The Myth of the American Dream

Transcript

Would you take a brief moment to pray with me? Father, as we seek to understand your word, we pray that you would give us the help of the Holy Spirit. Open our eyes, open our mind, help us to understand what you intend for us to know through your word. We confess, Father, we can’t do this on our own, and so we desperately ask for help. So send the helper, we pray, in Christ’s name, amen.

Well, before we dive into our text this morning, I wanna take just a few moments to revisit what we explored last week, especially for those who weren’t here, and I think that’s a lot of you. So just a side note, if you weren’t here last week, I wanna encourage you to go to the website and listen to last week’s sermon, because all the context and framework for where we’re headed was explained there in that first sermon, and I think that will be very helpful for you as we move forward in the next 10 weeks or so. And so if you weren’t here, here are just a few important details to help you get through this morning. Last week, we began our series on Ecclesiastes by hearing from the voice of the preacher, which is better translated, Kohelet. And that word Kohelet means one who assembles or gathers,

but the Kohelet doesn’t just assemble people, he assembles wisdom. I mentioned last week that what I think the Kohelet is doing here is called persona poetry. He’s writing his wisdom poetry as if he were King Solomon. And today, especially, I think you’re gonna see some of that. His whole drive with this persona poetry was to take his collection of thoughts and wisdom and lay it before us to show us the necessary but difficult truth. We can’t find ultimate meaning and lasting satisfaction in this world under the sun. And just by way of reminder, what he means by saying under the sun is everything from the vantage point of humanity. In other words, he’s giving us an analysis of our world without taking God’s perspective and God’s wisdom into consideration. And his point was that when we look at the world solely through our eyes or from a human experience,

everything is vanity. In fact, that’s the motto of the Kohelet, all is vanity. And that word vanity is translated hevel, probably the most important word in this book, hevel. And as we discussed last week, that word hevel means smoke or vapor. It’s here one moment and then it’s gone the next. It’s something that cannot be grasped. You can’t grab it to make sense of it. And so last week, the Kohelet gave us a snapshot or a brief overview as to why he thinks everything under the sun is hevel. And he started by addressing the myth of human progress, which I think is a great starting point because this is what humanity sees as the most significant aspect of the human experience. But this morning, he will begin to tackle in a more exhaustive way some of our other pursuits, the pursuits that we as humans try to find meaning

The Experience Experiment

and lasting satisfaction in under the sun. So just for perspective, last week, we were flying at 30,000 feet. This morning, we’re gonna be about 10 feet, okay? He’s gonna dissect in painstaking detail all the various aspects of our world to show us that everything is hevel, okay? And as Cassandra read, you probably realize that’s a whole lot of text. And so we’re just gonna dive right in, okay? So chapter one, verses 12 through 18, we’re gonna begin with what I call the experience experiment. I, the preacher, have been king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search out wisdom, all that is done under heaven. It’s unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I’ve seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity, 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 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 but a striving after wind, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow, okay? So here we begin to see the Kohelet stepping into the persona of King Solomon. And why does he step into this persona? Because Solomon wasn’t just a king, Solomon was the epitome of wisdom. The Bible tells us that there was no one wiser than King Solomon. And not only was Solomon full of wisdom, but he also had access to everything this world has to offer.

Money, sex, power, art, entertainment, you name it. So when the Kohelet pulls us into Solomon’s world, he’s essentially setting the stage for this deep dive into the unlimited human quest for meaning. So Solomon is the perfect persona for this experiment. But here’s what’s interesting, before exploring everything he has access to externally as the king, he begins inwardly with his heart. Notice how many times he said, my heart, my heart. And this is where we can really begin to resonate with Solomon because we might not have all the luxuries that King Solomon had, but every one of us has a human heart. And it seems that the human heart is where most people begin in their pursuit to find meaning. This is why so many people encourage you to just follow your heart. So this isn’t just an intellectual exercise, it’s an experiential journey that begins with the heart.

In fact, the word wisdom that the Kohelet talks about here in the original language, it’s chokmah. Can you say that word? Chokmah. Sounds like an awkward word. It just means wisdom gained by experience. In other words, wisdom that is rooted in the exploration of the human heart. And so you can already see how this is gonna be an epic fail because we know from scripture, actually from King Solomon himself, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not the human heart. But here under the sun, wisdom isn’t rooted in a fear of God. Remember, it’s from the vantage point as if there was no God to be feared. So following his heart really just is another way of saying he was following self. In other words, he’s giving us the whole of himself, his mind, his heart, and his body in a radical and comprehensive pursuit to find meaning.

