The Toil is for Others

Opening Prayer and the Call to Study Leviticus 22

All right, grab a Bible, something to write with. We're gonna get started. We're gonna be in Leviticus 22. Clearly I'm gonna be bearing fruit in keeping with repentance in one way or another. So we pray.

Heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, we come before you in humble awe. You are the one true God and there is no other God than you. Come, we pray, bless our hearts and our minds as we study your word.

Send your Holy Spirit into our lives that we may grow in love and grace and that we may go forth into all the world proclaiming your gospel so that others may learn of your saving grace. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.

All right. Gotta love these.

Just wanna say something, Pastor.

Yes, sir.

I don't know if you notice, I'm a little raw, so.

I can tell.

Yeah.

And it was justified.

Well, then if I will boast,.

I will boast of those things that show my weakness because God's word is the thing that does it. Okay, any questions about the texts or how I handled them in the sermon? Yes, Bruce, I knew you would have one.

The Meaninglessness of Life and the Gift of Toil in Ecclesiastes

The balance between two things that you've said. When you talked two weeks ago about your high school graduation and you were on fire to change the world.

Yeah.

You described that as arrogance.

Yep.

And today's sermon is on taking up your cross to follow in Christ. How may I take up my cross in Christ?

I, plural.

Ha, you're on me now.

Yeah.

It's the plural I, that's crazy talk, that's awesome. Okay, so it's more of a practical question. So may I give you this advice? And that is embrace what Scripture teaches us in Ecclesiastes. Our lives are not purpose-driven here.

Our lives are meaningless-driven. Your life is meaningless, mine is meaningless. And that being the case, at the end of the day, all of the things that Solomon chased after to kind of see where the borders were in this life, everything comes back as vanity, as meaningless.

But he says this, and he says, to take joy in the toil that God has given you. That this is a gift from God. And so note then that the toil that God has given us, it helps us pass the time, it is a mercy from God.

And so in serving others, serve them in meaningless toil as their servants, and you will not have arrogance. Understanding then that if you are given the privilege of partnering with God, with his word, that as Paul says, that one plants, another waters, but it's God who gives the increase.

And neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the increase. And so the idea then, in taking up your cross in even public proclamation of God's word, even as a teacher rather than a pastor, that this falls under the cross, it is a burden, it is toil, it is work, and it is for the sake of others, not your own.

And so one of the things I made a practice of very early on in my podcast is opening up by introducing people that I am their servant in Jesus Christ, and that has always been the thing that tempers the work that I do publicly, and why I so readily embrace as a pastor the uniform that men before me had come up with, because it visually reminds everybody that I am the slave of the congregation.

And so if you can serve in that way, then you can boast like the Apostle Paul boasts, then of the things that show his weakness, not his strength.

Uh-huh?

Ephesians chapter two.

Okay.

First Sinship.

Uh-huh, creating Christ Jesus.

Four good works.

Four good works prepared before us.

Yes.

Ahead of time.

Yes.

To walk about in.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So note then, taking scripture and interpreting scripture. Let me show you the text from Ecclesiastes, by the way. I think it's Ecclesiastes seven. I'm doing this from memory. Give me a second.

Mm-hmm.

Solomon, Wisdom, and the Tragedy of Ecclesiastes 1

In fact, let's do this. Let's take a look at Ecclesiastes, shall we? Ecclesiastes chapter one. The words of the preacher, the son of David, the king in Jerusalem. The author of Ecclesiastes is Solomon.

And his story is probably one of the most tragic in all the scriptures. Absolutely, utterly tragic. And the reason why it is so tragic is that he is this beautiful type in shadow, in his own person of Christ himself.

God gives him the office of the king of Israel as a young man, and God appears to him, not once, but twice. And in his first appearance, he says to Solomon, the young man, the king of Israel, ask of me anything that you want, and I'll give it to you.

And in humble fear, Solomon says that I am just a boy, and I am not capable of ruling your great people. Please give me the wisdom to do so. And Solomon, God is pleased with this answer, and says because he didn't ask for gold and silver and a long life and things like that, but that he asked for something, for wisdom, that God gave him a special miraculous gift of wisdom so that not any human being other than Christ himself had more wisdom on planet Earth.

