In this eye-opening sermon on Ecclesiastes 5:8-20, Tony Arsenal tackles the challenging relationship between Christians and money. Drawing from the wisdom of “the Preacher,” he explores how wealth—while not inherently evil—can quickly become a destructive master rather than a useful tool. The sermon reveals the futility of chasing wealth for satisfaction, exposes the painful consequences of hoarding riches, and presents the surprising biblical perspective on enjoying possessions properly. Most importantly, it reminds us that the ability to use money wisely is actually a divine gift from God that comes only through Christ. This message offers practical wisdom for anyone struggling with financial anxiety, materialism, or uncertainty about how to steward their resources faithfully.

“Once a person recognizes that wealth is a gift from God to be enjoyed and not a master to be served, we can finally enjoy it. And this enjoyment of our wealth drives us to enjoy the labor that’s required to get it. When you work and work and work and you never spend your money, that is one of the sure-firest ways to learn to resent your job.”

“If you allow money to be the primary focus of your life, there’s very little chance that you will enter the kingdom of heaven… This is why it is so difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, because wealth has this pernicious way of replacing God in our worship.”

Pray specifically this week for God’s wisdom in handling your resources. Ask Him not just for financial provision, but for “the power to enjoy” what He’s already given you. Consider one practical way you can use your money this week that brings both glory to God and joy to yourself or others—then take action on it.

In this thought-provoking sermon on Ecclesiastes 5:1-7, Pastor Wes Hebert challenges us to examine how we approach worship. Drawing from the wisdom of the Preacher, he reveals three crucial elements of reverent worship: guarding our steps, watching our words, and fearing God. The message confronts our tendency to enter God’s presence unprepared, speaking rashly before Him, and making promises we don’t intend to keep. Through personal examples of Sunday morning struggles and biblical insights, Pastor Hebert reminds us that worship isn’t about performance but preparation of heart. While the message convicts us of our failures in worship, it ultimately points to Christ’s perfect obedience and worship as our hope for transformation—moving us from empty religious performance to authentic reverence before God.

“While I’m called to be an expository preacher, you as God’s people are called to be expository listeners.”

“God is in heaven and you are on earth. This is one of the best verses in all of scripture to restore perspective for us as creatures. God is the eternal deity who made the entire universe. Everything that we see and experience and know is in the hands of God, who is in heaven.”

“When we fear God in this way, we come to worship with expectancy and awe. We’re ready to listen to what he says in his word. We’ll be careful what we say in response, and will give God what he deserves, including our times and our talents and our treasures that we’ve promised to him.”

In this profound message from Christ Community Church, guest speaker Wes Hebert challenges us to reconsider our understanding of vocation as Christians. Drawing from 1 Peter 4:1-11, he argues that beyond our careers and daily occupations, our primary calling is to be “stewards of grace” who both suffer and serve. Using a powerful illustration from the movie “300,” Hebert asks the pivotal question: “Christian, what is your vocation?” Throughout the sermon, he unpacks how believers are called to embrace Christ-like suffering by standing apart from worldly values and enduring the slander that comes with faithful living. He then explores how we are to serve one another sacrificially, using our God-given gifts for His glory, especially in light of Christ’s imminent return. This message offers a compelling vision for Christian identity and purpose in an increasingly secular world.

“Christian, what is your vocation? We are stewards of grace called to suffer and to serve—soldiers in the army of the King of Kings. Armed with his mindset to suffer, empowered by his strength to serve and motivated by his glory, because the end of all things is at hand.”

“None of us can do this apart from the strength that God supplies. You don’t need to be perfect to serve. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to be willing to allow God to use you and to strengthen you.”

“God does not adorn us with his gifts so that we may rob himself and make himself as if it were an empty idol by transferring to us his own glory, but that his own glory may everywhere shine forth in every way you serve.”

In “The King Who Couldn’t Fix It,” Pastor Wes Hebert examines Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26, where King Solomon (or the idealized Preacher King) conducts a comprehensive experiment to find satisfaction in life. Despite having unlimited resources, wisdom, and power, the king discovers that nothing “under the sun” can truly satisfy the human heart. The sermon explores how the king systematically tests simple pleasures (wine and laughter), cultured pleasures (building gardens and paradise-like environments), and communal pleasures (accumulating wealth, servants, and entertainers), only to conclude that all is “vanity and striving after wind.”

The sermon reveals how Solomon’s attempts to build his own personal Eden—to recreate paradise through human effort—ultimately failed. Despite being the most powerful king in Israel’s history with unprecedented resources and wisdom, he still found that life remained frustratingly futile. This serves as a powerful reminder that if the greatest king couldn’t find satisfaction through his own efforts, neither can we. Pastor Hebert points out that we exhaust ourselves trying to turn everything into renovation projects—our marriages, children, careers, and even our vacations—placing burdens on these gifts that they were never meant to bear.

The turning point comes when the king finally looks upward rather than inward. He discovers that true enjoyment doesn’t come from using God’s gifts to please ourselves, but from receiving them gratefully as we seek to please God. When we stop trying to make wine, friends, work, and relationships fix our lives and instead see them as gifts to be enjoyed while we wait for the ultimate Eden that only Christ can establish, we find the rest our hearts crave. The sermon concludes by contrasting Solomon’s failed kingship with Christ’s faithful kingship—where Solomon accumulated everything for himself, Jesus emptied himself; where Solomon built gardens for his pleasure, Jesus sweat drops of blood in a garden for our salvation; where Solomon lived to please himself, Jesus lived to please the Father.

In this sermon, Tony Arsenal delves into James 1:1-18, offering an encouraging and theologically rich exploration of how Christians can find joy amidst trials. Addressing an audience of Jewish Christians scattered due to persecution, the book of James reveals the purpose of trials: to test and validate faith, producing steadfastness, sanctification, and ultimate conformity to Christ. This teaching emphasizes God’s unchanging goodness, His provision of wisdom in trials, and the eternal crown of life promised to those who persevere in faith. With references to Romans 8:28, Philippians 1:6, and Matthew 24:13, the sermon provides practical insights into how believers can face suffering with confidence, trusting in God’s providence and immutability.

James 1:2-4 calls believers to “count it all joy” when facing trials, not because the trials themselves are joyful but because they fulfill a higher purpose. Trials test and validate faith, much like a temple shekel is weighed to confirm its authenticity. This testing produces steadfastness—a spiritual endurance that equips believers to persist in faith throughout their lives. Far from being a random occurrence, trials are divinely ordained to sanctify us, conforming us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:28). They provide a tangible demonstration of God’s faithfulness, working in and through difficult circumstances for our ultimate good and His glory.

James describes God as the “Father of lights” with whom there is “no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). This imagery highlights God’s immutable nature—He is unchanging and perfectly reliable. Unlike the instability of human circumstances or the shifting shadows of the natural world, God’s character and promises remain constant. This truth provides profound assurance to believers, especially in the midst of trials. The same God who brought us forth by the word of truth (James 1:18) is faithful to complete the work He began in us (Philippians 1:6), ensuring that no trial will ultimately consume or defeat us.

James 1:5-8 emphasizes the necessity of wisdom to navigate trials, wisdom that comes not from human reasoning but as a generous gift from God. This wisdom enables believers to see trials from an eternal perspective, trusting in God’s providence and purposes even when circumstances seem overwhelming. However, James warns that this wisdom must be sought in faith, without doubting God’s ability or willingness to provide it. Doubting God’s goodness leads to spiritual instability, like a wave tossed by the wind. Thus, asking for wisdom is both an act of faith and a demonstration of trust in God’s fatherly care.

The Joy of Trials

[00:00:00] Tony Arsenal: We’re gonna be reading today from the first chapter of James, so if you’ll make your way there,

[00:00:13] Tony Arsenal: and I will be reading verses one through 18. This is God’s word. James is servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings counted all joy, my brothers. When you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.

[00:00:43] Tony Arsenal: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given to him. But let him ask. In faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.

[00:01:03] Tony Arsenal: He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation because like a flower of the grass he will pass away for the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass. Its flower falls and its beauty parishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

[00:01:27] Tony Arsenal: Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test. He will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted. I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires.

[00:01:49] Tony Arsenal: Then desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow. Due to change of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

[00:02:17] Tony Arsenal: Pray with me. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your servant James, who has given us this wisdom from above. Let us receive it with meekness and humility. Let it implant itself into our hearts so that we may run the race and persist to receive the crown we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

[00:02:42] Tony Arsenal: I got the call from Isaac on Saturday afternoon or Friday afternoon. Excuse me. Asking me if I could preach. And I think most of us, if we got a call asking to preach in a few days, would probably think about it for a few minutes. Uh, I was able to say yes right away because God’s providence is such that I was actually studying the book of James.

