Joy on a Tether

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Zac Lloyd; Ecclesiastes 8:15 Joy on a Tether

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Go ahead and grab your
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Bibles and open up to Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 15. That's where we're going to be is in Ecclesiastes this morning.
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Don, six months or so ago, asked me while we were still in Indonesia if I'd preach this weekend and give an update.
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He currently, his family, I think all of them, were up at Camp Barakal this week. He was speaking to the youth up there, so he asked me to fill in.
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And he asked me to give an update on our ministry. There's a lot of new faces since we left.
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I'll just introduce my family. I have a wife, her name is Lee, a daughter who's 15, Grace. Bryce is 13,
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Reese is 11, and Jace is 9. Like Dave said, we were here the first time
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Recast met, and we were sent by Recast to Indonesia to further the mission of Recast, which is to seek followers and worshipers of Jesus Christ.
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So we moved to Indonesia in 2016. I put that photo up there just to comment on it.
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That's never happened ever where I say something and all my family laughs. That's kind of an icebreaker. That's just sort of a fictional photo that the photographer said, go ahead and everybody look at dad and laugh.
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So that's the only time I'll ever use that photo. So we went to Indonesia, and just to remind you,
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I think the next slide is where Indonesia is in the world. It's that red chain. It's an island nation.
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So this morning, I'm just going to kind of give you a high -level overview of what we've been doing in Indonesia. We got back in April, so it's been about three years that we've been there.
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I think the next slide will show you where we are. We're on the far east island there. So that's all Indonesia in white, and we're on that red spot, and kind of the top right corner in a town called
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Manakwari is where we've been serving. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world.
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I think it goes like China, India, U .S., Indonesia, but it only has about 20 percent the land mass of the
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U .S. So I think I overlaid Indonesia on top of the U .S. just to give you some perspective, but it's 90 percent
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Muslim. So there's just, they don't have as much land, but it's really spread out, but it's,
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I guess, a majority Muslim, so it is the biggest Muslim country in the world. And so our vision, our goal when moving there is to start a
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Muslim background believing church there in Manakwari. The next slide kind of gives you a perspective of how big the island that we're on.
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There's, we're there. In the top right corner says team. That's the organization we went with. This is our sending church.
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That's the organization that kind of handles a lot of our, gives us some training and gives us, you know, handles our donor receiving and that kind of stuff.
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But that's how big it is, and we have probably, I think, seven units on that island. So it's a pretty big land mass, all jungle, right on the equator.
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It's just a lot different than it is here. So what we were invited to, while it is a Muslim country, it's, you're free to be
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Christian. You have to be a faith. You have to be one of their five approved religions, but you can't evangelize.
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You can't proselytize. You can't go around just trying to convert people. They want harmony among the religions. So that just gives you an example.
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That's our house on the ground. We moved in there in September. Just to give you some perspective what it looks like on the ground there.
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It's really urban. There's homes on every, each side of us. It's all concrete. It's all tile. We can hear our neighbors washing dishes.
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It's just a, that's a benefit. While that might strike my heart, like that's not a very good spot, but there's a lot of security in being so tight like that.
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So the next slide will be what we were invited to. This is where we serve. We were invited to a community center because what that does gives us a platform to share the gospel.
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You run into people. We're like one of 10 faces in a town of 120 ,000. The first question like, what are you doing here?
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So we can answer like we work at the community center and we, where's that at? And so what we wanted to do is provide some service there to be in their society.
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We tell them we were blessed by Jesus Christ. So we want to be a blessing. What can we provide you that will be beneficial?
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And we've learned they all want to learn English. The government will pay for them to go to another first world, like a
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US, Europe, university, Australia, if they can get in there and they need to pass an
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English test. So they all want to learn English. To a person, they want to learn English. So we teach a lot of English classes there.
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We, there's an example of, you know, the dynamic and it's probably too detailed, but maybe the girl right next to me on my left,
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Rosa, she's Papuan. So those are the people that are on that island. The people that have a lighter skin, have straight hair, are from other islands.
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And so there's a lot of kind of, we're right there at that community center, right next to the university, and there's a lot of diversity, even though they're all kind of in the brown spectrum, but there's a lot of diversity.
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And a lot of times the Papuans have been reached by our organization, probably 50 years ago, for Christianity.
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And there's been a lot of churches planted among the Papuans, where we're at. But the Indonesians, who are majority
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Muslim, have been migrating there and coming to the universities, have higher education, and are bringing
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Islam. So the town that we're in is majority Islam now, in the last 15 years. So the other thing we do there, is we have a basketball court there, and we brought soccer nets.
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We mailed soccer nets, but they wanted to play basketball. I don't know if it's because we're white, or they just like basketball. So I've been really blessed by God to go there.
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What can we do, you know, to help? And they, you know, things that I know. I know English, and I know basketball.
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I don't have to practice, though. So that's been a real blessing to be able to do those things. Maybe a couple more slides. Because what it does, is
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I found it's a little bit challenging just to strike up conversations with people at the market.
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They're just, the culture's different. They do it in their religion, their social structures are at their place of worship, or with their family, or the work.
