All right, I'm in Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 1.

So the studies or the scriptures will be on the screen.

Encourage you if you have a Bible to follow along.

Really excited about this series.

I'm about to read the first chapter of Ecclesiastes.

And before I read it, I want you to remember this is the Bible I'm reading from.

This is the word of God to us.

The word of God to us.

It's in the Bible for a reason.

God wants to communicate something.

And as I read it, I want you to remember that these words are written by King Solomon.

He's a teacher.

He lived in perhaps the most affluent time in the nation of Israel, in all of Israel's history.

They were never this wealthy and affluent as they were in the time of Solomon.

And yet, even though all this wealth is flowing, Israel's not in slavery, there's no poverty.

They're not under attack.

There are no wars.

The queen of Sheba has come all the way to Israel to see how beautiful and powerful and affluent this kingdom is.

So while the milk and honey and the wine are flowing, Solomon decides to take a pen out.

And here's what he writes.

The words of the teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem, meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher, Utterly.

meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

What do people gain from their labors at which they toil under the sun?

Generations come, generations go, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and sun sets, and it hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south, then turns to the north.

Round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from, there they will return again.

All things are wearisome, more than one can say.

The eye never has enough to have seen, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again.

What has been done will be done again.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, look, this is something new.

It was here already, long ago.

It was here before our time.

And no one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered.

by those who followed them.

Wow.

It feels like Eeyore wrote a passage of scripture.

Here are my favorite Eeyore quotes.

Number one, good morning, Pooh Bear, if it is a good morning, which I doubt.

Number two, end of the road could be worse.

Not sure how, but it could be.

And then finally, I love this one.

After all, what are birthdays here today gone tomorrow?

As you read Ecclesiastes, you ask the question, why on earth would the Spirit of God include these words in his revelation to us?

Now, they sound incredibly similar to the words of existentialism that emerged in our culture in the 1960s. And existentialism still hangs around.

It's a hard thought process or thought system to get rid of.

from movie to television to the arts to the books we read, everything around us, whether we recognize it or not, has been born out of this existential despair.

Here's what existentialism is.

It asks the question, how is it possible to create meaning in a meaningless world?

How do we find meaning if there is no God?

So you have authors like John Updike, Walker Percy, John Irving.

Told us that God did not exist, therefore there are no true and objective meanings to our lives.

We can create tiny little meanings, but objectively and absolutely, there's no meaning to life.

No God means no purpose, no meaning.

Nothing really matters, they told us.

And the meaning of it all is that there is no meaning.

We must create our own meaning, they told us.

Otherwise, you might as well shoot yourself in the head.

Just a few quotes.

It makes no difference whether one dies at the age of 30 or three score and 10.

Since in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before.

What difference does it really make, they said?

It matters little whether you get up or stay in bed, whether you love life or you hate it, whether you stab yourself in the hand, shoot another person, or wander from place to place, bar to bar, picking fights.

Life goes on whether you strive to change it or not.

They told us what is human.

What is a human being but a tiny little blip in a billion-year progression of history?

Carl Jung.

who founded the School of Analytical Psychology, admitted that a third of his cases suffered from no definable neurosis other than senselessness and emptiness in their lives.

And he went on to say that meaninglessness is the general neurosis of the modern era.

That's our era.

Now think about it.

Comparatively, in our time, we have everything.

I mean, we got cars and airplanes.

The liberty to travel, television, movies, entertainment, fast food, pleasures untold, freedom of expression and experience, advanced medical cures, wealth and health, never experienced before in human history.

That's what we got.

And do you know what we have along with it?

Depression, anxiety, and downright frustration of epidemic proportions.

Now, I've been singing this song for a long time.

And this series is going to take us someplace, I think, by God's grace, we're going to come to a conclusion that can be transformative.

I know it's transformed me.

Our dis-ease is of epidemic proportions.

Our affluence has not brought us peace.

In fact, it's done the opposite.

Do you ever catch yourself, especially you guys, not that women don't matter to me, but we guys fight this.

In a major way, do you ever catch yourself just staring out into space and you're thinking, what in heaven's name am I doing?

