Intro to Ecclesiastes
Tom Shrader opens his series on Ecclesiastes by contrasting Job and Solomon — two men who arrived at identical conclusions about life's futility through opposite experiences, one by losing everything and one by gaining everything. Solomon's experiment, detailed in Ecclesiastes 1 and 2, tested whether pleasure, wealth, work, and wisdom could produce meaning, and his verdict is that life 'under the sun' — viewed from a purely earthbound perspective — is vanity. The message turns hopeful as Shrader points to Ecclesiastes 3:11, where God has 'set eternity in our hearts,' arguing that lasting meaning, joy, and peace are found only in Christ, not in the accumulation of anything the world offers.
“Whatever you think will make you happy, Solomon had it — and here's what he says: I did all that stuff, and I'm here to report the findings of my experiment.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ecclesiastes
Recorded: 2008 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 43 min
Themes: meaning, vanity, suffering, hope, wisdom, contentment, eternity, purpose, feeling empty, chasing success, questioning god, going through loss, midlife crisis, new believer, young adult, struggling with purpose
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 1:1-18, Ecclesiastes 1:2, Ecclesiastes 1:3, Ecclesiastes 1:8, Ecclesiastes 1:12, Ecclesiastes 1:15, Ecclesiastes 2:1, Ecclesiastes 2:3-9, Ecclesiastes 3:11, 1 Kings 3:11-13, 1 Kings 4:20-34, Isaiah 55:7-8, James 4:13-14, Philippians 4:6, Colossians 3:2
Theological Themes: ecclesiastes, divine sovereignty, imago dei, eternity in the heart, theodicy, common grace, biblical wisdom literature, eschatological hope
Full Transcript
Two Men, One Conclusion
Solomon essentially arrived at the same conclusion Job did: that life is temporary, that life in an earthbound context makes no sense, and that whatever a man came with — which was nothing — is what he will take away. Both of these men arrived at essentially the same conclusion, but in totally different ways. Job arrives at this conclusion by losing everything. Solomon arrives at this conclusion by getting everything.
Job is going along as God's man — successful, healthy, prosperous, everything fine. Satan says to God, "Obviously he's going to worship You and be righteous and love You. Why wouldn't he? Look what You've given him. Let's take some of that away." In the midst of that story, we find out that God had built a hedge around Job, just as He has around you. That is a real source of encouragement. There is a hedge around you, God is protecting you, and nothing gets into your life that God does not allow in.
Everything in our lives is either caused by or allowed by God. If that is not true, then He is not God. And here is why that is great encouragement: He says He will not let any test or trial come into your life without also giving you a way to withstand it — using it, causing all things to work together for good. Those are wonderful truths.
What Happened to Job
So God says to Satan, "Go ahead and take some of that away." And there is Job, still praising God. Satan pushes further: "You haven't really hit him hard yet." Then God allows it — the children are gone, the flocks are gone, everything is gone. Job is going, "Well, at least I have my health." And essentially what happens is God takes away everything Job wanted and leaves him with the one thing Job perhaps wished He had taken away — that wife who is saying, "Curse God and die."
Now Job has these friends, and he has lost everything, and he is asking incredible questions: Where are You, God, in the midst of all this? How do I keep from becoming angry and bitter? Is it a matter of faith? What is the issue? After a while he grows frustrated and says, "Alright, God, I have a question for You." And God responds, "Just a moment, Job — because I have two chapters of questions for you." At the end of that exchange, Job says, "Never mind." He says, "Before, I had heard about You, but now I have seen You."
Solomon's Path to the Same Place
Solomon is at exactly the opposite end. He has everything, and then more, and then still more — and he arrives at exactly the same conclusion. What is Solomon's conclusion about life? It is right there in chapter 1, verse 2: "Vanity of vanities." Some translations will say "meaningless." We are going to unpack all of this.
Solomon is a man whom God has blessed and blessed and blessed. Turn back through Proverbs and Psalms until you reach 1 Kings 3. God says to Solomon, "What can I do for you?" Solomon says, "Give me wisdom — give me insight and discernment. That is what I am after."
God's Gift to Solomon
God's response is recorded in 1 Kings 3, verse 11: "Because you have asked this thing, and have not asked for yourself long life, you have not asked for riches, you have not asked that your enemies be killed, but you have asked for yourself for discernment and understanding and justice, behold, I have done according to your word. Behold, I have given you a wise, discerning heart, so that there is no one like you, there has been no one like you before you, and there will be no one like you after you. I have also given you what you have not asked for — riches, honor — so that there may not be any among the kings like you all of your days."
