197: Dev Ramcharan - Coping In A Fallen World

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to good Chris Selfian Talks. I’m Levi. And I’m Chris. And I’m Brian. Thank you for joining us this week on this podcast. We select One Talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. We post a new episode at the start of each week. With a short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you’re about to listen to. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk. Welcome to the good Chris Adelphian Talks podcast. This is Brother Brian.

2. 0:55

   This week’s talk is a class. In the middle of a series on Ecclesiastes that was given by brother Dave Ramsrand at the Palm Springs Bible School earlier this year, 2022. The official series title is The Whole Duty of Man and we’ll be listening to the third class entitled Coping in a Fallen World. But I’d strongly suggest you listen to the whole week’s worth because every class is solid.

3. 1:25

   Breaking down. You know, like chapter by chapter, the mindset of Solomon, the preacher in Ecclesiastes, and how we can, like, just reconcile the vast differences in the statements that are made and perhaps where the lessons were learned along the way. But really, the signature of this series is Brother Dave’s personal commentary, which is interwoven throughout each verse.

4. 1:54

   Turning side comments to stories that take on life of their own and become so deeply personal and intimate. And if you’ve ever been in the audience for one of his talks, it feels at times like he’s speaking at you 6 inches from your face and just that you and that you have nowhere to hide.

5. 2:25

   And it’s because he’s got such a gift in speaking in the real list of terms and oftentimes saying what needs to be said when and where others won’t. Now I say that in the most complimentary way because Brother Dave is such a diligent Bible student, but I would say any class I’ve listened to an expectation, any series. It doesn’t matter what the subject is at the end of each class.

6. 2:57

   It almost feels more like you’re walking out of a therapy session and that you just need some time to just sit and process what he may have stirred up in your heart.

7. 3:15

   He cares, and I say all that because. This particular series and the audience he was speaking to hits close to home at the moment. The Palm Springs Bible School in California typically is not a Young people’s Family Bible school, but pretty much one for those who are about to be retired or long since retired, if I could put it kindly.

8. 3:43

   And the subject matter of Ecclesiastes as an end of life reflection. Is just addressed so poignantly that even the young chap, as myself was deeply moved by his exposition. So for Class 3 it jumps us right in the middle. It’s not great for continuity, but I chose this one because I think it had the most consistent and compelling side comments and stories that have really meant a lot to me. Just this morning one of our elder sisters in our meeting at Moorestown fell asleep in the Lord and I was thinking about a comment in this class that Brother Dave makes and his explanation of this comment alone. I think it’s worth posting the entire class. So what he said was start working on having a good death. And you’ll want to stop what you’re doing and listen a few times over when he gets to making that point and what he says about it.

9. 4:57

   So I apologize for the overly long intro. The link to the rest of the classes is going to be in the description as well as it’ll soon be on the GCT extended podcast. Once again, this series is called The Whole Duty of Man and this will be the third class of five. So as always.

10. 5:17

    We hope this strengthens your faith and brightens your day. Brother Dave Ramsrand coping in a fallen world Good morning, brothers and sisters. Did you all have a good night’s sleep? Well, I don’t believe you because at your age that’s an impossibility or a rarity. A rarity at least. So if you did have a good night’s sleep, that’s a wonderful blessing.

11. 5:43

    So we’re going to look now. At Ecclesiastes 6 and then work our way forward. Now let me just remind you a little bit about how things are put together in this book.

12. 5:58

    They are the thoughts of a brother who has made some big mistakes in his life. He’s had a lot more than most people that he has ruled over have ever experienced. It didn’t make him happy. There was always something he was searching for and searching for and searching for. So money, power, women, opportunities just didn’t fill the void. And he noticed.

13. 6:27

    He noticed that life had an inherent hole in it. He looked at the world and the way things work, and he saw unfairness in so many different ways. He also saw an unpredictability. He realized that you could be a good person or a righteous person or a God fearing person. We know no one is good. Christ said that but a God fearing person and still have a really tough, difficult painful life. You could be a wicked individual and have a trouble free life and so there wasn’t a predictability he saw based on how you behaved in this world.