[00:03:03] Tony Arsenal: Uh, some of you may know I have an opportunity to fill pulpit, uh, in local churches occasionally. And I was asked a few weeks ago to preach the second half of James one, and so I was already studying the book. I was already reading through the commentaries.

[00:03:15] Tony Arsenal: So in God’s providence, he was already preparing us for, uh, for today, I wanted to just share a very brief bit of information about the book of James.

[00:03:26] Tony Arsenal: It’s always important when we come to a passage to understand the context. James, uh, as an epistle was written by the brother of Jesus and he, James was the leader of the Jerusalem church. So early in Christianity, the primary center of of Christianity for the first several years was really Jerusalem. So there were of course, Christians that were at Pentecost that had begun to work their way out back to their homes.

[00:03:50] Tony Arsenal: But primarily, at least as, uh, the Book of Acts is concern, we really zoom in on the, um, church in Jerusalem. And James was the leader of this church. James was writing to an audience of Jewish Christians who had since then been scattered into the Judean countryside as far north as Fania. So the very northern reaches of, of what was the land of Israel at the time.

[00:04:16] Tony Arsenal: And they had been scattered out of the church due to persecution that arose following Stephen’s death. So you don’t have to turn there, but just to sort of show that I’m not making this up, uh, acts eight, one says, Saul approved of his execution, speaking of Steven. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem.

[00:04:34] Tony Arsenal: They were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. And then compare that to James one. One. It says, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion Greetings. Now, that word scattered that you hear in both. I’m, I’m not a big fan of using a lot of Greek terms in, in this kind of context, but the word for scattered used in acts as DePiero, it’s a farming metaphor.

[00:05:01] Tony Arsenal: It’s you scatter seed. It’s a very interesting, um, turn of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration that the persecution of the church was described as the scattering of seed, which of course we hear later in church history is a common theme picked up. And in James, the word for dispersion, it’s a little bit obscured, by the way.

[00:05:20] Tony Arsenal: It’s transliterated instead of translated, the word is diaspora. So you can see that the word for scattered and the word for scattering or the dis the scattering, the dispersion is basically the same word. One is a verb and one is sort of the noun form of it. There’s also some, some verbal affinities between James here and the letter, uh, that the Jerusalem council sends out.

[00:05:42] Tony Arsenal: They both end with the word greetings, which is an, a very uncommon way to end a greeting for a letter in the New Testament. So we see that James, the brother of Jesus, as opposed to some of the other James candidates, um, is the author here and he’s writing to this persecuted church. And it’s important for us to frame this as a letter to the persecuted church.

[00:06:01] Tony Arsenal: ’cause I think we think of trials and we think of something very different usually than the trials that were going on in the audience of this letter. That’s not to say, and we’ll talk about why we can say it. That’s not to say that this doesn’t speak to other kinds of trials, but if we lose sight of the fact that this is a persecuted minority scattered into the Judean countryside being oppressed by wealthy Jewish landowners, most likely we lose sight of the flavor of this and the force of what he’s saying.

[00:06:32] Tony Arsenal: Today’s sermon will have three main points to cover. The first is the purpose of the trials we face. The second is the outcome of those trials, and the third is the source of our success in those trials. So the purpose of trials, the outcome of trials, and the source of our success. James two, uh, one, two starts with the familiar phrase, but I, I wanna read it again here because I think we often gloss over it quickly as we’re reading.

[00:07:00] Tony Arsenal: We’re kind of eager to get into the meat of it, or maybe we’re rushing to get to chapter two where it gets a little spicy with the justification controversy. But it says here, count it all joy, my brothers. When you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

[00:07:25] Tony Arsenal: Count it all joy when you meet. Trials of various kinds, right? Don’t count it some joy. Don’t count it a little bit of joy. Don’t think about counting it as joy. Count it all joy. In the Greek, this word is positioned in front of the word it’s describing, which gives it the robust character. The word all is not like, count it every joy.

[00:07:50] Tony Arsenal: Think about everything as though it’s joyful. That’s not what it’s saying. It’s intensifying the word. Count it as extreme joy. Revel in the joy of this. It doesn’t mean that the trials themselves are joyful. That’s not what the text is saying here. This is not a bootstrap theology where we just try hard enough to not feel bad about the terrible things that are going in our life.

[00:08:14] Tony Arsenal: Um, James was not telling the Christians in persecution here that they should smile when someone is coming to kill them. What he’s saying is that they should count it all joy when they meet these various trials. Because you know the purpose of them. You know that they are for the testing of your faith.

[00:08:36] Tony Arsenal: And we can know that this applies to our trials and not just the particular persecutions that were happening because he tells even the people who are in the midst of this persecution that they will face trials of various kinds. So whether it is the loss of a loved one sudden or expected, whether it’s the loss of a job or a messy divorce, that you have no say in the matter, a wayward child or a loss of property, a cancer diagnosis, or the bills that you can’t pay, or something as mundane as the sleepless nights with a new infant.

[00:09:14] Tony Arsenal: Those are all trials that we should look at and count as joy, counted as all joy. And the reason, again, is that these trials have a purpose. These trials survey function. We, we read in Romans, we won’t turn there, but we read in Romans, I’m sure we’re all familiar, right? God works all things for the love or for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose, that they might be the firstborn among many brothers that they might be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

[00:09:45] Tony Arsenal: This is not saying that God is coming behind an uncontrolled history and is figuring out a way to make something good outta something bad, and he’s certainly not commanding us to try to do the same thing. What he’s saying is that the purpose of these trials, and it is known to us that the purpose of these trials, because God’s word tells us that it is known to us, is that they produce in us endurance and steadfastness.

[00:10:10] Tony Arsenal: One commentary I read translated this as sticktoitiveness. This is not about. Gritting your teeth and bearing it. It’s not about living through an individual trial and just making it through. This is about the life of endurance that is ours in Christ by the pul power of the Holy Spirit. This is also not a test of our faith as in a test that we pass.

[00:10:36] Tony Arsenal: This isn’t some sort of, um, entrance exam into the Kingdom of Heaven. The Greek word here has to do with validating things. The image that was used is the idea of the temple shekel. You’ll read about that in the Old Testament and the temple shekel. In ancient times, they would, everything would be weighed out on scales, and it was very easy for people to shave off the edges of their coins to shave just a little bit off so they could keep that small amount of silver or gold or whatever it might be.

[00:11:04] Tony Arsenal: And so the Temple Sheckle, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference by holding it in your hands. But if you put the Temple Sheckle on one side of a balance scale, and you put the other shekel on the other side, if they don’t balance something is off. That’s the picture that we have here. Our faith is not being, um, tested in that we have to prove that we have faith.

[00:11:25] Tony Arsenal: We’re not trying to clear a hurdle or to try to pass an exam. Our testing here is that our faith is being validated. It is being shown to be genuine and shown to be real. In many ways, the person that it’s being shown to the most is ourselves. God doesn’t need to learn that our faith is real. Our colleagues and our brothers and sisters in the faith.

[00:11:51] Tony Arsenal: It’s helpful for them to be able to look at our lives and to be able to assess whether we are in the faith. But first and foremost, these trials serve to validate our own faith to us, to encourage us and to build us up in the faith. They are not a hurdle for us to jump over. They are a rubric or a grading scale.

[00:12:15] Tony Arsenal: That is shown what the reality is. And finally in this section it says, let Steadfastness have its full effect. If I want it to be just a little bit cheeky, I might translate this as, let, let Steadfastness show its chief end. The word here when it says full effect is the tell us, the end, the aim of steadfastness.

[00:12:40] Tony Arsenal: It’s not saying give steadfastness permission to do what it does. It’s saying let steadfastness complete the work that it is intended to do. So the trials and the testing of our faith build in us this steadfastness. They come to us and they show us. And the Holy Spirit uses the difficult providences in our lives to show us that we have faith and to show us that it is being perfected in us.

[00:13:07] Tony Arsenal: It is being grown, it is being sanctified in us. And through this process, our steadfastness has increased. We will face more trials. We’ll come back to that at the end of the passage here. But there’s this cycle testing faith steadfastness, testing, faith steadfastness. It doesn’t stop, but it’s for our good and for God’s glory.

[00:13:30] Tony Arsenal: I take your Bible briefly. I’m gonna turn over to Matthew 24, 3 through 14.

[00:13:41] Tony Arsenal: I commented earlier that this is not just the momentary endurance of making it through an individual trial. That this is the steadfastness of a Christian life and it’s not James alone who teaches this. So reading starting in, uh, Matthew chapter 24, verse three, and he, Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives.

[00:14:01] Tony Arsenal: The disciples came to him privately saying, tell us when these things will be and what will the sign of your coming and the end of the age, Jesus answered them. See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name saying I’m the Christ, and they will lead many astray. You hear of wars and rumors of war, see that you are not alarmed for this must take place.