The Scope of Solomon's Prosperity
What did that actually look like? Turn to 1 Kings chapter 4, verse 20, and we begin to get a sense of how it played out in Solomon's life. Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sands. Solomon reigned for about forty years — forty years of peace. His father David was a king of war; Solomon was a king of peace. The land experienced unprecedented prosperity. Resources that might have gone into a vast military complex fed the economy instead, and the economy kept growing.
Solomon ruled, verse 21, over all the kingdoms from the river of the land of the Philistines to the border of Egypt. And look at what it took just to feed his immediate team for a single day, verse 22: ten fatted oxen, twenty pasture-fed oxen, hundreds of sheep — along with gazelles, roebucks, and everything else that moved. Was he militarily strong? Verse 26: he had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots and ten thousand horsemen. He had deputies, he had barley and straw, and verse 29 tells us that God gave Solomon wisdom and discernment, breadth of mind like the sands on the seashore. His wisdom surpassed all the wisdom of the east and the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than all men. And his life was prolific — he was a man of extraordinary literary output.
Solomon and Job: Two Paths to the Same Conclusion
Both Solomon and Job arrived essentially at the same conclusions through two vastly different exercises. Job arrived there by losing everything; Solomon arrived there by having everything. Both of them came to the same conclusion: that life apart from Christ has no meaning, and that if we do not understand God and who He is, we are never going to understand life.
Those great, fundamental questions of life — who am I, why am I here, where am I going — are the essential ones. I remember listening to someone, it might have been R.C. Sproul or Elisabeth Elliot, and they said, "I'm so sick of dealing with this. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Can't we ask more profound questions?" Not really. Those are the basic questions. It would seem that every person and every culture throughout the world has wanted some answer to why they are here, where they are going, and perhaps where they came from. Those are the great questions in life.
The "Great Questions" We Actually Ask
This morning before I came in — I got here really early, I was up by about 2:30 and ready to go, because this book is my wheelhouse — I sat down and Googled "great questions of life." Here is what popped up. Since bread is square, why is sandwich meat round? Can you daydream at night? Is it legal to travel down a road in reverse as long as you are following the direction of traffic? What do you do when you see an endangered animal that is eating an endangered plant?
There were others I have always wrestled with. Can a short person talk down to a taller person? Do prison buses have emergency exits? Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii? Do Jewish vampires avoid the Star of David? Why do we put suits in garment bags and garments in suitcases? Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane? And this one: is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?
Here is perhaps the most profound one of the bunch: if you really could dig a hole to China, and you did, and you fell in, would you stop in the middle because of gravity? Those are the kinds of questions people might call the great questions. But Solomon is dealing with the essentials — who we are and why we are here.
Solomon: The Searcher and His Experiment
Solomon is identified in verse 1 as the Teacher, or the Preacher. The word literally means the assembler, the gatherer, the one who collects — the searcher, the seeker. Solomon is really on a great experiment, and we are the beneficiaries of it. Interestingly, in chapter 2 he tells us what the experiment was, but he gives us the results early, so we jump right in.
Look at the experiment in chapter 2, verse 1: *"I said to myself, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself.' And behold, it was futile."* The test was this: Is there meaning in life? Is there value in life? What is life all about? Where do I find meaning, purpose, and direction? Where do I find value? Can I find this thing called happiness? In our culture it gets dressed up as the American Dream — which I have yet to fully understand, though I know it is materialistic in nature and promises that it will make us happy.
The Pursuit of Pleasure, Wealth, and Power
So Solomon tried pleasure. Look at verse 3: *"I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely."* He got into all sorts of things — the fine tasting of wine, and then just outright heavy drinking.
Then in verse 4 he says, *"I enlarged my works: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself, and I made gardens and parks for myself and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made ponds of water for myself, from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees."* He built houses, then bigger houses, then more houses — one by the sea, one in the mountains, one in the desert. And it was not just the houses. He planted incredible gardens and pursued all of those kinds of things for himself.