14. 7:10

    What he realizes and fits and starts, it seems, through the course of the writing of the book and the capturing of these alternating thoughts, that in the end, a life of faith is the life that we need to subscribe to, that we need to hold on to.

15. 7:36

    And that going and making our life in this world all about parties and laughter and merriment is ultimately an empty life. The life of a believer, which in in in involves endurance, patience, and choosing to believe and have faith in God, is something that we should all be trying to do. Am I the only one who’s hearing bells, or is this a problem then?

16. 8:06

    In my head, alright, sounds like some kind of tinkling, jingling that’s going on. So when we go through these chapters, sometimes he writes from the point of view of a man of faith. Other time he writes from the point of view of the darkening view towards the end of life, of a man of this world, at an uncle like that.

17. 8:36

    Made a very, very big success of his. His life dragged himself up out of poverty. My dad’s brother was very kind to all of his brothers and sisters and their kids often had young families who were nephews and nieces living free of charge in houses that that he owned, just free because it was who he was.

18. 9:00

    He had a terribly hot temper when he got going. And he would lose his temper. And then it was over, except for the person with whom he had lost his temper, that they had to go and get repaired somewhere after. But as his life went on, fewer and fewer people came and visited him. Fewer and fewer people remembered to come say thank you to him for all of his kindness, everything that he had done. Even found this time goes that went by, that the people that were closest to him didn’t come to see him. Now part of that was because of his temper and his critical nature, and so it tended to alienate people. The problem was the people closest to him weren’t there for him as he was dying.

19. 9:53

    And so all the money, all the power, all the influence, all the adulation, all the hangers on, all the people who benefited. None of that mattered at the end of his life, because what he experienced is what this man is describing in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He’s describing the fact that in spite of everything that you get and everything you can have apart from God, if your life is only about what is under the sun on this earth, it winds up being an altogether empty life. That’s the point he’s making now. This is Solomon.

20. 10:33

    I believe it is Solomon, and he’s speaking to the congregation. Maybe not in one connected talk, but he would give pieces of this message. He was talking to a culture that was all about materialism. Yes, they believed in Yahweh, the God of Israel, but they were all about the accumulation of wealth. And we see evidence of that because of the abundance of gold and silver as it’s described during the period of Solomon.

21. 11:08

    And also the attitude of the men that grew up with Rehoboam who said no, no, no, you’re not going to go out to these people and tell them that you’re going to ease up on the tax burden. You’re going to tell them you think it was hard under my dad. It’s going to be twice as hard under me because I’m tougher, stronger. And I’m going to require more of you than he ever asked. Not, not in whose interest was that? Not the people’s, but in their personal interest, the accumulation of material wealth as rapidly as possible. And of course, it split the nation, because a man named Jeraboam, who had fled for his life and then had come back into the country at the death of Solomon. Who had grown up the son of a widow, and we’re told that deliberately for a reason.

22. 11:59

    It meant that he was a man who knew what poverty and hard times were like. He could have a sense of fellow feeling with people who struggled to pay their taxes, who often had to sell their kids into slavery so that they could pay the debts that were incurred as a result of the hardship.

23. 12:23

    Of the system of taxation that was in place under Solomon, He could relate to those who felt as if they’d been bruised by and alienated from the leadership of the country. And so he could speak to their hearts in a way that Rehoboam, who’d grown up in the lap of luxury with his friends, could never hope to be able to speak to the people.

24. 12:48

    It is no wonder that he was able to take. The majority of the nation away with him because he could speak to their sense of grievance, their sense of having been taken advantage of by the rich and powerful, their sense of the fact that the leaders did not give a hoot about them and they had to look after themselves. It’s why they say those words while you look after yourself, Judah, and they go their own way. But this society under Solomon is afflicted with great materialism, and we can relate to that, can’t we? We can relate to that both for ourselves, having grown old in the society, in times of prosperity, without war. That’s why this war is so shocking to us, because there has not been a war like this in Europe. Since the Second World War, I know there was the the conflict in Yugoslavia that occurred, but a major power attacking another country in Europe has not happened since the Germans did it, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and so on and so forth. So this is a, this is a this is almost an echo coming back from some of your childhoods.

