Adversity Never Looked So Good

Probably my favorite basketball player of all time is Michael Jordan. For those of you who are younger, just bear with me a little bit. Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, I think. Some of you in my age and a little younger and older would probably agree with me. But I followed his career when he was at North Carolina and then into the pros with the Chicago Bulls. And God had just given him an unusual gift and drive and desire for the game that very few people have ever had. He was at the very top of his career had just led the Chicago Bulls to three straight NBA championships when he shot the basketball world in October of 1993 by saying I'm done. I'm quitting. I'm retiring. He was at the height of his game and still young as far as basketball players go. But his father had been murdered in July of that year and it just devastated him and really took away his desire to play the game. And that adversity caused him to kind of back away from everything he loved. He further shocked the sports world when he said I'm going to sign a contract with the Chicago White Sox to play baseball. And he went to one of their minor league affiliates, a double double A team and then in the South and Birmingham, I believe. I remember right the Birmingham Barons, more number 45. And he tried playing baseball and it was really pretty good because it was a good baseball player in high school. But he finally figured out what most people say the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit a curveball and he couldn't handle that. So he finally got his love back for basketball and a year and a half later in March of 1995 as the Bulls were struggling to make the playoffs this championship team without Jordan struggling to even make the playoffs. He said two words to the press. I'm back and announced that he was coming back to the game of basketball. He came back last month of the season basically and did a number of great things in that season. I remember one game against the Knicks and Madison Square Garden scored 55 points. So he was still Michael Jordan, but but he lost a little bit and even the other players who were playing against him said this is not the same Jordan. He's not quite the same and sure enough in the second round of the playoffs they lost to the Orlando Magic in six games and they went home. This championship team went home. And the ringing in his ears, Michael Jordan could hear the other players, one of the star players for Orlando said Jordan just doesn't have it anymore. He's not the same guy and that really got to Jordan. And so he rededicated himself to the game and through that disappointment and heartache and adversity, he challenged himself to work out more stringently than it had ever done before in that summer of 95 leading into the 95 96 season. He prepared himself like no time before to play that next season. Well, the next season was the first of another string of three NBA championships. And Michael Jordan not only led the balls to the championship again, he was the all star game MVP. He was this regular season MVP. He was the NBA finals MVP led the league and scoring and he led the balls to a record 72 wins and 10 losses. It was an incredible season, but it came about because of adversity and he would write later that I think the Orlando Magic and the adversity of that that series for helping me to realize I needed to go to the next level. Solomon is going to tell us the same thing in different words, not in basketball terms, but in different words, he's going to tell us the same thing. That adversity is not always bad. In some cases, really in most cases, we can say, wow, adversity never looked so good. We're in a section of the book of Ecclesiastes, chapters six through eight, where we're gaining God's perspective on some critical issues of life that help us understand the first part of the book, living life in God's good plan, the good end of the bad. And then putting all that together in how exactly God wants us to live out life. And that'll be the last three, four chapters of the book. But right now we're in that critical section where we've got a reorient our thinking and we've got to think through again how God sees things. Last week, we looked at God's perspective on prosperity and we saw that prosperity never looked so bad. There's a bad side, a downside, a dark side, the prosperity, especially if that's all you live for, you'll find it will leave you empty. Well, today Solomon turns us on our ear and we see the flip side of that, not prosperity, but adversity. And whereas prosperity never looked so bad, we find today that adversity never looked so good. Notice Solomon's opening statement. This really is his theme statement. He will support it in verses two through six. But his theme statement is in verse one. So we're going to take a little time to grasp and wrap our minds around this. Verse one of chapter seven in Ecclesiastes says, a good name is better than fine perfume. Now in Bible times and it's still true even today, although we may not recognize it as clearly. A good name stands for a person's reputation. A person's name represents their character. And to have a good name means that you have a good reputation or you have a deep, godly character. That's what a good name means. That's true of people. It's true of companies. Some of you my age and older will remember the electronics company, Zeneth. Remember their slogan? The quality goes in before the name goes on. And the