But then he shifts from private indulgence to public works. He is a king, so he is building parks, waterways, aqueducts, and all sorts of things. Maybe meaning is found not in doing things for himself but in being a public servant. Verse 7 tells us he also bought male and female slaves. Verse 8 continues: *"I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I provided for myself male and female singers and the pleasures of men — many concubines."*
He held nothing back. He pursued joy, music, his own private concerts. He took wives and concubines — and in Solomon's world, the concubines existed strictly to satisfy him physically. He had more money than he could spend; all he had to do was ask for it, because he could tax and tax and tax. Then, as verse 9 tells us, he became great and increased more than all who had preceded him.
The Experiment of a Lifetime
"Wisdom stood before me, and all that my eyes desired, I did not refuse them. I did not withhold from my heart any pleasure. My heart was pleased because of all my labor, and this was my reward for all my labor." Thus Solomon considered all his activities. He went after it.
Now, you and I might say we are going to go after something, but there is always something that limits us. I was flipping through channels the other night and came across a show about a man I would have guessed to be around 35 years old. He had liquidated everything he had — sold everything except the clothes on his back — and they were taking it all into a casino to a roulette table, where he was going to put it on one number, or on black or red. In he went, determined to place it on black, but the crowd was chanting red, so he moved his bet to red as they spun the ball. The place was electric, the wheel was spinning, the ball was bobbing, and it landed on red. He doubled up. But he still had financial limitations.
Solomon had none of those limitations. He had all the money he needed. Nothing was illegal because he was making the rules. He had no societal or peer pressure because he was the king. That is what is so crucial to understand about Solomon.
Whatever You Think Will Make You Happy
This is especially important if you are here thinking you are not sure about this Jesus thing — whether you are a student, or 14, or 24, or 74, and you are going to try to find meaning on your own terms. Here is what I want you to understand: whatever you think will make you happy, Solomon had it. I believe God granted him that so he could write this book, so we could be here at this moment, so that Solomon could say to you, "I don't care, pal. You bring whatever you want to bring. You want to talk girls? I had girls. I had drugs. I had everything. Freedom? If by freedom you mean do whatever you want to do, I am the freest man that ever lived."
And here is what he says: I did all of that, and I am here to report the findings of my experiment. Those findings are in chapter 1, verse 2: "Vanity of vanities." That word vanity is clearly important — it appears 37 times in this book. The word means fleeting, vapor, meaningless, futile, empty. Solomon went through all of it, and then came back and said, "I did the test. I tried it all. No restrictions, no limitations. Denied myself nothing." And here is what life under those conditions amounts to: meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. Vanity of vanities. All is meaningless.
Two Key Terms
There are two terms we must understand, or we will never understand the book of Ecclesiastes. The first is the word vanity. The second is the phrase found in verse 3: "What advantage does a man have in all his work which he does" — and here it is — "under the sun." That phrase appears somewhere around 28 to 30 times in the book of Ecclesiastes, and you need to understand what it means, because it is the key to everything.
What advantage do you have for all your work, all your life, all your labor, all your toil — what do you get out of life under the sun? And the answer Solomon gives is nothing. The term "under the sun" means an earthbound perspective. It is seeing the world from the world's perspective. When we started summer camp, the very first verse I shared with the students was Isaiah 55, verses 7 and 8, where God says, "My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways, says the Lord. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts. My ways are higher than your ways."
Here is what Solomon is saying: if all I do is look at the world from the world's perspective, I will never find meaning there. I will never find purpose there. I can never smoke enough, never sleep with enough people, never close enough deals, never do any of these things to find satisfaction. In fact, the more I do them, the more dissatisfied and frustrated I become. At least before, when I was in the process of trying to acquire, accumulate, and hoard, I could tell myself, "When I get there, I'll be happy." Now I have gotten there, and I am miserable.
A Winner's Verdict
And this is not — let me say it again — this is not the conclusion of a loser. This is a man who, if he were alive today, would be on Forbes, on the E! Network, doing infomercials for some "Live Like Solomon" type deal. He is a winner, not a loser, from an earthly perspective. And he says to you: been there, done that. You think that is going to make you happy? It is not going to make you happy. Then he runs the whole table and begins to dismantle all of it.
Now there is a bit of a paradox here. A number of atheists quote from the book of Ecclesiastes. Many who are antagonistic toward our faith quote from it, because there are eight or nine places where Solomon says to find satisfaction at work, find enjoyment at work, and suggests that all that matters is what is under the sun. That is precisely why we need to understand and interpret this book carefully, because at this moment you might be thinking this is not exactly the upbeat, powerful message you were expecting.