And Jesus makes it clear that when he was on Earth, he said that somebody greater than Solomon is here, and he is. Christ is the logos, the word of God, the wisdom of God incarnate. And I don't wanna use abstractions for Jesus, but these are titles given by scripture to Christ.

So Solomon becomes the wisest man to walk the Earth until Christ appears, and sadly, in all of the wisdom that he was given, he uses it wisely, builds the temple, makes Israel great, really fantastically great, but he, like all of us, has sin.

And his sin leads him off into a terrible, terrible folly where he loves many women. And scripture describes him as, you know, he has many wives, many concubines, we're talking like 700, you know, which is just an outrageous number.

And what's fascinating is that scripture says that Solomon cleaved to all of his wives in love. So there's an aspect to this ridiculous amount of wives that's fascinating is that scripture acknowledges that Solomon actually had true love for the women that he was married to, but that their hearts, because these are pagan foreign women that he was forbidden to marriage, that their hearts, they ensnared Solomon, and he engaged, he set up places of worship to false gods.

He himself did it, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord, and one of the high places that he set up for pagan worship was a place for the worship of Molech. That's how far he falls. And so it's a tragic story in that sense, but in the midst of all of this, Solomon, in his great wisdom, takes a look at this life that we find ourselves in, and he is, in a sense, kind of looking for the borders.

He decides he's gonna do something, and that is that he's going to allow himself to kind of take everything to its extreme. You know, he's going to be foolish. He's gonna seek after pleasure. He's gonna seek after wealth.

He's gonna seek after all these things to take it to the farthest border to see if it can satisfy, if it will somehow make his life meaningful, and so he begins with these words, vanity of vanities. If you have the NIV, it says meaningless, meaningless, and so the Hebrew word here, by the way, for vanity, chaval, you can take this, and it can mean meaningless or vanity, but you kind of get the idea.

Vanity and meaningless is all the same, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises, the sun goes down. It hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south. It goes around to the north, and around and around goes the wind. On its circuit, the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, 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. What has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new, it has already, it has been already in the ages before.

There's no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of latter things. Yet to be among those who come after. I, the preacher, have been king over Israel and Jerusalem. 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. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, it is all vanity. It is a striving after the wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight.

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 great experience of wisdom and knowledge, and I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and to know folly.

I perceive that this also is but a striving after the wind, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. It's a great book, right? And I would argue, and I want you to think about this.

So 12, 15 years ago now, the book that was all the rage in Christianity was The Purpose-Driven Life, and it was a complete bucket of lies. Yeah, it's all about self. And you'll note, and see, here's the thing, what Rick Warren in that book promised is that if you applied yourself and sought God, that he would whisper into your ears or into your heart the very specific purpose for which you were made.

And the way the theology is is that when there is a problem in the world, God doesn't create a solution, a baby is born. This is the whole mythos behind The Purpose-Driven Life. But you're gonna note something here is that in the fall, the entire world, and this is a horrible picture, but it's worth embracing in this sense.

The entire creation itself has become, well, like a toilet. We're just waiting for it to finish cleaning out. Everything's going round and round and round, and at the end of the day, everything is just striving after the wind.

You're born naked, you brought nothing into this world. You're not taking anything out of it, not a thing. So what, just look around right now at what we know is the common experience of men. There's a lot of different ways to live this life, but when you kind of put it all into major categories, as many different ways as there are to live this life, they all kind of fit into the same themes.

So we take a look at the person, oh, I know that fellow, he is into climbing the ladder, gaining money, wealth, power, and all the entrappings that go with it. So this is the guy who has the private helicopter, who's got the corner office on the top floor of that Manhattan office building, whose home was photographed so that it could be shown to the world on the spread of better homes and garden.

His wife is just perfect. She looks beautiful on his arms. Of course, he looks like a train wreck, but we can forgive her because we understand that with great power, it doesn't matter what you look like, if you have great wealth, you can get the prettiest gal.

And then on the other side of that, you have the women who chase after men like this. But then for everybody else who doesn't have the power and the wealth, what do they chase after?

Right?

Yes.

Right, and everything that they strove for, whose will it be? So in the midst of all of this, I would remind you that we all kind of know this because we've heard talk like this, and maybe you've even said it, that there are people who are poverty stricken.

