Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Search for Justice

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

If you’re on a spiritual search, there’s no better place to go than the book of Ecclesiastes. In the entire Bible, it’s the only book written from the viewpoint of a skeptic. The writer of Ecclesiastes asks, “If this life is all here is, what meaning is there in life?” To explore that, he looks at several questions we all have to answer in some way. The first of these is how we deal with the injustice and suffering we see in the world. How do you deal with injustice? The Ecclesiastes writer 1) refuses to let you avoid the question of injustice, and 2) gives us clues to two answers for how to deal with injustice. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 13, 1998. Series: When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough. Scripture: Ecclesiastes 9:2–16. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Have you ever found yourself asking, What if nothing I do really lasts? Is this all there is? In today's podcast, Tim Keller looks at how Ecclesiastes helps us face our doubts, fears, and uncertainties, and points us to the lasting hope and significance we have in Christ. Let's take a little. look at this passage. Now, we're about to read from Ecclesiastes, and last year, last fall, I did

one sermon on Ecclesiastes, and ever since then I wanted to come back. And in the month of September, we're going to be looking at some of the basic themes of this book. And right away, as we read it, you're going to see it's different. It's so different than other books of the Bible. It'll strike you right away. Ecclesiastes chapter 9, we're going to read verses 2 to 16. share a common destiny. The righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad. The clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with a good man, so with a sinner. As it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them. This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun. The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts

of men, moreover, are full of evil, and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterwards they join the dead. Anyone who is among the living has hope. Even a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate, and their jealousy have long since vanished. Never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.

Go. Eat your food with gladness. drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white, always anoint your head with oil, enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun, all your meaningless days, for this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave where you are going, there is neither working nor planning, nor knowing, nor wisdom.

I have seen something else under the sun. The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned, but time and chance happens to them all. Moreover, no one knows when this hour will come. As fish are caught in a cruel net or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them. But I also saw, under the sun,

an example of wisdom that greatly impressed me. There was once a small city with only a few people in it, and a powerful king came against it and surrounded it and built huge seedworks against it. Now, they lived in that city a man poor, but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man. So I said, wisdom is better than strength,

but the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heated. This is God's word. This is God's word? There's never been a time where in the last few decades, at least in America, maybe even the West, where people have been searching more,

doing more spiritual searching. And there's no better place to go do spiritual searching than going to the book of Ecclesiastes. The word Ecclesiastes is the last, translation for the Hebrew word for the author. And the Hebrew word, what the author calls himself is Koheleth, which actually means, it's very hard, a public teacher or a commentator. Some people have actually called him a pundit. A public teacher, a commentator, a person who's commenting on the way things are. Now, there is no better place to go if you or you know somebody,

no better place to go if you're on a spiritual search. If you're trying to find faith or trying to find God or trying to find what's out there, there's no better place than the book of Ecclesiastes because in the entire Bible, this is the only book written from the viewpoint of a skeptic, written from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't believe, written from the viewpoint of someone who's a practical secularist. Let me take a second to explain that. For example, unless you understand that, that this is the only book like that,

It's going to be very confusing to read. Look at verse 5, for example. It says, the dead know nothing. Is that what the Bible teaches? I mean, is that the overall whole... Is that what the Bible teaches about the afterlife? No. Well, what's it doing here?

Because the key phrase, which comes up several times in this text, and it comes up dozens of times in the book of Ecclesiastes, it comes up nowhere else in any book of the Bible. In fact, it comes over nowhere else in any part. of literature is the term under the sun. And what this means is, he does not say, this is true, this is true, this is a fact, this is a fact. He says, this is a fact under the sun. This is true under the sun. Under the sun. This life is meaningless, what? Not just life is meaningless. This life is meaningless under the sun. What does that mean? It means this life understood without any reference to life above the sun or beyond the sun.

In other words, this life, without reference to there being an eternity or heaven, if this life is all there is, that's what life under the sun means. And what's so helpful about this guy is the point of view he takes is not a philosophical atheism, but it's very much, frankly, is very much the practical secularism of the average New Yorker and increasingly of the average Western person. When I say practical secularism, notice, he uses the word God a couple times. He talks about the meaningless life that God has given us.