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So like a restaurant, or something to just hang out, it just doesn't happen. But what this does, one more slide back, is that basketball courts, they come up and play basketball.
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It's free. There isn't basketball courts. We provide that. So I can just go hang out with guys, and we have conversations on the side.
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It's just a really beautiful platform for us to be able to share Christ. And then our goal, we don't care if anybody learns how to play basketball, learns
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English. We want to provide legitimate skills and things to them, but our goal is to make relationships. Our missiology, our philosophy of missions, is to share
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Christ, but we want to make disciples. We don't want to say, Jesus died for you, good luck. We want to be in relationship with people.
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So the, I think that we just put up a slide of Santi and her daughter Bena, and the next one. Just, they bring us food.
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So we want to invite people to our home, we'll cook a meal for you. They don't want that. That culture doesn't want that. But what they do want to do is bring you food.
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And some of that's the Islam that, you know, they want to do good things for us to stack up rewards for them at Judgment Day.
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So that's a religious thing, but we haven't been able to serve anybody food. It's just something they don't do. But this is one of our relationships.
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We have a couple of them that are starting to blossom. And maybe one more slide. We have been able to interact with the church there.
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It's largely Papuans. We want to partner with nationals. We want them to be involved with what we're doing. So occasionally
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I get to preach. There's no English anywhere on the island, so everything is in Indonesian. So I was 40 when we went there, had to learn a new language.
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That was very hard, still learning by far. So that's kind of what we're doing.
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I think that's the end of the slides, right? The next one. Anyway, so what
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I want to do this morning to hear, kind of close up this section of an update of what we've been doing and transition to a sermon.
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You know, I could just preach, you know, let the nations be glad. Or, you know, how will they hear without someone preaching?
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But I want to talk about something that's just been in my heart and changing me over the last few months and maybe beyond that.
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So what we're going to, I guess before I wrap up the part about the update, is that you hear one thing.
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And while we moved over there, we came from this environment where Recast is kind of, I don't know if it's a motto, whatever it is, we think that believers should be growing in faith, community, and service.
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You should be, you know, growing in those three areas of the Christian life. And maybe there's more, but at least those three.
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And our experience there has been, we've been able to grow in faith. You can get good preaching via internet, via podcast, we can study, we're serving there, but what we've been missing is community.
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And that's been the hardest part is just the isolation. So we've encountered some hardships there.
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I just ask that you'd be praying for us. How you can pray for us is that we'd be emotionally healed. We desire to go back in January, but we would also find a way to have some kind of community there in Indonesia where you can just share, like we hope happens here, and we certainly experienced here, where you're able to share your struggles, share your hurts, question
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God, question things, and have people love you. And what I want you to hear is Recast has been that for us, has been.
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And while we were on the field, it was phenomenal. You guys have been supporting us financially, supporting us with prayer, you've been sending us packages, sending kids gifts, just loving us.
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And it's been really powerful. You sent people, you sent Don and Linda and their daughter
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Leah to see us. And when we're so isolated to have people come visit, it's just, it's off the charts how powerful that and how much we feel loved through that.
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Even the DeWitts, they moved, they used to go to church here, they live in South Korea, they came and visited us. Just phenomenal.
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You guys, we're using a car. Recast, the family here is providing us with a car to drive around while we're on home assignment.
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Our home, my goodness, you guys redid that whole home. It's just been, we've been blown away.
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So we don't like to compare. It's not a good thing. You compare your situation to someone else's, it usually doesn't go well.
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But I'll say this, that when you're talking to other missionaries, what their experience is from their sending church,
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Recast is winning, and it's not close. You guys are phenomenal, and we want to just give glory to God for how much we feel loved from this sending church.
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But also, pray for our healing, and then please don't put us on a pedestal.
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We're just like you. We have a lot of sin, just we're everyday joes. So sometimes we interact with people, and they're like, you guys are just amazing.
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We don't like that, so don't do that. So back to the message, where we're going to go with this is
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Ecclesiastes, which again isn't a classic missional passage. But what
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I like about the way Don walks through scriptures every week, he's in the same book, verse by verse, so that you get exposed to all the verses.
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And he doesn't just pick and choose his favorite passage, or let's talk about marriage for a few weeks, or let's talk about parenting.
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Those are good things, but what they don't do is give you an opportunity to come in contact with some of the difficult passages.
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And so I acknowledge, and I think that's the best way, but I got one Sunday. We're going to look at the book of Ecclesiastes, the whole thing today.
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So that's a little bit different than what we normally do, and so while you might come across Ecclesiastes in your
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Bible reading plan, just kind of drive through it, and yeah, it's all vanity. I get it, that's nice. We're going to at least get out of the car this morning, look at the skyline, walk around, get a feel for the main themes of Ecclesiastes, rather than what you normally experience, where you guys kind of get out and just kind of camp out, go down every alley.
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What's going on in the book of Ecclesiastes? So that's what we're going to be doing, just kind of highlight. And I invite you to check me.
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If you hear something here that doesn't sound right, please evaluate it. I've prayed over this, and I'm going to be judged for what
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I teach here, but it's up to you to make sure that I'm rightly dividing the word. Ecclesiastes might strike some of you as maybe a depressing book.
