Life Is Hard And Then You Die (Part 3)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

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My name is Mike Abendroth, and it is Saturday, May 21st in real time.

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In no -go time, I don't know what it is. It's a time warp. Let's do the time warp again. What do we have here?

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I have all kinds of stuff here. I have How to Pray the Rosary, a New England Primer, Christian Faith by Theodore Beza, The Message Bible, Charles Finney, ESV Study Bible.

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Some of the things are not like the others. We are planning on going to Israel, 2023,

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February 21st through March 2nd, Omaha Bible Church slash the Pactum slash

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Pat Abendroth and myself, Bethlehem Bible Church, No Compromise Radio, Mike Abendroth.

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And we're going to head on over to Israel. If you want to send in your deposit, it's $500, first come, first serve.

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More information, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. I think I get 22 people on the bus, unless I get 40 -something, then

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I'll just take my own bus. We'll try to beat Pat to the good spots. What else is going on?

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New book on assurance. I just have basically wrote an introduction about assurance and then have pulled together 31 chapters, so you could read one a day to help you with assurance.

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And those 31 chapters are pulled from Confessions, from Puritans, from Spurgeon, stuff like that.

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So 31 days. I think it's entitled at the moment, No Condemnation, and I'm just going to have it published by Crossway, self -published, because what do we care?

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We don't care. Do we? I think you'd be encouraged by the book, and I could probably publish it like, you know, what if I went

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Oxford Press or something like that, and I could get $99 out of it. Holy, holy, moly, moly.

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Am I allowed to say holy, moly? Anyway, today I want to talk a little bit more about life and its meaning because I'm in the book of Ecclesiastes, and so on Sunday mornings when

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I'm preparing all week, that's where my mind is. My mind's in Ecclesiastes because I'm going to preach it, just like my mind was in Ephesians, like it was in Hebrews, et cetera.

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Boy, there's a big, huge stack of stuff here. I got to get rid of this stack somehow. I'm going to get new furniture in this office sometime, this study,

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I just haven't pulled the trigger yet. Ecclesiastes, how many chapters? 12 chapters.

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We went through a chapter and a half the last couple shows, and you ever get the feeling you're just sinking?

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What are you sinking about? Ecclesiastes 2, what has happened is this preacher, this king, this rich person decides, you know what?

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I'm going to go on a little search. I'm going to go on a quest, to quote

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Eugene Peterson, the quester. Frank Gorshin in the

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Riddler, Riddle Me This, right, Christian Harris? And he realizes that in a fallen world, i .e.

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under the sun, it's pretty bleak. If you're not going to recognize the triune

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God, if you're not going to recognize there's something above the sun, if you're not going to recognize the first heaven, second heaven, and then ultimately the third heaven, right, birds, stars,

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God himself, then it's pretty bad. And then we understand, don't condone, but we understand what people do as they contemplate, should

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I keep living, right? There's so much despair, so much hatred of life, so much, what does the

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Bible say here in Ecclesiastes, futility, vanity. And when you have that word for vanity in Ecclesiastes, depending on the context, you can translate it as vanity, i .e.

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futility or frustration. You could translate it riddling, like this just doesn't make sense.

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Or you could translate it as fleeting, life's a vapor, life goes by fast.

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And so he says everything's vanity, and life under the sun is difficult.

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He uses other language like striving after the wind, and we realize in this wisdom literature that, okay, to interpret this, we're going to have to make sure we just don't stay in Ecclesiastes.

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We have a canon, we have an author of scripture, we have Jesus himself telling us that things point to Christ in one way, shape, or form, and therefore, that's how we approach the book of Ecclesiastes.

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Now, I've been hitting the cough button here because I still have lingering pneumonia, and I don't know why,

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I don't know why people die of pneumonia. Hope I don't die anytime soon, I've got a grandson on the way, would like to see him.

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Drinking some coffee here, there's a beverage company that wants to support No Compromise Radio, we'll see if they do or not, and if they do,

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I'm going to have to start drinking something else on the show. And it is not Mountain Dew Flamin' Hot.