reason for that slogan was they recognized, maybe they didn't recognize it long enough, but they recognized that their name was at stake if their product was not a quality product. You see, a good name means you have a good reputation. Means you've developed good character. And Solomon says, good character. Good reputation is better than fine perfume. Now get the contrast here. The contrast between character and fine perfume may seem like, well how do those two even match or contrast at all. Fine perfume in that day, oils and ointments and perfume were only used for festive occasions, like wedding banquets or something really exciting, one of the feasts of Israel. And you would put on some kind of expensive perfume or oil on your head because it was a festive occasion. But that kind of oil is something that is only outward. It appeals to the senses. You can see it, you can touch it, you can smell it. So it appeals to the senses. What Solomon is saying here, and it's so critical to get this to understand the rest of this passage, Solomon is saying your character is more important than what's on the outside and what appeals to the senses. What people can see, touch, feel, smell, those kinds of things. Your character, what's on the inside, your reputation is much more important than any of those things. That's his point. Now he really sticks his point by saying at the end of the verse, notice the next statement, and the day of death better than the day of birth. Now that one's like a full body slam. It leaves us lying on the floor looking up saying, what was that? What does he mean by that? The day of death is better than the day of birth. That's the opposite of our thinking, isn't it? We celebrate birth days, we mourn death days. How can this be true? And I know what some of us are thinking, we're thinking, well wait a second, John, from a Christian's perspective, the day of death is better because the duchess has ended God's presence, and that's better than entering this world. And that's true, but that's not what Solomon's talking about. The two parts of the verse go together. These first six verses are proverbs. It's a particular form of writing in the Hebrew language that use either contrasts or comparisons or completions. Two parts of a verse, they either contrast, they compare with each other, or they complete each other. And in this case, there is a contrast, a good name is better than perfume. That which is on the inside is better than that which you can experience with your senses. And in that sense, in that sense, the day of death is better than the day of birth because it is adversity, death, the very serious things about life and life ending, that form our character. Our character is formed in adversity, better than through anything else. And so that's why in the formation of character, first part of the verse, that the second part of the verse is true. Because looking death in the face will do more to form your character than the joy of being welcomed into this world. That's what Solomon's saying. Now the rest of the passage supports that. So here's what we're seeing in this passage in these six verses. God is showing us how adversity produces character. Okay, adversity produces character. That good name, that good reputation, which is far better than anything you can experience with your senses about your life. That is produced by adversity. The day of death does more for your character than the day of birth does. Facing the day of death. So with that theme, that purpose statement in place, adversity produces character. Solomon shows us, okay, how does that happen? There are four blessings of adversity that he mentions in the next few verses, four ways that adversity produces character in us. And that's why the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. First reason, adversity brings our priorities into focus. Look at verse two. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting. For death is the destiny of everyone. The living should take this to heart. Now this verse verse two expands on and explains verse one. If verse one is the theme statement, that character, which is more important than anything else, is produced more by adversity than by good times, then what he's saying is this. In that way, it is better to be in a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting. I know it's easy to read that verse and to think, wow, this guy is hooked on depression, isn't he? What's wrong with this writer? Does he believe that suffering is good and we should love suffering? Is he saying that, you know, just give me despair. That's what I really live for. Is that what he's saying? No. No, it's in the context of the whole argument. It's to support his main thrust that it is adversity that does more to produce our character that he says it is better to look death square in the face than to go to a house of feasting. It will do more for your character to face death. That's why he says at the end of the verse and verse two, this is the reason why it's better to go to a house of mourning. For death is the destiny of everyone. The living should take this to heart. I mean, this is the same guy that said some things in Proverbs, I believe, the same author that said the same thing or said some things in Proverbs that sound the opposite of this. Look at Proverbs 15. On the screen, Proverbs 15, 13, a happy heart makes the face cheerful. But heartache crushes the spirit. In verse 15, he says, all the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast. And