Amen. Good morning. I wanna invite you to turn in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 4, if you would. And as you turn there, I'm gonna let you know about a handout you'll get on the way out today, because one of the challenges with Ecclesiastes is that it has a lot of good sort of stop signs and speed bumps for us to rethink life. But as we prepare to go back, as kids are going back to school, as we kind of get settled in for the fall season, one of the challenges is that we'd hear everything from Ecclesiastes and then just kind of go back to living the way we were. And I don't think that's what God's Word wants us to do. It wants us— Ecclesiastes is built to get us to rethink our lives, to think about what really matters at the end of life, to think about what really matters today. And so to do that, we're going back to sort of an ancient way of phrasing this, because the early church talked about the rule of faith, and some like Augustine talked about the rule of life. The rule of faith is being thought— thoughtful and intentional about what you believe. And so that's where we find things like the Apostles' Creed come out of that. But the rule of life, really think about it as a ruler in Augustine's terminology. The rule of life is like, this is the pattern of my life. If I do nothing else, this is the way I'm gonna live. Whenever things change, I go back to this pattern. And it helps us think through what do we want our relationship with God to look like? What is one thing I could do each day to grow in relationship with God? Thinking about family, thinking about neighboring, thinking about all of life lived backwards in the words of Ecclesiastes. And so you'll get a little card. It'll fit in your Bible or in your Daytimer or whatever. And— or you can put it on your desk. And I don't want you to put more than one thing, maybe 2, in each area that you think, this is important to me. This is what it looks like for me to apply Ecclesiastes. Maybe for you it's letting go of some things that you're holding onto really tight. Maybe for you it is pausing to enjoy the good gifts of God. Whatever it is, you will get a little card at the end and I want you to take that. We also have a full article on our sort of blog website that you can read for more information. But I want to encourage you not to let Ecclesiastes simply be sort of heard and then put aside, but let's apply it as we work it into our lives.
All right, now Ecclesiastes chapter 4. I'm gonna warn you up front, we're gonna do a large section of Ecclesiastes because I wanna use 3 sections of Ecclesiastes to emphasize a particular important guiding principle, which we're gonna see as we open to Ecclesiastes 5. We're gonna look at verses 1 and verses 7, verse 1 and verse 7 of chapter 5. This is the thread that we're going to emphasize this morning, and as we read, let's remember this is God's Word. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice fools, for they do not know, they do not know that they are doing evil. Verse 7, for when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity, but God is is the one you must fear. This is God's Word. And Lord, I pray your blessing over the preaching and the hearing of your Word today in your house. Amen. Well, I love opening lines in classic literature, and one of my favorite opening lines comes from the Russian novel Anna Karenina. And even if you've never read the novel, you may have heard this line or something like it. It opens this way: Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. But isn't that great? It's just like Tolstoy, just like, boom, I'm going to see— he's not even going to wait, make you wait for 3 chapters in to give you a banger line. He just starts there. And I think it's an observation that we could make from the book of Ecclesiastes because Here's what Ecclesiastes does. Ecclesiastes, for chapter after chapter, is laying out, here's another way to be unhappy. And you're like, what about this way? And the preacher who has surveyed all of human experience and has this vantage point to look at human life goes, yep, unhappiness down there. What about this one? Unhappiness. What about this? Unhappy. He just keeps going, unhappy, unhappy, unhappy. Nope, nope, nope, nope. And yet there is also this, this thread in the book of Ecclesiastes of the one way to live a happy life. And, and what I want you to do is, is see today, we're going to apply this to 3 areas, to neighboring, to religious practice, and to money. But I want to lay out for you very clearly up front, this is, this is the only way to be happy and everything else is how to be profoundly unhappy.