But you see, in the book of Ecclesiastes, God is not the biblical God. The judge of heaven and earth, the lover of our souls. If you ask the average New Yorker, do you believe in God, there's very few atheists. There's very few rigorous, philosophical, doctrinaire atheists who said there can't be a God. The average person says, yes, there's probably some kind of supreme being, but we can't know what that God thinks, or we can't know that God, we can't know the will of God, and therefore, essentially, this life is all there is. We don't know why we're here. And after you're dead, that's it. And therefore, you've got to kind of make the best of it. That's practical secularism. And the book of Ecclesiastes gets into that position. and says, okay, you practical secularists, how does life really look? And then he goes after, in the book, and we're going to take these next three weeks on these three. He says, let's take a look at the three basic projects that all human beings have got to do.

If you're going to live, the basic projects that you can't avoid. And even if you don't think you're doing them, you have to do them because you can't live without avoiding them. And the three basic projects are justice, pleasure, and achievement. achievement is what is worth doing in my life what am i going to spend my life doing you know what should i be doing pleasure is where will i find happiness what will satisfy me really and thirdly how do i deal with the injustice and the evil and suffering i see in the world you can't live without asking those questions or essentially answering them even if you don't think you're answering them you are answering them and he says all right let's just say here's the reason that

the book of Ecclesiastes is so unusual and is so helpful and why a book eventually brings you to God. Because the book of Ecclesiastes is not just doubt, belief. The great thing about the book, and it's so democratic when you think about it, the Ecclesiastes writer also doubts unbelief. Now, this is something that almost nobody does. Now, in other words, people know what, yeah, well, yes, let's doubt belief, but let's not doubt. You see, it wouldn't be fair, would it, to only doubt belief, only doubt faith. Surely, if you're going to doubt faith and ask very hard questions about faith, wouldn't you doubt your doubts? Shouldn't you doubt your doubts? Shouldn't you ask hard questions about unbelief?

You see, you're standing someplace, even when you doubt. You can't doubt without standing someplace. And a practical secularist says, this life is all there is. Okay, says the writer. Let's ask a few questions. about that position. And the first one is, how do you deal with justice, the injustice of life? Now, when he does this, some of you today, this is the main spiritual issue you've got.

This is the main problem. This is the main problem with God, with faith, with everything, because you have seen or you've experienced this kind of suffering. For some of the rest of you, it's not maybe the main problem. That's what we're going to do some other weeks, but it's still very important. How do you deal with injustice? Now, here's what this guy does, and I'm going to only be able to outline three things he does. First of all, he refuses to let you avoid the question of injustice, and then secondly, he gives us two answers, clues to two answers.

First of all, he refuses to let us avoid the question. He puts the question in front of us. He refuses to let us tune it out. And then secondly, and then he gives us the clues for two answers, two answers for how to deal with injustice. Okay, first of all, let me show you. Look how he makes sure you do not avoid the question. This is very easy to tune out. In verse 11 and 12, first of all, he's tear talking about the random general injustice in life.

And he says what? He says, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor does come to the wise, nor wealth to the brilliant, or favor to the learned, but time and chance happens to all. And moreover, as Fisher caught in a cruel net, birds are taken in a snare, men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them. One writer I was reading, preparing for this, one night just took down the first couple sentences of every news story on his TV news, and here's what he got.

There was trouble in Middle East again tonight, today. Three terrorists commandeered a school bus and set off explosives that came. killed both themselves and all the children. A major storm hit Bangladesh. Thousands were drowned. Tens of thousands are homeless. Four car pile up on Route 261 resulted in five deaths. In the Bronx, a five-year-old girl in her mother's lap was killed by a straight bullet.

And here was one that's a little more of a research thing. Thousands of two-thirds world children die daily from largely preventable diseases out of complacency and selfishness and invincible ignorance that people will. with the power to treat them, simply fail to do so. Now, what is that saying? It's what the Ecclesiastes writer is trying to say. It doesn't matter who you are, where you are. It doesn't matter whether you're good or bad.

Horrible things happen constantly, random, without just, it's crazy. It can happen to anybody. Suddenly, beautiful little children blown up. Suddenly this, suddenly that. It's like, and as he says, it can happen to anybody. It can happen anytime you never know. You can't avoid it, and you never know when it's going to happen. The random misery and cruelty of the world.