the most famous of all those kinds of verses in Proverbs 17, 22, says a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. And even in this very book, it includes the Astes, he has said in chapter three in verse four. There's a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. So is he contradicting himself, even from the first part of his book, is he contradicting what he wrote in Proverbs? Is it really better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting? Is grief and sorrow and sadness really better for us? I thought Solomon, you said that that will crush your spirit and that laughter is what really is a good medicine for you. He's talking about two different things. In this context, in this passage, he is saying this. Adversity, when you look death in the face, when you go to a house of death, when you go to a funeral home, when you go visit the home of someone who has lost a loved one in death, that will do more for your character than a banquet in honor of their birth. It will do more for your character than a party that will make you laugh. He's talking here about the formation of character. He's not talking about a morbid, sad perspective on life. He's simply saying that death and facing it square in the face will bring your priorities into focus. It will help you to see the significance of what's really important in your life. When you come to a time of death, it is then, and sometimes only then, that we really realize how important our parents were to us. How important that brother or sister was to us. How significant, how special our children are. Sometimes that is the only time when we really face those things and understand those things on a deeper level. Death has a way of facing us with the fact that we have a short time in this world, and we need to use everyday wisely for God's glory. Death has a way of putting right in front of us the fact that eternal issues are more important than just the stuff that we deal with every day that will pass away. Because Sunday, as Solomon says, Sunday, I'm going to die. That's my destiny. Given the rapture, you understand that. If we don't go that way, we're going to die. And I need to take to heart the fact that I have an appointment with death, sometimes being in a funeral home or being in a home of one who is grieving the loss of a loved one. Sometimes we think about those things. We should think about life and death more seriously than we would any other time. And it really has a way of bringing priorities into focus. Moses knew that. Moses led a 40-year funeral procession through the wilderness. 40 years. And a whole generation of Israelites he watched die. While he, Caleb, Joshua got older, and a young generation grew up to take the land, a 40-year span of people died in the wilderness. It was a 40-year funeral procession for Moses. And he watched death after death after death after death. But it taught him something. And he writes about it in the only psalm that Moses ever wrote. Psalm 90. He talks about God's eternal character, God's eternality, and the fact that he's forever, and we are not. We have such short lives. Even if they're 70 or 80 years, they're so short in comparison to God's eternity. And then he draws this conclusion in Psalm 90 and verse 12. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. There is something about looking at death that causes us to say, I need to number my days. It's not a recognition that my days are numbered. It's not just that it goes beyond that. It's a philosophy of life that says life is short. I do not have much time here. I'm not going to waste this life in a way that does not glorify God. Death faces us with that. And Moses said, Lord, in light of all that I've seen, teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Live a lifestyle of wisdom. Live in the way you would have us to. You know what that means? Let's boil it down. It means that when you realize you're going to die, you need to be ready to die. That really brings serious things. Life into focus. That puts priorities into focus. You realize the most important thing when you face death is to know you're ready to meet God. And you're not ready to meet Him if you've not taken His only plan of salvation, His only way of salvation. And that is through His Son, Jesus Christ. You see, we're all sinners. And we will all end up separated from God at death unless we take God's remedy for our sin. In the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, the only perfect man who ever lived and thus qualified himself morally to be the Lamb of God without spot, without blemish. And He laid down His life as a sacrifice for us on the cross. He died for you and He died for me. His life was given to pay the penalty for your sin in mind. And it is through faith in Christ, through receiving Him as our Savior. That we are given the gift of eternal life. We become the children of God. And God gives us a home in heaven with Him forever. My friend, it's only when you have made that decision to trust Christ as your Savior that you are ready to die. And so it is important that we look death in the face. In that way, it is better to be in the house of mourning, that house of feasting, because we are recognizing the priorities of life that are being brought into focus. What's most important and what we're going to leave behind when we leave this world? True story is told about a woman who was rescued from the Titanic. She was on one of the lifeboats. She asked before it