Today is the 3rd day of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is fantastic to be here with you today as we greet another brand new shiny sparkly week.

We're at the front end of a month so it feels like all things are being made new. It's a reset for us.

But even in all of that, we've come back to the place where we left off to take the next step forward together.

We've got a brand new week. We will read from the new living translation this week.

And continue the journey that we began yesterday into the book of Ecclesiastes and the ponderings of a man later in his life.

A man who had nothing off limits.

A life that we might dream of having where there really isn't anything off limits where we have all of the resources and all of the money that we want.

And we can aim ourselves in any direction that we choose.

And so few of us have anything anywhere near that kind of experience, but we think that if we could have that experience,

then we would have the full human experience.

The teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes had that experience. Nothing was off limits.

And Ecclesiastes, at least in part, is a reflection on what that looks like at the end of your life if you gain the whole world and maybe lose your soul.

And so let's pick up with the story. Today Ecclesiastes 4, 5 and 6.

Again, I observed all the oppression that takes place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed with no one to comfort them.

The oppressors have great power and their victims are helpless.

So I concluded that the dead are better off than the living.

But most fortunate of all are those who are not yet born, for they have not seen all the evil that is done under the sun.

Then I observed that most people are motivated to success because they envy their neighbors.

But this too is meaningless, like chasing the wind.

Fools fold their idle hands leading them to ruin, and yet better to have one handful with quietness than two handfuls with hard work and chasing the wind.

I observed yet another example of something meaningless under the sun.

This is the case of a man who is all alone without a child or a brother, yet who works hard to gain as much wealth as he can.

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