The injustice of life. That's the first thing he brings up. He says, look at that. The race is not to the swift, you see. You may be swift, but you may lose. You may be brilliant, but you may not succeed. Because, frankly, life is a crapshoot. You think you're under control.

If you think you're under control, you think if I just do this and do this and this, things are going to go well for me. You're very, very young. I mean I say interesting I do that way every two months I say that somehow

and everybody laughs because you are young or maybe it's only the old people laughing I better watch careful next time you are not in control one of the ways that young people tune out the injustice of life as they say

it's those people it's not going to happen to me I'm going to watch my back I'm going to be very careful I'm going to discipline myself I'm not going to ride on school buses in the Middle East. I'm going to have all sorts of things. But he won't stop there. He goes on. Now, when he goes on, I want you to know right away, some of you are going to

start to defend yourself against what he says here, because you're going to say he's just being gloomy. I'll get back to that. He says, oh, yeah, there's people like this. He's just, but here's what he does. He goes on, and he goes on past the random general injustice that happens to so many people, and he moves to the absolute ultimate injustice that happens to everybody. back in verse three and four as it is with a good man so with a sinner as it is with those who take oath so with those who are afraid to take them this is the evil in everything that happens under the sun

now look down in verse five for the living know that they will die but the dead know nothing they have no further reward and even the memory of them is forgotten their love and their hate their jealousy have long since vanished never will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun here's what he's saying he is not just saying here that good people have it bad and bad people have it good that's injustice and that often happens that sort of random thing he's saying something else

something deeper he says no matter what you do in life whether you live a life of look a life of love verse 6 or hate whether you are the terrorist or the child everything you do will vanish but worse than that even the memory of what you do even the effect of what you do will be forgotten at the end of the road for every human being if this life is all there is there is a nothingness that if you're willing to think about it at all and I'm making you he says makes everything you do meaningless Everything you do. Kathy and I recently watched on video one of the latest John Sales movie called Men with Guns.

It's a powerful movie. And in the movie, it's about a doctor in a Latin American country who has trained a bunch of young doctors, and they have gone up into the hinterland, they've gone up into the parts of the country. They're very remote and very poor, and those doctors were going to give health care to people who desperately needed it. and when he came to understand that virtually every single one of the people that he had trained and set out there had been killed either by the army or by the guerrillas almost immediately so that everything he'd done and all that they had put their lives into was gone he goes the whole movie is basically about him going into one incredibly dangerous place after another to just find every one of those young people and he never can find them and in the very end he dies his last words are a man should have a legacy

and at one point in the movie he says I'm not a religious man I'm not a religious man I'm a scientist I'm a doctor but I want to know that I've done something to make this place better I've got to know that or my life is absolutely meaningless well the ecclesiastes writers says wake up what if they didn't die yet listen if you build the pyramids you'll be remembered for a while longer than the rest of us but eventually if when you die you rot and when the sun die everything rots, cosmic forgottenness, lies at the end of every person's life. It doesn't matter

what you've done. It doesn't matter who you are the same destiny. And that makes everything you do pointless, everything. Now, somebody's saying, I know what you're saying, oh, I've heard this stuff. I had to take Philosophy 101. I've heard this sort of thing. This person is just being gloomy. I want you to know, you say, that even if you think about that, And see, if you're a practical secularist, you say, of course, if you think about that, you're going to be depressed all the time. But, hey, there's Central Park. There's the theater. There's sex.

There's incredible restaurants. There's wonderful clothes. And you know what? He's heard this from you. And in verse 7, look, he goes right on. He's heard it a hundred times. He heard people say, oh, yeah, sure. It's meaningless if you're going to think philosophically.