was lowered. She asked the sailor who was on that lifeboat. Please don't lower it yet. Let me go. Just for a moment. I have to pick up something to take with me. He didn't want to let her go, but he finally relented and said, you have three minutes before this boat is lowered. We're lowering it whether you're back or not. She often made her way back to her luxurious cabin, one of the richest people on board that ship. She threw everything aside by way of clothing and pushed around her jewels and her diamonds and then found that what she was looking for three oranges. You see, staring death in the face has a way of shifting your priorities. And you realize there's a lot of stuff we spend a lot of time focusing on that really doesn't amount to much. The only thing she wanted was something maybe to keep her alive out there in the open sea and orange. Adversity brings priorities into focus. Second benefit of adversity that Solomon reminds us of is that adversity leads to the discovery of real joy. It leads to the discovery of real joy. Verse 3 is what that's all about. Notice he says, frustration is better than laughter because a sad face is good for the heart. Say, whoa, whoa, wait a second. It's exactly opposite of what you said in Proverbs, right? No, no, different subject, different lesson, different point. In the sense that adversity produces character, frustration is better than laughter. Now the word frustration is a very interesting word. It's a word that is most often translated in the Old Testament by the word sorrow. And it can be used that way a lot in the Old Testament. But it is a word which most often means in the Hebrew language anger. What the new addition of the NIV has done is found the word that kind of bridges the gap between those two because either is a legitimate translation. So they've chosen the word frustration for that Hebrew word. Frustration, the kind of anger that comes because of sorrow that leaves you frustrated with life. He's saying that is better than laughter. Why? How can you say that? Notice the reason because a sad face is good for the heart. Remember the hearts, the inside of you who you really are on the inside, your character. And so what he's saying again is your character is developed by sadness, adversity, sorrow, the anger and frustration that comes from that. That has more to do to develop your character than laughter does. There are at least a couple of ways I believe that Solomon is stressing that sorrow and its corresponding anger and frustration sorrow has something to teach us that laughter never can. First of all, sorrow and frustration shows us the shallowness of mere laughter. Now laughter can certainly be an expression of inner joy. Laughter can be a wonderful thing. That's the side that we saw in Proverbs. There is much healing value to laughter. Laughter is good medicine. But laughter can also be simply external in a way of just covering up pain. That's what Solomon's talking about in this verse. Because he's talking about discovering deeper joy, real joy. It's good for the heart, sad face. It can be good for the heart. You can find a deeper joy in the sense that sorrow can show you the shallowness of mere laughter. If all that you are about is fun and games and jokes and entertainment and amusements, you're living a pretty hollow life, pretty shallow life, pretty superficial life. When compared to the eternal issues that face us in times of sorrow, laughter can be very shallow. That's what Solomon's talking about. It shows the shallowness of mere laughter. Laughter can be like an archaic. Laughter can be used, not all laughter, but it can be used simply to cover up, to deaden the pain that you're facing because of sorrow or adversity or heartache in life, rather than going deeper and finding true, sustaining, lasting joy. Laughter can be a way of just covering up and masking rather than processing the pain, processing the adversity to find what God really wants you to find. That is that jewel of real joy underneath. So sorrow shows the shallowness of mere laughter which can be used as an archaic just to kind of deaden the pain of difficult adversity. Secondly, sorrow also can show us the depth of true joy. The depth of true joy, sorrow and adversity, frustration and anger that goes along with that, can lead you to a true joy that you recognize is much deeper than surface circumstances. I'm talking about that inner confidence in God, that deep sense of peace and contentedness that joy is all about. Not about laughter. Joy is about something deeper in your spirit and in your soul that grasps a hold of the promises of God and finds a strength and a contentedness and a peace even in the midst of very difficult times. So sorrow leads us to that level. So he's saying it's better than laughter in the sense that don't just laugh away your sorrows. You're putting a bandaid on them. You're not going where God wants you to go. You're not going deep with them. You're not seeing what he wants adversity to really do in your life. And that is to lead you deeper below the shallow, hollow surface responses to something deeper that joy in your heart, that deep sense of contentedness and peace, in your heart. And that way of sad face is good for the heart. That's what he's talking about. And sometimes it is through sorrow that we even find that joy. Sometimes through sorrow that we find the true joy of salvation. Paul said it this way in 2 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 10. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret. See how different that is than surface happiness, surface laughter. You can go to Vegas and have a good time. You can go to the bar and drink away your sorrows. You're regretted afterwards. You'll realize it just makes the sorrow deeper and the pain deeper. But Godly sorrow, a sorrow that seeks to learn what God has for us through that adversity. And how he's wanting to produce character in us, that brings repentance because it causes us to evaluate our lives and what we're doing and where we are, what we need to change. So it brings repentance that can even lead to salvation in the case of one who's not been saved. It can lead to a recognition of the need of a savior. Wow, you talk about adversity producing joy. It doesn't leave any regret behind. Worldly sorrow brings death, he says. I'll even go a step further than that but we have an illustration. And I want you to know that this illustration comes directly from the words of our Lord. It does not come from me because the illustration I'm going to use, all of you ladies will say, it sounds like a man talking. I've never had a baby but of course you know that. But I understand that there is a lot of sorrow and difficulty in adversity leading up to the birth of a child. Ask any woman whose nine months pregnant, she will tell you. You probably won't even have to ask her, she'll tell you. It's not easy. But there's something about when that little baby arrives. Here's the way Jesus said it. John 16, a woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come. But when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. What a great illustration that Jesus used. Yes, there is pain, there is difficulty, adversity leading up to and during the birth of a child. That's why they call it labor. It's not easy. It's not hard. Those last few weeks are difficult. But then when that little baby comes, you're holding that baby and bonding with that little baby. There is a joy that surpasses and exceeds all of the anguish and difficulty that brought you to that point. But you know you couldn't have got there unless you came through the sorrow, through the difficulty, through the anguish, through the pain. You would never have gotten to the birth if you hadn't gotten through the pain. And so it is literally the pain, the adversity, the sorrow that leads us to the joy. That's the point Jesus was making and that's the point Solomon is making. That's why he's saying a sad face is good for the heart. He's not talking about a gloomy outlook on life. If you understand the whole approach that he's making in this book, that just doesn't fit. He's making his point that because adversity develops character, because sometimes joy is only produced through times of anguish and sadness and pain. But in that sense, the sadness is good for our hearts because it develops character. It brings joy. It leads to the discovery of real joy. Quickly third reason and benefit to adversity is in verse four. It promotes serious thinking. Promotes serious thinking. In verse four, the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning. But the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure. He's still following up on this theme of death. He's still talking about what you can learn from going to a house of mourning in our day of funeral home or the home of someone who's lost a loved one. And he's saying that the heart of the wise is in that place. The heart of the fool is in the house of pleasure. It seems to be that here his emphasis on the heart is on the thinking because he uses the distinction between wise and fool. In the Bible, in the Old Testament particularly, the heart represented everything about the inner person. Everything that you are on the inside, it included your intellect, your mind, your thinking, it included your emotions, it included your will, it included the way you make decisions, it included everything you really were on the inside. Because of his use and contrast of wise and fool here, Solomon seems to be using the word heart here of the thinking process. And so that's why I say that adversity can be good for us because it promotes serious thinking. The heart or the mind of the wise is in the house of mourning. What he's saying there basically is that the wise man is not afraid to look at death. He is not afraid to think about serious issues. Death and what that means about my life. Those are very serious things. The wise person though has looked death square in the eyes and thought through the eternal issues that that faces us with. Where will I spend eternity? How am I investing my time with only stuff I'm going to leave behind or stuff that will count for eternity? Those kinds of in your face things that death teaches us, that's where the wise person thinks. And then makes decisions that will reorder the priorities of life. You see adversity causes us to think seriously. The contrast of that is the fool who says, I don't want to think about that stuff. That's too morbid. Come on, you only go around once, get all the gusto out of life. That's fun, man. That's what it's all about. I don't want to think about those morbid things. So those kind of people end up drowning out their apprehensions with indulgences and amusements. And live a surface life never really thinking about serious issues. And we live in a culture that promotes that. We live in an escapist culture, do we not? We're just all around us. The mentality of our culture is basically, if I hurt, I do something to