This, brothers and sisters, is existential philosophy at its core. And this is part of what the Kohelet is aiming to show you. He wants you to see that we won’t find meaning beginning with existentialism or the self. But he also wants to show us that we won’t find meaning through personal experiences, which is in every way connected to the self. And to do that, he’ll pull us into a series of experiments. But before he takes us on this journey, and I think this is very helpful, he’s careful to give us his conclusion on the front end. And I wish everyone would do that. His conclusion is this. I’ve seen it all. I’ve heard it all. I’ve experienced it all. And let me just tell you, the business of pursuing meaning in this world under the horizon is bad business. It’s bad business. Remember last week we talked about

profit and loss statements? Well, here again, when you add up the sum of all of King Solomon’s personal experiences, there is no net profit. It’s all hevel. It’s fleeting and futile. And not only is it hevel, but he introduces a phrase that will echo throughout this book. He says, it’s striving after wind. That’s an interesting thing to say. Essentially, when you translate that, it means shepherding the wind. Do you imagine the difficult task of shepherding the wind? Well, this is helpful when you think about experiences. In the same way you can’t corral the wind, or you can’t bottle up or contain smoke for any lasting period of time, you can’t make meaning out of your experiences because of how short-lived they are. And he gives us this prophetic proverb. He says, you can’t make straight what is crooked. In other words, you can’t fix what’s broken.

And though we’re looking at all of these things under the horizon, this here is a bit of reference to the fall. Sin’s curse has bent and broken everything under the sun that was once beautiful and bountiful. We learned about this when we were going through Romans 8. Do you remember? Romans 8.20, it said, for creation was subjected to futility, hevel, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. That’s futility. That’s the word hevel. So you can’t fix what was bent and broken because of the fall. His upfront assessment before diving into the particulars of his experiment is this, the more you engage your heart in an attempt to find meaning, the more frustrated you’re gonna become. That’s what that word vexation means. It means frustrated. And why is it so frustrating? Because the very pursuit of engaging the heart and personal experiences is itself hevel.

Pleasure, Projects, and Possessions

The more you lean into your own heart, the more complicated and confusing things become. The quest itself is trying to shepherd the wind. It’s an exercise in futility because our personal experiences only give us a limited vantage point for a limited amount of time. And it’s with this end conclusion in mind that the Kohelet, in the persona of King Solomon, takes us on a journey to explore the avenues and the dead ends of our human pursuits for meaning and satisfaction. Essentially, what we get this morning are six experience experiments. So he’ll give us pleasure, projects, and possessions, and then he’ll give us wisdom, work, and wealth. So we’ll begin with the first three, pleasure, projects, and possessions. Chapter two, verse one through 11. I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself, or in other words, treat yourself. But behold, this also was vanity.

I said of laughter, it is mad, and of pleasure, what use is it? I searched with my whole heart how to cheer my body with wine, my heart still guiding me with wisdom, and 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. I made great works. 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 forests 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 been before me in Jerusalem. 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 delight 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. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity, a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. So here, the Kohelet, our experiential teacher and tour guide, gives us this complete dive into his experiment, and he’s fully immersing himself into self-indulgence to test pleasure, projects, and possessions. You notice how many times he uses the words I and myself?

Well, this just signals that his experiment is rooted in his personal experience. This is self-exploration for self-satisfaction through self-indulgence, okay? Remember the Westminster Shorter Catechism we looked at last week? We asked the question, what is the chief end of man? And the answer, to enjoy God, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Well, here, the Kohelet flips this question on its head. Through his experiment, he’s testing what most people fundamentally believe is the chief end of man, to glorify self and enjoy yourself forever. So he examines the pinwheel of pleasure and starts sampling every single thing this world has to offer, starting first with entertainment, which he calls laughter. And that’s an interesting thing to start with, entertainment, but I think this makes complete sense, especially in our context, because we are a culture that is completely obsessed with entertainment, especially with streaming and scrolling.