Is this it really?

This is it, the totality of my life?

Solomon, in an age of wealth, he had everything.

And he says, meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher, utterly meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

Meaningless occurs 35 times.

in this short book in the Old Testament.

And he goes on to say, if you read the entire book, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, evil people prosper, good ones suffer, tyrants reign, disasters happen, disease spread, everyone dies and turns to dust.

The whole world, he says, is unbalanced and twisted.

And then he says in chapter 8, verse 14, later on, there is something else meaningless that occurs on earth.

The righteous who get what the wicked deserve I'm and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve.

This too, I say, is meaningless.

You know, a lot of theologians and pastors will not preach out of Ecclesiastes.

Do you know why?

And then Solomon's answer to this, as he sits back and sips his wine in his cushy palace, he says, here's his advice.

Forget prudence.

Eat, drink, and seize any fleeting moment of happiness.

What else is the point of living?

You work hard and somebody else gets the credit.

You struggle to be good and bad people prosper and trample you.

You accumulate money and it goes to your spoiled heirs.

You seek pleasure, it turns sour.

Besides everyone, rich or poor, good or evil, meets the same end, no matter how you live, we all die.

Death, the ever-present stalking specter, contradicts any notion that we are born to be happy, he says, and there's only one word fit to describe this life.

meaningless.

Phil Yancey in his book entitled The Bible Jesus Read says to come across such words in Albert Camus, the existential philosopher, is one thing, but in the Bible?

Don't miss the larger point.

The message of doom and gloom and meaninglessness sprouts not from suffering, but from the soil of excess.

You can understand if these words came out of a concentration camp of Ravensbrück or Auschwitz or the hell holes of POW camps, a sense of hopelessness and justice meaninglessness, that'd be quite understandable.

But these words come from a place of excess where you have everything, all the women you want, all the food you want, all the housing you want, all the wine that you want.

And this is the conclusion.

Walker Percy, in his work, The Message in a Bottle, says this, why do more people commit suicide in San Francisco, the most beautiful city in America, than any other city?

I had to look that up.

That's true.

Why is it that Jean-Paul Sartre, sitting in a French cafe riding nausea, which is about the absurdity of human existence and the nausea of life in the 20th century, why was he the happiest man in France at the time?

Why is it that a man riding a good commuter train from L'Enchimarte to New York, whose needs and drives are satisfied, who has a good home, loving wife and family, good job, who enjoys unprecedented cultural and recreational facilities, often feels bad without knowing why.

And his answer, because despair rises out of plenty, not deprivation.

Existential despair does not germinate from Auschwitz or Siberia, but out of the cafes of Paris, the coffee shops of Copenhagen, and the luxury palaces of Beverly Hills.

Now, what's interesting about Phil Yancey is he spends a lifetime addressing the question of pain and suffering.

Trying to harmonize pain and suffering that we experience in our lives with a so-called good and merciful God.

And his conclusion in the end is this.

He says, it is significant that most of the objections to the existence of God from the problem of suffering come from outside observers who are quite comfortable.

Whereas those who actually suffer are, as often as not, made into stronger believers by their suffering.

He says, as I visited people around the world whose pain far exceeded my own, I was surprised by the effects.

Suffering seemed as likely to reinforce faith as to sow agnosticism.

I remember the Scottish theologian James Stewart said this, it is the spectators, the people on the outside looking at the tragedy from whose ranks the skeptics come.

It is not those who are actually in the arena.

and who know suffering from the inside.

Indeed, the fact is that it is the world's greatest sufferers who have produced the most shining examples of unconquerable faith.

Pastor Jeff, what are you trying to say?

And I'm taking a long time to say it.

It's my style.

The verdict is in.

Despair rises out of plenty, not out of want.

Think about secular Europe right now.

Man, people driving around in BMWs, Volvos, eating gourmet restaurants, visit sex shops, and every other sense of pleasurable entertainment.

They live in their affluence, no longer seeking their colonial ways, having access to everything a person ever wants.

And they are riddled with anxiety, depression, frustration, emptiness, and the fight, the temptation to kill themselves.