25. 14:18

    When you look back and you remember that the times when people had to tighten their belts because of the war necessity and the way that provisions were really hard to get a hold of and there wasn’t a huge amount of food. Obesity was not a problem at that time because nobody had a lot or a lot to eat. So Solomon is talking to the hearts of people. Who ultimately didn’t listen.

26. 14:53

    But his words continue to move us today because we can see an alignment between what he is talking about and our own struggles in the faith. So what does that mean then? Believers have doubts. Doubt is a part of our life in the truth. Yes, it. Is Yes, we do. There are times when we have doubts. There are times when we struggle to make sense of what’s happening, what God seems to be allowing or doing in our lives, or the lives of those that we see around us or even distant from us.

27. 15:36

    You think of that brother and his little boy in the Ukraine that Mark showed us in that wonderful session last night. Our hearts bleed for them. Imagine what that must be like.

28. 15:52

    And we we see our children, sometimes your children in their 30s, forties, 50s or even 60s and 70s, who have been so deeply affected by the materialism of this age as I have and my generation. And you look at that and you realize, how do you live that? And live the truth at the same time. And it’s hard.

29. 16:18

    It’s hard for us to serve both God and mammon, isn’t it? But doubts? Doubt is a part of faith. What does that mean? We are going to have our struggles and then make our decision in our struggle. To say I may not understand that. I may not have the answer I’m looking for for this, but I’m going to make a choice and I choose to believe God and I choose to have faith in him. Though I can’t workout everything and get the answers I’m looking for for this, that or the other issue, problem or situation.

30. 17:03

    I choose God. He’s never let me down till now and I will continue to believe in him. And so when our kids come to us with their doubts, sometimes we we we we we don’t tell them about our own struggles in the face, but we have our struggles in the face and we come back and we keep holding on. So this this book is filled with a man’s struggles in the faith as he wrestles with materialism as he. Experiments with the pleasures and the prosperity of his age while at the same time observing himself and those things that are associated with what is eternal beyond death, beyond what we see and feel today.

31. 18:03

    It have only to do with things we have faith in and trust God that he will accomplish. So the the book is so modern. In fact, many philosophers today see this as a book that aligns with 20th century philosophy, a kind of philosophy that was called existentialism, that talks about the fact that all we have here, all we see here, that’s all there is, and the life of humanity is altogether dark and ends and ends with nothingness. Puts us into a void with nothing beyond. And so philosophers of an existential bent look at this book and say, oh boy, this is an ancient book that aligns with what we believe.

32. 18:56

    And they ignore all the bits that talk about faith and God and holding on to God. So it’s very modern, but it’s also very truthful. And it’s something that we can look at and relate to. In parts of it, there seems to be a connected sequence of thoughts, and you can identify that sequence of thoughts in others.

33. 19:23

    In other parts of the book, it’s a collection of sayings, and at the end of the book it’ll say that the preacher collected Proverbs. And of course, if Solomon wrote the proverbs, which I also believe he did. Well, it’s a collection of things that he put together as pieces of wisdom. Sometimes they look like they’re in conflict with each other. And what what is intended for us to do is to say to ourselves, it depends on the situation.

34. 19:52

    And we interpret each of these based on circumstances to understand how one thing could be sent in one way at a certain point in the book and then in an opposite way at another part of the book. So let’s jump back into chapter 6. Then There is an evil which I’ve seen where under the sun on the earth in this earthly life.

35. 20:16

    And it is common among men. A man to whom God has given riches, wealth and honor so that he doesn’t lack anything and he has everything he could want and yet he doesn’t have the power to eat thereof, but someone else eats it for him.

36. 20:37

    And that can happen in this world. Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, and not enjoy what you’ve worked for and what you’ve been able to acquire as a result. And then you hand it off to someone who enjoys it all and fritters it away with zero work whatsoever. Now Solomon seems to have this coming up in his mind all the time.