[00:14:19] Tony Arsenal: But the end is not yet for nations will rise against nation and kingdoms against kingdom, but there will be famine and earthquakes in various places. All these are about the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you’ll all be hated by all nations, for my name’s sake.

[00:14:37] Tony Arsenal: And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will increase the love of many will grow coal cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved and this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations.

[00:14:57] Tony Arsenal: And then the end will come. You can see just in the English translation, the the verbal affinities here, right? For James, the full effect of steadfastness, which is in Greek is Hoopa. Monet, is that we might. Uh, is that we might be perfected in the end, in the Tello. The tell us for Jesus, the one who endures, he endures until the end, the telos.

[00:15:24] Tony Arsenal: So we have this complex of words that is used by the church, by Christ to show us that the process of Christian living that will bring us to the end is one of endurance. We should not expect it to be easy. We should not expect it to be simple and to not require effort. Both Christ and Jesus. And then Paul and all of the other, um, biblical writers who teach on this are arguing that the chief end of this endurance is to prepare us to fulfill the chief end of man, which is to endure to the end so that we might glorify God and enjoy him forever.

[00:16:06] Tony Arsenal: The endurance that we. Have that is given to us by the spirit is given to us for the purpose of our good and for God’s glory.

[00:16:17] Tony Arsenal: Now moving on to the next pass, uh, section of this passage here back in James. We see immediately that James acknowledges that seeing trials in this way is going to require wisdom.

[00:16:31] Tony Arsenal: The natural man cannot look at negative things as they’re happening and see that they’re for his good. We all know people, and I think almost everyone, this is a universal experience who’ve had some sort of negative thing happen in their life, and they look back and say, that was really the best thing that happened to me.

[00:16:49] Tony Arsenal: But we’re not talking about the wisdom to see the good. In retrospect, we’re talking about the supernatural wisdom, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit to see the good in advance. To understand and trust the Lord that he is working good for those who love him, that he is conforming us to the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

[00:17:14] Tony Arsenal: For this reason, we must ask God for this wisdom, not just in the moment, but every day. Every time we come before the Lord, we should be asking him for wisdom and we can be confident as we approach the throne of grace. Because God does so generously and without reproach, he does not chastise us for asking for wisdom.

[00:17:36] Tony Arsenal: He looks at us similar to how he looked at Solomon. We can ask God for all of the temporal blessings of this world, for all of the skills that we need to accomplish our job, and he may in fact give them to us. God is a God who loves to give good gifts, but just as he said to Solomon, I will bless you with this because you have not asked for other things.

[00:17:55] Tony Arsenal: He also will bless us with wisdom. Another way to come at this phrase of without reproach is to bless. Without hesitation, God is not slow to grant this blessing. God grants us this blessing in the moment that we ask for it, and in a certain sense, the blessing comes in the very asking of it coming to God.

[00:18:16] Tony Arsenal: To ask for wisdom is itself a wisdom act that is driven by the Holy Spirit. We cannot do it apart from wisdom that he’s already granted us. However, James is clear that we must ask for this in faith. He says that you must ask with no doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

[00:18:39] Tony Arsenal: When you’re sitting on the ocean, the waves have a rhythm. They come in, they go out, they come in, they go out. They don’t ever make a lot of progress. When they do make progress, it’s a big problem, but even when they do, they still go back out. It might just come in longer and harder, but they go back out.

[00:19:01] Tony Arsenal: This is the image of the doubting man that that James is leaving you with. It’s this fool who spins his wheels and accomplishes nothing. He’s asking for something from someone he doesn’t believe has the ability or the desire to grant it. That makes no sense. You wouldn’t go to someone with no money and ask them for a loan.

[00:19:23] Tony Arsenal: I mean, you might do it, but it’s a foolish thing to do.

[00:19:29] Tony Arsenal: God does not answer the prayers of those who are marked by doubting him. Now, James is not saying anyone who ever has a doubt is not going to be given this wisdom. That’s just not, not the testimony of the New Testament and James is consistent with the testimony of the New Testament. What he is saying is those who are characterized as the doubter.

[00:19:50] Tony Arsenal: It’s not just the individual who has a doubt from time to time, or even the person who has the persistent and besetting sin of doubt. There are those out there who are, for whatever reason, just full of doubt. They’re full of a lack of assurance and they need to have our gentleness and not our uh, aggression.

[00:20:11] Tony Arsenal: But that is not who James is talking about. He is talking about the person whose life is characterized as a rebellious doubt in the blessings of God. Probably he’s referring to the Jewish landowners that are persecuting the church. He’s probably referring to people who claim the name of God, who claim to be God’s people and refuse to accept his blessings on his terms.

[00:20:36] Tony Arsenal: If we do not believe that God is generous or that he will give us this wisdom asking for, it is a form of insanity. That’s why he says that the one who doubt. Is a double-minded man unstable in all his ways. It’s not just the faith life of this person that is unstable. When you live a life characterized by radical skepticism and doubt, that will creep into everything you do and it will make your life unstable.

[00:21:04] Tony Arsenal: He gives us two primary examples, and this is a, a thing that James does a lot. He’ll get, deliver a little block of teaching. He’ll give us a concrete example and then he comes back to that block of teaching to finalize and clarify it. He gives us the example of the lowly brother. We might translate that as poor brother.

[00:21:23] Tony Arsenal: The Christians that are being persecuted, he’s encouraging those, receiving the letter, but he’s also encouraging us that are lowly us, that are made lowly by our trials. Later in the chapter outside of our passage, he talks about receiving the word with meekness. He’s talking about those, the lowly who receive God’s word.

[00:21:43] Tony Arsenal: In humility, asking for wisdom to understand it. He says that this lowly brother will be exalted because of his trials, because of his humiliation. He will be exalted. And then he contrasts this with the rich doubter and the commentaries in the church have interpreted this doubter in many ways. Some would say that this is a rich Christian, and so his humiliation is that in the end of things, he will, uh, he will not have his riches.

[00:22:14] Tony Arsenal: I’m not convinced of that perspective. I think that a, a better argument can be made again, that the rich doubter here is probably the Jewish Christian’s persecuting the church. But he says, let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation because like the flower of the grass, he will pass away.

[00:22:35] Tony Arsenal: The rich doubter will not endure through his trials. James is probably referring to the trial of being rich, which is its own kind of trial. But whatever the trial this rich person faces, he will not per, he will not endure because he will fade away like the grass he fades away in the midst of his pursuits.

[00:22:57] Tony Arsenal: So James is building this image for us of the wise lowly Christian who trusts the Lord in the midst of his trials, seeks wisdom and receives it by going to the word of God and hearing and receiving the word of God in meekness. And he contrasts that with the people who do have a bootstrap theology who do think they just have to push harder.

[00:23:19] Tony Arsenal: They do just have to see the good in it and see the silver lining. Do you see that contrast? There’s those, uh, those who have faith in the Lord and are able to see that the Lord is working even in the most tragic of circumstances. I had a friend in college, uh, who. She, um, she had rheumatoid arthritis or some sort of rheumatoid disorder.

[00:23:42] Tony Arsenal: And so the, the medication she had to take was, um, was not conducive to healthy pregnancy. So her and her husband had to make the difficult choice to just commit themselves not to having children. And I heard, I heard from a, a friend, uh, shortly after we graduated, that they had found some new treatment that was managing her condition and she was able to get pregnant.

[00:24:02] Tony Arsenal: And she was calling to share that this mutual friend was calling to share the good news. And a few days later, that same mutual friend called me and told me that my friend had been in a terrible car accident, died on her way home from her first ultrasound. And I remember sitting at the funeral and her husband was literally carried into the podium, and he looked at the, the, it wasn’t a church service, it was a, it was a funeral service, but he looked at the gathered crowd and he said, for I know that God works all things together for the good of those who love him.

[00:24:34] Tony Arsenal: That is the lowly brother who trusts in the Lord. In the worst circumstances that brother was imitating Christ, who of course looked forward to his trials with joy. Moving on to the outcome of our trials, we see in verse 12, James says, blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. We see again that same repeated language who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test.

[00:25:03] Tony Arsenal: He will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. The order is being moved around. Before it was the trials that produced the testing that produced the steadfastness. Now it is the steadfastness under trial that we are looking at, and it is looking at the test in reverse.

[00:25:27] Tony Arsenal: This is not, um, someone who stands through individual trials, as we said. We could look at this in a translation, which is hard to say, might say for when he has been authenticated or when he has become authenticated. The, the word here is a, a being verb when he has entered the state of being, of having been authenticated.

[00:25:51] Tony Arsenal: This is looking at the final outcome of the life of a Christian who has faced trials and has remained steadfast, who has trusted the Lord to give him the steadfastness, the endurance, the sticktuitiveness to persist.

