Latest / HBCWestminster / Ecclesiastes Session One 6.12.19

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Ecclesiastes Session One 6.12.19 · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for every word in your word, for every book in this collection of books. And I thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to dive into Ecclesiastes. I pray now, Holy Spirit, that you would come and that you would really be our teacher here tonight, Lord. That you would take all the...
• 0:26
  things that you have taught me and that you would share with these women what they need you to tell them, Lord, and that anything that is said purely from me would be forgotten, that you would be exalted, and that more than anything, Lord, that we would know you better and that we would grow deeper into the truth of who you are and understand more and more why we are here. We love you, Jesus, and it's in your name we ask these things, and in your name we pray. Amen.
• 0:54
  Years ago, I was sitting in a Starbucks, and there was a little boy in there with his mommy, and it was kind of fun. I was in there doing some work, typing, reading, and I was watching them. When they got up to leave, he went to those big heavy doors at Starbucks. He was maybe two years old, and he did that press and lean into the door, and it didn't budge at all. And he tried again, and he couldn't get it to move. So then his mom, being a mom, came up behind him.
• 1:24
  Started, you know, as he pushed, she was pushing, and he turned around and he swatted her like, no, I am going to do this. So then, you know, she just kind of got in his blind spot, and he pushed, and it opened. But he had gotten help from his mama. He hadn't done it on his own. I saw that, and I think that is so much how I live my life. I think, okay, this is where I want to go. I can see it clearly through that door right there. I just need to push this door open, and I'll be there.
• 1:53
  And I can try and I can try and I can try. I can't open it up. I can't do it. And God comes along. And honestly, sometimes I am arrogant enough to say, no, I'm going to do this. This is my thing. And I shoo him away or I don't give him the attention he needs. I think Solomon was one of those people, too, that tried and tried and tried. And as the old Rolling Stones song goes, he couldn't get no satisfaction.
• 2:23
  Even though he tried and tried and he tried and he tried and he couldn't get anywhere. And tonight as we study Solomon, we're going to see, and I have this kind of at the top of your page there. If you look on your table there are notes. At the top I have the main idea and it's simply this. Satisfaction is received, not achieved. Satisfaction is received, not achieved.
• 2:55
  King Solomon wrote this book, and most people agree that it was King Solomon. It was written, just to give you a little background, because this is our opening night of Ecclesiastes, Solomon wrote this near the end of his reign in 10th century B.C., some date it around 935 B.C. He went through his life, experienced many things, as we're even going to see right away tonight in the first two chapters.
• 3:24
  And then came to the end of it and said his conclusion. And in the style of Jewish writing, he opens chapter 1 right away in verse 2. We get to see the whole point that he has come to right in chapter 1, verse 2. And as we do this, we're going to hear this said again and again. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All.
• 3:53
  is vanity. So let's get into this. As we look at point number one, we're going to look at how Solomon reflects on life's rhythms. He's going to reflect on life's rhythms and he's going to say, how does nature work here? What's going on? And like I said, he starts right away with his conclusion. Let's back up to verse one. He says in verse one,
• 4:19
  the words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Now that word preacher is how he's referred to himself. Yours might say teacher. Yours might say speaker. That word is actually of the same root word as the word Ecclesiastes. I looked up Ecclesiastes in as many places as I could find, and it all came back to, comes from the root word Ecclesiastia, which means a gathering of believers. In the New Testament, if you know the story,
• 4:49
  Paul was teaching one time, and a mob came up against him in Ephesus. And that mob of people who had like-minded beliefs was called an Ecclesiastia in the New Testament. So it's not necessarily Christians. It's not necessarily Jewish believers, as Solomon would have been addressing. But it's a group of believers. And then these are the words that he's addressing. The preacher is the one who is addressing the group of believers. And he identifies himself as that. And then he says, the son of David.