Life Apart From God Is Empty
He is not saying that life cannot be good. He is just saying it isn't good apart from God. If all you are doing is living for the here and now, you will be frustrated. It is meaningless. But if your heart has been invaded by the living God, you are going to have meaning and purpose in life. So don't walk away and say, what a downer. It's not a downer.
You are always the ones who say, "I can take it — tell it like it is." Well, that's how it is. Life is empty and meaningless. As long as you want to go down that road, you go hard, you accumulate, and at the end of the day Solomon is going to be standing there saying, "I told you so. I could have saved you all this aggravation."
That is not going to make you happy. That is not going to make you fulfilled. That is not going to make you satisfied. He is not saying, by the way, don't work hard — just the opposite. Pursue things. But you don't find meaning in them. He is not anti-material. He is anti-materialism. Our life is not defined by those things, and we need to have that perspective.
Isn't it interesting? God says to Job, take it all away. To Solomon, give it all to him. And they arrive at the same conclusion.
People Are Transitory, the World Rolls On
"A generation goes, and a generation comes, and the earth remains forever." People are transitory. Mark Twain said it this way, speaking of what happens after we die: "The world will lament you for an hour and forget you forever." We are all passing away. James says it this way: life is but a vapor. "You say, let us go to such and such a city, we will work a year and make a profit — and then." James says, why do you say that? You don't know if you have tomorrow.
I read a book not long ago — I like those "I'm dying" books. This particular man had about two years to live. He went to two friends, all of them around forty years old, and they discussed what they were going to do with the time he had left. Two years later, both of his friends had been killed in separate car accidents, and he was still living. I also knew a man who walked into Coldwell Banker almost thirty years ago, and a doctor had told him he had six months to live. Last summer at camp I had lunch with him and his wife, and they came and worshipped with us together. You simply don't know.
But Solomon's point is that it doesn't matter, because eventually everyone is going to die. Maybe now, maybe a month from now, but sometime. And yet the world just keeps on going. He talks about the sun: it rises and it sets, it hastens to its place, and there it is again. It is relentless. It is predictable. We can sit down and calculate that on January 12th at 5:37 the sun is going to set.
And it's not just the sun. It's also the wind. "It blows toward the south and turns toward the north. The wind continues swirling along on a circular course." What's interesting is that Solomon had no satellite photos at the time, yet he somehow understood what was going on. Then there are the rivers: "The rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, they flow again." It just never ends.
I love going to the beach, and I love going to the mountains. The thing I love about the ocean is that I never simply look at it and move on. Every day of the week, every time I walk down to it — not just the first time — I have the same thought: this water doesn't care if it's Christmas Day, Super Bowl Sunday, or if the stock market just went up or down eight hundred points. That wave just comes rolling in and rolling out, rolling in and rolling out. That is Solomon's point.
The Restlessness of a Fallen Creation
You were the crown jewel of creation, but there was the fall. We rebelled. God said do this, and we said no. And He said, that's fine — there is a consequence to that. You will be separated from Me. You were made to rule over this creation, and now you can't control it. But God is not only a God of judgment. He is a God of love. So He sent Jesus, who died so that we could have eternal life.
Solomon says all of these things seem out of whack, and they are. Look at verse 8: "All these things are wearisome. Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." Let me read a couple of paraphrases. One puts it this way: "Everything is so weary and tiresome. No matter how much we see, we're never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we're never content." Eugene Peterson renders it: "Everything's boring, utterly boring. No one can find any meaning in it. Boring to the eye, boring to the ear."
The word translated "wearisome" can also mean restless. Man is incurably restless. We never see enough. We say we are going to travel the world, we need to see a sunset in Hawaii. Then we get to Hawaii and think, that looks a lot like the sunset back home. So maybe Europe, Australia, Antarctica. Maybe we'll climb Mount Everest, get in a submarine, go into space. It doesn't matter — we never get enough. And when we have seen it all, we find we never hear enough either, especially when it comes to gossip.
Life's Restlessness and the Checkout Line
I went over early — I drove over, then Susan flew over — so I had to go to the grocery store, which I don't frequent much. I'm checking out, and I just cannot keep my eyes to myself. I'm really wanting to know what's behind this Shania Twain thing. I'm reading, and I didn't know Oprah had 5,000 kids. I'm reading all of these articles, and I've got to tell you, this is sick. I'm saying, "Who buys this stuff?" And I say: people with less pride than me, but the same amount of curiosity.