And they have little to no interest in God.

Such people outraged Job.

He said in Job 21, they spend their years in prosperity and go down to the grave in peace.

Yet they say to God, leave us alone.

We have no desire to know your ways.

Who is the Almighty that we should serve him?

What would we gain by praying to him?

Now, you have to ask the question, especially as a Christ follower, in our culture, you have to ask the question, how is it There's so much depression and frustration and anxiety and meaningless comes into our culture when we have everything.

What's the scoop?

Gita Maupassant, which I've mentioned many times before, but probably the greatest writer of short stories in human history.

But he's remembered as a tragic figure.

He's a man who had all the things that most of us spend our entire lives trying to get.

Within 10 years, he rose from obscurity to fame.

His stories appeared everywhere.

His name became a household word.

He had a yacht in the Mediterranean, a large house on the Norman coast, a luxurious flat in Paris.

Critics praised him.

Men admired him and women worshiped him.

Yet at the height of his fame and wealth, he went insane.

On New Year's Day, 1892, he tried to cut his own throat with a knife.

He was taken to the hospital to a private asylum on the Riviera.

After 18 months of physical debilitation and gibbering insanity, he died.

He was 42 years old.

He had written his own epithet that sounds like what Solomon is saying.

He said, I have coveted everything, taken pleasure in nothing.

Wow.

Now, I wish I could have seen this years before.

But in verse 13 of chapter 1, You read something that most of us skip over, but this is the clue right here.

When Solomon writes, I applied my mind to study and explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens.

And then here's his conclusion.

What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind.

Wait a minute.

A burden?

In chapter 3, verse 10 and 11, he says it again.

He says, I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Evidently, there is a burden that comes with affluence.

There is a burden that comes with wealth.

Job suffered the burden of pain and struggle, yet he never once considered denying the existence of God.

In fact, we are told in all of his pain and suffering, he never sinned in what he said, ever.

His pain and suffering did not move him away from God.

He questioned God, but it moved him closer to God.

Alternatively.

And the juxtaposition of these two books in the Old Testament is an amazing thing.

Solomon suffered from the burden of excess.

He accumulated more wealth than anybody before him.

He pursued every kind of pleasure, but he did it, unlike Job, apart from God.

Rather than seeking the God of the blessings, he locked God out and decided to pursue the blessings themselves.

And all he got from it was a fear of death and a bad case of insomnia.

So the question comes, how does excess play a burden on us?

You think, well, that's not me.

Yes, you are.

Stop that.

Everybody in this room, compared to most of the world, lives in excess.

Now, there are some who have more excess than others, but we are a blessed nation, man.

Most of you are going to go out to In-N-Out afterwards.

You're going to go to your home with a roof over your head.

You know, your biggest challenge is...

deciding what you're going to eat, what you're going to watch, how much time you're going to spend on your iPhone.

How does excess place a burden on us?

And the hint is the way Solomon describes it.

He calls it the burden of the gods.

Now, what does that mean?

It means that when you're God, you have everything.

You can do everything.

And you have unlimited freedom and power.

But real power and real freedom.

Neutrality requires restraint, and that's something you and I aren't very good at.

It's a responsibility that comes with excess.

To whom much is given, much is required.

The more you're entrusted with, the more responsibility you have.

And while God makes everything beautiful in its time, we do the opposite.

Given enough time, we take beautiful things and make them ugly.

We're really good at that.

So we turn nudity into pornography.

Wine into alcoholism, food into gluttony, and human diversity into racism and prejudice.

Despair to sins as we abuse God's gifts, and the more gifts we have, the more abuse.

Solomon is saying to have wealth and pleasure is unbearable because we cannot bear the burden of the gods, the responsibility of what to do with too much.

Now think about this.

Corporately for a moment.

When we take our excess and begin to employ it as a human race, especially in the West, and we try to manage it, what happens?

We bring antibiotics to underdeveloped countries only to see the infant mortality rates plummet, populations soar, and the specter of famine rear up.

We dump $100 billion into the war on poverty only to end up with more poor people than ever before.

Oh, we're good at this.