• 5:18
  King in Jerusalem. And then the word vanity. I don't know what you think of when you hear the word vanity. I think of that piece of furniture my 12-year-old has been begging to have in her bedroom for the last six months. Or I think of somebody who struggles with humility. Somebody who thinks a lot of themselves. We think of vanity and it has a different connotation. Your translation might even say meaningless, which gives a whole other feeling.
• 5:46
  Like this is pointless or futile. It might say futility. And those are all sort of around the idea. But what that word in Hebrew is, it's hebel, H-E-B-E-L, or H-E-V-E-L, if you like Hebrew, which this is as close as I'll get to that tonight. And that word actually means breath, mist, vapor. That's what he's talking about. Every time we see that word, he's talking about...
• 6:17
  A mist. Something that is so transient. Something that is so temporary. So I want us to get our minds around that concept because I think we have this idea that he's talking about something that's meaningless or pointless. And when he's really just talking about something that's so temporary, he's saying, temporary. Everything's temporary. I can't get my head around it. On your table, you'll see bottles of bubbles. And this is my gift to you tonight.
• 6:45
  And so you can open these up now, please. And I'm going to have you help me as I read through part of Ecclesiastes. And every time I say the word vanity, I want you to blow bubbles. Now, my husband joked that maybe these are the kind that never pop. They are. See how long they last? And as we do that, I want you to think two things. I want you to notice how short that breath is that you exhale to make the bubbles.
• 7:17
  And then notice how short-lived those bubbles are. And that's what he's saying about all these things we're going to study tonight. That's what vanity is. This is vanity. It's a soap bubble. It's short. Okay, so every time I say vanity, you blow. Got it? Here we go. Chapter 1. I think I'm just going to read the first 11 verses. And we'll just hit the first section here. Chapter 1, verse 1.
• 7:50
  Of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity. Excellent. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens back to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north and around and around goes the wind.
• 8:21
  And on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said,
• 8:51
  See, this is new. It has been already in the ages before us. There's no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. I'm going to keep going, so get your bubbles ready. I, the preacher, have been king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.
• 9:20
  I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said in my heart, I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge, and I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceive that this also is a striving after wind.
• 9:50
  For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. All right, thanks for your help with that. You can keep blowing bubbles if, you know, that helps you stay awake. Thanks, honey. That's my husband blowing bubbles in the front there. All right, well, let's walk through this first section, and we're just going to kind of walk through. Gosh, I'm going to gallop through this as much as I can. Ladies, there's so much in here. Vanity of vanities.
• 10:22
  Okay, so we got that concept. That word appears 37 or 38 times, depending on which commentator you ask, in this whole entire book. And you can see it already occurred five times in that first verse. Again, this was his conclusion. Temporary. Everything is temporary. And then he talks about creation and how monotonous it is. And all of us, if we're honest, can relate to that. Because what he has done, this is your next fill-in, that creation, apart from the creator,
• 10:52
  is boring. He is looking under the sun and creation apart from the creator is boring. He's looking at it and it's just the same thing every day. You get up, you shower, you get dressed, you eat breakfast, you go to work, you eat lunch, you come home, you have dinner, you put on your pajamas, you go to bed, you sleep, you get up, you take a shower, you get dressed, etc., etc., and it just goes on and on and on.
• 11:20
  As I was reading, especially in verse 7, I kept thinking instead of all streams run to the sea, I kept thinking all groceries run to the cupboard, but the cupboard's never full. Where the groceries go, there they go again, over and over again, right? Or maybe you commute or drive kids to school, and on your circuit you go again like the wind going around and around, and you go one way and then you come back, and you go the next day and you come back. And it just goes on and on.
• 11:49
  And without the Creator, it is empty. Well then, point number two, he goes on, and the preacher wonders about wisdom. He starts to really focus in. Okay, well, I'm looking around, I can't see anything, so I'm going to wonder about this wisdom I've been given. You can see back in 1 Kings, which I'm going to let you guys read on your own, but in 1 Kings chapter 3 is where Solomon...