What we're going to see is this: to be profoundly unhappy has a common thread in Ecclesiastes, and it is life bent inward on itself. Meaning that your life begins and ends with you, and in a sense you bend inward onto yourself. And basically what Ecclesiastes is saying is kind of like Tolstoy. Yep, there's a million ways to bend in on yourself and become unhappy. Money, you know, chasing sexual pleasure, trying to accumulate things, trying to be the smartest in the room, trying to get degrees, all of those ways. Yeah, I've seen them all. They all bend back into unhappiness. But there is one way to be a happy Christian, to be a happy, in a sense, human being. And it's laid out very clearly in verses 1 and 7 and 10. Look at verse 1 again. Guard your steps when you go, to the house of God. So this, this book that's been very vertically oriented all of a sudden reorients vertically for a second. And look at verse 7, when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity, but God is the one you must fear. So, so you're thinking, what about me? What about myself? What about my stuff? All of a sudden it reorients you to go, what about God? And verse 10 is also critical here. It says, whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. What's Ecclesiastes doing? The preacher is saying, listen, you're living your life in light of all of these realities of money and pleasure and what's moving and shaking in the world around you, but you are missing the reality, which is that you have a Creator that stands over and above all things, and your life is meant to be lived vertically in the appropriate fear and reverence of God.
So with that as a foundation, we're going to walk through 3 areas of life and we're going to go, here's some ways to be unhappy, and then hopefully end with, here is the one way to seek happiness truly in this area. So first area is this tragic neighboring. I'm calling it scripts because imagine it like a script where you get handed and you just start reading lines, right? These are all scripts that the people around us read and pursue, and yet they all end in tragedy.
So, look at the area of neighboring. Ecclesiastes 4:1, again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort Them. And so you think, okay, finally, I know Ecclesiastes finally has got the problem. The problem is the people up there at the top of these things, the top of these companies, the top of these governments. The problem is people with money and wealth. And we're about to go like, yes, we got to topple the rich and powerful. That's the point, right? Except the preacher, right as we're getting ready to like topple the people above us, holds up a mirror and says this, then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor, and this is vanity and a striving after wind. Basically what the preacher is saying is, you wanna know a whole host of ways to be unhappy? The common denominator is envy. Envy, this endless craving in your heart for what others have. If you have power, It often leads to using that power to oppress people, to take what they have. But listen, the fact that, that all of us deal with this is very apparent, isn't it? If we were to look at all of our— I remember going through an evangelism exercise one time where somebody was like convinced that they had never broken any of the 10 Commandments. But the one that got them was do not envy your neighbor or your neighbor's wife or your neighbor's possessions. And so finally, you know, he was like, well, maybe that one. Okay, maybe, you know. It's like, no, no, no. We all have, right? We've all envied watching television, or driving by our neighbors seeing their new SUV or whatever. We've all envied those things. We walk in during football season and we think, that screen is way bigger than mine, right? We've all been there. But the writer of Ecclesiastes is saying, listen, that envy, once it's fed, it only grows and grows and grows.
And we would be fools to think, well, we wouldn't do that. I remember a number of years ago, one of the— there was an organization founded in the wake of a tragic death, and the organization was aiming to raise money for racial and economic justice. That was their purported mission statement. And they quickly raised upwards of $90 million, but the whole organization was thrown into scandal when it was revealed that one of the founders was using the money they had raised on things like multimillion-dollar homes, right? And you're thinking, how could they? I'll tell you how they could. For the same reason you and I watch a commercial and just wish we could have it. It's envy, right? That's, that's the path of unhappiness, right?
6 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 4:7-8 diagnosing the tragedy of isolation: accumulating wealth through endless toil but having no one to share it with
Second, another way to be unhappy is not just envying your neighbor. The second tragedy is the opposite in a sense. It's being isolated and alone. And cut off from your neighbor. Look at verse 7. Again, I saw vanity under the sun. One person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches so that he never asks, for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure? This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Look, the preacher lays out this scenario. What if you do get a bigger salary jump? What if you do have more possessions? What if you have everything you've ever dreamed dreamed and you just keep working yourself to the bone until the day you die, what happens to the big pile of money? Somebody else gets it, right? And you have no one to hand it to. Here's the point. If you have all the money in the world and no one to share any of it with, it's only the path to tragedy and unhappiness, isn't it?
