents done with her children by the river and chagrin throwing bread on the water of all the things that they may have as expectations. The one expectation, they do not have is what is described here in verse one, namely of finding it again at the docks are going to come and gobble it up or is going to disintegrate is eventually going to absorb so much water that it said that it sinks and goes away, but they do not have a plan for finding the bread again either somewhere downstream or of it ever coming back to them therefore is a striking in a curious statement is that through your bread upon the waters and after many days you will find it again. While it is the very unlikely nature of it which makes it so powerful.

It is a reminder of what God is able to do when we are prepared to take whatever he has entrusted to us of life of talent of resource of time and throw it out onto the water of life.

The promise of God's word is that it will return to us as per God's design and very ordinary terms verse one is saying. You will never see a return from an investment until first, there is an investment you want to get out of life, what you put into it.

If there are risks in everything is better to fail in launching notes that in simply hugging resources to ourselves so we say, far better to make a go all that far better to go for it and to see what will return we can delay on this verse. Although we could spend the morning on it. It's a call to Christian resourcefulness is are called to generosity is not a unique call to the Old Testament. Indeed, Jesus himself in a great deal to say along these lines, remember on one occasion he says to his disciples launch out into the deep what you paddling around here for in the shadows go out into the deep.

He told the story of the master who left resources with his servants.

And when he came back one had multiplied it in one way and one another by the one who received his rebuke was the individual who said I was afraid and I hit it in the ground. Jesus says you don't want to be doing that. So for example we take money and be given to the poor do expect ever to see it again. No, but what is Solomon tell as in Proverbs 1917 the man who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and he will reward him for what he is done. In other words, there is actually an investment factor in taking what is ours casting it out on the water in the sewing of the word of God in telling others about the nature of faith, we may find ourselves on a journey speaking to a companion and becomes very obvious to us very quickly that the individual whom we just met and has very little interest in what were saying. They put their head down into their magazine there trying to be polite by the really dismissive of our explanations of the difference that there the incarnation has made the wonder of Christmas, the joy of knowing Jesus and so on. We cast our bread upon the water and we say what a futile exercise that was while it may well be that one day a in a different realm and we will meet the same individual who, having left Oz going on the second leg of their journey flying to the West Coast and sat down next to another weird person just like us who started on the exact same song before this individual knew it they were being confronted by a story that they never Herod, they were being introduced to a gift that they had never received the bread cast out on the waters was going to come back is the same in teaching the Bible.

Those of you who teach in any circumstance whether large or small, you saw the seat. The sower went forth and so on.

When he soloed some seed fell on stony ground, another seed fell among thorns and some of the seed was snatched away and a little bit of the sea find good soil that's the experience Sunday after Sunday after Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

It never quits. You throw your bread upon the waters reminding yourself from Isaiah 55 that God's word never returns to him MT but always accomplishes its purpose as a reminder, here in this verse. Some of you when you go home today will take bread out of the freezer.

How weird is that frozen bread frozen bread. We go to great lengths to get to the Baker at the right time.

When is just emerging from the oven so that we can stand there and enjoy all of our senses being drawn to these marvelous loaves then we hasten to put them into our cars rush home and jam them in a freezer so that we can ship them apart with metal wooden pallets of destruction. Sometime later, where you save it if we don't freeze the bread bowl of moldy bread is because you hold your bread if you eat your bread or share your bread. You don't have to freeze it and it doesn't get moldy scattered bread that's what he's talking about. Go for scattered it is capturing your resources finances that God is giving you prepared to throw them up on the waters scattering your life. The gifts that God is giving you casting them out on the waters, buried treasure rings strong condemnation verse two.

Diversify verse one. Go for it. Verse two. Diversify is the significance of this statement here. Give portions to seven yesterday you don't know which one is going to work you don't know which one will bomb don't put all your eggs in one basket, spread your investments around sees with enthusiasm the variety of opportunities. Be creative. Now, again, we can apply it on every level. Let's just think about in terms of the their wonderful opportunities of sharing our faith. Paul is a terrific example in first Corinthians 9.

He says in order that I might share my faith as widely as possible in order that I might win as many as possible. I determined that to the Jew I would become a Jew to the gentle, I would become a Gentile, to those who are under the law, I would become under the laws of those who had no lie would be like one would know law and the reason I would do all of this. He says, was in order that I might diversify my opportunities and think about it in relationship to our church life, how we do what we do with what we've been given going for diversify Jim down to verse six stick with it, stick with it. So your seed in the morning and evening. Let not your hands be idle or different stages in life and the morning of our lives. There are opportunities that we can fulfill in the noontide of our lives the same and in the evening of our lives, our hands are not to be idle launch out in new directions.

You're told that your old and so you conform to sensible expectations come along now.

Dad put the blanket over your knees, take your bath chair and sit in it.

Let me freely around the mall. No, I want to jump out of airplanes number you can jump out of airplanes or an old man.