• 12:14
  Has God appeared to him in a dream? And God asks him, as you maybe heard on Sunday when Danny was preaching, God asks him what he needs. Solomon came in chapters 1 and 2 of Kings. You can hear how difficult it was for him to get to the throne. He's finally on the throne in chapter 3 and God says, okay, what do you need? Solomon says, wisdom. I'm young. I don't know how to discern. I don't know how to judge these people. And God is so glad that this is what Solomon asked for and not fame and not...
• 12:43
  wealth and not a long life but he gives him all of those things as well but here we see he's had wisdom and he took it in verse 13 and again he asked for it so that he could discern and judge his people but he took that wisdom now and he in verse 13 says he applied his heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under the sun
• 13:10
  As I'm reading this, I keep picturing, it's like he's got this ceiling right above his head. Like he's refusing to look up. He's only going to look at what's right here. What's right in front of him. What's tangible. And he's looking to see, okay, what about all these things that we can do? And he says, it's an unhappy business God has given to the children of man. Unhappy business is a heavy burden. Might even translate it as an evil burden. And I thought, why?
• 13:39
  God, do you give us a heavy burden? It doesn't even necessarily fit with what we're going to see at the end of chapter 2. But I think if we read in Genesis where we see about the fall of man and we have chosen to try to do things our own way and sometimes we've pushed our way through that door even when we're not supposed to and been disobedient. And when we've done those things, we ended up with an unhappy business.
• 14:10
  And God hasn't necessarily given it to us because that was his best for us, but because that was the result of sin that came into the world, was work and labor and those kinds of things that were heavy and burdensome. There was work before that that was a gift, and we're going to read about that in a little bit too. So as he goes in and he's searching it, I love that it comes down in verse 18. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
• 14:40
  There it is. Ignorance is bliss. That's point number two. No, just kidding. But that is what he's saying, right? What I noticed about all of this, and as I was going through Ecclesiastes, even Ecclesiastes 1 and 2 where he's really just focused under the sun, I kept thinking about what Dr. Michelle Anthony said. She was here and she did a women's retreat a few months ago here at our church. She said on every page of this book is redemption. And what can we learn about God on every page of this book?
• 15:09
  And that's why I saw the creator being ignored in the first part of chapter 1. And here, he doesn't wonder if God is real. He knows God is there. Because he's saying, well, God's given this to us. But he's not paying any attention to God. He's not doing things God's way. And so the second point is simply this. We may know God is real and still wander from his reality.
• 15:35
  We may know God is real and still wander from his reality, from his best way of doing life for us. And boy, did Solomon wander away. He took that gift, that strength that God gave him, and he applied it in all sorts of crazy ways. Let's keep going. You don't need to blow bubbles anymore unless you're, again, needing to stay awake. But in chapter 2, we see that he applies his wisdom. And now he's going to say, okay.
• 16:05
  You know, I'm kind of seeing this philosophy. Now he's actually going to take some action. And the preacher is going to pursue his passions. He's going to pursue his passions. And there's a number of them here in chapter 2, verses 1 through 11. I'm going to read starting at chapter 2. I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. But behold, this was also vanity.
• 16:31
  I said of laughter, it is mad, and of pleasure, what use is it? I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine, my heart still guiding me with wisdom, how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. There's a lot of repetition here. I'm just going to interrupt myself for a moment and say this.
• 16:51
  There's a lot of repetition, and sometimes it's easy when we hear things repeated to kind of let them start to slide past our ears. I'm going to ask you to do the opposite. When you hear repetition, I want you to press in. I want you to wonder, what is this there for? Why are we hearing this again and again and again? So he's asking again, what is good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life? Verse 4.
• 17:14
  I made great work. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had ever been before me in Jerusalem.
• 17:38
  I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delights of the sons of man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me, and whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.