37. 21:00

    He’s worried about rehoboam and what’s going to happen. To the Kingdom, to his possessions, to the accumulation of wealth that has given him the power that he has to pay armies, etc, etc. What’s this boy, this man going to do when I’m gone? So he’s reflecting on these kinds of things and he says, look if you if you have 100 children, so that the days of your years be many, but your soul is not filled with good. And in the end nobody even gives you a decent burial. Then he says, Somebody who is an untimely birth is better than he.

38. 21:45

    But he comes in with vanity, and he departs in darkness, that his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover, he hath not seen the sun, nor known anything. This hath more rest than the other. A miscarried baby is better off than a man who had all this wealth, never enjoyed it, and handed it off to someone else to enjoy. That’s what he’s saying.

39. 22:15

    It’s a pretty dark view, isn’t it? So it must mean to some degree, for all of Solomon’s wisdom and all of his possessions and all of his might, you had a hard time really enjoying what he had. We’re going to drop down now. Nine better is the sight of the eyes then the wandering of the desire.

40. 22:37

    Now what could that possibly mean? This is what it means. It’s better to want what you have than to have what you want, to see what you already have and desire it and be grateful for it. Meant to be continually wanting more and more and more and more and more and more and the way everything is set up today.

41. 23:09

    You know, Amazon, eBay, etc etc etc. These things just promote the wanting more. I know because I’m affected by that. You must be too. For those of you who like technology, well it’s both a curse and a blessing, isn’t it?

42. 23:27

    How many of you have felt that you really do need to get that new iPhone every two years? I’m talking about you kids in your 50s and 60s, right? You lads and lasses. And they’ve even built the thing so that they start to malfunction at year two when they could in fact last you for 10 years. But they made it so that things become obsolete quickly. So you continue really have to buy something new and buy something new, buy something new and buy something new. It’s just the way things have been set up for us. Better is the sight of the eyes, what you can see and what you have than the continual wandering of the desire for more and more and more this is this look. This also is, is is emptiness and and a striving after wind. So what are we striving after?

43. 24:20

    You know that feeling youngsters, when your Amazon box arrives. And you bring it in, and there are even on YouTube videos of what they call unboxing. How stupid is that? A person films 15 minutes of himself opening the box. He hasn’t even seen the thing in it yet. Now I take a knife when I’m as you can see, I’m cutting the box.

44. 24:44

    Gee, they have good tape on these boxes. It’s the lunacy of this age. What is the wind we’re chasing? Happiness. You feel happy and then it’s unboxed. Use it once and you laid aside whatever The thing is, right? Whatever The thing is. I like music and I like something that’s really old. It’s called a CD, right? It’s old today.

45. 25:11

    Now, it used to be that if you had to buy the kind of music I like. So I I know I’ve told you about this, Rolling Stones. And that’s the stuff I grew up with. The Stones, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin. You remember it? I don’t know. You may not know any of those punk rock groups with inappropriate names and so on and so forth. But I learned all about and learn to love classical music and jazz.

46. 25:34

    Now what would happen is you’d buy one jazz CD. It might cost you $15. Today you can get 150 Jazz C D’s in one box for $100. So what we paid for those things 25 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago is is like nothing today. So what do you think that’s going to do to somebody like me? Oh no, I won’t do that.

47. 25:58

    That’s that’s greedy and inappropriate. There’s a room I have you can barely walk into because of boxes of CD’s I do not have enough time in my lifetime to listen to. But the the the, the urge to accumulate. I can get the complete works of Lozart for $150.00. Yes, I’m getting that. It’s still in its plastic in that room because that’s what our materialistic age is doing to us.

48. 26:28

    It knows our weakness. It knows our frailty. Marketers know how to hook us and pull us in. And so the accumulation and accumulation. Is all about a fitful desire to find happiness through things, and we might get a momentary bump up, but then it Peters out. It it it it it just it just goes away.