I want to know. I'm hoping every time I go into somebody's condo, they bought it and left it there for me to read. There's something insatiable about it. I was restless. We are never satisfied.
Nothing New Under the Sun
Here is what the text says: "That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, 'See, this is new'? Already it has existed for ages."
Now you might say, "Wait a minute — what about the computer?" Here is what he is saying: there are some new gadgets, but it is the same old person behind them. Man has always been territorial and full of hatred. We used to defend ourselves with rocks and hatchets, and now we do it with nuclear weapons. It is the same old thing. We just see it over and over and over again. When I was a bit younger, Leo Sayer sang, "The world just keeps on turning." It is the same thing, on repeat.
It will not happen because I lack the discipline, but I have contemplated writing a book for my 60th birthday — which is a year from November — and it will not happen. But I have the title, and it is this: *Life Is a Rerun*. Everything. I never see anything new. Whether I am sitting with a seventh-grade boy or a seventy-year-old man, it is essentially the same issues. It boils down to my selfishness, my pride, my ego, my rebellion, my self getting in the way. It is the same.
No Remembrance, No Sense of History
Here is another problem: "There is no remembrance of earlier things, and also of the latter things which will occur. There will be no remembrance of them among those who will come later still."
You do not remember those who came before you, and the people ahead of you are not going to remember you. Paul writes to the church at Corinth and says to them, more than once, to read the Old Testament — because in it, what you see is this: you sinned, you fell, you rebelled, God was faithful, and then you just kept doing it again. I used to be in a small group studying the life of David, and one of the guys said, "How many times does David need to see this?" And I said, "It sounds like us to me."
How many times do I need to see that? Can you ask yourself that? How many times does God have to prove to you that He is faithful? Why is it that you get into the middle of all this and become anxious and worried and upset? You have seen His faithfulness. He has told you not to worry. Why do you need to see it again — need Him to prove Himself to you? He does not need to prove anything to you. Here is the key thought: He is God, and you are not. That is a very important thing to remember. And is God faithful? Yes. And He has just shown it to you, hasn't He?
The Preacher's Search for Wisdom
Now he begins to tie this up. Verse 12: "I, the Preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with."
"I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind." It is like chasing after the wind. Even if you caught it, you would be like the dog who caught the car — you would not know what to do with it. He blesses you, and you do not get it. He takes it away, and you do not get it.
What Is Crooked Cannot Be Straightened
And then, verse 15: "What is crooked cannot be straightened and what is lacking cannot be counted." Here is what he is saying: this is all messed up, all distorted, and you cannot fix it. You cannot figure it out. If He gave you a fix-it kit, you would not know where to start. The universe cannot fix it. You cannot fix it. You do not have the gifts, the talent, or the knowledge.
Here are a couple of paraphrases of chapter 1, verse 15. One reads: "What is wrong cannot be right, and what is missing cannot be recovered." And from The Message: "Life is a corkscrew that can't be straightened." It is not fixable by you or me or us. You are never going to find joy, never going to find happiness — not through fixing it yourself. I'll say it again, and I will likely keep saying it, because these next eight weeks cover the same theme over and over again. That is all twelve chapters are. That is just all he does.
Stop Grinding and Go Home
You cannot fix it. You cannot make it right. You cannot close enough deals. The economy is bad — are you going to work harder? If you are a businessperson and the economy is bad and you are already working fifty hours a week and working smart, working sixty hours a week is not going to change it. All you are going to do is lose your family and your joy.
Go home. Get yourself a Diet Coke, or whatever it is you drink. Get some pizza or a Double Double. Stretch out, watch Seinfeld, go to sleep. You are not going to change it. It is what it is. I am watching people who just want to grind — "I've got to work harder." Why? You cannot change it. It is a difficult market. You have to work smart. If you are capable, go get them. But grinding harder is not going to matter.
The Limits of Wisdom
And then he says: "Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me."
The Limits of Wisdom and Knowledge
"My mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge, and I set my mind to know wisdom and to know the madness and the folly, and I realize all this is striving after the wind, because in much wisdom there is much grief and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain." He says this is terrible. The more I know, the more I realize I don't know. The more I know, the more screwed up I am.
We think if we could just get more of this or less of that, everything would be fine. I tell students — and this always dates you — that the year of my high school graduation I paid 19.9 cents a gallon for gas. A twenty-gallon tank filled up for four dollars. Diesel the other day in California was $5.02, so a hundred bucks.
I remember when we said, "If it goes to a buck and a quarter, everything's going to fall apart." It didn't. If it goes to two dollars, it's going to fall apart. It didn't. If it goes to three dollars, it's going to fall apart. It didn't. If it goes to four dollars, it's going to fall apart. It didn't. We just go, "Oh man, if we could just get gas prices lower," but that isn't going to change anything.
Twenty percent of the agriculture crop in the state of Iowa is washed away, and already they're telling you there's only a two-month supply of corn worldwide right now. And we think, if this happens, everything will fall apart. But it always kind of works out. And the flip side is the same problem: if I can only get that, I'll be happy. If I could just get that — no, that won't work either.
You're painted into this corner, whether the market goes up or the market goes down, and you're going, "Oh my gosh, what do I do?"
Eternity Set in Our Hearts
Well, he tells you. Look at chapter 3, verse 11, because there is a little thing tucked right in there. "He has made everything appropriate in its time." That comes right after the passage in chapter 3 where he lists the time for this and the time for that. And then it says: "He has also set eternity in our hearts." Paul says it this way in Colossians: dwell on the things above.
Here is what it comes down to. Life bankrupts those who invest in it. It mocks those who seek its meaning. The universe in itself does not contain anything to give meaning, purpose, happiness, joy, and fulfillment to life.
Where the Hope Is
So where is the hope? That is the right question to ask. Because at this point I could be getting pretty nervous. But remember what we studied a couple of weeks ago? Philippians chapter 4, verse 6: "Be anxious for nothing, pray about everything." We flipped that around and said, if there is anxiousness and worry in my life, what Paul has just told me is that I am not praying enough. I am not supposed to be anxious about anything. I am not supposed to worry about anything.
Is that realistic? I think it is, or he would not tell us. Now, if you go home today and you get a call from one of your kids saying the baby just fell in the pool and died — I am not a robot. I understand the hurt and the pain associated with that. You are human, and you are going to have those moments. But when things settle in, there does not have to be an ongoing anxiousness or worry. There is instead a sense of the sovereignty of God, that God is in control. That does not take away your humanity — it actually makes you more human, because you are now the person God created you to be.
You can say, "I can't get my arms around this. I don't know why I lost that job. I don't know why I lost that spouse. I don't know why that child is in rebellion." But you can also say, "I know this: God does. And He put a hedge around me, and He would not have allowed this to come in if He were not going to protect me and give me the strength."
I am never going to find happiness, joy, meaning, or purpose in the world. I am only going to find them in Christ. Remember, when Paul says "be anxious for nothing, pray about everything," he does not follow it with "and then everything will be great, happily ever after." He says, "and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts." The circumstances will likely stay the same — but the peace of God changes everything.
Life Under the Sun, and Above It
That is the great theme running through all of this. Life is meaningless under the sun, on a horizontal plane. But when I begin to see it as God sees it, all of a sudden there is meaning. I can enjoy my work, I can enjoy my labor, I can enjoy the things God has given me — not finding my ultimate meaning or purpose there, but enjoying them as gifts.
If you are here and you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you feel like there is never enough — there never is going to be enough. You are not made to be satisfied by any physical person, place, or thing other than the person of Christ. That is why this matters so deeply.
And that is why it is so important to understand that as Christians, He left us here for a reason. It is to enjoy this world and to be salt and light, so that people look at us — even in the middle of rising gas prices and inflation and everything else — and see a joy and a peace that does not make sense given the circumstances. And we get to say, "It is not me, it is Him." Because if all we had was this world, there would be nothing to stand on. But we know it is not this — it is Him.
The World Is Not Enough
The world is not enough. You can take the world, just give me You. All I want is You. All I need is You, Jesus, I love You. Those words are true, aren't they?
Father, thank You. In a world that is all jacked up, in a world that is rebelling against You, that doesn't even know how to define success or good or fair, You have judged the world, and rebellion requires punishment. But You are not only holy — You are righteous. We can find forgiveness in Jesus Christ and Him alone.
What is crooked cannot be straightened. God, this is not a fixable problem. This is way beyond us. That is okay, because it is not beyond You. Father, thank You for loving us and showing us that love. In Jesus Christ we pray, in His name, amen.