Medicaid it. I'm not talking about a real need for medication or even real medication. What I'm talking about is the hurt of inner pain, of disappointment and sorrow and adversity and where it has left you. And you have a pain in your soul. And our culture says, there's a way to escape that. There's a way to get over that. Through alcohol, you can drown that out. Through drugs, you can cover it up. But oh, there's a lot of other ways that we escape reality. And escape pain may be through food. It may be through pornography, whether it's of the visual kind that appeals more to men or the written kind that appeals more to women. You can put a bandaid on your pain for a little while with that kind of stuff. You can enjoy that kind of pleasure for a while. It may be through parties. It may be through TV. It may be through amusement parks. It may be through technology. Look at whatever you're investing your life and time in and just look to see if it's the fools way of covering over what's really going on on the inside, the real pain that you're facing. And if that's what you're using to try to medicate your pain and sorrow and adversity and what that's done to you on the inside, you're full. Solomon said that. I didn't. You're full. The wise person is the person who looks seriously at life and death and says, what can that teach me about the way I live my life? I'm going to do some serious thinking here. Rather than put the bandaid on my pain, I'm going to get to the bottom of it and see what it teaches me about real life and how I need to be living and relating to my Lord. Adversity promotes serious thinking. But he's not done yet versus five and six. He says there's a fourth benefit of adversity. And that is that adversity provides lasting benefits. And we would expect that as proof of or support of verse one, his theme is that adversity produces character. Character is lasting. Character will last far longer than the perfume you put on or the colon you put on. That's his main point. And so we would expect this. And this is how he ties it all together. Adversity provides lasting benefits. Now the scene shifts a little bit to a different kind of adversity. He's been talking about death and dying and looking at that square in the face and learning the lessons from that. Look at the adversity mentioned in verse five. It is better to heed the rebuke of a wise person than to listen to the song of fools. A little different kind of adversity here. It's not death. It's a rebuke. It's a reproof. None of us enjoys that. None of us enjoys a rebuke. It's painful to have someone tell us we're wrong. It's painful to have someone point out a weakness in our lives or a sin in our lives. That's painful. All of us have been there. It's painful to be corrected. It's painful to be instructed as to what to do because you messed up. That's not easy. Our parents did a lot of that for us, didn't they? If they did it in the right way, it was loving correction and rebuke and reproof. Our parents do that a lot. Maybe it's a supervisor at work. It's not easy to hear. Maybe it's a pastor who has to confront you about something in your life. Maybe it's a friend. Maybe it's your mate. Maybe it was a coach that noticed you were doggin it. You weren't really given it your all and called you out on it. It might be a judge that gives you a reproof that is very hard to hear. Reproofs are easy. They're not fun. They're not enjoyable. Nothing like that about them. But Solomon says when it comes to the development of character, it's better to heed the rebuke of a wise person than to listen to the song of fools. The song of fools. Very interesting word combination here. It's the fools way again of dealing with issues about life. How do you deal with them? Yes, sing them away. It's that surface hollow superficial approach to life. That loud, boistress attempt to cover up reality, to deaden the pain, to assure yourself that everything is okay. That's not the way to treat your own adversity. It's not the way to comfort people in their adversity either. It's a song of fools. Again, all that you are about and all the way you know to approach life is to joke about everything. It's all fun and games. You can't get serious. You can't confront. You can't take or give a rebuke, a reproof and get serious about then you're living a very shallow life, a very superficial life. Solomon gives us a very picturesque, very graphic picture to support this in verse 6. How is it? What greater benefit is a rebuke? Verse 6, he says, like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools. This too is meaningless. What's meaningless? Well, after a fool's. That approach to life. That you just laugh off your troubles. Come on, give me a good joke and I can make it through this. That's a hollow superficial approach to life. And Solomon is saying, that's meaningless. That's empty. It doesn't really give you any... You know what it's like? It's like you want to start a fire to put under the pot to heat up some food and you go find these little thorn bushes that have these nettles, these stickers, these briars on them and you start a fire with that. Well, have you ever tried to start a fire with something like that? It makes a great sound. They popp all in the crack and it bursts up into flame real quick. But only the last about 10 seconds. You're not going to get enough heat out of that to even start getting the pot warm. Much less cook your food. And what he's saying is this approach to life that is the laughter of