7 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 demonstrating through multiple practical scenarios (work, hiking, survival, combat, rope strength) that companionship is functionally superior to isolation in every domain of life
And in contrast, he says, listen, verse 9, 2 are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. Meaning, meaning if you're working in business, you can probably do more with 2 people than you can with one person. Verse 10, for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Meaning if you're on a path, like, What's the thing you always hear in the state park? They always have these signs, don't hike alone. Right? If you— when you buy your pass, they're like, I just want to make sure you're not hiking alone. And you're like, no, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. And then there's always people, because we live by Trans Mountain, there's always people whenever there's searchlights up on the mountain and there's like a helicopter, that's a dude that was hiking alone almost all the time, right? It was just like, no, I'll be fine. No, you won't. You're going to end up with the helicopters. Woe to him who falls. Again, verse 2, if 2 lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? This was like classic survival. Like, if you're gonna freeze to death, you gotta go back to back and not die, or you can just sleep separately and then you'll die alone. Watch those survival shows, watch Bear Grylls, they'll tell you the same thing. Verse 12, and though a man might prevail against one who is alone, 2 will withstand him. Meaning, if you are by yourself and a big guy comes down the field of battle, you're dead, unless you've got a buddy. And 2 relatively weak buddies have a decent shot. And then last, a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Meaning, if you have one just piece of rope, it's going to snap. But if you notice, most of the rope we use today, especially if you're climbing or doing Things like where you need a lot of strength in the rope, it's woven in on itself. Multiple strands make it far stronger. So, what's the point? You want to know one of the most common paths of unhappy life in this world? It's isolation. It's isolation.
8 · The pastor distinguishes between circumstantial loneliness and chosen isolation, making the pastoral claim that prolonged isolation is nearly always the result of self-focused choices to avoid relational risk
Now, notice something here. The isolation here is self-inflicted. Because look, there are seasons of loneliness, seasons where, okay, you move to a new school, you move to a new city, you're new in town and you're still getting to know people. And there are times where it's like, man, I wish I had more friends, but I don't have that many yet. But friends, hear me when I say this, nearly always isolation over time is a choice, not an accident. It's, I could strike up that conversation. I could join a group. I could do this. I could go deeper. I could invite this brother I met at church for coffee. I could connect. I could call my family. Like, I could do those things, but instead, do you see what happens? You warp back in on yourself and you're only thinking of yourself. And the Bible says that's the path to tragedy, yet another path to unhappiness.
9 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 4:13-16 tracing the rise and fall of a youth who ascends from poverty to power through his hunger for wisdom, but then falls into tragic irrelevance when he stops receiving counsel after gaining position
And third path here in this area of neighboring is arrogance. Look at verse 13. Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice. For he went from prison to the throne, though in his own kingdom he had been born poor. I saw all the living who move about under the sun, along with that youth who was yet to stand in the king's place. There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this is also vanity and a striving after the wind. Again, an example from the preacher. He surveyed a neighboring kingdom, and in this kingdom there was a youth, a youth perhaps that maybe had even been in and out of prison or stolen bread or who knows, whatever. I don't know if this is an Aladdin situation, but there's a youth that all of a sudden is young, but he is hungry and he is hungry for input. He is hungry for insight. He is hungry for wisdom is the picture. And that hunger for wisdom leads to him being elevated. He grows in position. He's elevated to being a ruler among this people. But you see the tragedy in verse 13, when he becomes this ruler, he no longer takes any advice. And as a result, his story ends in tragedy, and it is yet another path to an unhappy life.
10 · The pastor applies the arrogance pattern to common pastoral scenarios where people are open to counsel during crisis but close off once stability returns, using specific examples of dating and addiction relapse
Look, one of the most common but most tragic patterns I've experienced as a pastor is often when people are really in a bind, people are really hurting. Their marriage is in shambles or their personal life is really messed up. They lose their job because they did something stupid. There is often this openness, this posture of, can somebody help me? Help me see what I'm supposed to do in the Word of God. There's an openness to the wisdom of Scripture in their lives. And yet what happens is they begin to get a little more stable in life. They get another job. Their marriage begins to not be as tense or fractured. It seems like things are going better. And here's the, The tragic reality, often it is at that point people stop listening to advice from the Word, because they begin to think, no, I've got it now. And maybe a friend or a sister who's going, listen, I'm a little concerned about this person you're dating now is a lot like the person you just recovered from dating a year ago and ended in tragedy. And what happens? Stay out of my business. Okay. I, I'm not a little girl. I can decide who I'm going to date. Right? You begin to say things like this. I can decide what I'm going to do. I'm going to decide that this is okay. This, this thing I dabbled in with in previous years, and I ended up addicted to, I can dabble in that again. Do you see the tragedy? All of a sudden that, that you begin to be, rather than open, to the wisdom of others and wisdom of God, all of a sudden you get closed off, you warp in on yourself, and it's another path to unhappiness. The more arrogant, I can guarantee you this, the more arrogant, the more unhappy your life will be in the end.
11 · Pivots from diagnosis to solution by introducing Jesus as the fulfillment figure who completes what Solomon cannot—establishing canonical continuity between the wisdom literature and the New Testament revelation
So then what's the path here? Well, this is where the preacher of Ecclesiastes hands us off to another preacher when we arrive in the New Testament. The preacher meets the preacher of all preachers, the wisest man who ever lived. This preacher is only the wisest man who ever lived in the Old Testament, but there was a yet wiser man when we arrive in the New Testament, and his name is Jesus Christ.
12 · Establishes Jesus's Great Commandment as the solution to the neighboring tragedies diagnosed in Ecclesiastes 4
And do you know his rule for life? He says this in a couple of places actually, but like in Matthew— in Mark rather, 12, he goes and answers the question, what does God require of us? How do you live basically? What's the path of life? And he says this, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The only path to a happy relationship with those around us is when we have our relationship with God straight, and then when, in light of that, we begin to look at the people around us and not as obstacles, not as things to exploit to get what we want, but rather objects that we love Because we love the Lord. And that counterintuitively, you're like, no, no, no, that doesn't make any sense. If I'm going to be happy, I should be focusing more on myself, right? Wrong. That's not what the preacher or the preacher of preachers says. If you want to live a happy life, it is Godward and outward. Counter— countercultural, but so true and proven out over thousands of years. That's the path.
13 · Signals the shift to the second major section (religious practice) and clarifies the non-pejorative use of the term 'religion' to avoid misunderstanding
Second area, second area is not neighboring, but religion. And I'm not using religion pejoratively or like, oh, religion. I mean just the stuff of religious practice, the tragic realities of unhappy religious people who go to church week after week and still end up with tragic lives.
14 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 5:1 diagnosing the first religious tragedy: external religious performance without internal reverence for God or openness to His Word
And the first way to do that is found in chapter 5, verse 1. Which says, guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. The point here is this, if you want to live an unhappy life, have no reverence for the things of God. Notice the picture. It's somebody coming to offer a sacrifice at the temple, and they're going to offer a big sacrifice, maybe an impressive sacrifice. But you know what? They're not listening to God at all. Right? The Lord is speaking to them from his word, from his commands, and they're like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Here's the thing. Here you go. You better be happy with me. Thumbs up. We'll see you. And here's the reality. It is far easier to make some external display of religious sort of pomposity, right? Some external religious act that seems impressive. Oh yes, I did this. Oh, I gave money to this campaign, or, oh, I never miss a Sunday at church, or, oh, I always serve on this team. And yet then in the end, you're offering these things but have your ears closed to the things of God. And why is that? It's diagnosed because you do not have appropriate reverence for the Lord.
15 · The pastor makes a pastoral-theological claim about the danger of losing holy reverence in the wake of New Testament fulfillment
Look, the things of God in the Old Testament are treated with a reverence and a respect that we would do well to re-inject into our American Christianity at times. Now, look, I love that, and I thank God that He, Jesus, has fulfilled the law, many of the religious things that we— that were practices or rituals we're no longer required to do, but we would be foolish if along with the fulfillment of the Old Testament law, we eject a holy reverence for God that they were meant to teach us. The Old Testament laws and rituals were intended to be instructive, to say, when you approach the Lord, do not approach Him cavalierly. For cavalier religion is a path to profound unhappiness. You may miss the whole point of the religion altogether with your ears closed and your steps casual. That's one warning.
16 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 5:2-5 diagnosing 'chattering religion'—the religious person who talks constantly about spiritual things but whose many words serve self-promotion rather than genuine devotion
Second is the warning of chattering religion. We began to see this in verse 1. Look at verse 2, be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth, therefore, Let your words be few, for a dream comes with much business, and a fool's voice with many words. When you vow a vow to God, do not delay in paying it, for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than you should vow and not pay. All right, so what's the picture here? The picture is of chattering religion. This is a person who talks a big game about religious things. They're always talking about what they learned, what others should know that they have to teach. This is the person perhaps that in their group or in their Bible study or in their group of friends, they're always talking. They always wanna be the one giving advice. They always wanna talk about their ministry, their insights, their experience. And they're talking a big game like, I'm gonna do this for God, or I might do that for God, right? And here is the reality. Where there is many words, there is always a warning in Scripture. Because often all of the talking you're doing is not upward and not outward. It is aimed inward. It is aimed at making you look impressive. It's aimed at making perhaps your standing before God seem higher than someone else.