49. 26:55

    And I know my daughters will throw every CD I own into the garbage dump. Everyone of them. Not one single CD will be left right. So an actual fact, the true worth of those things, they will demonstrate, right? Those things that made me so happy, you know? And for every brother and sister, it’s a different thing. Might be sewing supplies for the thing you will never ever get around to sewing, right?

50. 27:26

    But boy, do you have the best thread. Or if you’re a nitter, the best yarn a person could possibly have all the way from Turkey, from sheep that were hunted down on the whatever, right? Right. And Cars Brothers and their cars, right? Yes. Like, think about it this way. Everybody’s thing that they have that you don’t have is a ridiculous and silly obsession. They have those people over there in that thing. But mine’s a serious collection thing with meaning and importance, even if it’s like Marvel comic books from the 1960s.

51. 28:07

    Right. Oh, sorry. I think I must have touched a nerve for a couple of couple of the youngsters in the back there. Captain America, Absolutely. So let’s drop down then to chapter seven, he says. Look, a good name, a good reputation, a good character is better than precious ointment. Now what? Why would he?

52. 28:36

    How do you put those those two two things together? Because when a woman is in your presence and has that kind of great character, you won’t know it right off the bat. But if she has a precious ointment on, you will know it from yards away from her before you even reach there.

53. 28:55

    And So what are you saying is the showy outward things, the luxurious whatever of our of our life today is empty. What is more important is character. It’s been well said for our kids, and I know you’re all thinking along these lines too. What are you going to leave your kids? What is what?

54. 29:17

    What is more important than what you leave for your kids is what you leave in your kids, what you live in in your kids, what you’ve taught them, how you raise them, the character that they’ve developed, what what? What you, what you. Taught them was most important, even if for now they look like they’ve walked away from it. What you’ve left in them is more important than anything you could leave them to spend or live in or or hold on to. Because all those things will drift away into the ether when what you’ve left in them will always be in them, Even a child that walks away from our faith.

55. 30:04

    Will have in them things that we raised them with. Hard work, dedication, honesty, integrity that marks them as different to the people in this world. And don’t mourn about your kids having left the truth or not in the truth. Because where there is life, there is hope. There’s a woman who came back to the meeting in her 80s in Toronto.

56. 30:34

    We were doing a a a campaign and going out and inviting people who had been to the Learn to read the Bible seminar series and stop coming. So a couple of us were were paired up and knocked on a house and and a woman came out who was in her 80s and we said look we we’re we’re inviting you to to a special lecture for people who at some point in time have come to the seminar series and we’d like to invite you.

57. 31:04

    She said the strangest thing. She said, well you don’t usually do that. Please come in. She made us a pot of tea and and we had some cookies and and sometime into the cookies, she said. Actually I am the daughter of the recording brother of the church St. Ecclesia and in the 1940s when I married outside of the truth. The arranging board, the arranging brethren sent me a blistering letter and I left the truth. I used to bring my daughters to the CYC, but after a while, because their mom and dad weren’t in the truth, the kids really didn’t treat them all that well, so they stopped coming too.

58. 31:55

    Now this sister’s name was Marguerite Kempthorne. Marguerite came back in. In her 80s, made a special trip down to Church St. Ecclesia so she could visit the hall with those brethren and their children long dead, so that she could just go there and and forgive what had been done. And she has to worry what is going to happen to my little girls. And they were 60s going into 70.

59. 32:27

    She died in her 90s. And directly after her death, one of her girls was baptized in her 70s, in her 70s. So you might think, what’s going to happen to my kids? I’ve lost everything. I wish I’d raised them differently. I wish I was there more, all the things that parents torture themselves with.

60. 32:48

    But there isn’t a mistake your child makes as a full grown art adult that you don’t blame yourself for, for some degree. If I’d raised him differently, if I’d given him more love, less discipline, more this, more that, we’ll all do that. It’s what we do as parents. But remember, though he may not have chosen God, or may have walked away from God, God brought that child into the world.