But let's just, let's go out there and really be normal people. And he goes on. he says, okay, sure, fine. So, verse seven, go eat your food with gladness. Now, I don't want to get into my next two sermons here. Go eat your food with gladness. Drink your wine with a joyful heart. Be clothed with white. Good food. Parties. Look great. Feel marvelous. Okay. See? Enjoy life with your wife. Have sex all the days of this meaningless life. He says, listen. It's meaningless this anyway. It's going to keep breaking through. It doesn't matter. You see, he's really saying, don't you dare tune this out. All the great ones are like this. Buddha, Siddhartha,

before his became Buddha, before he became the old story that he was raised in a palace and he hadn't really seen suffering. When he finally went out, the first day he saw an old man, and the second day he saw a sick man, and the third day he saw a dead man. and he realized this was coming to everybody. And the way the legend goes, at one point he turns to his charioteer, he turns to his servant. And he says, the hearts of men must be hard to be self-composed before such a situation. He starts to cry out. He says, old age.

Well, the charioteer says, well, of course old age. I mean, everybody knows you lose all your beauty eventually. You lose all your memory. You lose all your sensation. You lose even your... He says, everybody knows this. See, Buddha says, you know this and you're not crying out? You're not wrestling with it.

Doesn't this make everything meaningless? We have to do something. We have to come to grips with it. See, the great ones always say that. The great ones refuse to tune it out. What do you do with the evening news? I know what I tend to do. Another bomb.

Hmm, you know, it's on. Another bomb. Hmm. A flood. Hmm. Okay, kids, dinner's on the table. Turn off the news. You tune it out.

Ecclesiastus writer says, don't you dare. You want to lose what little humanity you have left. Now, he refuses to let you out from under the question. The question of injustice is injustice in this world, and especially the ultimate injustice of radical and cosmic nothingness and forgottenness. It makes every single thing meaningless, everything pointless, everything vanity. But in this text, we also have, and we're going to be looking at this more in the next three weeks. In this text, we also have the clues to the two biblical answers to this question of injustice. Now, what I mean by that is, the Bible says don't tune out

injustice, but don't go into despair. There's a third way. Don't tune out injustice, but don't go into despair. There's a third way. You may know the story of the prodigal son, but it's not just about a wayward younger brother. In fact, Jesus tells this story to speak both to those who run from God and to those who try to earn his love by being good. In his book, the prodigal God, Tim Keller shows how this well-known story reveals the heart of the gospel, a message of hope for both the rebellious younger brother and the judgmental older brother, and an invitation for all to experience God's prodigal, extravagant grace. Whether you're a Christian or you're still exploring faith, the prodigal God will help you see your relationship with Christ in a whole

new way. The prodigal God is our thank you for your gift this month to help gospel in life share the hope and joy of Christ's gracious and relentless love with people all over the world. Request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. What is that third way? Over the years, it seems like increasingly I've found that the Bible's answer boils down to two, and I'm going to call them a cool answer and a hot answer. One is an answer for the mind, that's the cool one. And one is an answer for the heart.

That's the hot one. All by themselves, they don't work, but together they're remarkable. And the Ecclesiastes writer, because he's Ecclesiastes, because he's different than any other book in the Bible, does not tell you, but clue you. He does not let, see the Ecclesiastes is not a lecture. It's a seminar. It's almost a bull session. He does, he goads you. He role plays. He pushes you with questions. He gives you clues. And here are the clues to both the cool and the hot answer. I will be brief, but here's one I want to tell you. Even though I'm going to be brief, when we go through the cool answer right now, I want you to be patient.

If you are not suffering, the cool answer is very interesting. but if you're suffering, the cool answer is very inadequate. Okay? But you have to have them both. What's the cool answer? All right. The cool or the answer, actually, it's not called cool. Let's call it the answer for the mind.

He gets at that in verses three and four. In verse four, he says something terrible about dogs. Now, my wife is a dog lover, and I promised her that I would not, I would put this into context. But in verse four, he says, it's better to be alive. dog than a dead lion. Now, when you think of dogs, you think of beagles and collies. But when the ancient people thought of dogs, they did not. Because to ancient people, dogs were the lowest form of animal. Dogs were the scavengers. Dogs were wild. Dogs lived on garbage, and dogs ate cadavers. I mean, when Jezebel, the great queen, the evil queen, Jezebel is thrown

into the street back in the Old Testament, what happens? The dogs come and eat her. You see, because, well, because of course, she deserves the dogs, they say, because she's so evil. And the dogs deserve her, you see, because they're so low. But the lion, out of the ancients, the lion was the greatest noble beast. Just as we see him now. But now listen, what is he saying in verse four? Astounding. In fact, if it wasn't linked with verse five, we would have to back away. What he says in verse four is fairly simple. He says there, It's better to be a liar, a murderer, a scavenger, and save your skin than be a noble person who dies.

It's not worth it to live for anything anymore. What he's really saying? And you say, what is he saying? Yes, he's saying something so shocking and so vicious. He says, it no longer matters. It's better to save your skin, be a liar, and a murderer, and a thief than it is to be a noble person. and die for it. And if you say, is he saying that? It's in verse five, the word four. You see the word four? This is the reason for, and go down in there. And he says, because love or hate, in the end,

they vanish. And what he's saying is something very, very, very up to date. And the philosophers are saying it now. And what is it? What they are saying is this. If this life is all there is, if when you die you're rot, if we just accidentally have evolved as the, out of the collocation of accidental forces, then there is no such thing as a right and wrong. There can't be. All moral distinctions are pointless. Why? Well, Alistair, great philosopher who has done this very, very well in a couple of his books. He says, here's the reason why. He says there's no such thing as abstract goodness. goodness is always relative to purpose.

What if somebody gave you a watch and you'd never seen a watch before in your life? This is McIntyre's illustration. What if somebody gave you a watch and you'd never seen this watch before? And somebody says, is it good? You'd say, I don't know. What is it for? There's no such thing as abstract goodness. Is it, is the watch for hammering a nail?

It's bad. Is the watch for, you know, what is the watch for? Until you know what something is for, you don't know whether it's good or bad. bad. Things are only good or bad in relation to the purpose. What makes a good human being? McIntyre says, if we are accidents, if there's no purpose, then it's ridiculous to say it's bad to hurt people. You're just here to survive. The strong eat the weak, you're just here to survive. Better to be a live dog. Better to trample on people. I mean, how dare you say? Who are you to say? There's no warrant to say that anything is good or bad. If this life is all, you know,

or is, there is no good or bad, but. Now, here's the other part of this weird argument. In verse three, in spite of the fact that he says, vanity, meaningless, it's all meaningless, it's all meaningless. Up in verse three, he says, but men are evil. And this is the problem. Derek Kidner, one of my favorite commentators on this verse, Derek Kidner says something extremely interesting. He says, what we may not notice about verse three at first is that this sense of outrage is just as much a fact about us as is our mortality. The fascination of this book of Ecclesiastes throughout its length arises largely from the collisions of observation and equally obstinate and opposed intuitions, so it pushes us toward a synthesis that is largely

beyond its own pages. Here's what he means. If you don't believe, if you believe this life is all there is, then there's no such thing as injustice. Right? And yet deep inside, you know there is. On the one hand, he says vanity, meaningless, pointless, but then he also says, and yet it's still as evil. And there is an incredible contradiction in the heart of being a secular person. At the heart of unbelief, it says this, I don't believe really in a God because of the injustice, but if there is no God, there's no basis for being outraged. I'm going to put it to you two ways. It'll be on tape so you can always listen to it again. If there's a God, evil is a problem.

It's a big problem. He's got reasons for why he's allowing it, and we don't know what they are, but that's not, that really hurts. It still doesn't really make it better. If there's a God, evil is a problem. But if evil is a problem for you, there must be a God. Do you see that? If evil is a problem, if you are outraged, and yet, Your own worldview gives you no basis for the outrage.

What it means is your worldview is wrong. If you know there's an injustice, even though if there is no God, there shouldn't be an injustice, then you know there's a God. Put it another way. It's a problem for belief. Evil's a problem for belief, but it's a bigger problem for unbelief. It's a problem if you believe in God, but it's a bigger problem if you don't believe in God, because if you don't believe in God, then the original reason for disbelieving of God is gone.

You can't even define injustice. There's no basis for it. That's the cool argument. It's a very strong argument. It's being made by Christian philosophers all the time. And that is, evil is a problem for belief, but it's a bigger problem for unbelief. And that's your only two alternatives. So why not believe?