17 · Illustrates chattering religion through a marriage counseling scenario where counselees want endless discussion rather than action, demonstrating how many words can function as a mask to avoid substantive obedience
I remember hearing about a couple that did a lot of marriage counseling a number of years ago, and they were meeting with some counselees who were there for marriage counseling, and they had gone through a particular period of months and maybe a year, I don't know, but at the end of it, the counselors met with the counselees and said, we're going to stop meeting now. And the counselees were surprised. They were like, well, why? Why would we stop meeting? And the counselors essentially said— I'm oversimplifying this complex situation, but essentially the counselors said, because we need to stop talking about this stuff and you just need to do it now. Right? Do you see? Isn't that all of us though? It's like, well, let's have another meeting about it. Let's talk about it one more time. You're like, no, you can just start doing it. Well, but maybe I'm not clear on it yet. Maybe a few more sessions, a few more conversations, a few more books, and at some point you start to realize that all of the words in your Christian life are essentially a mask to cover up the fact that there is very little of substance there.
18 · Direct application summarizing the diagnosis of chattering religion in one pointed sentence
You want to know how to live an unhappy Christian life? It's by trying to mask with many words a lack of substance in your heart.
19 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 5:6-7 diagnosing deceptive religion—the pattern of making vows to God then retroactively redefining them through self-deception
And then third, third last way in this area of religious practice is the tragedy of deceptive religion. Look at verse 6, let not your mouth lead you into sin, that you do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity but God is the one you must fear. This is a picture of a person who is not just trying to deceive the people around them. This is the picture of a person almost— the picture is almost that they are trying to deceive God. Almost to go like, well, listen, listen, I know I vowed that I was going to give you this, Lord. I know I vowed I was going to do this, but what I meant was, This, right? I know, Lord, I said I was going to only, you know, date Christians who have a heart for the Lord. But what I meant was anybody who kind of believes in God. That's what I meant. You believe in a higher power? Awesome. That's all I need, right? Or somebody who goes, Lord, I am going to turn this area of my life over to you. I'm going to stop making an idol of my work. And then the 4th quarter rolls around and you're like, actually, Lord, what I meant was, At least one night a week, I'll be with my family. Right? All of a sudden you start doing this. You start almost playing. This is the image. This is so dangerous. It's almost playing games with the Lord. And the reality is this, the only one you're deceiving is yourself. Because the Lord's not going, oh, well, that is what you meant. I didn't understand. No, he's like, I see your heart. And the reality is this, that in the end it is a path to profoundly unhappy Christianity to be constantly pushing and pulling and trying to deceive the Lord Himself when you're only deceiving yourself.
20 · Pivots from diagnosis to prescription, preparing for the solution to the religious practice tragedies
So, all these are paths to unhappiness. So, what's the path? What's the one way through? What's the one way to live a happy Christian life?
21 · Establishes the solution to religious tragedy: vertical reorientation toward God through Jesus's first commandment
It is to move away from religious practice that warps in on yourself and to get out of yourself and to look back up at the Lord and live an upward and outward Christian life. Look, what is the core commandment even before love your neighbor as yourself? It is, Jesus answered, this is the most important. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
22 · Develops the solution through Keller's concept of 'freedom of self-forgetfulness,' arguing that true freedom and happiness in Christianity come not from self-focus but from God-focus that paradoxically meets our needs
A happy Christian life is one so, so lifted in focus to the Lord himself that we stop thinking about ourselves. When our Christian life has a lot of thinking and talking and focusing on ourselves and very little Godward and upward and vertical, it becomes a twisted, ugly shadow of true religion. But friends, when we— Keller has this great phrase, the freedom of self-forgetfulness. And what he says is true freedom, we often think, is like going to be found down here rearranging our lives, but the Bible's prescription for true freedom is in a sense that you forget yourself as you look at the Lord. That you come to church and it's not about you, it's about him. You come to group, you come to your Bible, and it's not primarily about you, it's about him. Now, does the Lord in you meeting him meet you? Absolutely. When you gather, does he not encourage you during worship as you worship him? Absolutely. When you gather for hearing the word, does he not disciple and help you in your life as you look at his word? Absolutely. But friends, do you see the orientation difference? You walk in, and if you walk in thinking to— walk into your Christian life thinking it is about me, you'll lead nowhere. But if you walk in going it's all about him, all of a sudden you find a path to happiness that you never expected.