The most technologically advanced countries in our world are marked by family breakdown, drug addiction, abortion, violent crime, homelessness, and suicide.

Malcolm Muggeridge in Jesus Rediscovered writes, The result is almost invariably the exact opposite of what's intended.

Thus, expanding public education has served to increase public illiteracy.

Half a century of pacifist agitation you has resulted in the two most ferocious and destructive wars of history.

Political egalitarianism has made for the heightened class, or for a heightened class consciousness.

And sexual freedom has led to erotomania on a scale hitherto undreamed of.

In other words, we stink at being God.

We stink at having everything and knowing how to use it wisely.

Having too much crushes us in a thousand ways.

individually, think about this, rather than worshiping God, as a pastor, I see this all the time.

We pray for the blessings of God.

In fact, our country is always saying the words, God bless America.

And I definitely want that.

But as I've said before, how is it that God can bless America and then those very blessings become a distraction from worship and serving God?

It seems to me that when God blesses us, it's not good for us.

Because rather than turning to him, we turn to those things.

So you have people, especially here in wonderful, sunny Southern California, so you have people who are Christ followers that never go to church because they're at their beach house.

They're in the mountains.

They're other places all the time.

So let me get this straight.

God gave you talents and abilities and business acumen, and you have been able to grow your corporation, your company, so much that you have so much wealth, that you can have so much time in liberty and freedom.

to go do your own thing.

And rather than worshiping God for the freedom, you take that freedom and you spend it on yourself.

Individually, there are far too many Christian atheists, people who claim to be a Christian, but live as though God does not exist.

And Solomon is telling us, if you try to live your life this way?

If you go out and pursue all the pleasures of your life and take all the affluence God has given you, and you go and you enjoy yourself and you overload yourself with entertainment and wealth and you neglect God, what's going to happen is on the surface you're going to think you're okay, but inside you start to destroy the soul.

Depression, anxiety.

Now, somebody might say, well, Pastor Jeff, take a deep breath, man.

What am I supposed to do?

Apologize for my affluence?

No.

Perhaps the people of God, Israel, who first received these words, can give us the answer.

Do you know, still today, Jews, during the festival of tents, will move out of their house into the backyard and will live in those tents where they will eat their meals and they will sleep and they will remember their ancestors in the Sinai wilderness.

They will remember how they were freed from slavery in Egypt and how they dwelled in tents for many, many years on the way to the promised land.

But do you know what else they do during the festival of tents?

Somebody stands up and reads the entire book of Ecclesiastes.

Why?

As a sober warning against depending on their success and prosperity rather than God.

Now listen, for us Christians, the book of Ecclesiastes offers a corrective.

In chapter 3, verse 11, he has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also said eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

As you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in the mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.

This is so good.

Most of us read over it, but Solomon is telling us something's missing.

And it's the reason that you have so much anxiety and depression and drug addiction and anger.

And men, it tells us why you and I live lives of quiet desperation and our walk in the halls at night and can't figure out what's wrong with our job and our marriage and our children and even the things we enjoy.

Why am I not getting out of these things what I need to get out of these things?

And as we begin this series, Solomon tells us four truths.

You ready?

Here's the first.

Embrace the joys of life, but never make them ultimate.

Men, we have a problem.

We have the Solomon syndrome.

Listen carefully.

The problem isn't your marriage or your career or your money, but the weight of expectation that you place on them.

You want them to deliver something they cannot, and you live with chronic discontentment.

They cannot deliver ultimate things.

Listen, I know this sounds harsh, but you will never find the love you're looking for in a woman.

Now, you'll find good love.

but not the one you're looking for.

She's just a pointer to the ultimate love.

And until you have it, you won't be able to enjoy the earthly love in the way that it's meant to be enjoyed.

You will never find the significance you're looking for in your job.

Never.

Because it was never meant to deliver that to you.

You can have successes and joys and celebrate accomplishment.

But you're trying to get your significance from it, that you matter.

You're trying to prove to everybody you matter and you're smart and you're good.

The world is fickle, man.

They'll celebrate you one day and throw you under the bus the next.