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I don't know what comes to your mind. Some of you, it's like a funeral type thing, you know, it's all dust to dust, or it's all vanity.
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It can be a depressing book, and I think that kind of what has struck me is that kind of strikes a chord, that there's so much of our day, day -to -day life just seems like toil, just vain repetition.
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Like, are we really making an impact for the kingdom or anything in an eternal consequence?
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You know, we just, we load the dishwasher, we put it away, fill it back up, we mow the lawn, we just get in our car, we go to work, we come home.
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Like, what are we really doing? And I borrowed, I read a few books in preparing for this, and this is the one
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I like best by Douglas Wilson, and he describes it, the joy at the end of a tether.
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And so what I want to do this morning is kind of walk through three points, is that we are on, number one, we're on, we're not able to, we don't have the power to enjoy the toil.
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Number two, God is sovereign. He's in control of everything. Number three, He gives us the power to enjoy the toil.
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So that's where we're going to be going today. I invite you to read with me Ecclesiastes chapter 8, verse 15, then
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I'll pray, and then we'll worship God through song. So verse 15 of chapter 8 in Ecclesiastes says this, and I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.
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Let's pray. Father God in heaven, Lord, we are gathered this morning today to meet with you, to commune with you, to commune with your people.
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God, this is a privilege and an honor. We invite you to send your Holy Spirit this morning, that we would be able to worship you first here through song, and then as we hear your word,
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God, that it would transform us, that through your word and your spirit working in each and every one of us, and then being in community, being in contact with one another,
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God, that we would be changed from one degree of glory to the next, and that through even the mundane activities of our lives,
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God, that we could give you praise as from your hand, and accept them, and God, that we would just worship you through everything that we do, and it's in Christ's name we pray.
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Amen. Thank you, Dave, and everyone up here just serving us through, you know, using your gifts and talents to help us worship
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God in song. I really appreciate that. So again, we're in Ecclesiastes this morning, and let's kind of give you a little background.
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My theology went through a bit of a transformation maybe 15 or so years ago in the notion of that God is just the idea that God is big, and I think
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Tozer said, what we think about God is what matters most about us. What you think about him, and I agree with that.
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I think it's our theology affects everything. How we think about this world in light of God affects what we do, and honestly, that is a bit of that was what led to us going to Indonesia, coming in contact with Romans chapters 9 through 11, and discussing them with people smarter, and more informed, and have studied these things better, and through prayer just to see how big
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God really was, and so I'm really excited because we as a church are about to go through Romans 9 through 11, and if your experience is anything like mine,
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I'm super excited because you'll be joining us in Indonesia pretty soon, but maybe not. Might not go that way, but so I think of my theology used to be kind of like this.
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There's this cosmic, the spiritual war going on. There's God against Satan, and God is good, and Satan's bad, and when
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I sin, it's kind of like, you know, I disappointed God, so God gave Jesus to kind of like, all right, get back over here.
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Do better next time. I don't know if it was exactly if I would use those words, but that's kind of what was feeding my everyday life was that kind of theology.
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But then I started to see God as the creator, and sustainer, and in every detail of everything, and that the
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Bible really wasn't about me. It wasn't about God saving me.
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It's certainly that is a message in there that God loved us. I don't want to say it's not that, but that's not the supreme thing, but then
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I started to put those lenses on to see that God is about something bigger than that. It starts showing up on every passage, every page, so that passage is a classic passage like the 23rd
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Psalm. If you're probably familiar, the Lord is my shepherd, right? He's my shepherd.
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He makes, I shall not want, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
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He makes me down the paths of righteousness. He leads me in the paths of righteousness.
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So I saw that's all about me, but if you read it, why is he doing that? The next phrase is he leads me in the path of righteousness in the 23rd
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Psalm for his namesake. For his namesake he's doing all this, and the whole scripture is pointing to that, and this universe is not about me.
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It's about God. The scripture points to God, but God is not only, it's not about him, but he's supremely sovereign.
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He's in control of everything. It's not like, oh, Satan got away with one. Let's see what we can do. It's just this mindset, so that thinking back, like just the stuff that was so ingrained in me, the certain
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Bible stories, whether it's Pharaoh, you know, Moses, he won't let the people go, but you look at the beginning of Exodus chapter 2,
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God hardened Pharaoh's heart, or you know, even the story of Isaac and Esau and Jacob, they're twins.
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God chooses Jacob, not Esau, while they're yet in the womb, before they've done any good or evil. He chooses
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Jacob. Moving to the, or certainly think of Joseph, and his brothers sell him into slavery.
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He spends 17 years in an Egyptian jail. It seemed like things weren't going so good for him.
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At the end, when the brothers come back and they're reconciled, Joseph says, you meant it for evil,
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God meant it for good. So you just, you start reading that. Every page seems, every story is really about him.
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You see Jesus praying to the Father for disciples, and he gets 12 of them, and one of them is
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Judas. We see in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is baptized. He, you know, comes up out of the water.
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The Holy Spirit comes down like a dove on him, and God the Father says, behold, my son, in whom I am well pleased.