23 · Signals the shift to the third and final major section on money, with emotional anticipation conveyed through the exclamation
And third and last area is money. Oh man, some profound ways to be unhappy in the area of money that the preacher and the preacher of preachers want to warn us about today.
24 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 5:10-12 diagnosing the American script that the next income bracket will bring happiness
Look at what he says in verse 10. He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. Now this, friends, this is— I understand that I'm talking to a bunch of Americans here, okay? I'm not unaware of that. I am one as well. But one of the most common tragic scripts that Americans live is that if they just had more money, or more wealth or more income, then they would be happy. Right? It's just like, and it's always the next income bracket, right? Not the one that they left. I thought you said once you got to this income bracket. Yeah, but it's really, I mean really, you know, it's not much at all. 'Cause now I'm beginning to see that it's the next one.
25 · Historical illustration of Rockefeller's famous 'my next million' response proving that even possessing more wealth than almost anyone in America does not satisfy the money-focused heart
It goes all the way back to, there's this famous exchange with Rockefeller, one of the most wealthy Americans who ever lived, was talking to a reporter. And the reporter was trying to get an overview of Rockefeller's life. And so the reporter asked Rockefeller, which million that you earned was your favorite? Thinking he was gonna get some story of like, oh, I did this deal and, and, or I made this investment and I saw it grow. Which million was your favorite to earn? And Rockefeller's response was, my next million. Do you see the tragedy in that? He's like, he's got more wealth than almost anyone in America and he's just thinking about the next million. But do you want to find a path to unhappiness that millions of Americans are running down? It is thinking that it is the next million, the next income bracket, the next salary bump will finally allow you to be happy. But it is simply not true.
26 · The pastor makes a theological distinction between wealth itself (not evil) and love of money (root of evil), then demonstrates how wealth brings practical anxieties that interfere with the simple peace the laborer enjoys
True. Now wealth, remember, in Scripture is not evil. It's the love of money that's the root of all kinds of evil. But wealth also brings with it— this is what people don't often see— a host of practical problems. The more you have, the more you fear losing. Look, if you've got 5 grand invested in the stock market and it tanks, you're like, oh, that's a bummer. If you have like $5 million invested in the stock market and it tanks and you go from like $5 million to $2 million, that's like existential panic, right? All of a sudden, you have so many things that you're worried about, meaning the guy that clocks out and he knows the job's going to be there the next day, okay, he can just go to sleep, he's good. But the guy who has all of this, while all these companies, he's getting emails in the middle of the night, what are the markets in Asia doing? What are the oil's, you know, future looking like? And he's, ah, he never sleeps. If you think that's the path of happiness, the preacher would beg to differ.
27 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 5:13-16 exposing the futility of using wealth to build security walls
In addition to that, look at verse 13. There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. Riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, and those riches were lost then in a bad venture. And he is the father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. And he came from his mother's womb, he shall go again naked as he came and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. This also is a grievous evil. Just as he came, so shall he go. And what gain is there to him who toils for the wind? Now look, this is the tragic script of somebody who's thinking, okay, okay, I understand what you're saying, but if I just had enough money to build a big wall, enough things, enough possessions to build a big wall between me and the scary outside world, then I would be safe. Then I would be secure. Right? Then I would be like, okay, now I'll be able to sleep. Now that I have that second million, now I'll be able to sleep. And here's what he says. He saw that man, the preacher saw that man only to see all of those riches evaporate. All to see, okay, this company's never going to fail, that company fails. This industry is only going up and it tanks, right? And then that— and here's what the preacher is saying, you end up where you started at the end of your life. What was the sum total of your possessions when you arrived into the world? Zero. Not a stitch of clothing to your name yet, right? You arrive utterly dependent with nothing. And here is the reality, the preacher is saying, and you will leave the exact same way. And you might say, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. I have investments. I have this. I have possessions. Yeah, and how many of those are going to matter the millisecond before you breathe your last? None of them. You leave the same way you came in, with nothing. And so the preacher is saying, if you think, if I just build a big enough financial wall around me, then I'll be happy. It's a vapor. That's not the path to happiness.
28 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 6:1-6 diagnosing the opposite money error: accumulating possessions for immediate enjoyment ('live it up now') but finding them unenjoyed despite abundance
And then here's what I love. He contrasts then at the beginning of chapter 6, 2 different places we often go as a result. You might say, yeah, well, sure. I understand. I'm going to live it up now. I'm going to live right here, right now. Right? I'm going to do the coram Deo, live in la vida loca, Ricky Martin philosophy of life. This is— I'm just going to embrace life with zest. Okay, great. Let's see how that goes. Chapter 6, verse 1. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind. A man to whom God gives wealth and possessions and honor so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys This is vanity. It is a grievous evil. If a man fathers 100 children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life's good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and it goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything. Yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live 1,000 years twice over, yet enjoy no good. Do not all go to the same place? The tragedy is the unhappy path is the one who thinks, if I just had more things and could enjoy them, then I would be happy. I don't want to save it up, I just want to use it right now. I want to buy stuff that'll make me happy right here and right now. I want to buy this or buy that. And the preacher is pointing out that it never ends the way you think. It always ends in unhappiness.
29 · Personal story from a California marina illustrating Ecclesiastes 6's tragedy of unenjoyed possessions through the absurdity of owning an elaborate 'Disneyland-level' boat that is never used, only maintained and criticized
Now, a number of years ago, we were— I was on a pastor's retreat in California, and where we were staying, you could walk over to a marina. And of course they have all these boats, and these, man, the boat people are on a different level in life than the rest of us. Because look, there's like nice car money, which is, you know, it's pretty good, and then there's boat money. Boat money is another level of existence altogether. Once you have enough money to buy a fancy boat and leave it docked, that's a whole other thing. And so there's this one boat that looks like a boat from Disneyland. It's like retro, and it has all these like, these fancy things, And we saw a guy who was working on the boat, right? He has a real fancy house, real fancy boat. We talked to the guy who has the, you know, the job of maintaining all of these boats and all the things there. And we were like, hey, tell us about, you know, what this is like. And he's like, oh man, it takes a lot of work. You know, you have to— surprisingly way more maintenance on a boat than you'd expect. And you gotta, you know, keep all these things and do all this maintenance. And we're like, man, so, but I bet the owner loves it. How often does the owner come and take the boat out? And he looked at us like— and he just said, never. And I was like, never? And he goes, yeah, I mean, sometimes he'll come and then criticize, oh, this needs to be maintained better, or whatever, and then he'll leave. And I just thought, you have a boat. You don't go out on the boat? You have, like, a Disneyland boat. It's not even a regular boat. It's like a Disneyland-level boat of fancy things. Yet it's the same tragedy in Ecclesiastes chapter 6. You have all of this and yet unenjoyed, right? Chasing the next thing, chasing the next, chasing the next, chasing the next, unenjoyed. It sits there and at the end of your life, it's a vapor.
30 · Exposition of Ecclesiastes 6:7-9 diagnosing the contemporary 'experience over possessions' philosophy as equally futile
And then you might be thinking, okay, well, listen, I don't believe in possessions. I'm not one of those people. Right? I'm not a possession person. I'm an experience person. I believe in investing in memories, right? I believe in investing in experiences. So yeah, I agree. The materialists among us, yeah, they need to listen to this. But I invest in like vacations and experiences. Okay. Verse 7. All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool, and what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. Look, there's a whole other thread of American culture that's like, no, no, no, it's not in your possessions, but it's in the trip. The trip, not just a trip, the trip. The meal, not just another meal, but the meal. The vacation, the photo-worthy spot. All the toil of man is for his Instagram, and yet his Instagram is not satisfied. All the toil of man is for his photo book that sits on his table, yet his photo book is not satisfied.
31 · Illustrates the futility of experience-chasing through the common pattern of 'trip of a lifetime' never actually being the last trip needed
Look, here's one of the funny things I have found about people who take the, you know, the trip of a lifetime. You guys ever known friends that have done that? They've taken the trip of a lifetime. You know, they've planned, they've saved, they've gone on the trip of a lifetime. I've found surprisingly few of them. I want to say none, but maybe there was somebody. But surprisingly few of them that take the trip of a lifetime come back and go, wow, that's it. I'm done. I'm good. I am good. Don't need to travel again. No. Instead, usually they come back from the trip of a lifetime and what do they want to do? Plan their next trip. Of a lifetime. And they're thinking, because if I could just get one more, a second trip of a lifetime, then I would for sure be good. Right? It never ends. That's what the writer of Ecclesiastes, that's what the preacher is saying. Friends, it never ends chasing this experience or this restaurant or this thing or that thing or that one ingredient or making that one dish. It is never going to be satisfied. It always ends the same way, in unhappiness.
32 · Establishes Jesus's 'cannot serve God and money' teaching as the solution to all money tragedies
So then how do we get free from this? How do we get free of this cage that we live in in our culture? We listen to the preacher of preachers, the wisest man who ever lived, in Matthew 6, who says this, no one can serve 2 masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Now sometimes it's easy to see and to feel like Jesus in that moment is— he looks down on people and they're all having fun. They're all having a great time and Jesus comes and says, stop having fun. You need to be worshiping God up here. Stop it. Stop going on vacation, right? That's, that's sometimes the feel that we read into Jesus' words, but instead it's the utter opposite. Jesus looks down and he sees all of these people chasing the next purchase, the next trip, the next thing that will not satisfy them as they are bent in on themselves. And the wreckage of those lives is all over the world. And Jesus is saying, come Come here, I can help. Come here. The only thing to free yourself from this thing that has you caged is to look again to the God who made you and find your life in Him. And then, friend, then you will begin to truly live.
33 · The pastor steps outside the expositional flow to address the congregation directly about the intended effect of the sermon—that they should feel more foolish, less wise, and more exposed in their self-focus
Now, as we arrived here at the very end, I hope you're feeling something. I hope you're feeling, okay, I thought I was doing pretty well in life, but I feel a little more foolish than when we began. I feel a little less wise than when we started. I thought, you know, if you'd asked me to rate my wisdom, how wise are you at life, Ricky, coming in at 11:00 AM? I felt pretty good. Now I feel less good. I see a little bit of that materialism in me, a little bit of that next vacationism in me, that little bit of that isolationism in me, a little bit of that, of that empty words religion in me.
34 · The pastor makes the gospel turn, establishing Christ's substitutionary work as the only solution for the foolishness the sermon has exposed
So then what do we do? How then can we actually come to the God above us if we are unwise and foolish people? And that's where the preacher of preachers does what the preacher of Ecclesiastes cannot. That's where the preacher of preachers, Jesus Christ, the wisest man who ever lives, comes to our foolish world. And do you know what he does? He trades his wise life for our foolish one. All of the warped, bent, inward failures of our lives are exposed before him, and rather than condemning us, he says, let me take those and you take this instead. He offers his life for ours.
35 · Direct evangelistic application calling the unconverted to stop living the culture's unhappy script and surrender to Christ
So friend, if you're getting to the end here and you're going, I feel way more foolish Good news! There is a Savior of foolish people, and His name is Jesus Christ. And when you come to Him, oh friends, He frees you from that warped and ingrown life and teaches you to love God and love your neighbor and enjoy life the way God intended. Look, the only way that you can hear the commands of Ecclesiastes to enjoy your life is if God himself covers your foolishness and gives you a new life in him. And so friend, if that's you today, if you're not in Christ, I just want to encourage you, stop living the unhappy script that everyone else in our culture is living. And if you're thinking, no, I think it's finally going to work for me, it's not. The preacher's words have held true for 3,000 years, and he had way more money than you ever will. He sees way better than you ever could, and he says, I've looked down all the paths, it's not down there, it's only up here. And so friend, you today can come and surrender your life and say, Jesus, you're my Lord, you're my Savior, teach me to live a new life, and he will.
36 · Closing prayer synthesizing the sermon's central petition: that God would help the congregation see where they need to change, turn aside from unhappy paths, and have their vision pulled upward to Christ
So let's stand, I want to end with prayer. I'm going to end with a particular song that we ask the Lord to lead us today. And so, Lord, I just pray for all of us. I pray that, first of all, you would help us see if there's any area in our lives that we need to change. Lord, if there is an unhappy path that we keep running down hoping that it will end in happiness, help us to turn aside from it. And Lord, I pray that you would gently, kindly, but firmly pull our vision upward and not downward. Lord, may we behold you and may we come to you yet again as the Savior for our failures and the Lord of our life that we might live new lives of eternal happiness in you. Amen.