You have no basis for outrage, no basis for working against injustice unless there is a just judge. We don't know why he's not acting. But if you get rid of him out of your mental furniture, you've got a bigger problem than if you keep him. Now, didn't I warn you? If you're not suffering, if you're kind of intellectual type, and there's lots of you out there like that, I know, that's intriguing. That's interesting. You'd never thought of that. That's helpful, maybe even.

But if you're suffering right now, it's just cold. It's cold comfort. There's a place in C.S. Lewis's book, A Grief Observe, where he says, the thing I'm afraid of, and when his wife died, Joy Davidman, Gresham, who went to Hunter College, by the way, when his wife died, he says, the thing I'm not so much afraid of is that there is no God. I'm afraid of who he might be. I'm afraid of meeting a God that I don't like. Christianity doesn't just give you one answer. The one answer is there. We just gave it to you. Lots of religions have it. There is a God. If there is no God, if there is no God,

God, you have a bigger problem with evil than if you don't have a God. But Christianity gives you another one. It's the hot answer. It's the personal answer. It's the answer for the heart. And what is it? Well, the clues for you in this last little vignette. What a weird story. When he says, I saw one more thing and it impressed me, in Hebrew, that's a two week of word. The word impressed means it amazed me, it confounded me, it mystified me. I don't know what it means. And here's why. He saw a kind of wisdom in this little story, this little thing he saw. I saw a kind of wisdom beyond any wisdom he knew. There was once a small city with only a few people in it, and a powerful king came against it, surrounded it, and built huge seed works against it.

And now they lived in that city, a man poor but wise. He saved the city by his wisdom, but nobody remembered that poor man. But the poor man's wisdom was despised. Now there's three things about this wisdom he'd never seen before. First of all, it was a saving wisdom. Look at a little city, few people, which is a great king, huge seed works, it was absolutely overwhelming. The city was absolutely doomed. There was no way out. We don't know exactly how he did it, but there was a wisdom that was so incredibly powerful

that it was able to save that city. That's incredible, but that's not all. More than that. Secondly, it wasn't just a saving wisdom, it was a serving wisdom. One of the things that is so weird and so unusual about this, at least in the Old Testament, is the wise man is poor. Now, you know, the Ecclesiastes is a wise man, and if you read the whole book, you'll see he's a king. You'll see that he's rich, because frankly, if you're really wise, if you're really smart, of course you're going to get up in the world, of course you're going to make some money, of course you're going to get ahead. How could a wise man be poor?

But suddenly he's confronted with the fact that this wisest of men, this person with almost a supernaturally saving wisdom has not used his wisdom to dominate or get up but to be a servant. He's used it in a humble way. And then lastly, the most astounding thing of all, anybody who has that kind of power and wisdom and that kind of form of servanthood in wisdom, he was not just, forgotten. Look. He says, nobody remembered him, but it says he was despised. It was a vicious. It was a deliberate forgetting. The people turned on him. They hated him. Now, my friend Sinclair Ferguson, wrote a book on Ecclesiastes some years ago. He called it Pundits Folly, because he uses the term pundit for the writer of Ecclesiastes. And this is what he says. He says, God has placed testimonies to his presence throughout our lives.

no safe haven. There's no place we can escape his reality. And the words of Ecclesiastes 9, 13 to 16, read almost like a prophecy. Whose name most naturally comes to mind when we hear of a poor man, full of wisdom, who became a savior but whose life and teaching were rejected? The man the pundit saw was just a reflection of a wisdom beyond philosophical arguments, wisdom himself. The true, poor wise man, who had become the savior, as Paul described, Him, Christ crucified, was a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks, but to those who Christ is called, both Jew and Greek, Christ's the wisdom of God and the power of God. Now, here's why this is the hot answer, and this is a clue. The Ecclesiastes writer sees a kind of wisdom, and he's moved by it. Now, we know why, because it's just an echo, a pattern of the great wisdom, and this is this. We do not just have a God who, simply up in heaven and he says, I've got reasons why I'm not dealing with evil, you're just going to have to accept them. And that's all you've got. That's all you've got. You're in worse