You will never find the thrill you're looking for even in recreation or sport or nature or vacations or holidays.

And the reason is none of them were ever meant.

to give you ultimate things.

Oh, really, Pastor Jeff, I like it when I talk.

Guys will say to me, really?

Okay, Pastor Jeff, you're so smart.

What am I looking for?

Let me tell you what you're looking for, and you know it.

You're looking to know that you matter, that you're just not taking up space.

You're looking for security where you can take a deep breath and know you're going to be okay.

You're looking for hope that things may get better.

You're looking for eternity.

That's what you're after.

And you're after it because God put it in your heart to seek it.

He has placed eternity.

But if you try to extract ultimate things from temporary things, you're going to end up losing both.

Do you understand that?

Because you'll abuse the thing.

That you think should give you something that it's not giving you.

That's why marriages break up all the time.

You think your wife is your savior.

That she should love you all the time.

That she should never question you on anything.

She should meet you at the door when you come home and do this.

You are wonderful.

And she's not doing that.

So you're angry.

You're mad.

You're not going to get that kind of love for her.

Now you'll get sweet, good love, but not that kind.

And if you keep trying to force her to be that, no person can live up to that kind of expectation.

However, when you know that the joys of your life are gifts from God, and they're all fleeting, that they're not ultimate things, then you really can enjoy and truly appreciate the gifts of God.

I have things that I talk about, and I know if you were here, you would have yours.

There are things that I love, that when I'm having a hard time, I will close my eyes and I will pretend that I'm at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Africa, and I'll just see it in my mind's eye.

I wish that somehow, you know, have you seen those things they're advertising that plug into the wall and then they show a scenery in your, I wish I could have Victoria Falls just in my room.

I wish I could just live there.

Golf.

I love the game of golf.

It brings such pleasure and pain.

I love to travel.

I love to see different cultures.

One of my best experiences, I'll never forget, I was in a little town called Solcic, outside of the town of Ephesus in Turkey.

And I was just walking down the street to look and some old guys, I mean, they live right in Turkey.

These old guys were sitting out around the table having their Turkish coffee at the end of the day.

And they saw me and said, come sit down.

Tell us about yourself.

I mean, we just talk.

Oh man, I love those.

But here's the problem.

They're temporary, right?

You know, the day's going to come when I can't travel anymore because I'm too old.

The day's going to come when I can't enjoy nature.

I can go and watch it, but I can't run in it and hike in it.

One of these days, I'll lose my ability to golf, even though Ricky Reed might tell you that's already happened.

I may lose my job, my position.

I may lose my money.

See, if I think these things...

are going to give me that for which I'm so desperately searching.

And I don't come to terms with they're just fleeting.

I'll never truly enjoy them.

I'll try to extract something from them they're incapable of giving.

Here's what the book of Ecclesiastes does, and here's what this series is going to do.

It systematically tests major avenues people use to find what they're looking for, and nothing passes the test.

Right?

Isn't it true that even the pleasures that you experience, don't you need a greater dose the next time to get the same effect?

When something good does not deliver to you what you think it should, I promise you, you'll start to abuse it and eventually destroy it or it will destroy you.

When your relationships become ultimate, there will be a constant frustration because no person can live up to your expectations.

However, alternatively, when you stop treating this life as if it must satisfy you entirely, you'll find it more satisfying.

Work and achievement.

Let's go back again.

It can be enjoyed and celebrated if it's not made ultimate.

But man, if you're depending on your job to give you the self-esteem and self-worth you're looking for, oh man, you're going to be miserable all the days of your life.

And the ebb and flow of your emotional health and well-being will fluctuate with the ebb and flow of your performance at work.

But if your job is something that gives you satisfaction without being ultimate, then you can relax and you can enjoy it because you're not trying to extract something from it.

It's incapable of giving.

You can just enjoy the highs and the lows.

You can enjoy the highs, a sense of accomplishment, and the lows, a sense that God may be doing something special in you.

Remember what Walker Percy said?

He said, why do more people commit suicide in San Francisco, the most beautiful city in America, than in any other city?