We know for a fact they live in third world nations, and yet we would say they are the wealthiest people in the world who physically have so little compared to us. How can somebody with so little be so wealthy?

The answer is actually found here in Ecclesiastes. So coming back to this, we must embrace that in the fall, our lives now are short, they're mean, they're hard, and in a very real way, they are meaningless.

Embrace the meaninglessness of it because in the midst of that are the things that you will find that this book says are given from God that we can rejoice in. All right, so coming back to it, and this will get to your good works question then too.

So I said in my heart, come, now I'll test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. This is always kind of the first thing youth do anyways, isn't it, right? And then life happens. So behold, this also was vanity.

I said of laughter, it's mad 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, and how to lay hold of folly until I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.

Notice he's in pursuit of something here. He's looking for the good things that they can do in the short life that they have. So I made great works. I built houses. I 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. I had slaves who were born in my house. I also had 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. Sounds like he's made it, right? Is there any satisfaction in that? So I became great. I surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem.

Also my wisdom remained with me and whatever my eyes desired, I didn't 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.

Now note here, now he's going to start to kind of zero in. This is the first time you're gonna see it. But I found pleasure in all my toil. Keep that phrase in your mind. So when I considered all that my hands had done and the toil that I expended in doing it, behold, all was vanity, meaningless, striving after the wind.

There was nothing to be gained under the sun. So I turned 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's more gain in wisdom than in folly as there is more gain in light than in darkness.

The wise person has his eyes and 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 also to me also.

Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. The same fate awaits somebody who lives wisely as opposed to somebody who lives utterly foolishly. So what gain is there in being wise?

For of the wise, as of the fool, there is no enduring remembrance. See that in the days to come, all will have been long forgotten how the wise dies just like the fool. And I would note here, brothers and sisters, let us not overlook this little fact.

After you die and we put your carcass out there, your children will come visit you. Your grandchildren will come visit you on occasion. Your great-grandchildren will have no memory of you. And as the snow and the wind and the rain beat down on your stone, your name will become harder and harder to read.

And eventually, no one will even know that you were here. You might show up as a leaf on genealogy .com, right? Oh, this is a good tonic. Drink it, sip it, relish it. This is good for your soul.

Okay, all right.

If only there were somewhere.

I wonder where that would be. I love your hinting there, it's awesome. So I hated life, Solomon says, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me. All is meaningless, it's vanity. It's a striving after the wind.

So I hated all my toil. Now, no, he went from loving it, now he hates it, okay? It reminds me of that wonderful kid's story about the kid who's had a terrible, no good, very bad day, and he decided he was gonna move to Australia, you know?

Anyway, anyway, that's a whole other thing. So I hated all my toil in which I toil in this thing, that I must leave it to the man who'll come after me. Who knows whether he'll be wise or a fool. Well, his name is Rehoboam, and we know he's a complete fool.

Yet he'll be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair. It's a note, we're going through all the, now we're going through all the cycle of mourning, okay?

First thing in mourning, oftentimes, is anger. Now we're to despair. So Solomon's going into a deep depression here, okay? 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.

Can I say the words Paris Hilton, right? What has a man from all the toil and the striving and the heart with which he toils beneath the sun? All his days are full of sorrow. His work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart does not rest.

This also is meaningless, chadol, vanity. There's nothing better for a person, listen to this. There is nothing better for a person that he should eat, that he should drink, that he should find enjoyment in his toil.

And here's the reason why. This also I saw is from the hand of God. For apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment? And this is where the solution starts to present itself very early on, but it's reinforced throughout the book.

So I'll make reference to this again. If you've seen the 2015 live action remake of Cinderella by Disney, if you haven't seen it, you've got to see it. It's just so beautiful of a story. But it's the story of Cinderella.

And Cinderella starts off with a mother and a father who love her. And they've taught her two important lessons in life, to have courage and to be kind. These are her guiding principles through life. And she loses both of her parents and she comes under the control of a woman and her two daughters who despise and loathe her and put her into servitude.

And in the midst of this is an interesting line in the Disney adaptation. And it says that she was given much toil and work to do. And this was a good thing because it kept her mind busy. You see, in the fall, Adam and Eve were cursed.