fools. Oh, it sparks up real quick. It sounds great. It's fun for a while. It doesn't last. It doesn't produce any lasting fruit or help. Not like the Rebuke of a Wise Person. The Rebuke of a Wise Person provides lasting benefits. Whether it's a friend or a mate or a coach or a judge or whoever it is, it can change your life. Solomon in another place in his Proverbs says it this way. Proverbs 28 verse 23. Whoever rebukes a person will in the end gain favor rather than the one who has a flattering tongue. If you're honest, you tell people what they need to hear, not what they would like to hear, in the end you've done them a service. A Rebuke is always hard to take. But in the end it gives far more lasting benefit than the band-aid of laughing everything off. Now, please don't misunderstand me today. I know I could send you home with a severe headache and a bad case of depression. That's not my goal of the day. That's not what Solomon's goal is either. I'm not saying that laughter and parties and jokes and having a good time. I'm not saying that's bad. Those can be wonderful things. Again, that's the Proverbs side of the equation. I think maybe one of the common theories that I read this week as I was studying this passage says it much better than I could. Ian Proven in his new international commentary says this. In the application commentary says this. He says we are not to think therefore that these things, referring to laughter and parties and fun and those kinds of things, we are not to think therefore that these things in themselves are being criticized here. Rather the pursuit of them as part of a frivolous and trivializing way of life that is under consideration. Otherwise, if this is the way you address adversity and problems in your life on a continual basis, that's what Solomon's talking about. You're not going deep enough to learn from them. You're just medicating them with narcotics of the culture. That's all you're doing. He goes on to say there is a way of living that is centered on feasting, on the pursuit of joy, on empty laughter and singing. This, now notice this next statement, it is so profound. He says this is life lived in denial of the true nature of things, hoping to push reality to the margins by flooding the senses with sensation and drowning out quiet contemplation with noise. He has pegged our culture. What do you do when that gnawing emptiness of pain and adversity starts to get at you again? And it hurts. Even if it's death that you've looked square in the face, what do you do? How do you respond to that? When that comes to your life, do you find something to amuse yourself? I'm going to go see a movie, I'm going to watch a TV program, I'm going to whatever, to get me through this. If that's your default way of dealing with adversity, you're living a hollow, superficial, shallow life. God wants you to go much deeper than that. He wants you to know that adversity never looks so good. It can be great for you in developing your character, something that lasts. Something that's not going to be like nettles under a kettle. Something that's going to be much more lasting than that brief sparkle of flame that doesn't do any good for your pot. Doesn't do any good to heat up your food. That's Solomon's point. Remember how the passage started with the emphasis on character? How character is developed, mostly through adversity. But when we face adversity so often, we want to blame someone, we want to cover it up with some kind of frivolity or laughter to kind of get us through rather than, okay, wait, Lord, what are you teaching me? How can I go deeper here? Because what God wants us to do, how He wants us to live, is to keep our priorities in focus, that demonstrates real character. To be able to experience real joy even in the midst of sorrow, that develops and shows real character. God wants us to think seriously about eternal issues that shows and develops real character. God wants us to be willing to humbly accept a rebuke knowing that it is for our good, that demonstrates real character. March, the month of March is often known, and by the way, I'm ready for it. But March is often known as the month that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, right? Any other reason for that, don't just the wind. March is a time when there are lots of wind gusts and high winds, typically we think of that when we think of March. But you know, botanists tell us that that is important in the growth cycle of trees. From what I read, the wind blowing the trees as it does in March, back and forth, flexes the trunk and limbs of the tree and actually acts as a pump system to draw the sap up to where the leaves are, so that leaves can get the proper nourishment that they need for the tree to grow. That's why trees grow so much in spring, at least one of the reasons. But if you didn't have the wind, if you didn't have that flexing and pulling of the sap up into the tree, it would not grow as well. So when you're in the winds of adversity, when those winds are blowing hard in your life, don't just laugh it off. See what God is really doing to develop your character. Let him draw the sap up from deep down, that life giving nourishing spring of life in your soul, from deep down in those times of adversity, that will encourage you and challenge you and grow you to be more like him, that will develop your character. That's what adversity is designed to do for us. And when you think about it, that way, wow, adversity never looks so good. Let's pray together.