And the reason we’re obsessed is because entertainment offers us an escape from our broken world. It pulls us out of everything mundane, but it’s only a momentary escape, because the show eventually comes to an end and the scrolling, if you scroll long enough, eventually brings you to where you last left off in your social feeds. And then when you’re done, we’re instantly snapped back into the reality of our broken and boring world, okay? When Heather and I first moved to Portland, a friend of mine from New York, he mentioned that we should check out this series called Lost. Now, that just dated us, but that’s okay. We were super late in the game with Lost, by the way. But up to this point, Heather and I, we really didn’t spend much time with those long shows. We were much more sophisticated. But for whatever reason, we were in a new city

and we just decided we’re gonna try all kinds of new things. So we began this series called Lost. And after the first episode, we were hooked, right? Like many of you. We burned through that series quickly. And this is way back then when you had to wait for the DVDs, when Netflix had to send you the DVDs, okay? All right, well, every time we had a free moment to ourselves, we were like, babe, you trying to watch another episode? It’d be like the middle of the day and we’re just like going in, okay, let’s do it, okay? I remember we got so deep into the series and kind of every progression of the series, we began to wonder, man, how in the world are they gonna make sense of all these little tiny details? And then we got to the season finale, the very end of the show.

We had all this built up expectation thinking we were gonna have everything stitched together for us and everything’s gonna finally make sense. We got to the very end of the show, and nothing was resolved. Everything remained confusing and we were so dissatisfied. And part of that dissatisfaction came from the show failing to meet our expectations, which was, you know, conclusion. But the other part was that the series was over and there were no more episodes for us to just enjoy in the middle of the day while we ate a burrito or something. And that in some way felt so strange, like hevel — failed expectations, no closure, no more hope for another episode. And you see, this is what entertainment does. It carries you along with all kinds of excitement for a little while, but eventually it comes to an end, which then just leaves us longing for more.

So we quickly try to find the next piece of entertainment to build us up with all this excitement only to let us down when it ends and the cycle repeats. Friends, the Kohelet is right, entertainment is hevel. And then he moves to test wine, which in most cases is often paired with entertainment. He thinks surely wine will satisfy, surely wine will carry us away from the woes of our broken and boring world. But no, this too is hevel because when the alcohol fades, we’re snapped back into our broken and boring world again. So then he tries entrepreneurship or creative projects. He built vineyards and parks and all kinds of amazing things, but this too is hevel because with each completed project, there’s always a new project to complete. My project managers, amen.

We are a project producing people. Our hearts are never satisfied with the projects we complete. And if you own a home, you totally understand. And then he tries accumulating possessions, both people and things, but this too proves to be hevel because people will always fail your expectations, amen. And things, well, they never seem to satisfy. We’re a people addicted to buying new things because we’re constantly bored with old things. So we just keep getting new things. Just think about technology, right? So possessions are also hevel. And so then what does he do? He pursues art and culture. He takes the more sophisticated route. Surely that’s where I’ll be satisfied. Through my creative senses. But this too is hevel because art, friends, is subjective. And the most favored artists, well, they always seem to become irrelevant as the new artists begin to dominate the art world.

And it’s the same with possessions, right? It’s the same old deal. We get old, we get tired of the old art and we want something new. And because culture is so unpredictable and tends to shift in opposite directions, it can become very confusing and completely unstable. I remember what was once punk rock and kind of anti-government is now what is conservative. It just totally flipped. Okay, so that’s hevel. And then finally, and perhaps the most popular of pleasures, he immerses himself in sex. But in the end, he finds, like most people, that pleasure from sex does not last. And so sex becomes perhaps the best illustration of heavil. It is enjoyable for the moment, but when the moment passes, so does the enjoyment. It’s hevel. And so what is the result of all of these personal pursuits? What did the test of pleasure and projects and possessions produce?

Well, it’s interesting. We find that it wasn’t all for nothing. It did produce something. He says it produced greatness and pleasure, which is interesting. I love the Kohelet’s honesty here. He would think, as he’s building his case, that he would say it produced nothing. But that’s not what he did. In his experiment, he gives a very honest assessment. He says, I received popularity and pleasure in my pursuits. But let me ask you this. Was his pursuit popularity and pleasure, or was it satisfaction? Or let me ask you this. Do you understand the difference between pleasure and satisfaction? Because most people just squeeze those two things together. But you see, pleasure is something that is enjoyable. Satisfaction is something that is fulfilling. And the Kohelet was looking for satisfaction, not simply something to be enjoyed. And all those things that he explored were merely the vehicle by which he was searching