And there's so many different aspects to the curse. We could talk about how marriage itself was broken, broken. But in the midst of this, Adam had to now eat by the sweat of his brow. But here's the thing.

This text says that's a good thing. Our toil is from God. Have you embraced it? As the gift that it is. It's from the hand of God. And this is where our good works are done, in our toil. At Walmart, at DigiKey, Catholic Health, Kongsvinger, all the places where we work, all true, right?

This is from God. Yeah, right. But you'll note then, here's the thing. It's universal. It's universal. And the whole pursuit of wealth is to find a way to overcome the curse. And what happens to the people who overcome the toil curse through their great wealth?

Does it make them better? It ruins them. Because no longer do they look to God and say, Lord God, please give us this day our daily bread. How many human stories do you know of men and women whose lives were destroyed when they found a way to overcome the toil of this life?

But they don't really overcome the toil.

No, they don't.

Because the wealth in of itself becomes the toil.

Uh-huh.

It's always one thing after another, right?

Because you never have enough.

Right.

So for to the one who pleases God, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he's given business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This is vanity. It's a striving after the wind.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

He said, carry it. Putting down people who are rich.

Uh-huh.

Right.

Now, I would say this. We will note that there are those who, through hard work and industry, have amassed for themselves businesses that are capable of providing toil for other people so that they can put bread and water and wine on their table.

And these are truly a blessing from God. And the dividing line then is gonna always be the dividing line of faith because they do serve a purpose in our economy and one that is a good one. And so we do not knock the rich merely for being rich, but what we're going after here is the striving after wealth.

The striving after wealth. Whether or not you employ 1 ,000 people and help our economy, at the end of the day, that's not the question on the table that the Scriptures are gonna be addressing. Although that is a good work, it counts not if you have not faith.

But it's important to recognize then that the Scriptures tell us that even that is vanity. It's a striving after the wind. It's under the curse. It's in the toil. And with it comes great vexation. And all of that's on purpose for now.

Because, let me ask you, in the world to come, in the world to come, will you need to toil an hour for there to be bread and meat and wine on your table?

No.

All food is free in the new earth. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, would we be in the toilet we're in right now? Not at all. All right? So we went from actually having lives of purpose in the fall to having lives that are meaningless.

Because it doesn't matter how hard you work, doesn't matter how hard you try, you're still gonna die. And everything that you've toiled over, everything you've amassed for yourself, everything that is important, it's going to somebody else who probably doesn't care a bit about it.

And that's kind of the vein that we're in right now. So in the midst of all of this, how do you not slit your wrist? That's kind of the question. Well, Solomon continues. For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.

Now we all know the song and I'm not gonna sing it. A time to be born, there's a time to die. There's a time to plant, a time to pluck up what is planted. There's a time to kill and there is a time to heal.

A time to break down, a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh. There is a time to mourn and a time to dance. That's right, you Norwegians needed to pay attention to that last part of verse four.

Just saying. A time to cast away stones and then a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and there is a time to refrain from embracing. There's a time to seek and there's a time to lose. There's a time to keep and there's a time to cast away.

A time to tear and a time to sew. There's a time to keep silent and then there's also a time to speak. And there is a time to love but note also there is a time to hate. There's a time for war. It has its proper place.

There's also a time for peace. So what gain has the worker from his toil? I've seen the business that God has given to the children of man. Note where the business comes from. It comes from God. I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also he has put eternity into man's heart yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live.

Also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all of his toil. This is God's gift to man.

Yes.

No, it's always been there.

And the thing is that it always shows up, funny enough, there are some of the fairy tales and I'm a big fan of the fairy tales and I mean it because C .S. Lewis was right that in the fairy tales, they capture what they call deep myth.

Some of the fairy tales we have no clue where they came from. We have no idea who the authors were or where they came from. But this is an example of that kind of eternity in our heart. I always think of the fairy tales as pre-gospel catechism because in the fairy tales we have good and evil laid out but I particularly like, and I'll be careful how I say this, I like the feminine fairy tales because of the subtleness of good.

It's a good that is expressed in terms not of strong manly defeat of the enemy but of the bruised reed crushed under the weight of evil who by no other power than the power of kindness and goodness and love overcomes evil.