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And in Mark's account, the next verse says the Holy Spirit leads Jesus. Where does he lead him?
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Into the desert for 40 days to be tempted by Satan. God leads him there. So all of a sudden, like, wow, what in the world?
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God is really doing things that I didn't think he was doing, and it's not that he's fighting.
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He's done it all. He's in control of everything, and so then how does that theology play itself out? In my life has been
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God's done it all. Let's get after it. To live is gain, or to die is gain, to live is
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Christ. So let's just love God, love his people. That's the motivation. Isn't like, well,
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I gotta do this right, or I gotta, what about my sin? Just get after it, and that's just where I was and where I still am.
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None of that's changed. I still see God as completely sovereign, but then living in Indonesia and even reflecting back on my, a lot of my days on this planet, just reflecting on the toil.
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So much of my life just seems to be toil. Like, so much of my energy isn't really that meaningful.
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I'm not doing anything that really affects eternity. I think Ecclesiastes has some helpful wisdom to impart, and we're going to walk through it, like I said, just to give you the overview.
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Ecclesiastes is a book of wisdom. It's classified in that genre as wisdom, like Proverbs, Psalms.
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It's in Job. Those are wisdom literature, and this book starts off with the author saying, this is the preacher.
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This is what the preacher says, the first verse, and the preacher talks the whole time, and then at the end, the author comes back and says, these are the preacher's words.
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This is the summary. So we could just read the summary and like, okay, got it, but I think there's a lot more. We miss a lot of it, and certainly when we look it back at Ecclesiastes from the
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New Testament, we want to squish it all. No, we have eternity to look for. Jesus, you know, we have a lot more to live for than just divinity, but there is,
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I don't want to squash all of it. There's some value in it, and that's what I want us to hear this morning, because again, where we're going is, we can't, in our own power, we can't find satisfaction in our toil.
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It's just going to be toil. God's in control. Number two, God's controlling everything, and number three,
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God does give us power to have joy in those things, and there's a reason before it. So turn with me to chapter one of Ecclesiastes.
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We're going to read several different passages. Just kind of, again, look at the skyline of Ecclesiastes. Verses 2 through 11 is where we're going to start, and this is kind of, if you've read
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Ecclesiastes, this will kind of be the epitome of what you're probably familiar with, because this kind of repeats itself throughout the text.
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So Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verses 2 through 11. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher.
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So again, this is, the author is now recording what the preacher says. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
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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.
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The sun rises, the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north, around and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.
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All the streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.
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All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
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What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There's nothing new under the sun.
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Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new? It's already been in the ages before us.
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So that's a go, right? That's encouraging. No, that's kind of discouraging to hear that.
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And this notion of vanity, that's what the ESV translates the word, I think in Hebrew is hevel, translates it.
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It's in the Ecclesiastes 38 times, so that's kind of the theme. And it's kind of a hard word apparently for us to translate into English, so this is what they've done in the various verses.
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They've used vanity in those, futility, and that's the same word that we read last week in Don's sermon.
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And that's, it's really kind of interesting that Don's sermon last week, right in the middle of Romans, was really about how the creation is groaning.
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And we're, it really impacted me thinking about this week, and hopefully you're thinking about just craning, looking for the glory of this to come.
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But futility, meaningless, that's the, that's the vanity when it's used here. These are the words that we want to have in our minds.
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So, because I think vanity can mean different things to different people. But also, I saw words like smoke or vapor.
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So, everything is vanity. It's just that idea that there, oh, there's smoke. Oh, I don't got it. Oh, there's some, I don't got it.
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You know, it's just that it's, you can't grasp it. So, that's, that's one of the themes is vanity, and it's all just like vapor, it's smoke.
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But also, the theme, you heard it there, and it's throughout, is under the sun. And so, while we read this text, we see there's nothing new under the sun.
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There's, it's, you know, all the days of our lives under the sun. It's that phrase, and that's really highlighting, under the sun is not eternity.
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It's not all of creation. It's not ever. It's just here, in this creation. That's what we're talking to.
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So, the scope, when we hear some of these phrases, put that in your mind, under the sun, is referring to our limited existence.
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It's not talking about eternity, present, and past. Talking about right now. And, you know, we live in Manikwari, Indonesia, and there, it's a coastal town, and they have, so we can go to the sea.
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We can go see the Pacific Ocean, and that's really a, we found to be a profitable exercise. It's not, it might sound glamorous, but it's not quite that glamorous.
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There's just trash, and it's just a little bit different experience than just kind of hanging out at the beach. But what it does do is just kind of show us the vastness of God.
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But one thing that strikes me, whenever I go there, I'm just kind of toiling, is just to see the sea coming in and coming out. And you can kind of have the same experience in South Haven.
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Just, the waves come in, and they go out. In and out. Over and over, and it's, nothing's really being accomplished.
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The tide's in, day in, day out. It's just like our daily lives. Just, we're going through the same motion, over, we change the kids' diapers, we, you know, we prepare the food, we eat the food, we clean up.