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I wanted it to be mouth -burning. I tried it with John Tucker and Pat Abendroth in Ohio, in Beloit, a month ago, and I wanted it to be hot.

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I mean, if it's flamin' hot, it should be hot, not drinks and food for the masses.

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If it's advertised as hot, I want something hot. Anyway, Pat gets stuff shipped to him, you know, he gets the people sending him hot sauce and stuff like that, but that's all right, that's all right,

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I'm glad my younger brother knows what to do. Ecclesiastes 2 .17,

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after Solomon, most likely, sees life and realizes how frustrating it is, how vain it is, wisdom's not going to help, possessions are not going to help, pleasure is not going to help, everybody dies, death is inevitable, where are we headed from there?

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If life under the sun, not recognizing a triune God, not recognizing the resurrection, right?

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This whole book could be solved with, stamped across it, the resurrection. Our bodies will be resurrected, and how do we know that?

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Because Jesus is the firstborn of the dead. Jesus has been resurrected, and so we will be resurrected as well, and that will make sense of everything.

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All wrongs righted, all rewards given, everything will make sense, you can know that your labor is not in vain, 1

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Corinthians 15 .58, assuming that there's a resurrection, and therefore, we have hope.

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We need to read this book like Christians do. How do Christians read the Bible? In a Christ -centered way, in a hope -filled way, in a joy -filled way, thankful for the word of God, thankful that we can see, hmm, when this starts popping up in our minds, we live this way, this is us, when we start becoming full of despair and hatred and frustration and vexation, oh, we probably have our minds too focused on the world.

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So this is, it's good for us to work through. We ought not to get depressed when we read this, if we read it like a

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Christian. Well, the writer here isn't doing that at the moment, and he said, So I hated life,

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Ecclesiastes 2 .17, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and striving after wind.

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We have those descriptions here, vanity, striving after wind, and under the sun.

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In this fallen world, it's like you're chasing after the wind, you can never get it, and if you do get it, you can't catch it, you can't keep it.

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And the writer's, you know what, this is kind of disgusting. You think about life, and you think about death, and he's getting bugged.

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He's like Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau, most men live lives of what? Quiet desperation.

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He's mad. He's angry. He's as mad as Hades, as they might say.

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Everything's disappointing. People disappoint, things disappoint, does this sound like this is your life at all?

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And again, if our heads are just down, right, horses have blinders on the side of their heads.

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If you have a blinder on top of your head, like a visor, like a baseball cap, not letting you look above, as it were,

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I don't even mean physically, of course, but just as a description. Things are gonna be bad.

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This is gonna be you. And so if this is you, then you back up and say, how'd I get there, right?

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If you see fruits of this in your life, then you go, hmm, what's the root? What's the solution?

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He said, I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me.

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And who knows whether he will be a fool or wise, yet he will be master of all for which

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I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. I'm gonna work super hard, and I'm gonna make sure

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I use wisdom and work and other things and build parks and accumulate horses and wives and everything else, and I'm gonna die.

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Somebody else is gonna take it over. So let's just think about that for a second. What do you have? Cars, house, a little vacation getaway, clothes, motorcycles maybe,

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ATVs. What do you have? What do you have in your garage? What do you have in your storage unit? What do you have in your attic?

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Well, you're gonna die one day, then somebody's gonna take it all, right?

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It's gonna be gone. When I was laying there in the hospital last year, it's whatever I had, somebody's taking it.

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His name is probably Luke. I mean, the girls can't take my clothes, so who can?

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So does that sound like good news to you? Everything you've worked for, remember those long, hard days that you put in?

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Remember those overtime days? Remember those really frustrating days? You just like go home and slump in the chair and you're like, oh, how exhausting.

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What was that for? It's for somebody else, because you're gonna die and then somebody else is gonna get all your stuff.

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Crazy. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun.

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I mean, let's just cash in the chips. Let's just give in. I'm gonna use that tomorrow, cash in chips.

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I don't mean potato chips. I mean, chips like at a casino in, well, in an

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Indian neighborhood near you or Las Vegas. Atlantic City, do they still gamble there in Atlantic City?

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I know they gamble. I think the closest place to gamble here in New England, like casino, like at least a big one is

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Fox, Foxwoods. People go there to see concerts. I've yet to go to Foxwoods. Maybe they have cheap food.

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Who knows? He says, I'm just despairing. I'm gonna have to hand over everything to somebody else.

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Man, that is painful. You want to know why the world is like it is?

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I think it's because the world's not looking up. Depression at an all time high, it seems like it to me.

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Melancholic people walking around, zombie like. Clarence Darrow toiled all night and have taken nothing.

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He said, that's the Bible verse that summarizes my life. Crazy, because sometimes a person, verse 21, who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it.

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This also is vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun?

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What do you have? Well, I mean, I'm dying in the hospital and I think, okay,

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I've got my iPhone. I had to borrow a cord from somebody else and I've got some sweatpants in the drawer over there.

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I've got a little, one of those little nighty things on they give you for the hospital and some socks, those hospital socks with the ridges on the bottom so you don't slip.

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That's it. That's all I've got. And I couldn't even take any of that with me either if I would have died.

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And one day I will die. This just seems, something seems wrong. And of course, as we think about it, dear

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NoCo listeners, this is the, these are the effects of the fall, right?

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If you go back to Genesis chapter three, verses 16 through 19 ish, and you'd think about thorns and sweat and childbirth pains and all kinds of other things, you think, oh, my federal head

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Adam, thanks a lot. This is what the world is, it's just full of sin and the fruit of sin.

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Lloyd -Jones talks about a totalitarian demand that things make upon us, quote, how they tend to grip the whole personality and affect us everywhere.

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They demand our entire devotion. They want us to live for them absolutely. Problem is, got to hand it to somebody else.

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Got to give it to someone else now. So what happens? Verse 23, for all his days are full of sorrow and his work is a vexation.

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Even in the night, his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. Just lay there, and the more you think about it, the more you say to yourself,

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I can't even sleep. My mind is racing back and forth, or like in an oval in some

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Indy car in Indianapolis 500. I'm not much in car, into cars and car racing.

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I used to work for Duracell batteries. We had a Duracell Indy car sponsored, and so I did get to go to the

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Long Beach Grand Prix. That was interesting for a couple of years. And I went to the Indianapolis Speedway in, of all places,

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Indianapolis. And in the center, seemed like it was underground too, they had a cool museum with cool cars.

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I really thought that was pretty amazing. I don't know if I'd like an

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Indianapolis Speedway, you know, the Indy 500 race, just watching

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I don't know. I guess maybe that's why people drink a lot when they watch those things round and round and round.

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I know their strategy. I know you got to be a tough guy, gal, to do it. Anyway, mind racing, looping, looping, looping, looping.

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Everything's full of trouble and toil. Looking for love in all the wrong places.

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How about looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places? Consumed by our own lusts.

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Okay, if you're a Christian, sometimes this stuff sneaks into our lives, right? And we need to repent and ask

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God to forgive us. But before you were saved, I mean, doesn't this describe you?

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Isn't this your testimony? I mean, it's my testimony. To some degree or another, you just look at,

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I mean, I don't have the resources that Solomon had. I never had slaves. I wasn't into Greenpeace or anything like that, but filling life full of skydiving and scuba diving and whitewater rafting and travel and drugs and everything else that goes along with it.

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There's no satisfaction. What do you do? What about these blinders?

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Hmm. Well he doesn't stop there. And I think we turn the corner finally.

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The first corner is turned here in Ecclesiastes. And that corner turned is verses 24 through 26.

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You want answers to the meaning of life. You want to know what life is all about. It's not found in life.

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These are things to be used, enjoyed, consumed, given.

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But when you start seeing everything in your life, dear listener, I want you.