And we must remember that both men and women are created in the image of God. And so we are tempted to always magnify the man who conquers, the man who puts on his armor and does all this stuff. But I am more interested in Cinderella who's so abused and suffered greatly at the climax of all of this says I forgive you.

That's the best part of the Disney version is that when she could get her vindication and send her wicked stepmother to prison and she would languish, she turns and says I forgive you.

Brutal.

That's a word that can snap a beam of iron. You know, you see what I'm saying? And there's more power in that than in anger. More power in that than in an army of 1 ,000 or 10. And so we would be wise to look for these things.

And so, and we can find them in our stories. Always the classics are the ones that pull on the deep myth. Always the ones. And ultimately the best ones are going to be the overcoming of evil by death, by surrender.

You know, those are always the best. We continue. So we note then verse 12 of chapter three says I perceive that there's nothing better than that they do good as long as they live, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all of his toil.

This is God's gift to man. Taking pleasure in your toil. So I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it. Not anything taken from it. God has done it so that people fear before him.

That which is already has been. That which is to be already has been. And God seeks what has been driven away. Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness. And in the place of righteousness even there was wickedness.

So I said in my heart God will judge the righteous and the wicked for there is a time for every matter and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see themselves.

Are but beasts.

For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other. They all have the same breath. The man has no advantage over the beast. All is vanity.

It's meaningless.

All go to one place. All are from the dust. And to the dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth. So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work for that is his lot.

Who can bring him to see what will be after him? So you can see now that a godly way of looking at our toil is that this is a gift from God. So you wake up on Monday morning. You make your coffee. You eat your oatmeal.

You head off to the office. And then the phone starts ringing.

Right?

Yeah.

After you check your voicemails and write the list.

Right?

You turn on your computer and in comes the flood of emails. You know, I remember back in the days of AOL. You have mail.

No kidding.

You know, you see that number, right? And it just comes in. And you sit there and you go, it's gonna take me till noon to do this. And I've gotta, yeah, I know. And so what do you do? You start answering the phone calls.

Returning the phone calls. Answering the emails. And in the midst of all of this, in come the employees. And the employees, did you know that so and so did such and such? Did you hear what happened over the weekend while you were gone?

Did you, did you, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da? And it just, right? And before you know it, it's six o 'clock. You were supposed to leave at five. You completely lost track of the time. And your wife's on the phone going, are you coming for dinner or not?

I may or may not know.

My response is, it's six o 'clock already.

Exactly.

How do you know my date?

Right?

And you know what's gonna happen? You figure out a way to put a bow on the day knowing that you have 5 ,000 loose ends that you gotta pick up tomorrow. And when you get back overnight, that 5 ,000 has grown to eight.

And you know what you're gonna do?

You're gonna do the same thing again tomorrow. And you sit there and you go, this is all meaningless. This is a gift from God.

It is. Embrace it.

And then when you get home, enjoy your bread. Kiss your wife and tell her this is just a great meal. Have a glass of wine. Enjoy it. And the text will go on to say, enjoy the wife of your youth. These are the things that God has given to us now.

And what do we do? We despise them. Those of you with smaller kids. All right? You come home from work and your wife says to you,.

Your turn, right?

Because she's been talking to little crazy people all day long and she's lost her mind and it's time for you to lose yours, okay?

Right?

But here's the thing is that in the midst of all of this, you have tuition, you have homework, you have diapers, you have runny noses, you have sports, you've got catechism, you've got this busy, busy, busy life and they grow up so fast.

I would sell my brother into slavery to be 21 again and to think that I would be able to have my own infant in my arms and to be able to hold him or her to change a diaper again. And when I was in the midst of it, I thought it was the thing that was getting in the way of my good works.

What a fool I was.

What a fool.

And so now you can see it. Real wealth is not an accumulation of things. Wealth comes in recognizing that the toil itself is from God that your wife, your spouse is a gift given to you from God that your children are gifts given to you by God.

And so every day the thing you can look forward to is work given to you by God in the form of vexing toil and so rather than despise it, say thank you Lord for the gift of this toil and kiss your wife, hug your kids, relish that meal, have a glass of wine and then do it again tomorrow because that's your lot and it's been given to you by God to do that and you will be wealthy beyond belief.