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It's just over and over, and it can be a bit depressing. And I think, even thinking about the phrase that there's nothing new under the sun, like, oh yeah, you know, there's phones, and, but if you, in a fundamental sense,
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I don't know that there really is anything new. We've been always trying to create new things and make our jobs easier, but eventually, we're still cleaning up, and we're still digging holes, filling them up, making things, tearing them down.
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And in that sense, there's nothing new. And it's all vanity. It's all like smoke. If that's what you want, if that's your focus, if that's your motivation, it's going to be like that smoke.
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It's just going to vanish. But there's gift in this. There's a gift in this wisdom. And we have to be honest with ourselves, because sometimes, that really is what's behind what we do each day.
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Like, we can go through those things thinking about, well, I know soon enough we're going to get a new house, or we're going to get a new, you know, whatever it is.
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Something new, it's going to be different. And that's a lie. We can't allow that to help us sort of tolerate the futility today, knowing that, well, in a little bit better, in a little while, it's going to get a little bit better, as soon as this thing changes.
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So I worked at MPI Research here in Matawan, now Charles River, for 17 years as a toxicologist.
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And even there, you know, just that idea of that struggling with my existence, like, what am
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I doing with my life? So I tell myself, like, look, I am Jesus's ambassador there. I am salt and light.
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That's what, I'm his representative there in that people group. That they, it's not a church. They're not all Christians there.
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That's my opportunity to share the gospel. And that's right and true. That's not wrong. But what
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I was confronted with, it seemed like day after day, I'm not sharing Christ. I'm not sharing my faith.
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It's just, maybe people see me. I'm just sending these emails, analyzing data. Like, am I making a difference?
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Seems like complete vanity. And then, so then I take a new mindset, and I think, well, we're there.
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The goal is to create new medicines, and we're going to eliminate, or at least limit, suffering.
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We're going to allow humans to live longer. Okay, so that'll kind of carry me through these daily struggles, these daily, just mundane tasks.
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But even if we're, we think that to its logical conclusion, we're just completely successful, we knock it out of the park, beyond our wildest dreams, people are still going to suffer.
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People are still going to die. That's not going to, we're not going to have a, it's like smoke.
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Like, that's our motivation. Like, oh, you can't quite get there. And even, you know, moving to Indonesia, there's a sense of that.
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Like, we live in these homes, and we, for the first year in Manikwari, we have to, our water comes from the rain.
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So we have these big buckets. You kind of see them, I sometimes see them like on farm property, where they'd catch water off their barns and stuff.
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And we had like 5 ,000 liters, a little bit elevated, so we could catch the rain. But, you know, we have little screens on top of those, and stuff gets in there, and not just leaves, but like bugs, and animals die, and stuff.
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So you're always trying to get water. It's raining, we got to go ahead and try and wash our clothes while it's raining, so we can use it and capture the rain, or use the rain while it's coming.
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Then you got to filter it, and you got to wash the dishes, and just moving to Indonesia, where I thought, now I'm doing God's work.
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Now I'm sharing the gospel, these people never heard it. So much of my life is just taking care of clean water, way more than it is here.
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And I really appreciate coming back, technology, and dishes, and dishwashers,
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I mean, and washing machines, and dryers, and just the fact that water just comes out of spouts, fresh, clean, just wherever you want.
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It's amazing. And I'll just pause here, because I don't want anyone to hear that work is meaningless.
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There's something called the cultural mandate. Like in the garden, God created us, and he told us, be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth.
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We're supposed to be working from now on. That's why we were created. That was before the fall. Our work is good.
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Keep doing your jobs, keep using your gifts for God's glory, for God's glory, and making mankind better.
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Like, just the inventions and stuff that's here is so much better than that third world country. And we don't want to worship those things, but I can really appreciate it.
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I think we can make a real difference in a limited sense, and that's the rub.
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So we're going to make this new invention, make our life easier, but it's in the scope of eternity.
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It's not really. So don't make that your motivation, and that's kind of the rub of it. And so then
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I start thinking, well, maybe it's just a wisdom issue. You know, like, if I had more wisdom,
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I could find out a way to apply my efforts that instead of 90 % of my time being just sort of mundane, trivial task,
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I could get it to, like, 70 % or 60 % of just that, and then 40%, I'm, like, sharing my faith, and I'm really doing something for the kingdom.
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So read with me in Ecclesiastes, a response to that type of thinking, still in chapter 1, verses 14 through 17.
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It's a kind of response. If you had all the wisdom and all the knowledge, it says, I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
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What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said in my heart,
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I've acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge, and I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly, knew it all, and I perceived that this is also but a striving after the wind.
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So after acquiring all this understanding, all this knowledge just still chasing. So this is a person that's done that, and I think it points to our limited, our finiteness, our limited experience of this reality.
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And it's not a magical quote, but I have a quote from C .S. Lewis in his book, In Mere Christianity. I remember reading it in college, how he kind of puts words to our experiences.
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Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along.
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There's room for very little in each moment. That is what time is like, and that's our existence, where we are limited and finite.
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But I think that's the promise of knowledge and wisdom, is that somehow we get enough knowledge, then we're so limited.
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We have no idea what's going to happen, and some of that can be just our experience in the world. I think of, maybe that's the promise of sort of big data, artificial intelligence, and saber metrics, or whatever it might be.
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If we just measure enough stuff, you see it in the healthcare world. They talk about it's going to be personalized medicine.
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We're going to measure all just your data, and we'll know what to give you. And maybe that's a good thing, but in the end, it's not going to get you what you ultimately want.
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Or, you know, I like sports, and they measure all these just minute detail of the athletes running around, every step they take, and when they ran, how the team does, and then if you get the right guys in the right situation for their metrics, then some guys win a game against some other humans.
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Like, it's just, what are we doing? You know, that's fine. They even made a movie about that idea,
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Saber Metrics. There's about the Oakland Athletics, a baseball team. They were the first ones to employ that kind of technology, or using the big data.
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They never won a championship. They made a movie about it, and they couldn't even win a championship, even with that. And I think, no matter how far we go with our knowledge and wisdom, it's just limited.
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We are at one moment at a time. We have every financial advisor you've ever spoke to says, past performances is not predictive of future results.
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We know that. We don't know what's going to happen. We can kind of read some general principles, but by and large, there's no guarantee.
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And I think all of it is just screaming, like Romans 1, that God is in control.
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We are without excuse. The universe is telling us about the eternal godhood, that he is eternal. So, we got this side.
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So, it seems like the one ditch over here is, like, it's all just vanity. Whatever. I just live my dumb days.
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Or, the other one is, well, might as well just go all in. Just eat, drink, and be merry.
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Get everything out of this life I can. Just seek pleasure.
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Maybe that's a strategy. And so, our boy here in Ecclesiastes has, he gave that a shot. Read with me in chapter 2, in verses 9 through 11.
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Beginning of chapter 2 is this long stretch where he talks about all the stuff that he did. He went all in on what this world has to offer, and he did it all.
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But, we're just going to kind of get to his conclusion in verses 9 through 11 of chapter 2. He says, All was vanity, and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
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So, we just kind of hear this again and again, like, it's just, whether it's wealth, power, fame, whatever we're pursuing, maybe we don't always acknowledge that that's what's motivating us.
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But, if we're honest with ourself, I think we can capture a hope in us that's not founded in eternity.
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So, we see Solomon, like, he had all of it. We even see people in our current era that seem like they have everything.
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They have all the power, they have all the money, or whatever it might be, and you know they're not satisfied.
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It's like we hit this glass ceiling, like, there it is, and you just can't get there. If it's chemicals, we want more.
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Whatever it is, if it's wealth, we're just always going to want more. And, maybe you've experienced that. So, there's some wisdom here.
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I think of just, like, great fame. Some examples, like, who's the greatest college men's basketball coach ever?
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Maybe someone you say, John Wooden. You know, he dominated for, like, 10 titles in 12 years. Most of you don't even know him.
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That was in our culture in this time. You want to know how many people in Indonesia know about John Wooden? None. And, he dominated that era, and he was on the newspaper, or somebody like, currently, like,
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Steph Curry, super popular. Most of you probably have heard of Steph Curry, a basketball player in the NBA. So much, so popular, so much fame, that shoe companies will pay him 30 to 40 million dollars a year just to wear their clothes.
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I read an article that says that his value, his fame to their company, he's worth 14 billion dollars to their bottom line.
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Just his fame. I play basketball with people in Indonesia. They're aware of basketball in the
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NBA. They don't know Steph Curry. That's today, in this world, in this time. Imagine, whatever you're thinking of, just bring it to its logical conclusion.
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The point is this, it's not going to satisfy. We're not going to get there. So, just pouring in on that, on that idea of pleasure.
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One more illustration. I just love a couple things, like, I think there is something about being able to taste food that makes us uniquely human.
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Like, animals, I don't think they really enjoy food like we do. And so, like, my favorites are a grilled steak with some blue cheese on it, which is the right way to do it, and diet
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Mountain Dew, and maybe even a Michigan game. And then, I'm like, I'm right at that glass ceiling, like, oh,
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I'm there. But good thing, or bad thing about Indonesia is that they don't have much beef.
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There's certainly no steak. There's no cheese. And Recast was kind enough to send a care package.
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They sent eight diet Mountain Dews in it. And so, like, yes. So, I get to, I'm going to savor these.
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I'm going to make these last. And so, my kid's going to testify, like, I would fill up a glass full of ice and fill it with the
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Mountain Dew. So, it goes real slow. I get really diluted. And then, you know, we're like, depending on whether or not there's time change, we're like 13 or 14 hours different.
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And so, we would watch sporting events usually after the event, but we would watch March Madness, and we watched Michigan play in a basketball game.
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And when the game started, I'd start drinking my Mountain Dew, just try to get the maximum out of this moment. And eventually, you know, that year, they did really good.
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So, every time they played, I rewarded myself. I got to drink a diet Mountain Dew. And each time, they won five games in the tournament.
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They made it all the way to the final. I'm like, praise God, we get to have five diet Mountain Dews in, like, three weeks. But every time
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I got to the end of that class, it was just smoke. So, enjoy. The point is this, and don't drink those.
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Don't pursue those things. But for what end? Enjoy them in the moment. Enjoy your today, but that's not our pursuit.
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Well, if I had a vat of diet Mountain Dew on tap, and I just had it piped in through a straw, it just wouldn't, it wouldn't satisfy.
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And I think I'm probably beating a dead horse here. So, we'll move on to Ecclesiastes chapter three. There's a time for everything.
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Many of you are familiar with this passage. We're going to kind of shift from, we don't have the power to enjoy the futility.
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God is sovereign, the second point. So, let's read this kind of a beautiful poem. Many of you are probably familiar with it. Chapter three, verse two, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
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I think that's our experience. We don't just experience whatever it is, life, from now on.
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We don't experience death from now on, whatever. There's a season, there's a timing for everything. But what it isn't is descriptive.
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It's not marching orders. Here's the season, so therefore you should. There's no instruction there.
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But what it is, is describing God. He's the one setting these seasons. Time to live, a time to die.
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None of us control that, right? So this is talking about his sovereignty.
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So you think about it, there's a time for war. You think about this, and each one of those is a pairing. All those bad things, a time to tear, time to tear down, time to hate, time to murder.
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I think they said kill. Maybe that's different, yeah. So, excuse me, so the idea there is, he's not trying to pick a theological point, like God's in all of that.
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He's just pointing to it, like look, God's in control of that. This isn't, you gotta try and read the tea leaves and pick which season it is and try and predict it.
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You can't do that. We're not gonna be able to see the whole thing, and so read down with me a little bit further in verse nine, same chapter.
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What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.
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All these busy things. 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
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God has done from the beginning to the end. So each season, we don't see it.
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We see this narrow lens right now. We're experiencing one moment after another. When we get, we can't see eternity, but God is doing something really good and beautiful.
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And so I think, if you think about Romans 8, 28, we know that all things work together for the good, for those that love
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God and are called according to his purpose. That good, be careful how you define it. God is good, might not be what you think of good.
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God's all -powerful, he's all -loving, he's wise, and he's patient. He's not gonna give you what you want, right?
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That's not gonna be what's best for you. And so there's this notion there that we just need to trust God, and the wisdom really is, the blessing is in the problem.
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These seasons, it's acceptance, it's from God. We are created and we are in the hands of a creator.
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And I think that verse 14 is kind of appropriate response to coming to grips with that. I have perceived that whatever
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God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it or taken away from it. God has done it so that people fear before him.
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I think that's appropriate response is just fear. And so the argument so far, again, we cannot derive satisfaction from our toil.
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God's in control, and it's coupled with this thorny acceptance that God's sovereign over everything, in control, and so we experience these sort of hard things, this toil.
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But God alone gives us the power to enjoy this sort of unending parade of meaningless tasks.
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Whatever it is, whatever you're cleaning, whatever you're building, it just seems meaningless in the temporary. So I'm gonna do a quick survey.
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You have to be quick with your Bible. What I see is the good news of Ecclesiastes. Turn back to chapter two, verse 24.
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This is kind of the argument that I think is being presented, and it goes around and around in the book.
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It says in verse 24, there is nothing better for a person 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. Verse 25, for apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
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So I think the world seeks enjoyment in those things, and we know it's just smoke. We, as believers, accepting it from God, can have enjoyment in these things.
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Chapter three, verse 22, back to chapter three. He says in verse 22, so I saw that there is nothing better, nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot.
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Who can bring him to see what will be after him? So we just have this lot, this momentary acceptance of what's in our lives, and to enjoy it.
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And I don't know how this is hitting you, like, okay, now
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I'm supposed to enjoy it. I feel like, it reminds me that there's a Bob Newhart parody of a psychiatrist a long time ago, where, you know, patients come into him with whatever their problem is, if it's,
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I don't know, maybe they're afraid of heights, and so the patient describes the psychiatrist, and he has the solution.
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Just stop doing that. Just keeps saying, stop doing that. He says that like every time a patient has a problem,
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I can solve that, just stop feeling that way. It kind of strikes me, or maybe it's striking you, like, oh, changing diapers,
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I should have joy in this. Oh, why didn't you say so? Like, it's just not, I think we need a little bit more weight behind it, so we're gonna read a few more passages, because there really is deep biblical joy,
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I think, that the idea of joy, not like elation, but maybe a peaceful, you know, contentment, as in a gift from God.
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So chapter five, verse 18, this is our home stretch here, running through these passages, again, just kind of surveying
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Ecclesiastes, the main points. Five, verse 18, behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun, the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot, and we see it again.
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Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power, we see it there. God gives power to enjoy them.
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God gives power, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil, this is the gift of God.
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It's a gift to receive that power, to enjoy those things and accepting them. Chapter seven, verse 14.
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Chapter seven, verse 14, in the day of prosperity, be joyful, and in the day of adversity, consider this.
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God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.
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So we just have this narrow view, but God's the one giving the power to enjoy them, and we started today reading chapter eight, verse 15.
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The preacher here being reported says, I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun, and one more, chapter nine, verse seven.