You can even jump off your garden wall what you talking about. It doesn't matter. You never know when you make a breakthrough. You never know when your project will succeed some of your getting ready to go fossilized in Florida with the rest of them down there with the newly newlywed in the nearly dead on the most dangerous places in America and wish to drive a car, don't feel bad because you have a home there. It's just probably jealousy on my part that provokes the sin. But you know what I mean course, you may relocate that would be fine, but make sure that when you do you know your hands become idle in the evening of your days make sure that you are prepared to keep going to keep looking to keep taking initiative to thinking imaginatively and creatively, and indeed the kind of person we will be in our old age is largely determined by the kind of person we are now summer waiting for the retirement when they will take up basket weaving when they will then go to the art class when they will take care of the various opportunities that are before them, but in the moment. They just go straight down the same track avenues for you. You're going to keep going down your track goal for diversify and then stick with. That's the three here comes the one the qualifying line is this.

Do not wait for ideal conditions do not wait for ideal conditions. Note that seems to me what's being said in verses three, four and five in verse three we have a story of inevitability when the clouds are full of water you get rain when a tree falls within a falls to the south and to the north in a place where it falls there it will lie. Don't allow the inevitability of things in life to thwart initiative or endeavor. Don't stay inside just because it's raining get an umbrella and go. I'm sorry.

Don't miss the adventures don't miss the adventures. Are you adventuresome is your life at all and adventure. Do your children believe that their own adventure with her mom and dad dear friends say this is fantastic. I love going places with him and that the ordinary becomes extraordinary. The routine takes on significance. This guy can make a coffee on a newspaper appear as if we were drinking the most amazing potion while reading the finest .3 in a fight look at what we are reading inevitability marks many lines. Oh well, looks like it's going to rain all loop the tree fell in be there for a while once it years. Well I think I'll just sit here watch the rain watch the logs become a log don't allow inevitability to paralyze you.

Secondly, verse four don't allow uncertainty to paralyze you is nobody sitting whoever watches the wind will not plan to live our lives in the clouds will not reap as a small boy for the first five years of my life is been all my time essentially in the company of my mother. She stayed home to look after me to instruct me. I'm thankful for that. And in the washing pursuits. I was around and especially in the West is carbon when it rains so much as soon as the washing was done in a very short window of opportunity to hang out dry and get it back in and like a lottery along the backyards of the of the neighborhood. You see Mrs. McDonald while she's already ventured.

She's got hers out while I was looking I climbed I thought it was going to rain. I think I'll wait till 10 o'clock and Sundays only one left was a big pile of laundry and never made it out to the breeze and it never rained what happened. We were watching the clouds.

Are you making the most of every opportunity.

Ephesians 516 making the most of every opportunity making sound like endeavor. The most sounds like extent opportunity sounds like things that come our way, making the most of every opportunity that is represented within the framework of this church here in all that is represented for the chances of evangelism and edification.

Learning about the Bible growing in Christ, and so on are seeing again will you know I think it's not an ideal time for me to get in that class.

I think perhaps after the first quarter of the year that'll be the time.

It is not a good time for me to broach the subject with my boss any typing. After the first six months is is it, whatever it is, and where are you you actually further behind the new wireless time last year.

You're waiting for ideal conditions. There are no ideal conditions don't allow inevitability to paralyze you. Don't allow uncertainty to paralyze you. Few great enterprises and waited for ideal conditions. Don't get caught up in the maybes and the might of begins tackle what is grab Watson reach is Roosevelt, Theodore, that is said do what you can where you are with what you have, do what you can where you are with what you have given them very much and if I wasn't here. If I was there.

And of course you do nothing verse five in verse three is about inevitability in verse four is about uncertainty. Verse five is about mystery you don't know the path of the wind or how the parties formed in the mother's womb. You can understand the work of God, the maker of all things okay some things we will never fully comprehend, but we mustn't let them instead is prevent us from getting on with life. Don't allow the unknown and the unknowable, to paralyze you.

You know enough to proceed perceived uncertainty and overanalyzing can cause us to miss out on opportunities.

That's why Alister Bragg is encouraging us to go for it to diversify and to stick with it were listening to Truth for Life. One thing you don't have to miss out on even when you're traveling is listening to Truth for Life.

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It provides direct access to Alister's daily messages and pack any messages in the entire library can be enjoyed at your convenience. This app also includes recent articles and the daily devotional from Alister so if you have not yet downloaded the app to your device. Search Truth for Life in the app store and then download today for free. In addition to Alister's daily teaching. We offer books to help you grow in your faith. We been mentioning recently a book called being the bad guys. This is a book that will help you live out your faith and lovingly respond to the cultures challenges to God's authority being the bad guys is an extremely relevant book examines the messaging that bombards us today through the media messaging that largely discards God's instructions for marriage, gender, or human sexuality. The question is how do we remain faithful to Christ in a world that says we should request your copy of the book being the bad guys today can do it when you give a donation to Truth for Life. Just tap the image you see in the mobile app or visit us online at truthforlife.org/donate about Lapine.

Do you live your life in a way that makes the invisible God visible will hear how that's possible to join us tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the wording is for living