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You say to yourself, what I have in my life is a gift from God.

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You start thinking about what you deserve. So well, you could start thinking about what

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I deserve. Then everything else falls into place.

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What do I deserve? And you only have to look at the cross to figure that out, to see what Jesus was doing between noon and three when it was dark and God was judging sin on Jesus, the substitute who never sinned.

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We don't have the ability to, or the know -how, because of the fallen world, to get satisfaction from this world, right?

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How can you get that? And it's only from God who gives us the ability to enjoy things.

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And we realize, hmm, satisfaction outside of me, joy outside of me, right?

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And not just outside of me, the world, I mean, the Lord God. Verses chapter one, verse one through chapter two, verse 23,

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God's mentioned in one seemingly in passing, 41 verses. That's kind of a good little picture of what's going on here.

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You have to have God in something for there to be satisfaction. The meaning of your life, no co -listener, is not found in your life, but in the

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God, the triune God, who gives life graciously.

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I think it's fair to say that God wants you to be satisfied and have joy. I mean, matter of fact,

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He commands it. Rejoice always, and again, I say what? Rejoice. So let's take a little look at this solution to the problem of vanity, futility, vexation, frustration, striving after a wind.

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I mean, this is basically, this is the world, and it's us if we're not careful. There's nothing better for a person,

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Ecclesiastes 2 .24, than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

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This also I saw is from the hand of God, for apart from him,

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God, who can eat or who can have enjoyment? Dear listener, you're forgiven if you're a

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Christian, you're justified, you're redeemed, you're bought with a price, and because the key issue in your life is dealt with, the most important thing is dealt with, that is forgiveness.

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Now you can enjoy life. Oh, there's things to do and commands to obey. That's certainly true, but you get to enjoy life to the fullest because you see, hmm,

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I know what I deserve, and now I know what I get, and therefore, everything that I have, it's just cream, it's just gravy, it's just wonderful.

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It's frosting on the cake. I don't like the frosting that's just like the cheap frosting you get at some of the stores.

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I want the frosting that has cream cheese in it, but I'm dairy free, so that doesn't help.

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Maybe I need the old kind that's just basically whipped sugar. What's in a, I don't even, I might watch cooking shows with my wife, but I don't even know what's in a frosting.

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What's in frosting? I mean, cream cheese stuff, I know, I get that, but it must be sugar whipped up real fast or something.

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What if I could figure it out? What's in frosting? I know what you'll do. You'll send me an email telling me what's in frosting, and I'll receive that in six weeks when this show airs, and I won't even remember what you're talking about, so you don't even have to do it.

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Eating and drinking. Hey, you can get satisfaction just simply eating, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

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I ask you the question, are you enjoying life as a gift from God? Life, breath,

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I understand that part, breath. Everything's meaningless unless you say, this is from the hand of God.

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God who's by nature giving, and you just think, for God so loved the world, he gave.

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Father sending the Son by the Spirit. Someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

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But he said to him, man, who made me judge or arbiter over you? He said to him, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.

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And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall

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I do for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there

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I will store all my grain and my goods. Beware to store goads.

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And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry.

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But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?

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So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

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And he said to his disciples, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, not about your body, what you will put on.

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For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap.

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They have neither storehouse nor barn. And yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?

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And which of you being anxious can add a single hour to his lifespan? If then you are not able to do such a small thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

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Consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

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But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow it was thrown into the oven, how much more will it clothe you?

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Oh, you of little faith. And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor to be worried.

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For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.

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Instead, seek his kingdom and these things will be added to you.

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Isn't that amazing? It ties right in to everything we're talking about. Dear Christians, we don't have to have vexation, frustration, vanity, and everything else.

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Because we realize there's a God who rules, a God who reigns, a God who's sovereign, a God who loves you and has sent his

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Son, Jesus, to die for you, to live for you, to be raised for you. Jesus prays for you.

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He sent the Spirit to dwell in you. We have a God that now, when he can eat and drink and do simple things and enjoy life.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.