• 18:07
  Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it. And behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. Under the sun is used 30 times in this book. And again, you can see how often we've already seen it in these first few verses that we've looked at.
• 18:31
  So he has pursued laughter, pleasure, wine, great works, slaves, herds and flocks, treasures of kings and provinces, singers, and concubines. In other words, it's like women and wealth and wine and work and everything in between. He has done it all. This to me right here speaks to the fact that Solomon is our author. Because if you look back in the historical accounts in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles, you will see how this lines up.
• 19:01
  in much detail of what those things were. For example, in 2 Chronicles 9, it talks about how they brought to him apes and peacocks. Really? I didn't know. I mean, I'm sure I've read that before. But as I was studying this, I just thought that was such an interesting picture. Like, he did not have to go out and travel the world. It all came to him. And he had it all. He had apes. I don't know where he kept them.
• 19:31
  He had peacocks. He had thousands of horses that he imported from Egypt and other lands. You can read all about it, like I said. And it's amazing to me that he did all these things, and when it comes down to it, it's all just bubbles. It's all temporary. And the conclusion is this. If life is temporary, accomplishments are empty. If life is temporary, accomplishments are empty.
• 20:02
  He said he had satisfaction or he had enjoyment, I should say, in his toil. And that's like a gladness or a mirth. But it didn't last. Even that didn't last. That was vanity as well. Well, as he goes on, now he's done all of these things. And again, he's writing at the end of his life. And as our study is called, it's lessons from a life of regret. He comes to this thought. Okay, so really, is there any benefit in living in wisdom? Starting in verse 12.
• 20:32
  And your fourth point there is that the preacher is now going to despair over death. The preacher despairs over death. Because he's seeing where all of this is headed. Starting in verse 12 through verse 23. So I turn to consider wisdom and madness and folly. Both sides of the coin. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done.
• 21:00
  Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said in my heart, what happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart that this also is vanity.
• 21:26
  For of the wise, as of the fool, there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten, how the wise dies just like the fool. So I hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool.
• 21:52
  yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill, Solomon saying, me, must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it, my sons. This also is vanity and a great evil.
• 22:19
  What has man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. Man, we hit the bottom. He finally got there. The end of it all. He's seen that, yes, if you're in the light, you can walk the same path as someone who is unwise and walking in the darkness.
• 22:47
  And the person walking in the darkness might run into some chairs and stumble. And you might just walk easily through. But guess what? At the end of the road, everybody dies. That's the end. And if that is the end, then we're in trouble, right? Because the benefits of wisdom and success, simply put, they don't last forever. The benefits of wisdom and success don't last forever. So then what? Where have we left? Well, we see here.
• 23:18
  That he changes gears a little bit in our last few verses. And this is really where I want us to sit. And he says this, starting in verse 24. There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God. For apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment. For to the one who pleases him.
• 23:48
  God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. In other words, in this fifth point, the preacher explains true enjoyment. He explains true enjoyment. Now he has not lifted his eyes to heaven.
• 24:18
  He has not said, I finally looked up to God and had a big aha moment here, but he has shifted gears a little bit. He's finding that there is something that we can actually enjoy on this earth. As I studied this, I thought it was interesting that both as an adjective and as a noun, maybe as a verb, I didn't really look that closely, but the word better in verse 24, the word enjoyment in verses 24 and 25.
• 24:48
  The word pleases, for pleases God in verse 26, is the same Hebrew word for good as in Genesis 1. God looked at his creation and said it was good. So Solomon is finally saying there is something good that we can have in this life. And you don't have to be wealthy. You don't have to be famous. You don't have to live a long time.
• 25:17
  It is as simple as eating and drinking and doing the work, whatever that is, that is right in front of you. And about a thousand years or 900 years after Solomon wrote this, God sent another gift from his hand. He sent Jesus who said, I am the bread of life. Eat of me.