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Trying to beat home this point, because it's throughout, God gives this power to enjoy these things, it says go, chapter nine, verse seven, go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.
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God has already approved what you do. We can be so caught up with anxiety about, I need to be doing the right thing, and it almost echoes, or Ephesians 2 .10
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echoes that, God has prepared works beforehand so that we would walk in them. We're in Christ, God has approved what we do.
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Don't sweat it, enjoy your toil. It says eat bread with joy, drink, enjoy.
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So often we just mow through our food, and living apart from this food, it's really good.
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Just enjoy it, take a moment to enjoy it. You don't have to eat rice every day. Enjoy life, in verse eight, let the garments always be white, let your garments always be white.
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Let not oil be lacking on your head. Those are sort of celebratory, external signs that you're enjoying these things.
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Verse nine, enjoy life with the wife whom you love. All the days, this is the best part.
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Enjoy life with your wife when all the days of your vain life, your vain life.
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And Doug Wilson, he paraphrases it, he says all your stupid little days.
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It's not something you put on a card, but that's the reality. Like if you think about, this is our reality, this is it, these are kind of dumb little days, but we can look forward, like Don preached last week, we got the full revelation, we're groaning towards, all things are gonna be made good, we're not gonna have the sin.
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But there is joy in today, in this portion, in our toil. Hopefully you're kind of hearing this analogy.
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And what Doug Wilson did I thought was best was he said, and that's the title of the sermon I stole from him, is joy on the end of the tether.
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So we have these things in our life, we're pursuing them, and if you go all in, 100, as far as you can take them, it's just emptiness, vanity.
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But it's on a tether, it's accepting it's from the hand of God that that's where the joy is. It's sort of like the analogy of a kite.
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Maybe you've heard something like this before, like a kite, it's just rip -roaring and it wants to go as far as it can go, it's out in the wind and you're holding onto it, and you're holding it back.
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It wants to just go, just like we want to go as far as this pleasure will take us.
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But as soon as you cut that string, it falls. And that's how pleasure in this life is, that's how all of our pursuits are, without being tethered to God and his wisdom, accepting them from his hand as good, there's no joy, so we have to accept that.
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So I mentioned that in the beginning of Ecclesia, when we started, that the author gives a conclusion, that's how we're gonna wrap up our time here this morning.
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The concluding paragraph in chapter 12, verse nine, so we heard all of this teaching from the preacher, and this is how he summarized it.
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The author of Ecclesia, he's in verse nine, says, besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging.
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Again, this is a summary of what we've just heard. Many proverbs with great care. The preacher sought to find words of delight and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
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The words of the wise are like goads, goads are these things of correction, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings.
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They are given by one shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these, of making many books, there's no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
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In verse 13, in the end of the matter, all has been heard, we heard everything he has to say, this preacher, fear
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God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
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So maybe we could just, again, I think if you skip to that, oh, fear God and do what he says, got it.
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That's not really what, there's a lot more to Ecclesiastes than that, but that kind of anchors us, or maybe relieves some anxiety, and I think some of our anxieties in today are from not being in the present moment, not experiencing now, today.
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We have anxieties typically about future and past, like things bad happen to us in our story, and they continue to control us today, or we're worried about what's gonna happen tomorrow, whatever it might be.
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But if we just acknowledge today as a gift from God, there is freedom in that. But one of the things that we have anxiety is like, it's not gonna be made right.
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Like, we see wicked prospering, and we see righteous suffering, we can trust
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God with the judgment. And so this hasn't been an overly gospel -focused message, but our hope and trust is only in Jesus Christ.
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We are all gonna be judged. So God has prepared these works for us to walk in. We are in Christ walking as we're gonna be judged, and if we're standing on anything, but the shed blood of Jesus Christ at the day of judgment, it's gonna be smoke, it's gonna go up in flames, and we'll have to bear the brunt of an eternal consequence for our sin.
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So that's the good news. This message has been largely for Christians and how to live out your life in Christ.
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But if you're not in Christ, this is an opportunity to trust in Jesus Christ. We've all sinned, we've all fallen short of the glory of God.
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Everyone in this room is in the same boat. We need Jesus, and we need his forgiveness through his shed blood.
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So we do that every week at Recast. As often as we meet together, we celebrate communion.
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It's a time to celebrate and remember what Christ has done for us.
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So we'll take their station set up in the back, we're gonna sing here in a moment, it's an opportunity for all of us, in the presence of one another, to demonstrate that I am too,
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I am trusting in Christ and that cracker representing his broken body for us and that cup of juice as his shed blood for the forgiveness of sin.
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It's an opportunity for us to reflect on that, enjoy it, and celebrate what has been done for us, that we have eternity secure in Christ.
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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for giving us our breath.
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We thank you for giving us this day. And just the, that all of our works have been approved by you.
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We can walk and we can walk in joy, knowing that everything is from your hand. And I know that there are hard things for us to struggle with.
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Just pray you give us a peace and an understanding and trust of you, but ultimately knowing, it's like Don talked about last week, we're groaning towards redemption.
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And when you come back and we celebrate what you've done through your shed blood this morning, through your son's shed blood for our sins this morning.