[00:26:09] Tony Arsenal: And this is now given to him as the victor’s crown. The crown is the, the culmination of his trials. It’s the culmination of his steadfastness. Paul describes it this way in one Corinthians nine. He says, do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that. You may obtain it.

[00:26:29] Tony Arsenal: Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But after I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest I preaching to others should find myself disqualified. And that word disqualified is the negation of the same word that we’re using here for tested.

[00:26:57] Tony Arsenal: He’s saying, I discipline my body. I run after the prize, not so that I may gain a prize, but that I may not be unauthenticated. This is the consistent teaching of the New Testament. Not that we obtain our salvation based on our endurance or obtain our salvation based on our works, but that we must endure unto the receiving of our prize.

[00:27:25] Tony Arsenal: If we want to make it to the end, we have to make it to the end. But making it to the end is not what gives us the prize. It’s not what gives us a right to the prize. It’s not what delivers us the possession of the prize. It is simply the pathway that we must walk in order to reach the goal.

[00:27:45] Tony Arsenal: Moving on to close out the passage here, starting in verse 13, we talk about the source of success in our trials. Now this is a complex passage and and we won’t dig into all of the nuances of it here, but James is very careful to qualify a few things. He’s told us now that the reward is for those who endure, which implies that there are some who do not endure.

[00:28:09] Tony Arsenal: There are some who will not be qualified or will not be authenticated, but will instead be disqualified. He’s anticipating the doubting man who receives nothing from God and blames his failure on God’s withholding wisdom and endurance.

[00:28:25] Tony Arsenal: He is anticipating the argument that someone will say, well, I asked for wisdom and God didn’t give it to me. Calling God a liar, because we know that God gives generously and without reproach to all who ask for wisdom. The way that he answers this hypothetical objection is He points to the fact that God is holy, good, and wholly righteous, and cannot be tempted with evil.

[00:28:54] Tony Arsenal: And because he cannot be tempted with evil, he cannot be affected by evil. He cannot be tested by evil. Evil has no control or root or foothold within God. He also cannot be said to tempt anyone else with evil. So rather than look at a situation where a person is facing a trial and fails under the trial and blames God, he details for us how it is actually that that failure occurs.

[00:29:23] Tony Arsenal: Starting in verse 13, he says, let no one say when he is tempted, I’m being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. Then desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

[00:29:42] Tony Arsenal: It is absolutely the case that the trials, the providence, the context that our trials take place in, comes to us from God. He will ground that later on in the verse explicitly. What does not come to us from God is the evil desires that inappropriately reach out and interact with those desires. When God brings a good gift in in our lives, there is a constant temptation to take that good gift and use it for unlawful purposes.

[00:30:13] Tony Arsenal: The constant desire to find your identity in your children instead of in Christ. The constant desire to see your spouse as someone who is there to meet your needs rather than someone you are called to serve and love and sacrifice for the desire to turn the money we earn in our jobs, in our vocations, which God has called us to, and our catechism is clear that wealth is not in itself a bad thing.

[00:30:39] Tony Arsenal: To turn that into an idol, to turn that into its ultimate purpose. That temptation is constantly there, but it is not there because God is dangling something bad in front of our face and just hoping we won’t take it. Instead, we are tempted when we are lured and enticed by our own evil desires. This is a fishing metaphor.

[00:31:00] Tony Arsenal: It’s a line fishing metaphor. Most fishing in the promised land was done by nets, but there was line fishing. We read, Peter goes and he line fishes when he gets the temple coin to to pay the temple tax. The picture here is that. Our desire is placed on the end of the hook, and when we bite, we are trapped.

[00:31:20] Tony Arsenal: It’s not that the nice new car that we’ve been looking at, that there’s nothing wrong with purchasing a nice new car. It’s fine to have a car that you enjoy or the trip, the vacation that you’re planning or whatever it might be. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing that if you’re doing it according to God’s law and in Christian prudence.

[00:31:39] Tony Arsenal: But when we reach out and grasp ahold of it because of, or through our wicked desires, we have been tempted. The temptation is not the thing that’s out there. The temptation is what happens in here. And he says that desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown, brings, brings forth death.

[00:32:03] Tony Arsenal: The chain of verbs here is in a complete tense. It’s not a sequential thing. It’s the desire. When it has finished the process of conceiving, then it gives birth to sin, and when sin has completed the process of being fully grown, it brings forth death. This is both terrifying and encouraging. It is never too late to stop and turn around when you’re walking down the path of sin until you’ve reached the end.

[00:32:30] Tony Arsenal: If you’ve endured to the end of the path of sin, then you’re in trouble. But the Holy Spirit is always quick to bring us back. He’s always quick to receive our repentance. This is why we should repent of particular sins, particularly we should examine our life every day and see the areas that we are falling short.

[00:32:49] Tony Arsenal: He goes on to reinforce this when he says in verse 16, do not be deceived, my beloved brothers, which of course implies that there were some who were either being deceived or likely to be deceived. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

[00:33:10] Tony Arsenal: The trials themselves are not joy, but they are a gift. John Piper wrote a famous book, don’t Waste Your Cancer, right? We don’t have to enjoy trials. We don’t have to think that they’re fun. We do have to recognize that God is working in them and that he has ordained them for us. He has prepared them as good works in advance for us to walk in

[00:33:38] Tony Arsenal: and it calls God here the Father of lights. This is probably not a reference to God the Father as the first person of the Trinity, but rather a reference to the whole Godhead as a fatherly God who gives fatherly gifts to his people. And more than the fact that God is a fatherly God, God is immutable. He does not change.

[00:33:57] Tony Arsenal: There is no variation or shadow due to change in God. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Malachi three six is the famous passage in the Old Testament. If, if you, if you’re looking for a new memory verse, you could do a lot worse than this one. It says, for I am the Lord. I the Lord do not change.

[00:34:18] Tony Arsenal: Therefore, you, o children of Jacob are not consumed. God’s unchanging nature is a source of comfort and assurance for his covenant people. We are marked in our baptism with the promise of God. He has admitted us into the church. He has promised us by the sign of baptism that we are his people, that we will persist until the end, that we will be fully clear.

[00:34:45] Tony Arsenal: Uh, CL cleansed, excuse me. It’s a sign and a seal of regeneration. It signifies what is ours in Christ that is given to us by the Holy Spirit. And we can look to our baptism. We can look to. The Lord’s Supper. We can look to our Christian family and our place in it. We can look to these things that God has given us and we can trust that he is good because he does not change and his promise does not change.

[00:35:12] Tony Arsenal: Paul says in Philippians, he says, I’m sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Just as Israel could be confident that even though judgment was coming, they could be confident that they would not be consumed. So also, can we be confident that our trials will not overcome us.

[00:35:34] Tony Arsenal: We may be pressed down, but we are not rushed. The hearers of this letter were persecuted, but they were not abandoned. And lastly, he says in verse 18 of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creation. He gave birth to us by the word of truth because that was his unchanging, eternal will.

[00:36:01] Tony Arsenal: And if it was internal, eternal unchanging will that we would be brought forth as the first fruits of his creation. It is also his unchanging eternal will that he will accomplish that for his own good or for his own glory, and for our good.

[00:36:17] Tony Arsenal: A few brief points of application as we leave this place today. And I, I recognize that this is probably particularly poignant for people in the congregation right now. We’re all facing something, some of us worse than others, and this is not an easy application to make to any passage of the Bible. But we must praise God in the midst of our trials, we must turn to Jesus and give him the glory he deserves for bringing us through and into these trials that he will produce steadfastness in us.

[00:36:51] Tony Arsenal: He is producing steadfastness in you. You may not feel it, you might not recognize it. In the dark of the night when you’re laying there staring at the ceiling, just begging for sleep to come. ’cause that’s the only thing you can do to get it off your mind. He is building steadfastness in you. And that steadfastness is not just the means to reach the end, it is the very testimony of God to your faith.

[00:37:17] Tony Arsenal: It is the discipline that he instills in our life to show us that he is our father. And once your faith has been fully validated, you’ll receive the crown of life, not as a reward of your faith, but as the ultimate proof that you are his. When we look at the Olympics, in most instances, it’s very clear who wins.

[00:37:39] Tony Arsenal: There’s an objective standard, and the winner is determined based on when they cross the finish line in reference to other people or how high they jump or whatever the, the test might be. The awarding of the Olympic medal is not what makes them an Olympic. It is to show that they are an Olympic winner.

[00:37:57] Tony Arsenal: It’s the signification to all who are seeing. It’s the permanent reminder that they have run the race and that they have won the prize.

[00:38:09] Tony Arsenal: An equally difficult application here is to not only praise God in the midst of your trials, but to seek God in the midst of your trials. God generously gives wisdom to all who seek it from him. It is important to seek wisdom. When we are not facing trials, it is vital that we do when we are. If we do not allow our trials to be a source of driving us to the Lord, then we in very real effect, are wasting our trials.