61. 33:17

    God is still working in his life. And where there is life, there’s always the hope that through tragedy. Through the advent of common sense, Through a yearning for something that’s more meaningful. When he looks at the emptiness of life. When you have everything you ever wanted and realize you have nothing but somehow God will bring him around back into His truth.

62. 33:46

    Pray for that. I know we should be looking at these chapters, but there’s one more thing I just want to mention to you. Start working. On having a good death, what do I mean by that? Model for your children. Forgiveness.

63. 34:10

    Model for your children. Faith and trust in God. Model for your children. The recognition that this life that we have, even with all the pain and suffering that comes at the end of this. At the end of it, this is not all we have, that there’s something better, there’s something coming. And that when I close my eyes, I open them almost instantaneously and I’m standing at somebody’s feet. And that you may have to live your life, son, for another 30-40 fifty years, but I will be right at his feet, hoping for his mercy.

64. 34:58

    And His Grace, an entry into His Kingdom. Let this stage of your life as you go towards and use as you get to those last days, not be about disappointment or bitterness or hurts and wrongs that you still feel that all that stuff go, let it go and have a good death. Because how you die will teach your child about what was most important to you and could draw their minds back into the future, into what’s most important.

65. 35:43

    Where they might think, you know, Mom was in so much pain I could barely look at what she was going through. But she kept on talking about God. She kept on talking about the Kingdom. She kept on telling me, son, you have to forgive your sister and make peace, because that’s what God would want you to do.

66. 36:14

    And if there’s a last wish I have that I want you to honor, it’s to make peace with your siblings. I have let go everything that was in my mind, creating a problem for me. All the hurts, everything that offended me. What this one or that one did to me, what I could have had and didn’t have.

67. 36:44

    I let it all go because I want to be like Christ. Because I know that the happiest condition I can be in, in all this pain is with a kind of thinking that is about grace and hope and the future that I know is coming with all my being. I’ve got to get through this pain.

68. 37:10

    I have to close my eyes one day. But I want you to think about these things. So you might think, what have you got to give your kids at this stage? You can give them a good death and it it means those things so that they know what was most important. It’s the last preaching campaign you will be on and it could save someone’s life that you love. Now Marguerite is going to stand up at the judgment seat and look over.

69. 37:49

    And see someone she didn’t expect would be there. Can you imagine the joy of that moment? All right, then. Back into Chapter 7, verse four. The heart of the wise is in the House of mourning, not in the House of delight, of partying, of noise, of festivity. The heart of the wise. Is in the House of mourning Does Does that mean that we’re death obsessed?

70. 38:24

    No. But it means that when we are at a funeral, we’re in a time of deep reflection, looking within and thinking through where we are, taking stock of where our heart is located, what our mind is focused on. Where we need to be now, you might look at it that way and say, OK, this is talking about other people’s funerals, yes, but think about the House of Mourning being the memorial meeting you and I are in every every week where we reflect on the man who gave his life for us, we think about the love.

71. 39:17

    The obedience, the suffering, the compassion, the empathy, the deep rapport between a man who had nothing but his faith and his belief in God and his love for him and his love for people he had not even ever met during his lifetime.

72. 39:49

    We think and we we in that House of mourning, remember His example that He set for us. And then we have the uplift of remembering in that House of mourning, that it was the pathway that led to eternal life for Him.

73. 40:13

    So his suffering had meaning. What he went through, what he endured, had purpose in it. And it’s the same for you. What we go through, what we suffer, is not meaningless stuff that happens to us by chance, randomly. God is at work. Verse 14 of chapter seven, he says. In the day of prosperity.

74. 40:44

    Be joyful. But in the day of adversity, consider God hath even made the one side by side with the other to the end. That man should not find out anything that shall be after him. What does that mean? God has deliberately put happy days and sad days into our life. So that we have no choice but to reach out to him in hope so that we can’t predict.

75. 41:22

    We don’t always know how things are going to go. That’s in his hands. Our responsibility is to trust in him. And when things are going well, that’s the last time we’re reaching out to the Almighty because things are going well. But our aches, our pains, our troubles, our heart breaks. They drive us to God.