• 25:45
  I am the living water. Whoever drinks of me will never thirst again. And the disciples come to him and they say, what work do you have for us to do? And he says, here's your job. Believe. Believe in the one whom God has sent. And ultimately, spiritually, that's what is good. Is when we eat and we drink, not simply of what's here under the sun, but we look at the gift that God has sent.
• 26:15
  And we partake in that. Turn with me to John 6. This is another place where I kind of wanted to teach you John 4, 5, and 6. But I'll hold back. But you can see in John 4, maybe you know the story, where Jesus goes to a well. And there's a woman there that is an outcast in society. And he asks her for a drink. And she thinks, why are you asking me for a drink?
• 26:51
  But she gives it to him anyway, and he says, you know, if you knew who was talking to you, you would have asked me for a drink, and you would never have been thirsty again. And she's like, well, where can I find this? And she's still thinking in the literal, in the physical, and he's already in the spiritual, right, saying, I'm the living water. And finally she gets there, and she goes, and she tells people, well, as she goes, and she is telling everybody, I'm sorry, I'm back in John 4, so flip back a couple pages. Go back to John 4 with me for just a moment.
• 27:20
  Because in John 4, she's going out, she's testifying that this rabbi just told her everything she ever did in her life, and she gets it, that this is where life comes from, is from this man that she has encountered. And she's telling them that, and in verse 31, the disciples come upon Jesus, and they notice that he's talking to this woman, and they're not really sure what that's about, but they don't ask questions, they just go up to him, and they say in verse 31, you know, they were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat.
• 27:50
  But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. So, of course, they're thinking he's got a secret lunchbox or a secret pocket in his cloak we don't know about, right? Because they're thinking in the literal, not in the spiritual. And has anyone brought him something to eat, they ask each other in verse 33. And Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. That was Jesus' work. And now flip over to John 6.
• 28:17
  And in verses 27 through 29, he tells us about our work. And he says, Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal. Then they said to him,
• 28:37
  What must we do to be doing the works of God? Like, just give us the formula. I want the five steps. I am so the five-step girl. If you could just tell me what I need to do, I can go and do that. And Jesus answered them, this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. In other words, this is the work of God, that we believe in Jesus Christ whom God the Father has sent.
• 29:02
  And then he starts talking and they have just been, now this crowd that is talking to him is not the crowd that was in Samaria. These are the people that were just fed miraculously the day before. And there were only a few fish and loaves and they got their fill and now they're talking to Jesus and they're trying to understand and they're thinking, man, this guy is like better than a grocery store. You know, he's better than the drive-thru because he just, it just appears. And he's saying, no, that's a picture.
• 29:32
  That is a picture. The manna from heaven is me. And I want you to partake of me. And this is why. In verse 35 he says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. And whoever believes in me shall never thirst. And then he says in verse 53, So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
• 30:01
  You will have no life in you. He says it in the negative there. In other words, this is not just so that you can have a satisfying meal and then be hungry in another three to four hours or an hour and a half or two hours, however it works for your body. You know, we get hungry all the time. He's saying you will never thirst again because I am going to give you what you've been looking for on the other side of that glass door. And it's eternal.
• 30:32
  Why could Solomon not find any satisfaction under the sun? Because it's not there. It's not there. We cannot do it. We can try and try and try and try and try and try and try. But we can't get no satisfaction. Can't. God didn't design it that way. And he didn't do it to just merely frustrate us and to make us vexed and to have restless nights. He did it so that we would reach out to him.
• 31:01
  And call on him and believe in his son whom he sent for us. And that we would then, as Solomon says back in Ecclesiastes, then we would eat and drink and find enjoyment in our work. And we have the privilege in our mortal bodies to have pictures of that. We have communion as one picture of that. But even every day as we eat.
• 31:28
  And as we drink, we can thank God and invite him into that. Whenever we're working, whatever our work might be, we can invite him into that. Years ago, I worked in the alumni office at my college as my summer job between college years. It was the mid-90s, and we were converting everything from the old catalog card system onto a computer. It was really high-tech.