[00:38:42] Tony Arsenal: We might learn something from it. We might come out of there with a good story that we can tell. It may shape our careers in a positive fashion. We may be able to look at it and say, this was the best thing that ever happened to me. But if we do not seek God in our trials and allow ourselves to be shaped by the Holy Spirit, then we might as well pack up, shop and go home.

[00:39:04] Tony Arsenal: God has brought you forth by the word of truth, and God is faithful to complete his work in you. Let’s pray.

[00:39:15] Tony Arsenal: Father, we are soft-hearted and sensitive as we come to your word. We are all mourning something in our own ways, and we are all facing difficulties in our own ways. And we know that it is not easy to count at all joy when we face these trials, but we also know that you are working all things together for the good of those who love you, and we love you Lord.

[00:39:40] Tony Arsenal: And so we can trust that the purpose of these trials is to conform us to the image of your son, Jesus Christ. So we pray that you would make that true in our lives, that you would make it apparent to our eyes. In Jesus name, amen.

In this sermon, Tony Arsenal explores James 1:19-27, emphasizing the importance of receiving the Word with meekness, being doers of the Word, and demonstrating true religion through practical application. Arsenal begins by providing historical and theological context for the letter of James, highlighting its relevance to Jewish Christians in the dispersion who were facing persecution, poverty, and trials. He stresses the need to understand the Word of God as the foundation for Christian living and the transformative power it has when received and acted upon.

The sermon focuses on the relationship between hearing and doing the Word. Arsenal cautions against passively hearing Scripture without allowing it to produce change in one’s life, likening this to a person who looks in a mirror but immediately forgets their reflection. He explains that true religion is marked by practical obedience, such as bridling one’s tongue, caring for orphans and widows, and remaining unstained by the world. These outward actions, while not the cause of salvation, are evidence of the transformative work of Christ in believers’ lives.

Finally, Arsenal discusses assurance of faith, emphasizing that believers should first look to Christ as the grounding of their assurance, rather than relying solely on their works. He encourages listeners to examine their faith, trust in the promises of God, and live lives that reflect their identity as the people of God. The sermon concludes with a call to action: to be doers of the Word, to love the downtrodden, and to demonstrate God’s charity through good works.

In this powerful sermon, Wes Hebert addresses what he calls “the loneliness pandemic” – a crisis affecting more than 60% of Americans and up to 79% of younger generations. Drawing from Ecclesiastes 4:1-6, he explores how isolation intensifies our suffering, undermines our work, and ultimately erases even our greatest achievements. Hebert demonstrates that this modern epidemic isn’t new at all; the Bible has been diagnosing this condition for thousands of years with the profound declaration that “it is not good for man to be alone.” Through personal stories, contemporary research, and biblical wisdom, this message reveals how genuine community within the church and communion with God through Christ provide the dual remedy we desperately need. Whether you’re struggling with loneliness or seeking to be part of the solution for others, this sermon offers practical insights for finding and creating meaningful connection in our increasingly disconnected world.

“Happiness is only real when shared.” – Christopher McCandless (cited by Wes Hebert)

“It is not good for man to be alone… If that was true before the fall, how much more devastating is loneliness now after sin has entered the world? After sin brought separation and isolation from God, introduced strife in relationships, futility to our work.”

“Here is where this loneliness pandemic finds its cure – in the communion of the saints and in the communion with God, our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

[00:00:19] Wes Hebert: There’s another pandemic today. I don’t know if you’ve heard, everyone’s like, oh no. But unlike COVID-19, it’s been spreading for far longer, affecting far more people and. Devastating. Deep down beyond physical realities to the human soul itself.

[00:00:43] Wes Hebert: Unlike the pandemic of COVID-19, this didn’t start in 2020, it’s been ravaging us for millennia

[00:00:53] Wes Hebert: as of 2023. 

[00:00:54] Wes Hebert: The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States with something around like 112 million. And with a population of about 340 million, that’s about a third of Americans having had COVID at some point. However, if the statistics are even close to Accurates, and we know as everybody’s aware, you can bend numbers to do whatever you want these days, but even if they’re in the ballpark, this pandemic is far more staggering in its scope than that of COVID-19.

[00:01:32] Wes Hebert: A study from 2020 revealed that 61% of adults struggle with this disease among millennials. To clarify that, we’re not adults, apparently that number jumps to about 71%, and then amongst Gen Z, it’s a crushing 79% Who experienced this? This pandemic that I’m referring to is loneliness. One study that goes all the way back to 2004 says that one in there’s only, uh, sorry, showed that only one in every four adults have somebody that they would consider a close confidant.

[00:02:22] Wes Hebert: Somebody that they can talk to about deep matters, what’s affecting them and things like that. But if those numbers are reality, and honestly, I think post pandemic, remember that was from 2020. It’s just gotten worse. Anecdotally, I’ve seen most of the folks that I know struggle with loneliness in some form or another.

[00:02:48] Wes Hebert: And this is isolation and separation we see in our own communities, not folks on a, some private islands remote and away from anywhere, but in our neighborhoods, our houses, our marriages, our friendships surrounded by people on all sides, but profoundly alone in our own experiences. 

[00:03:12] Wes Hebert: But this is the thing I find sobering and encouraging about God’s word, that the Bible knows the same world, that we know, these numbers and statistics that summarize our experience as the same experience we find in scripture, the Book of Ecclesiastes, as I hope you’ve seen over the last few weeks as we’ve been preaching through, it doesn’t describe the world as it should be.

[00:03:40] Wes Hebert: Some idealized view of wisdom in life, but instead as it is the groaning that we go through, and this includes, as the preacher has observed thousands of years ago, loneliness, something that resonates deeply with us today. 

[00:04:02] Wes Hebert: So as we look through Ecclesiastes four this morning, I want us to see how the preacher.

[00:04:08] Wes Hebert: Diagnoses this ailment and points us towards the cure for it.

[00:04:17] Wes Hebert: And I want us to see the main point that the preacher’s trying to make in this passage is an all too familiar one. It’s not good for man to be alone because we were created for communion. So let’s look here at these three pictures that the. A preacher has painted for us of how loneliness, devastates human life, whether it’s in the context of pain and suffering or working or achievement, isolation just makes everything worse.

[00:04:55] Wes Hebert: So here in verses one through three, we have our first picture where we see loneliness, amplifying. Or ex exacerbating pain and oppression, those who are suffering under the hands of others, read what he says here. He says, again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun reflecting on three 16 through 22 and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them.

[00:05:26] Wes Hebert: I mean, it comes as no surprise that oppression is a terrible thing. The preacher makes that point clear in the previous section where he observes that even in the places where justice and righteousness should reign, there’s wickedness. He sees that humans for all their dignity as image bearers of God share the same fate as beasts.

[00:05:52] Wes Hebert: Death returns us all to dust, and who really knows what comes after. It is this sobering reminder that he paints that injustice pervades everything in this world, and our mortality just makes us vulnerable to it. We see oppression throughout history and even today could count. Number of examples, human trafficking, genocide, abuse, corruption.

[00:06:25] Wes Hebert: In places where justice should reign, there’s more injustice and wickedness. Even in our own nation, which I would argue has the best judicial system in the entirety of history, we still find rampant wickedness and injustice in the very places where God has ordained righteousness should dwell. But notice even with whatever picture of oppression you can visualize in your head, notice what the preacher says makes it all even worse.

[00:07:04] Wes Hebert: He mentions it twice in verse one. They had no one to comfort them. They had, there was no one to comfort them, the oppressed. They’re not only suffering, the preacher says. But the worst is when they cry their tears, and there’s nobody there to comfort them in the midst of it. I mean, just think about the last time you went through some sort of pain or difficulty.

[00:07:32] Wes Hebert: Maybe it wasn’t a terrible tragedy, but just a hard season of sorts. But regardless, in the midst of your pain and suffering, didn’t you long for somebody to come and comfort you? To hear your pain, to sit with you, to cry with you, even if they weren’t great at it. I mean, I feel like that’s my experience most of the time.

[00:08:00] Wes Hebert: None of us are professional counselors, but still having a body there that cares about me makes all the difference. It doesn’t just leave the problem unchanged. Being alone just amplifies the pain. It just makes it echo louder in your own heart and in your own head, which leads the preacher to a shocking conclusion in verses two to three where he says it’s better to be dead than to live in such isolated suffering.

[00:08:40] Wes Hebert: Better still, he says, than to have experienced evil at all and just never have been born. That’s how devastating the preacher says loneliness and suffering is. It can make even existence feel unbearable.

[00:09:03] Wes Hebert: Are you facing any suffering or pain this morning? If you’re doing it alone, the preacher’s words to you would be, don’t do it alone. Find somebody, pray with somebody. Spend time with a brother or sister in Christ. Let them know what you’re going through and do it together. It’s not good to be alone, but maybe you’re thinking this morning was, I’m not in crisis mode.

[00:09:33] Wes Hebert: I’m not in any time of trial or oppression. My life is just, is just existing. I’m just busy. What does loneliness have to do with my everyday lived experience? 

[00:09:52] Wes Hebert: Well, the preacher shows us in verses four through eight that isolation and loneliness not only, uh, amplifies our pain, but now it undermines. Our work and he shows us it in two ways.

[00:10:08] Wes Hebert: Work in isolation turns us into people who work against one another and work for ourselves. Looking here at verse four, then I saw that all toil and all skill and work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is a vanity and striving after wind. I have a question. How much of your work is driven by competition rather than collaboration?

[00:10:40] Wes Hebert: We see our neighbors success, our coworkers prosperity, and we just say, we want a piece of that. Or better yet, we want to have what they have, but only more of it. Envy, according to the preacher, creates isolation instead of loving our neighbor. We’re working against them. And this happens too in the church.

[00:11:09] Wes Hebert: We compare buildings and budgets and baptisms and that’s just breeds more competition in isolation even amongst the body of Christ. And I’ll say even as a new pastor that pastors are the worst at this. We compare our congregations to one another, our theological libraries to one another, our spaces, what have you.

[00:11:40] Wes Hebert: And instead of celebrating the successes of other churches, we just say, Lord, why not us?

[00:11:50] Wes Hebert: But all of it’s striving after wind. We’re just isolating ourselves from others by envying them rather than. Rejoicing with them.

[00:12:01] Wes Hebert: We should take verse six here to heart in all of this better as a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after win. This verse is essentially about a balance in our work, in our rest. Envy just makes that worst. Not striving to compete, but finding. Some rests in the things we do.

[00:12:28] Wes Hebert: The preacher says the fool folds his hands and rests too much, but the workaholic works too much. He’s constantly striving. Instead of hands folded, are two hands full of striving and toil. You need a little work and a little rest. And this is a challenge for me this morning. I mean, I’m preaching this and I’m like, Wes, physician healed thyself.

[00:13:00] Wes Hebert: But it’s a, it’s, it’s difficult for us because rest means trusting in something beyond us, and this is where this community aspect of loneliness comes in. When you take that rest, you’re trusting not only that God will do the work that he will do, but. That there are others in the church and in our communities who will just fill in the gap.

[00:13:28] Wes Hebert: But that only happens when we recognize that we are working for others and not just for ourselves. ’cause that’s one of the problems that the preacher addresses here in seven through eight. We isolate ourselves by working entirely for our own benefit. Look at seven through eight. Let me read those again real quick for us.

[00:13:52] Wes Hebert: Again, I saw a vanity under the sun. One person who has no other either son or brother, if there is no end to all his toil and his eyes are never satisfied with riches so that he never asks for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure. Here’s a man with unlimited earning potential, but his eyes are never satisfied.

[00:14:16] Wes Hebert: The preacher’s right. He’s so busy accumulating wealth and he never stops to ask why and for whom, and this is the case for so many today. Some of us are working so hard to succeed in our careers, in ministry, in life, on achievements that we end up isolating ourselves from the very people we should be enjoying our labors with.

[00:14:44] Wes Hebert: We sacrifice family dinner. For one more meeting. We skip fellowship with the body of believers so that we can just get one more project done.

[00:14:58] Wes Hebert: I see this so much with what’s we call what? What so many people celebrate the dink lifestyle. Have you ever heard this before? Dink dual income. No kids. Oh, I got two incomes to work off of and we don’t have to spend a dime on kids. Well, I have news for those kinds of folks. You can’t take it with you. It stays here.

[00:15:26] Wes Hebert: And that’s part of what he’s saying. He says they have neither son or brother. There’s nobody to pass the wealth to, to share it with. And so they’re left in isolation. And there may be those this morning that either are not married or. Are unable to have children and feel as though I, that somehow this text is leaving you.

[00:15:47] Wes Hebert: But remind us, and we will get to this later. We have an entire family here to share God’s blessings with in the church. But the preacher’s focus here is that when we work for ourselves and for ourselves only, and we’re left in isolation. It’s vanity and chasing after wind. There’s nothing to it. But he doesn’t leave us to just say, well, this is all bad.

[00:16:20] Wes Hebert: He gives us a better way. Instead of working for ourselves or working against each other, he tells us to work together. 

[00:16:31] Wes Hebert: Verses nine through 12, one of the most famous passages in probably all of Ecclesiastes two are better than one. Because they have a good reward for their toil for if they fall. One will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up again.

[00:16:50] Wes Hebert: If two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who was alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. This is one of those passages that has become pretty popular, usually in the context of weddings. Some people have had it read at their weddings, and it’s a great wedding passage.

[00:17:19] Wes Hebert: One of the purposes of marriage is companionship, a lifetime companion to help you through this vain existence, and the preacher will celebrate marriage later in Ecclesiastes.

[00:17:37] Wes Hebert: And oftentimes this threefold cord is used to give us the context of it’s like, oh, it’s a husband, a wife, and the Lord. And those three woven together do make a strong bond. But marriage isn’t what the preachers focused on here. It applies to marriage, but he is not talking about marriage. He’s talking about the vanity of loneliness and the value of companionship.

[00:18:05] Wes Hebert: So if you are single in here this morning, you haven’t missed the boat for companionship. There are other ways to have companionship in this vain life under the sun, and we’ll get to what that can look like. The preacher’s saying that there’s benefits to being together. It says you can stay warm at night.

[00:18:32] Wes Hebert: Having three people in your bed might be a little weird today, but I don’t really recommend it. I mean, heck, I can share a bed with just Ezra and Christina and I’m, and on the floor,

[00:18:47] Wes Hebert: but the picture is supposed to be, again, we have to think of the culture that they’re in. It’s agricultural, it’s difficult, lots of physical working, and they don’t have heaters. So when you’re stuck in the middle of a cold winter, how do you become warm? They use each other’s body heat, and they’re working in the field.

[00:19:12] Wes Hebert: But just think about all the examples and the phrases we use in life. We understand this need for numbers, the more the merrier. Safety in numbers. Many hands make light work. We know that it’s better together. We know that it’s not good to be alone.

[00:19:39] Wes Hebert: The preachers observed it’s not good to be alone because this aloneness that he’s getting into kind of undermines our work. It robs us of relationships, but it also robs us of productivity protection. Participation with others. All of these things, when we work together, he makes it clear we have a better bounty two or better than one because they have a good reward, but we also have better backup.

[00:20:13] Wes Hebert: We find ourselves in a difficult situation and somebody comes upon us. He says two are gonna be able to stand up against an attacker. Better than one person. Three. It’s even un, it’s even more unfair, but that just applies to life in general, not just physical assailants. When we bind together as a church, we can take on the attacks of Satan in a way that we cannot do that alone.

[00:20:47] Wes Hebert: We work. Is better when we work together because it is not good to be alone, but the preacher’s not done. 

[00:20:58] Wes Hebert: He makes it clear, even if we do find ourselves productive and prosperous in 13 through 16, he makes it clear that loneliness erases our achievements. Even if you make it to the top, isolation’s gonna rob you of any lasting impact.

[00:21:20] Wes Hebert: Verses 13 through 16 essentially tell the story of some remarkable unnamed young man with some sort of zero to hero tale. He went from a prison to a palace and from poverty to power. I’m sure you can think of countless examples through history or culture, but in this case, he rules over a number of people.

[00:21:43] Wes Hebert: He’s achieved unprecedented success. But unfortunately the air was thin at the top where he lived.

[00:21:54] Wes Hebert: But even with all this success, here’s the crushing reality that comes here at the end. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Despite what, whatever great wisdom he had and whatever remarkable achievements he had accumulated, he has forgotten.

[00:22:17] Wes Hebert: It’s been completely forgotten, erased by passing time as generations go on. I mean, we even see this in the last few years. When I was a kid, when you would talk about rags to riches, sort of stories, you’d hear of a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs, they were like the picture of success and wealth. But most of the Gen Z Gen Alpha kids that I like either work with or coach or anything like that, couldn’t tell the two apart.

[00:22:54] Wes Hebert: They wouldn’t even know which one’s gates, which one’s jobs. But today, oh, they’ll be able to tell you all the different things about Tesla and Elon Musk or Amazon and Jeff Bezos 25 years from now, who knows who’s gonna take their place. But their achievements are gonna be washed away too. No matter how much we accomplish, how many people we lead or influence, we will be forgotten is the essence of what the preacher’s saying here.