76. 41:49

    They drive us to cry out to Him, to get close to Him, to draw him close to us. That that’s what this is saying in those good days. Rejoice, but no, that God has spliced into our lives. Those darker threads that come up and out into the tapestry? Tragedy, trauma, loss, grief, betrayal, disappointment, heartache.

77. 42:26

    He’s allowed, and sometimes put those things there to drive us to him and to keep him in our minds and in our hearts. He goes on, and we read in verse 19. Wisdom strengthens the wise more than 10 mighty men which are in the city. For there’s not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sins. Not so for people that believe outside that it is possible to live a life without sin.

78. 43:04

    Well, God doesn’t agree with you. Because God inspired Solomon to write this in the same way as God inspired the Lord to say there is none good, not one. Why? Why are you calling me good? And he was the Lord Jesus Christ. So sin, sin is part and parcel of our life and the experience of it. Verse 23.

79. 43:30

    All this have I proved by wisdom. I said I will be wise. It was far from me. It was far that which is far off and exceeding deep. Who can find it out? I cannot figure God out. I’ve tried and I’ve tried. I can’t figure him out. That’s deliberate. God does not want to be figured out by you. God wants you to trust Him and believe in him and have confidence in Him, it says.

80. 44:06

    Verse 27. Look, this is something I found counting things up 1 by 1 to figure things out and how they work, he says. I’ve looked all around. I have not found one wise man among 1000 and then sisters. Fasten your seatbelts OK? Please do not elbow the poor man beside you. That sharp elbow of yours.

81. 44:44

    But a woman among all those have I not found. Now stop, stop, stop, stop. I know Sister Tony is ready to throw her hymn book right up to the front right now.

82. 44:56

    What he’s saying is this. Wise people are exceedingly difficult. I’ve found so few of them. Did he not believe that there were women who were wise? Well, he wrote Proverbs 31 all about the virtuous woman.

83. 45:14

    It could be that the kind of women he surrounded himself with 700 wives, 300 concubines. That’s girls you play around with and don’t have a close relationship with. 1000 He collected them like stamps and just like stamps. Oh, that’s a good one there. Yeah. Let’s look at the next page. No relationship. This was an altogether lonely man.

84. 45:49

    He found very few wise people. And of the women he accumulated, well, wisdom was not an attribute he was looking for. No wonder he couldn’t find one. But he knew that they were out there. Throughout Scripture, we have wonderful, wise women, starting with Eve and all the way through to our sisters here in this room, right beside you, brother, right beside you. Now, some stupid Christadelphian interpreters have taken that to mean that men are naturally more wise than women and wisdom. Wisdom is lacking in sisters.

85. 46:34

    That is an altogether idiotic man who wrote that. I will not dignify that with anything other than that he’s he’s just a fool and it betrays A mindset towards women that will then play itself out. And how he treats his wife, his daughters, his mother, his sisters and the women in the ecclesia. We could not make it without our sisters. Sisters are like nurses in the healthcare system. It isn’t the fancy surgeons and their big fat Eagles who hold the healthcare system together.

86. 47:12

    It is the nurses. And it’s the same with our sisters and our ecclesias and in our families and in our lives. And so whatever, he may have written in that moment of pique. Remember, he wrote it as a flawed individual, and God lets it stay right in the text. It’s right there for us to see.

87. 47:36

    We are surrounded by wise women and men. We need to be grateful for them. We need to honor them. We need to seek their counsel, their advice, their feedback, their input. Yes, the buck stops with us. We cannot throw that yolk off our necks. But we need to treat our sisters as partners in our ecclesias.

88. 48:04

    They have much to offer, much wisdom to share. Solomon didn’t have any like that around him. Every ecclesia is filled with women like that.

89. 48:29

    Thank you for listening to the good Christadelphian Talks Podcast. We hope this talk helped you in your walk. If you would like to hear more, please subscribe for new episodes and leave a review, an Apple podcast, or whichever service you are using to help more people find the show when they search for it.

90. 48:45

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91. 49:25

    Thank you for listening. God bless and talk to you next week.