shape if you reject me, so there you are. You're stuck with me. Tough. Is that what God says? Not the Christian God. The Christian God has done something unbelievable. Here's the gospel. We've forgotten God. It is he who has made us, but not, and not we ourselves. We've forgotten him. That we go our own way. We doff our hats to him. But in general, every day, we don't remember him. We forget him. We act as if we're our own gods. And because we have turned away from the only permanent thing, we have stopped, we've become temporary. Because we've turned away from the only thing that lasts forever, we are going to be forgotten. And we know it. And deep in our hearts, we know it. The Ecclesiastes writer and Buddha and all the great ones are

trying to push you to say, look at it. You know, No, the worst thing in the world is to be forgotten. To have people forget you, to have people forget who you are, to have people forget that you were coming. I mean, even in the micro, that's horrible. But in the macro, it's even worse. And here we're told, we deeply inside know that what's coming is cosmic forgottenness, cosmic nothingness, and we can't handle it. But God has done something about it. He sent his son into the world, and on the cross, he did not give us a...

philosophical argument. When he was on the cross, which is the wisdom of God, when he was on the cross, he did not say, let me explain to you why if unbelief has more of a problem with suffering than belief. No, what he said is, my God, my God, why have you forgotten me? What was happening on the cross was God was pouring out the cosmic forgottenness. He was turning his back on his son. He was giving to him what we deserve and what we know. was coming in what is making our lives meaningless, even though it's only half-conscious, even though it's unconscious. He got forsaken by his friends, forsaken by his enemies, but even forsaken by the Father, he got the cosmic forgottenness that the Ecclesiastes writer says

it's coming to everybody, you know it's coming to everybody, and it makes your life meaningless, but it went into the heart of Jesus. That poor man was forgotten so that you will not be. why do you think God can say in Isaiah 49 can a woman forget the baby that nurses at her breast yea she may forget but I will not forget you behold you are engraved on the palm of my hands how can he say he'll never forget you he'll never ever ever forget you that you will be remembered in love forever and ever how can you walk out of the world knowing that that cosmic forgottenness is not yours anymore. And therefore you can walk out in the world and truly finally enjoy what's there. Because your forgottenness was put on Jesus. And therefore the

Christian can sing. And though I am despised, forgot, yet God, my God forgets me not. And he is safe and must succeed for who Christ promises to plead. If you are not a believer today, but you're a searcher, I beg you. You've got a hot and a cold answer. You not only have to think it out, but you have to get to know this one, this person, a God who came into suffering and received this suffering and injustice of this world in a more deep way than anybody else has ever experienced it. If you're a Christian, let me tell you what your problem is today. You know what your problem is? I'll tell you what it is. You've forgotten the poor man. Some of you are here today, and you're upset.

You know what? You've forgotten the one who died for you, though, you forgot him. Bless the Lord, oh, my soul, says the psalmist, and all that is within me bless his holy name. Bless the Lord on my soul, and forget not his benefits. The psalmist gets up every day and says, my big problem is I forgotten what he's done for me. I've forgotten the forgottenness that he took upon me. If you're here today, for example, and you feel rejected by somebody and you're in despair, you've forgotten the fact that the only person whose opinion counts, the only one who's

permanent, the only one whose love will last forever, loves you now because your forgottenness was thrown on Jesus. If you're a Christian today, your whole problem is, your main problem is, you've forgotten the poor man. You've despised him. You need to fill your heart again with the knowledge of what he did for you. Don't you see this? remember the poor man and you'll live forever remember the poor man and you'll be loved forever

let's pray we thank you lord god that because of who you made your son the son of god who loved you forever and knew you forever and then what you did to him you poured out our forgottenness on him because of that, we can know that you will never forget us. Lord, when it comes down to it, philosophy can bring us to the brink, can even give us some intellectual answers, but it's only a knowledge of your son that can help us to move out into the world and deal with the suffering in a way that is neither tuning it out nor falling into despair. Oh, we thank you that only at the cross? Do we get to the place? Do we get the resources for dealing with the injustice of life? We pray, Lord, that those of us who are experiencing injustice now would know what your

son experienced for us, that we can forgive, and we can be strong. And I pray for those here who don't know who he is yet. That through the despair that they might be feeling, which is really a gift of your Holy Spirit, they may come to see who he is and what he's done for them. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helped you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelonlife.com.

There, you can subscribe to the Gospel and Life Quarterly Journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. Today's sermon was recorded in 1998. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. You know,