[00:23:29] Wes Hebert: But the isolation that comes with time, we’ll erase our achievements. So brothers and sisters, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking we’re somehow exempt from this reality. Success doesn’t insulate us from loneliness. It’s only going to intensify it. Isolation. As the preacher’s shown us this morning, intensifies the pain of the oppressed, undermines the work of every person, and erases the achievement of even the most successful among us.

[00:24:07] Wes Hebert: Simply put, no matter what stage of life you find yourself in isolations, inescapable in life under the sun, and it is not good for man to be alone. Now, I’m sure you’ve been recognizing that phrase, as I keep repeating it, the preacher isn’t offering some new idea. He’s stealing from Moses. In the words of in Genesis two 18, it is not good for man to be alone in Eden with everything good and perfect and complete harmony between God and man.

[00:24:51] Wes Hebert: Loneliness was the first thing that God declared not good. Even with a perfect relationship with his creator, Adam needed human companionship. Animals weren’t sufficient. Your dog as wonderful as he or she might be, is not adequate company. We need real relationships with real people, and I think it’s really important to emphasize the word real here.

[00:25:23] Wes Hebert: I see this so much now, especially, and I feel mostly with millennials, this scouring of. Para social relationships on social media or even now people who will break down over ai. There’s a fitness guy that I used to watch a lot of, he’s got some really PhD sports science guy. Uh, and I remember, hi hearing him on a podcast and this is when I kind of decided I need to listen to somebody new.

[00:25:57] Wes Hebert: Where he starts talking about, he’s like, he’s like, I’ve had these true deep spiritual conversations with chat GPT that have brought me to tears. And I’m like, this is not only him. There’s so many people who will find these deep relationships in things that aren’t real, but we need real relationships with real people.

[00:26:24] Wes Hebert: ’cause it is not good for man to be alone. If that was true before the fall, how much more devastating is loneliness now after sin has entered the world? After sin brought separation and isolation from God, introduced strife in relationships, futility to our work. If being alone wasn’t good in paradise, it’s downright devastating in a fallen world.

[00:26:57] Wes Hebert: And that’s the world the preacher’s observing. It’s the world that we live in. But the question I’m sure is in our heads this morning, well, if God’s looking over our loneliness today, what is he gonna do about it? What has he said about it? Well, it’s not good for us to be alone. And so he has offered two sources.

[00:27:26] Wes Hebert: Of communion for us. 

[00:27:29] Wes Hebert: First, we are created for communion with one another. God created us for fellowship with each other. The New Testament epistles are filled with that phrase one another, a number of commands that kind of formed the relational DNA of what it looks like to find fellowship in the body of Christ.

[00:27:57] Wes Hebert: At the heart of these commands is the one we find in Romans 13 to love one another, a debt that we continually owe to each other in Christ. This love expresses itself through bearing one another’s burdens as we see in Galatians encouraging and building up one another in First Thessalonians showing each other hospitality and service.

[00:28:24] Wes Hebert: Like one Peter, but they also call us to maintain unity by accepting one another, submitting to one another, bearing with one another’s weaknesses. And when our relationships break down as we know they will, we’re commanded to forgive one another and confess our sins to one another to restore one another gently.

[00:28:56] Wes Hebert: We’re called to speak truth and admonish one another with wisdom and grace. All of these things require we actually talk to one another. We need to spend time together, open up to other people, bury each other’s burdens, men. You need to be willing to share your struggles with other men, women. You need sisters in Christ with whom you can be honest and vulnerable.

[00:29:33] Wes Hebert: And that means actually spending time with people. And this is a word to the shepherds here at Christ community. This means that we need to be in and among the sheep. And this isn’t something I’m concerned with. It is just encouraging us to continue doing that.

[00:29:56] Wes Hebert: We want shepherds who smell like sheep, and I think that our shepherds do a good job of that. Like I just, I love, I love how often I hear from Paul spending time, grabbing breakfast, grabbing dinner, grabbing lunch, inviting people over. That’s just something that I, I want to strive in my own life. And that isn’t unique to just shepherds that view of hospitality.

[00:30:23] Wes Hebert: Right. I think another example for me is just the Woodbury’s. How many of you, when you bought your house, said I wanna buy a house really close to the church so that I can have people over as often as popple possible? We were there first. That’s why we built here. Yes. It is not good for man to be alone.

[00:30:50] Wes Hebert: God desires each of us to have companionship within the church so that we can support each other, defend each other, care for each other. But I’m sure some of you might be thinking, well, I’m married or I have some good friends, so I don’t really need relationships. And to that, I would say, who’s gonna be there for you when your family fails?

[00:31:13] Wes Hebert: Because that can happen. Who will be there when your marriage is struggling? When your spouse is sick, who can support you? It’s not about what you need’s, about what you can give too. There are others in the church that are struggling with loneliness. They don’t have the relationships you have who is gonna be there to help support them.

[00:31:43] Wes Hebert: This is why we as a church emphasize the call to love one another. This is why we have opportunities to do that. It’s going to look different at different churches, right? Valley Bible or Christ Redeemer, or too big to have everything on Sunday morning, but they have groups to gather in. We’re not big enough that we have that problem.

[00:32:07] Wes Hebert: If you’re not here on Sunday morning. Then you’re missing the opportunity to one another Together. As a church, we have opportunities for us to go deeper too. Wednesday nights, Sunday school, our anniversary celebration coming forward, I don’t really care so much about ministry programs so much as I care about the body of Christ doing what God calls a family to do one another.

[00:32:40] Wes Hebert: So in order to share in that joy of companionship as a church, we need to make time for it. You need to open up your lives so you can forge bonds of relationship to enable us to love and support one another as God calls us to do.

[00:33:01] Wes Hebert: Honestly, that’s if you read your no testament, that’s the one distinguishing mark of God’s people. They will know your Christians by our love for one another, knowing one another. Being in relationship with one another is a prerequisite to loving one another. So what is this gonna look like in your life?

[00:33:26] Wes Hebert: Well, it could be even if you’re more of a social recluse, inviting people over for dinner. If you’re unable to host people asking if you can join somebody for dinner, meeting with a brother or sister for coffee, to pray with one another,

[00:33:49] Wes Hebert: setting aside time on Sunday morning to check in and see how somebody’s doing, coming to Wednesday nights so that you can be encouraged in the middle of your difficult work week. Man actually opening up about struggles that you have and not trying to be the one with a stiff upper lip women confiding in other women and being a source of confidence for another woman striving to make our homes and whatever resources we have.

[00:34:26] Wes Hebert: Places of refuge for brothers and sisters in the church. The church isn’t just a collection of individuals who happen to worship in the same building, it’s the family of God and families spend time together.

[00:34:47] Wes Hebert: But for those of you who don’t know Christ, I wanna say this, the church can help you with the loneliness that’s in your life.

[00:35:01] Wes Hebert: You weren’t meant to go through life alone, and God has provided a community of believers as a place where real genuine relationships can grow and to flourish. You don’t have to pretend everything is fine. You don’t have to have it all together. You can come as you are and discover what it means to be known and loved through the church.

[00:35:30] Wes Hebert: And maybe you don’t feel like my comments here about loneliness and its devastation are really that potent. And so I wanna share an example, an illustration that I heard a few years back when somebody else was teaching this text. It’s a book by John Krakauer called Into the Wild. Maybe you’ve seen the movie, but uh, it tells the true story of Christopher McCandless, who was this brilliant young man, graduated from Emory University and kind of in his youth, and decided to do something shocking.

[00:36:14] Wes Hebert: He gave away all his savings and abandoned his car, and disappeared into the Alaskan wilderness to kind of find himself. Experience what he thought real life was all on his own. If you read the book, you’d see that McCandless is kind of running from society and relationships, kind of the meaningless conventions of modern life.

[00:36:39] Wes Hebert: He wanted complete solitude. He wanted to prove that he could make it alone, and so for months, he survives in the harsh Alaskan wilderness, living in an abandoned bus. Hunting and foraging writing in his journal about his solitary adventures. But after all this time alone in the wilderness, McCandless makes a discovery.

[00:37:06] Wes Hebert: Despite seeking solace to and believing he could find fulfillment in his isolation, he found that it was not what it was cracked up to be in his journal and what he wrote in large, desperate letters. Happiness only real when shared. Just think about that. Uh, after months of the most extreme solitude you could imagine, this young man discovers what the preacher of Ecclesiastes new thousands of years ago.

[00:37:40] Wes Hebert: It is not good to be alone. And if anyone’s ever been to Alaska. You know that there’s just this amount of beauty in the frontier there and in the Alaskan wilderness, but even in the greatest moments of wonder and beauty, you could imagine he feels hollow because there’s no one to share it with.

[00:38:07] Wes Hebert: And maybe at some point he could have come back to society. Maybe he could have reconnected with his family, made peace with his relationships. But at some point during his travels, he, the details aren’t a hundred percent sure, but we can, we can gather from his journal as he’d probably eaten some wild potatoes that were poisonous and his last entries at his journal are all about his weakening body and his desperate situation and no way out and that greatest moment of need, there was nobody to back him up, nobody to pick him up when he fell down.