to find ultimate fulfillment. But those things didn’t provide what he was looking for. Because listen, those things, by design, are enjoyable only for a moment, only for the moment that you engage in them. And it’s only after your experience that you realize it wasn’t enough to keep you full or filled. And we know this to be true, right? We see this play out all the time with food, movies, whatever. This is why humanity is always on the hunt for the next hit, or sexual experience, or the next concert, or the next meal, or the next movie, or the next social media app. We’re constantly looking for the next dopamine hit. But the problem is dopamine rises when you’re experiencing the pleasure, and then quickly drops shortly after the pleasure is done. So the Kohelet, long before the term dopamine existed, was explaining the short-term effects of dopamine

and the fleeting enjoyment of pleasure. The point is, pleasure, projects, and possessions, though enjoyable for the moment, never deliver what they promise. And family, we need to be reminded of this, because we can find ourselves in all kinds of trouble when we buy into the myth that fulfillment, ultimate satisfaction, meaning in life can be found in pleasure, projects, and possessions under the horizon. And listen, you also need to understand something. Those things, pleasure, projects, and possessions, those things are not inherently evil. In fact, God made us to enjoy those things. The problem is when we try to make those things the single most important piece in our life, when we give ourselves wholly and completely to those things, they will fail us, because those things were never meant to hold the weight of our meaning or our worship. They were never meant to bring us fulfillment

or ultimate satisfaction. This is why Kohelet did find some enjoyment in those pursuits, but still found himself frustrated. It’s also important to understand that the burden of the Kohelet is not to explain the boundaries of pleasure. So his test didn’t account for what was morally appropriate in his pursuit of pleasure, okay? Obviously, we know as Christians that some of the Kohelet’s pursuits of pleasure were not healthy, and they actually go against God’s good design for pleasure. But remember, he’s not looking at pleasure from above the horizon perspective. He’s looking at it from a human plane, not taking into account God’s perspective. Therefore, his vantage point does not account for morality or goodness in terms of pleasure. So his observation, having experienced all these things, he determines it’s all hevel. It’s like shepherding the wind, trying to gather something that cannot be grasped. And so having checked off those three things on his list,

Wisdom, Work, and Wealth

he now moves to wisdom, work, and wealth. Chapter two, verses 12 through 23. So I turn to consider wisdom and madness and folly, for what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than darkness. The wise person has his eyes and his head, but the fool walks in darkness. Yet I perceive that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said in my heart, what happens to the fool will also happen to me. Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart that this also is vanity, 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 toiled 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, yet he will be master of all 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 must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 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. So here at first, the Kohelet seems to be taking a turn in the right direction. He’s moved from following his heart in pursuit of pleasure to now seeking wisdom. And this, friends, is the Solomon we all know, the one who tells us in Proverbs 1.7 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. This is good. Kohelet is basically saying here, wisdom is like a lamp to our feet, illuminating the path ahead, which is protecting us from danger. But ignorance, on the other hand, is a stumbling block leading us into danger. So this sounds like the wisdom literature that we’ve seen in Solomon’s writings before.

But just as the Kohelet starts to think wisely about life, he quickly realizes what happens to the wise person, well, that seems to also happen to the foolish person. Just when he thinks he’s found the key to life’s meaning, being wisdom, he hits a brick wall. He essentially becomes aware that the same fate, which is death, awaits both the wise and the fool. Death is the great equalizer. So you can live wisely with the aim to prolong your days, and this would be good because, after all, Proverbs 9

tells us that, for by me, meaning wisdom, your days will be multiplied and your years will be added to your life. But as I asked you last week, is this a promise or is this a principle? Well, it’s a principle. So you can make all the wise choices possible in life. You can eat all the right foods,

organic, no gluten, or you can choose not to eat, like, horrible food for you, like soda, children. You can exercise on your row machines. You can drive with your seatbelt on all the time, not just because of the beeping noise, but because you feel safe. You can avoid things like skydiving, and you will still not escape death. And the fool, well, the fool who lives recklessly without even considering his mortality, well, he might live longer than the wise one, but, in the end, he also will not escape death. So then if neither the wise or the fool offers an escape from death, then living wisely is hell. It doesn’t seem fair. This is perplexing and unsatisfying, and this seems to contradict the principle we see in Proverbs. So though the Kohelet sees a bit more benefit in wise living than foolish living, it’s not a one-to-one correlation

when it comes to the most important asset in life, and that asset is your life. And so here he begins to unravel, because if he makes wise decisions, it only makes sense that I should have a longer life than the fool. But wisdom can’t control the outcome, and that really begins to wreak havoc on control freaks. Therefore, wisdom really isn’t a gain, but it’s frustration. In his experiment, he’s having a bit of an existential breakdown because his whole paradigm is rocked. This is why he says, I hated life. But to be clear, it’s not that he hated life and, therefore, he wanted to die. He hated life because he didn’t want to die, but he had no way of controlling it. And so wisdom gets checked off the box when it’s insufficient to produce meaning or lasting satisfaction. But it’s not just wisdom that fails.