Now, let me tell you, I do realize this quote's outdated because San Francisco's not so beautiful anymore.

Why is it that Jean-Paul Sartre, sitting in a French cafe, writing Nausea, which is about the absurdity of the human existence and the nausea of life in the 20th century, why was he the happiest man in France at the time?

Temporary things can never fill an eternal void.

You remember the story I told you years ago and I went back to my file.

This is one of the most humorous stories about the baseball player playing in Major League Baseball was making $26 million.

And he felt it wasn't good enough, so he went into arbitration with the team, asking for $68 million.

So 26, he's asking for 68.

They settled for 52.

When they interviewed the baseball player's wife after the arbitration, they asked her how she felt, and she said, this was the saddest day of our lives.

Why?

You base your worth on a dollar amount, on a number.

Look, embrace the joys of life, but never make them ultimate.

And two, embrace your freedom, but never sit in God's chair.

Now, he says in Ecclesiastes 12, stay with me.

Now, all has been heard.

Here's the conclusion of the matter.

At the end of his life, he says, and he didn't do this, but he says, you know what?

I should have feared God and kept his commandments.

What's he saying?

In the affluent West, tell me we don't have great liberty.

Man, you can date who you want.

We don't have arranged marriages in America, I don't think.

You can look for the opportunity for work here and success.

It's still the greatest country in the world, no matter what the media tells you.

Vacations and pleasures of many kind are accessible to everyone.

Access to entertainment and employment, all of that.

But listen, oh man, this is the beauty, the beauty of travel.

Most fully devoted followers of Jesus in this world have very simple lives without any real luxuries.

Did you know that?

Outside of America, India, Africa, lots of South America, Asia, most Christ followers outside of the U.S.

live hand to mouth.

They sleep, they work, they repeat.

Luxuries for them is to perhaps have meat with a meal or a special treat.

And typically, they are persecuted because of their faith.

Tell me then, since we know that to be true, why is it that their passion for God is off the charts?

That the highlight of their week is going to the house of God to praise and to worship.

Why is that?

Why are they not struggling with depression and anxiety and suicidal thought?

Many, many years ago, we went to Zimbabwe.

I took a team from Savannah, Georgia.

We went out to the bush of the bush, a place called Chittimoyo, and there just happened to be an old lady on a mat on the dirt sitting in front of her mud hut.

There were two huts, the one she lived in and the one her extended family lived in.

The totality of her life, she explained, is one meal a day, sudza, with fish on a good day and vegetables that she grows in her garden.

And we ask her, in this poverty that we would describe, what is the best thing you know?

And she said, the best thing I know is Jesus.

He's everything.

Now, wouldn't you think that a person who lives on a mud hut, sleeps on a concrete floor, a mud floor, with just a garment as a bedspread, And the totality of her life is going every day to wash the clothes, to get water, to have one suds a bowl of millimil of mush with some maybe some, that is the totality.

She's not thinking about vacation.

She's not thinking about luxury.

That's the totality of her life day after day.

And yet she says the best thing she knows is Jesus.

The burden of influence does two things to you and me.

Number one, it gives us the false sense that we can control our lives.

After all, we have the means to solve all our problems, entertainment for our boredom, medicine for our sickness, medical care, money for our needs and wants.

Why do we need God when we have all this other stuff?

So that God becomes the person we turn to when nothing else works.

And our affluence makes us go into shock when things don't go well.

We're shocked that my life had a bad day.

Things didn't go well.

What's happening here?

What did I do?

This makes no sense.

But Solomon finally admits, you don't know the path of God, and you don't know better than God how your life should be going.

You're trying to bear the burden of the gods, and you're not very good at it.

He says he has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also said eternity in the human heart, yet nobody can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

As you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in the mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.

So that Solomon's conclusion in chapter 12, verse 13, fear God and keep his commandments.

Fear is not a negative term that Solomon uses.

It's equal to the word reverence.

In other words, revere God.

Respect his right to control your life.

And if you do that, all the stress will dissipate.

See, the problem is in your affluence, you think all the power rests with you.

And you think you can dictate and control all the circumstances around you.

And it's all good until it's not.

Religious people, oh, they're quite humorous because what religious people do, they're the most miserable.

religious people, because what they do is they think if I do this, God has to do this.

So I'm going to put God in his binding contract.

I'll be good, God, but if I'm good, you got to bless me.

And they're miserable because the blessings aren't coming because God never made that commitment to you.

The life that finds its joy and contentment is the life, first of all, that fears and respects.

And revels in God's sovereignty.

You know, let me give you a quick example.

I had a meeting this past week with a friend of mine.

If I would have had this meeting 10 years ago, I'd have gone into that meeting like this.

Oh, I got to have this.

I got to do this.

I got to be convincing.

I got to say all the right words.

Man, he's got to listen to me.

That's a horrible life to live.

But now I go to the meeting, I'm thinking, well, I'm going to speak the truth and the spirit of God will determine the outcome.

That's freedom, man.

That's freedom.

If we allow God to control our lives and to govern our pleasures, by the way, if we do that, then sex will be confined to the marriage covenant, entertainment will be governed by purity and righteousness, and pleasure will be tempered with the parameters of holiness.

But if you lock God out of your affluence and pleasures, It will destroy you and everybody around you, and worse yet, you will destroy any hope of peace, of a fearlessness, of courage, and you will be constantly at odds with your own soul.

Embrace the joys of life, but never make them ultimate.

Embrace your freedom, but never sit in God's chair.

And embrace living, but never forget death is coming.

Listen, listen to what he says in Ecclesiastes 7.2.

It is better to go to a house of mourning than go to a house of feasting.

For death is the destiny of everyone.

The living should take this to heart.

Wow, you hear what he's saying?

It's better to go to a funeral than a party.

Now, I got a hard time with that.

But why would he say it?

Oh, he says, because when you go to a funeral, it forces you to confront the reality you're going to die.

It strips the illusion of control and permanence, and it forces you to ask the question.

What is my life ultimately about?

What is it that truly lasts?

You know the death cloud follows you, men, all the days of your life.

You know that everything you do accomplish and every sweet and perfect and good thing will pass.

So he says, you need to go to more funerals because that will stop you in your tracks and you'll say, okay, given the reality I'm going to die, and like we said last week, I want to live life backwards.

What then is it that truly lasts?

Okay.

All my life, pastors have told me, live for what's last.

But they don't tell me what it is.

What is it that lasts?

The kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is where God's rule is the authority over everything, and all who live in it and under it experience the fullness of his power, where there's no pain, suffering, death, disease, or dis-ease of the soul.

And we all have the capacity to live in this kingdom now.

It's here, but not yet in full.

But we gain glimpses of it when we see the transformation of people who are far from God, who come near to God, and we see the change, the eternal change in their lives.

We see a difference in people when all of a sudden they're able to do things they've never done, see things they've never seen, and feel things they've never felt before.

And we see a little hint of it when someone experiences a physical healing where there's no other plausible explanation other than the kingdom of God.

That's the kingdom that will one day be here in full when Jesus returns and the forces of this world are cast down.

So, if you really want peace, This is the beginning.

Enjoy.

And this contentment that you've been looking for all of your life, stop trying to get it from things that are incapable of delivering it.

And enjoy the pleasures you do have.

And at the same time, realize that the kingdom of God is the only investment you make that will last.

Now, I'm almost done.

I'm going to confess sin to you right now.

I have sinned against the teachers of our church.

And you know, you're never too old to learn.

But for years, I told teachers, man, the school system is so bad, you just better get out.

And it's dawned on me that when people come to our church as teachers and they sign up to teach in our children's ministry, oh, we're so happy for them that you're doing the right thing.

But how many times has the church prayed for our teachers working in the secular world who are trying to represent the kingdom of God in the kingdom of darkness?

The soul, the essential you.

The real you inside will come alive.

Guys, listen.

You're the first one to turn me out in messages like this.

Listen to me.

I'm telling you what you're looking for.

You're only going to find when you completely and fully stop chasing so hard after money and sex and stuff and entertainment.

You can still go after those things there to be enjoyed by God.

They're gifts of God, rather, for you to enjoy.

But in the right context and within the right parameters.

But when you start to chase first and foremost, listen, it's a fundamental passage of Scripture.

Seek first the kingdom of God and what?

All these things will be added.

added.

What does that mean?

Does that mean if I seek first the kingdom of God, listen now, if I seek first the kingdom of God, I'm going to have a big house, have a big car, have all the money I want?

No.

If you seek first the kingdom of God, everything you're trying to get from those things will be yours because they can only be found in God.

Trust him.

Today is a day you can recenter your life on God.

Pastor Jeff, aren't you going to tell me how to do that?

Yeah.

But it's going to take me eight weeks.

Four, embrace the cross, never forgetting what it says about you.

Solomon did not have what you and I have.

So let me ask you some questions and I'll finish.

Why are you still searching for coping mechanisms to shut out the feelings of hopelessness and insignificance?

Make no mistake, that's exactly what we're doing, guys.

The way out is to believe about yourself what God has communicated to you through the cross.

Stop conforming the coping mechanism.

Stop listening to the voices of people who are broken in a broken world.

Stop following the blind.

God is inviting you into a land of rest.

He's already shown you how valuable...

you are to him.

He gave up what was most precious to him so he would not lose you.

He's already shown you that he is your protection and your security and you're going to live forever because of what Jesus did on the cross.

He's already revealed to you that even before the foundations of the world, he knew your name.

He decided to rescue you and give you a new name and a new identity that can never be stripped from you.

You are not worthy, but he made you worthy.

You are not deserving, but he made you deserving.

So stop believing, guys, this distorted view of yourself and receive what God has spoken about you through the cross.

You are not condemned.

You are at peace with God.

You are treasured and loved and adored.

Believe the truth of God.

Stop believing the lies of the world.

And somehow muster up your courage.

Admit that you really stink at being God.

And allow God to grant you ultimate security.

and significance and peace as you say to him, I will no longer try to control everything or hold on to the things I can't live without.

My life belongs to you, God.

Give me what I need, not necessarily what I want.

And most of all, God, give me you.

Now quickly, quickly, here, and I'm not meaning to exclude the women, your time will come.

Guys, hey guys, can I tell you what you're really after?

And I say you, I mean, can I tell you what we are really after?

Oh, this is what we're after, from the time we were little boys, fun, fun.

We want to play baseball in the yard with our friends.

We want to throw spitballs on the chalkboard.

We want to get in trouble.

We want...

When my little boy, Delaney, was probably eight years old, I got him a helium balloon, and he would hold that balloon in the living room, let it go up to the ceiling, climb up on the sofa, pull it down.

How many times do you think he did that?

Eternally.

He would still be doing it.

So he lets the balloon go, he climbs up on the sofa, pulls it down, lets the balloon go, climbs up.

He thinks this is just the greatest thing he's ever seen.

My grandkids, they live right behind me.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Every time I'm home, they see the car, they hear it pull in.

What do they do?

Papa, come out and play with us.

I'll get in the pool with them.

They each want to ride on my back.

They want me to swim the lengths of the pool while they're riding.

How many times do you think?

No, there's no limit.

It's infinite.

It's infinite.

Either until I drown or I get so tired I can't move.

There's no stopping.

Do you know that little boy, little girl grows up to be you and me?

And do you know what we're after?

Perpetual wonder.

Perpetual wonder.

We're bored.

And there's only one relationship that can give you perpetual wonder, where every day is a new experience, and every day gets better than the day before.

And that's when, guys, you pursue God.

with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And in this series, I'm going to show you how.

Father, I thank you for the book of Ecclesiastes.

I thank you for eye-opening experience on my study break to look at a book that is so filled with truth.

Man, I'm praying for all of us that by the end of these series, these next two, We'd be forever changed.

We'd never look back.

We'd step across the line and we would now know, oh, so this is it.

This is it.

And we enjoy creation for all of its wonderful gifts, but we never make them ultimate.

And our ultimate pursuit is our relationship with God who knew us before the foundations of the world.

and is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him.

In Jesus' name, amen.