[00:38:47] Wes Hebert: No one to rush him to safety and so he die alone in this abandoned bust, having learned the most difficult lesson of his life, that happiness is only real when shared brothers and sisters in this vain difficult world. We need God’s gift of companionship. Okay. We need to experience and offer the blessing of community so that when one of us falls, there’s somebody to pick us up so that when one of us is cold, there are others there to warm them so we don’t die alone, frozen in isolation.

[00:39:36] Wes Hebert: It’s not good for a man to be alone.

[00:39:41] Wes Hebert: But human relationships as wonderful and necessary as they are in God’s creation, can’t fill the deepest loneliness and isolation of the human heart. We were created not just for horizontal communion with one another, but vertical communion with God as well. But here’s the problem. As the Puritan author John Owen observes by nature, since the entrance of sin, no man has any communion with God.

[00:40:22] Wes Hebert: He is light and we are darkness and what Communion has light with darkness. He is life. We are death. He is love. We are enmity. And what agreement can there be between us? The deepest devastation of this pandemic isn’t just loneliness between people, but it’s separation and isolation with God himself. And no amount of human friendship can cure that.

[00:40:56] Wes Hebert: But the good news is that God has provided a way for communion to be restored with him. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the barrier between God and humanity has been removed. In Christ, we have fellowship with the Father and with one another. This is what John writes in his epistles.

[00:41:23] Wes Hebert: The life that is the life that we preach in Christ was made manifest, and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you. The Eternal life, which was with the father and made manifest with us. That which we have seen and heard. We reclaim also to you so that you may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the father and his son, Jesus Christ.

[00:41:52] Wes Hebert: Christ died in order to bring us to fellowship with him and the father. And that’s why, if you notice, it’s not the first Sunday of the month, but I have communion set up for us because that’s why we gather around the Lord’s table. We are celebrating our fellowship with God as we fellowship with one another.

[00:42:17] Wes Hebert: I love how Richard Baxter writes it. I read this in a JI Packer book. Where he says, nowhere is God so near to man, as in Jesus Christ, and nowhere is Christ so familiarly represented to us as in this holy sacrament.

[00:42:40] Wes Hebert: In other words, the closest we can get to God is through Jesus Christ and the closest we can get to seeing and feeling and touching Christ. Is through fellowshipping at the Lord’s table. In communion, we’re remembering that our deepest loneliness, our separation from God has been healed through the broken body and shed blood of our savior.

[00:43:08] Wes Hebert: We are created for communion with one another and with God in the church and in Christ, God has provided us both.

[00:43:22] Wes Hebert: Brothers and sisters here, we can find those who will walk through us through life With us, you can find and discover meaningful work done together. For God’s glory, we can be a part of something that will never be forgotten. And most importantly here we can find communion with God through Christ. Our deepest loneliness can be healed through faith in Jesus who died to bring you back to the Father.

[00:43:58] Wes Hebert: As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, we’re not coming as individuals, but as a community bound by the blood of Jesus Christ. The Lord’s table is a picture of our horizontal fellowship with one another, and our vertical fellowship with God coming together. 

[00:44:25] Wes Hebert: Here is where this loneliness, pandemic finds its cure in the communion of the saints and in the communion with God, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

[00:44:41] Wes Hebert: Join me in prayer as the elders come forward and we’ll participate in this together.

[00:44:54] Wes Hebert: Father, it is not good for man to be alone.

[00:45:04] Wes Hebert: Isolation just intensifies our pain. Undermines our labors, erases Our achievements

[00:45:19] Wes Hebert: enforces us to face life and its pains alone. But Lord, in your son, we have access to beautiful fellowship.

[00:45:34] Wes Hebert: We find in it in your son communion with you. The father in your son, we find communion with one another.

[00:45:47] Wes Hebert: So, Lord, as we come before your table here now, I pray that this would be an opportunity to deepen our fellowship with one another, to deepen our relationships as we partake together in a reminder of our only hope. Lord, I pray that this morning you would draw us nearer to each other as you draw us nearer to your son.

[00:46:21] Wes Hebert: I pray that those this morning who are struggling deeply with this sense of loneliness us would find in the church and in her savior companionship.

[00:46:38] Wes Hebert: Brothers and sisters to face life’s difficulty together. And Lord, for those who are not struggling with this, who have come to see and understand this, Lord, I pray that they would seek to be a command companion for their brothers and sisters. Lord, in all these things we ask that your spirit. And his fellowship would be with us all.

[00:47:12] Wes Hebert: We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

In this sermon, Tony Arsenal delves into Jonah 1:7–17, unpacking profound themes of God’s sovereignty, judgment, and mercy. The narrative focuses on Jonah’s rebellion, the sailors’ transformation, and God’s providential use of both creation and re-creation to accomplish His will. Arsenal begins by walking through the text, highlighting the sailors’ decision to cast lots to determine the cause of the storm, which ultimately points to Jonah. Jonah confesses his identity as a prophet of Yahweh, the Creator of heaven, sea, and land, and acknowledges that his disobedience is the reason for the calamity. Despite Jonah’s suggestion to throw him overboard, the sailors initially hesitate, showing a surprising moral transformation as they begin to fear the Lord.

The sermon draws connections between Jonah’s experience and broader biblical themes, particularly the idea of judgment as “de-creation” and salvation as “re-creation.” Arsenal explains that Jonah’s descent into the sea symbolizes God’s judgment, echoing imagery from Genesis and the Flood narrative, where chaos waters are unleashed. However, God’s mercy intervenes through the appointment of a great fish, transforming Jonah’s judgment into an act of salvation. Jonah’s time in the belly of the fish is portrayed as a symbolic rebirth, prefiguring both Christ’s resurrection and the believer’s experience of regeneration.

Arsenal concludes by emphasizing the necessity of rebirth and evangelism. He challenges Christians to reflect on their spiritual lives, evangelize their children and neighbors, and pray for all people, including those who may seem far from God. The sermon serves as a call to action, urging believers to grasp the urgency of sharing the gospel and living in light of their new life in Christ.

This sermon on Jonah 1:1-6, preached by Mr. Tony Arsenal at Providence Presbyterian Church, explores the profound theological insights surrounding God’s sovereignty, omnipresence, mercy, and discipline. The sermon begins by examining Jonah’s call to Nineveh and his subsequent flight, emphasizing how Jonah’s disobedience provides a mirror to our own tendencies to flee from God’s will. Through the use of vivid narrative details, Mr. Arsenal highlights how Jonah’s descent is not only physical but also spiritual, reflecting his rebellion against God’s calling.

The sermon delves into the sovereign presence of God, showing how His omnipotence and omnipresence are evident even in Jonah’s attempts to escape. From the storm hurled by the Lord to the obedience of the sailors and the personified ship, God’s control over every aspect of creation is evident. The theological richness of the text is further explored through reflections on the Trinity, with the Word of the Lord being presented as the pre-incarnate second person of the Trinity.

In the application, Mr. Arsenal draws parallels between Jonah’s story and the Christian walk. He emphasizes that God’s discipline is a reflection of His love and a tool for sanctification. Drawing from the Westminster Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, the sermon encourages believers to trust in God’s purposes, even during trials, and to fulfill their callings as faithful servants in all areas of life, including evangelism, family, and citizenship.

Tony Arsenal’s sermon, titled “What Manner of Man is This?”, focuses on Mark 4:35–5:43 and explores the miracles of Jesus, the question of His identity, and the theological implications of His divine and human nature. Arsenal begins by addressing the structure of the passage, emphasizing how the calming of the storm, the exorcism of the demon-possessed man, and the healing of Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman all reveal critical aspects of Jesus’ nature. The central question posed by the text—“Who is this man?”—is answered by examining both Jesus’ humanity and divinity, offering a rich exploration of the hypostatic union.

Arsenal highlights that Jesus’ miracles were not performed merely as acts of compassion but as demonstrations of His authority as both truly God and truly man. Drawing from Philippians 2:5–11, He explains how Jesus, though in the form of God, took on the form of a servant, fully embodying human frailty while retaining His divine nature. This double nature is vital for understanding Jesus’ role as our sympathetic High Priest, who both shares in our suffering and intercedes on our behalf.

The sermon also delves into the historical development of Christological doctrines, referencing the early church councils, such as Nicaea and Chalcedon, which defended the biblical teaching that Jesus is one person with two natures—united without confusion, separation, or division. Arsenal connects these theological truths to practical applications, showing how Jesus’ humanity ensures He understands our struggles, and His divinity guarantees His power to save. The sermon concludes with a call to trust in Jesus as both Savior and Lord and a reminder of the hope and inheritance we have in Him.