It’s also work and wealth. And what I find brilliant here is that the Kohelet stitches these three things together because they are in every way connected. This is hugely relevant to us, okay? Essentially, these three things together make up the American dream, right? This is what we all pursue here in America. Essentially, what he’s getting at here is, and I’m going to hyper-paraphrase this section just to make it as clear as possible. He’s saying that wisdom, work, and wealth, when those things collide together, they should be the perfect combination for finding a sense of meaning in life. But here’s why it doesn’t. Because you work wisely and diligently to acquire wealth, which is a good thing. And then you apply wisdom principles to grow that wealth through things like investments and retirement funds, which is a good thing. In fact, the whole aim with retirement

is to be wise in your youth to acquire enough wealth to no longer have to work when you’re older. That is the American dream. But here’s the big dilemma. What if you die before you retire? What if you die before you get to enjoy your retirement? Furthermore, what happens to all the wealth you’ve acquired? Well, presumably, it goes to someone else, someone who didn’t necessarily work for it, or at least as hard and as wisely as you did. And if that person is a fool, well, then he might squander it all. So then what’s the point in all of your wisdom and your work and your wealth? It’s frustrating. You give so much of your life to wisdom, work, and wealth, years and years, longing for the day when you will be 65, or maybe it’s even longer now, when you can finally retire.

Spend your whole life working for these things, but you can’t control whether you will reap the benefit of all of that work. You can’t take it with you when you die. Therefore, the American dream is heavil. Again, those are good things, and we should pursue those things. But those things aren’t ultimate things, and they will never satisfy the soul. This is the result of looking under the horizon for things like meaning and satisfaction and stability. All of our efforts and expectations will fail us, and we don’t have control over how anything is going to work out in this life. This is why the Kohelet carries us along on this experiential experiment, to show us that everything we’re looking for and everything we’re living for under the horizon is smoke. This experiment is meant to be sobering and depressing, because again, its aim is to disenchant us

with this world and what it has to offer in terms of meaning and satisfaction. It’s like he keeps pulling our eyes below the horizon, and he’s not giving us a way out, so that we don’t build sandcastles that will simply be washed away when the waves of life come and knock it down.

Above the Horizon

But what’s interesting is that the Kohelet, probably knowing how y’all feel right now, like, for real, this is depressing, he knows how we feel. And so he decides to briefly lift our eyes upward to get a glimpse above the horizon, to give us some hope in the midst of the experiment. So look at verse 24 and 26 with his conclusion here. He says,

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, 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 the one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

— Ecclesiastes 2

(ESV)

So what in the world? This dude’s crazy. He just explained over and over and over again, there’s no lasting satisfaction in our pursuits under the sun. Why even bother? It’s all hopeless. It’s all meaningless. So then what does he mean by this last statement here? Friends, this is the whole point of the book. So don’t miss this. He’s saying that wisdom, pleasure, work, projects, wealth, and possessions are all gifts given by a benevolent God to his children. And we should enjoy those things, not as the source of satisfaction, but as gifts from the source of all satisfaction. So eat, drink, find enjoyment in all of your work because these things come from the hand of God specifically for your enjoyment. As fleeting as those enjoyments may be, those are good gifts. Friends, imagine a love letter, handwritten and delivered to you. Man, don’t feel uncomfortable here.