• 31:53
  But there were thousands of alumni names and addresses and data to be entered in. So it was really more than even a summertime job. I had talked to another church secretary one time who had talked about how she had prayed over all of the letters she would send out and that kind of thing. And I went, oh, so then every name that came across that I entered, I took time to pray for. Not my idea, but it was a good one because I could invite God in to the mundane.
• 32:22
  And I could do something that would have an eternal impact and effect. Even in the smallest thing. Creation isn't boring when you think about the Creator. Creation isn't boring at all. Wisdom doesn't have to lead us away from God. It can lead us deeper into God. It can lead us deeper into a life that is fulfilling and satisfying. And we see...
• 32:52
  In the end of it all, my point here at the end of number five, if you are filling in the blanks at all, is that God gives life its meaning and every day its enjoyment. God gives life its meaning and every day its enjoyment.
• 33:11
  I really struggled with this as I studied this because I can understand, okay, God, I get that you are the one who's provided my husband's job. You've provided our income. You've provided our food. You've provided our drink. You've provided our health. I can understand all of that. But I have to confess that it was a different challenge for me to think of God giving me my enjoyment because I feel like we're kind of told as believers that we need to kind of muster that up.
• 33:38
  We have to write out our gratitude list of five to ten things every night and have an attitude of gratitude. And we need to have that spirit of, you know, positive thinking. Or we need to just kind of know and just be okay with things. No, it's a gift. Enjoying things is a gift from God. And when you're not enjoying it, let's just open our hands and say, you need to give it to me. Because I'm trying and I'm trying and I'm trying. And it's not working.
• 34:08
  I can't get no satisfaction here. I can't get any enjoyment. And I can tell you from experience in the last couple of months as I've studied this that it works, that it really does happen, that he can bring enjoyment even into the things that, you know, are really mundane. Like I said, as a college student, it was entering all of those names into the database one by one. As a mom,
• 34:31
  It's taking that time when I'm doing things like folding the laundry to really intentionally pray for my kids or to really intentionally pray for you or whatever it might be, whatever that work is that God has put in front of me spiritually to believe in him for along with the day-to-day tasks I have. So we see the real main idea is that eternal satisfaction is received by faith in Jesus Christ.
• 35:01
  It's not achieved by any short-lived human efforts on this earth. Eternal satisfaction is received by faith in Jesus Christ, not achieved by any short-term human efforts on this earth. And that is all we have, folks. We only have short-term human efforts. Whether we have a few years or we have many years, it's all so brief in the span of eternity.
• 35:28
  And I pray that that is where our eyes will start to focus, above and beyond this planet, into what God has for us. When I was watching that little boy at Starbucks, I told you he was pressing on the glass and he was trying to get outside. But what I didn't tell you is one of the reasons he was so anxious to get outside, because, I mean, I think kids really actually do like Starbucks. At least I tell myself that. But, no, he was pressing on the glass and he was wanting to leave because his daddy was outside.
• 35:57
  And he could see his daddy from inside and he was so excited and he was trying to get there and trying to go. And his mom finally helped him. And he ran out and ran into the arms of his daddy. And that's exactly what waits for us. We want that connection. We want to know that we matter. We want to know that we belong. We want to know that there's a point and a purpose and there is love and meaning. And on the other side of that door is our daddy waiting to embrace us.
• 36:25
  But we can't push it open ourselves. We need to receive it from the hand of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the wise words of Solomon. Thank you so much that he took his life full of temporary, futile efforts and put them into this book that we could learn and we could be drawn to you as our true bread, as our living water, that we would...
• 36:55
  enter into the work of simply believing in you, Jesus, the one whom God the Father has sent. And I pray, Lord, that even though we are in these tents that are breaking down and we have discontent and we have struggles, Lord, that you would please grant us a measure of enjoyment that can only come from your hand in the days ahead. In your name we pray. Amen.