You know you like love letters. OK? The mere fact that it’s a physical letter and it’s handwritten already communicates something special in our text message and email age. So already there’s some intention behind the letter. This letter is beautifully and poetically written, expressing the sender’s undying and unquenchable love for you. It’s written on vellum-weighted paper. If you don’t know what that means, you should touch vellum paper. It’s soft and it’s matted to the touch. You can feel it on your fingertips as you read along. And the ink comes from an expensive fountain pen that spreads the ink evenly and smoothly with no streaking and no smearing. The handwriting is beautifully presented, perfectly spaced. The lines, the kerning, it’s all wonderful. And there’s these little embellishments in the text to entice your eyes to it. The letter even has a slight aroma of lilac that seems to be intentionally

misted on the paper. That’s a good letter, right? Every facet of the letter is full of intention, delightful to your eyes, sweet to the smell, enjoyable to the touch. It’s made in every way to move your senses. But imagine separating the letter from the sender and prizing the presentation more than the person who sent it. Imagine sleeping with the letter under your pillow, taking the letter with you to coffee shops and on hikes and on drives through the forest, spending every waking moment with the letter. That would seem a bit odd. I mean, the letter’s good. It was made for you. It was made for you to enjoy. But its whole aim was to draw you closer to the sender, to enchant you to the sender, the source of all that is enjoyable and pleasing about the letter. What an empty and shallow experience to be so preoccupied with the letter or the artifact

that you never come to find satisfaction with the sender or the artist. This is what Ecclesiastes is driving at, enjoying the things that come from the hand of God so that we might be drawn to God, the source of all enjoyment. Because only the source who sits above the horizon and gives all the good gifts that we experience under the horizon can provide the satisfaction we’re longing for. We need satisfaction beyond this world, one that is eternal. In other words, a satisfaction that is not heavil, that’s not smoke, something that can be grasped, not just temporarily, but eternally. Family, that’s what we were made for. In the Gospel of John, Jesus approaches a Samaritan woman who is drawing water from a well. She goes back to the same well day after day, working and working to try to satisfy her thirst. But the mere fact that she has to go back to the well

every day stresses the fact that she cannot satisfy her thirst. Nothing that she does can help to satisfy her thirst under the sun. But Jesus meets her in her water work. And listen, rather than calling the water that she’s pulling up from the well bad and insignificant and meaningless, he tells her the truth. He says to her, anyone who drinks of that water that you’re pulling out of the well, well, they’re going to thirst again. Whoever drinks of the water that I give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. In other words, life under the sun will never satisfy. But life in the sun will satisfy eternally. And it’ll satisfy what we’ve been longing for in this world. The Kohelet and Christ are completely compatible here. So find enjoyment in eating and in drinking

and in working. Find enjoyment in it. But find satisfaction in the giver of those gifts, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Live for him. Pursue him for satisfaction, not the things he gives us as gifts. For those of you who don’t know God and are not satisfied in him, well, those people will work and work and collect things in this world. But they will never find true meaning or lasting satisfaction in this life. And all their work and all their collecting of things will be taken away when they die and given to those who will remain, the people of God who please God. Because only those who know God and follow after him will experience eternal life. That reality of eternal life for the believer and eternal death for the unbeliever is heaven. Are you here this morning struggling to understand what life is all about?

Are you chasing experience after experience, trying to find satisfaction, but you consistently end up feeling empty? You need to know that pursuit is an endless pursuit in futility. You won’t find satisfaction in pleasure, projects, or possessions. You won’t even find it in something as noble as wisdom, work, and wealth. You can only make sense of your constant chasing the wind by looking to Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world and the source of all enjoyment, who died for your sins to bring you peace with God and everlasting life. That life is a life of ultimate satisfaction. And listen, all that he asks is that you stop working for your satisfaction, that you stop looking for it in all the places under the horizon, that you simply lift your eyes up to make sense of this world. Look to him. Turn to him and trust in him to find the satisfaction

you were made to have. And if you want to know what it means to follow after this Jesus, to look above the horizon, to turn from this world, and to turn away from sin, we want nothing more than to help you figure that out. And you can ask anybody in this room, just ask them, are you a Christian? And if they say yes, they will help you to understand. Amen, family? Make yourself available for that. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, for all the ways in which we have sought to find satisfaction in the temporal and the transient and in the unsatisfying, we pray you forgive us. We pray, Father, for all the ways in which we have abused the gifts that you have given us to enjoy. We pray, God, that you would help us to have a right perspective on how to enjoy those things

with the right boundaries, with the right intention. And we pray, ultimately, Lord, that you would help lift our eyes to find all of our satisfaction in Jesus, the only one who can satisfy our longing souls. Everything else is fleeting, but Christ will remain. And so we pray that you would help us to lift our eyes out of this world to our eternal hope in Jesus Christ while enjoying the good gifts that you’ve given us in this world. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen.