Ecclesiastes 8:15 Joy on a Tether

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Ecclesiastes 8:15 and the Theme of Joy in Ordinary Life

Go ahead and grab your Bibles and open up to Ecclesiastes 8, verse 15. That's where we're gonna be, is in Ecclesiastes this morning. Don, six months or so ago, asked me while we were still in Indonesia if I'd preach this weekend and give a update.

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. And he asked me to give an update on our ministry. There's a lot of new faces since we left.

I'll just introduce my family. I have a wife, her name is Lee, a daughter who's 15, Grace. Bryce is 13, Reese is 11, and Jace is nine. Like Dave said, we were here the first time 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.

We moved to Indonesia in 2016. I put that photo up there just to comment on it. 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.

So that's the only time I'll ever use that photo. But, so we went to Indonesia, and just to remind you, I think the next slide is where Indonesia is in the world. It's that red chain, it's an island nation.

So this morning, I'm just gonna 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. 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 Manakwari is where we've been serving. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world.

I think it goes like China, India, U .S., Indonesia. But it only has about 20 the land mass of the U .S., so I think I overlaid Indonesia on top of the U .S., just to give you some perspective, but it's 90 Muslim.

So there's just, they don't have as much land, but it's really spread out, but it's, 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 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. We're there. In the top right corner, it says team. That's the organization we went with. This is our sending church.

That's the organization that kind of handles a lot of our, gives us some training, and gives us, you know, handles our donor reseating, and that kind of stuff. 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. 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 Christian.

You have to be a faith. You have to be one of their five approved religions. But you can't evangelize. 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. That's our house on the ground. We moved in there in September. Just to give you some perspective of what it looks like on the ground there. 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. 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.

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. 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? 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.

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? And we've learned they all want to learn English. The government will pay for them to go to another first world, like a US, Europe, university, Australia, if they can get in there.

And they need to pass an 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. 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, 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. 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. And a lot of times the Papuans have been reached by our organization probably 50 years ago for Christianity.

And there's been a lot of churches planted among the Papuans, where we're at. But the Indonesians, who are majority Muslim, have been migrating there and coming to the universities, have higher education, and are bringing 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. 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. What can we do to help? And things that I know, I know English and I know basketball.

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 I found it's a little bit challenging just to strike up conversations with people at the market.

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. 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 court, they come up and play basketball. It's free. There isn't a basketball court, so we provide that. So I can just go hang out with guys and we have conversations on the side.

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 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 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. So I think that we just put up a slide of Santi and her daughter, Bena, and the next one.

Just, they bring us food. 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. 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.

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. 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. It's largely Papuans. We want to partner with nationals. We want them to be involved with what we're doing. So occasionally 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. That was very hard, still learning by far. So that's kind of what we're doing.

I think that's the end of the slides, right? The next one. Anyway, so what I want to do this morning to here kind of close up this section of an update of what we've been doing and transition to a sermon.

I could just preach, don't let the nations be glad, or how will they hear without someone preaching? 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.

So what we're gonna, I guess before I wrap up the part about the update, is that you hear one thing, 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.

You should be growing in those three areas of the Christian life. And maybe there's more, but at least those three. 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.

And that's been the hardest part is just the isolation. So we've encountered some hardships there. I just ask that you 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 God, question things, and have people love you.

And what I want you to hear is Recast has been that for us, has been, and while we were on the field, 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.

And it's been really powerful. You sent people, you sent Don and Linda and their daughter Leah to see us, and when we're so isolated, to have people come visit and it's just, it's off the charts how powerful that, and how much we feel loved through that.

Even the DeWitts, they used to go to church here, they live in South Korea, they came and visited us. Just phenomenal. 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.

Our home, my goodness, you guys redid that whole home. It's just been, we've been blown away. 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.

But I'll say this, that when we're talking to other missionaries, what their experience is from their sending church, 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.

But also, pray for our healing, and then please don't put us on a pedestal. 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, we don't like that, so don't do that.

Ecclesiastes and the Limits of Human Effort

So back to the message, where we're gonna go with this is Ecclesiastes, which again, isn't a classic missional passage, but what 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, 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.

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. And so I acknowledge that, I think that's the best way, but I got one Sunday, we're gonna look at the book of Ecclesiastes, the whole thing today.

So that's a little bit different than what we normally do, and so while you might come across Ecclesiastes in your Bible reading plan, just kind of drive through it, and yeah, it's all vanity, I get it, that's nice, we're gonna 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, what's going on in the book of Ecclesiastes.

So that's what we're gonna be doing, just kind of highlight, and I invite you to check me, if you hear something here that doesn't sound right, please, evaluate it, I've prayed over this, and I'm gonna be judged for what 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, I don't know what comes to your mind, some of you, it's like a funeral type thing, it's all dust to dust, or it's all vanity, it can't 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, like are we really making an impact for the kingdom, or anything in an eternal consequence?

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, like what are we really doing? And I borrowed, I read a few books in preparing for this, and this is the one I like best, by Douglas Wilson, and he describes it, the joy at the end of a tether.

And so what I wanna do this morning is kind of walk through three points, is that we are, number one, we're not able to, we don't have the power to enjoy the toil. Number two, God is sovereign, he's in control of everything.

Number three, he gives us the power to enjoy the toil. So that's where we're gonna be going today. I invite you to read with me, Ecclesiastes chapter eight, verse 15, then I'll pray, and then we'll worship God through song.

So verse 15 of chapter eight 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.

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. God, this is a privilege and an honor, and 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, 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, God, that we would be changed from one degree of glory to the next, and that through even the mundane activities of our lives, 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, amen.

Thank you, Dave and everyone up here just serving us through using your gifts and talents to help us worship 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.

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 Tozer said, what we think about God is what matters most about us.

What you think about him, and I agree with that. Our theology affects everything. How we think about this world in light of God affects what we do, and honestly, a bit of that was what led to us going to Indonesia, coming in contact with Romans 9 -11 and discussing them with people smarter and more informed and have studied these things better, and through prayer, just to see how big God really was, and so I'm really excited because we as a church are about to go through Romans 9 -11, and if your experience is anything like mine, 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 my theology used to be kind of like this. There's this cosmic, the spiritual war going on. There's God against Satan, and God is good, and Satan's bad, and when 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.

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, but then I started to see God as the creator and sustainer and in every detail of everything, and that the Bible really wasn't about me.

It wasn't about God saving me. 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 I started to put those lenses on and I started to see that God is about something bigger than that, and it starts showing up on every passage, every page, so that passage is a classic passage, like the 23rd Psalm.

If you're probably familiar, the Lord is my shepherd, right? He's my shepherd. He makes, I shall not want, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He makes me down the paths of righteousness.

He leads me in the paths of righteousness, 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 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, it's about God. The scripture points to God, but God is not only, it's not about him, but he's supremely sovereign.

He's in control of everything. It's not like, oh, Satan got away with one. Let's see what we can do. Just this mindset, so that thinking back, like just the stuff that was so ingrained in me, the certain 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 two, God hardened Pharaoh's heart, or even the story of Isaac and Esau and Jacob, they're twins.

God chooses Jacob, not Esau, while they're yet in the womb, before they had done any good or evil. He chooses Jacob. Move into the, or certainly think of Joseph, and his brothers sell him into slavery, send 17 years in an Egyptian jail.

Seemed like things weren't going so good for him. At the end, when the brothers come back, and they're reconciled, Joseph says, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good. So you just, you start reading that.

Every page seems, every story is really about him. You see, Jesus praying to the Father for disciples, and he gets 12 of them, and one of them is Judas. We see in the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus is baptized.

He, you know, comes up out of the water, the Holy Spirit comes down like a dove on him, and God the Father says, behold, my son, in whom I am well pleased. And in Mark's account, the next verse says, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus.

Where does he lead him? Into the desert for 40 days to be tempted by Satan. God leads him there. So all of a sudden, I'm like, wow, what in the world? God is really doing things that I didn't think he was doing, and it's not that he's fighting.

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, God's done it all. Let's get after it. To live is gain, or to die is gain, to live is Christ.

So let's just love God, love his people. The motivation isn't like, well, 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. 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. So much of my life just seems to be toil.

So much of my energy isn't really that meaningful. I'm not doing anything that really affects eternity. I think Ecclesiastes has some helpful wisdom to impart, and we're gonna walk through it, like I said, just to give you the overview.

Ecclesiastes is a book of wisdom. It's classified in that genre as wisdom, like Proverbs, Psalms, it's in Job, those are wisdom literature. And this book starts off with the author saying, this is the preacher, 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, this is the summary. So we could just read the summary, like, okay, got it. But I think there's a lot more, we miss a lot of it, and certainly when we look back at Ecclesiastes from the New Testament, we wanna squish it all.

No, we have eternity to look for. Jesus, you know, we have a lot more to live for than just the vanity, but there is, I don't wanna 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. It's just gonna be toil. God's in, number two, God's controlling everything, and number three, God does give us power to have joy in those things, and there's a reason for it.

Vanity, Vapor, and Life Under the Sun

So turn with me to chapter one of Ecclesiastes. We're gonna read several different passages, just kind of, again, look at the skyline of Ecclesiastes. Verses two through 11 is where we're gonna start, and this is kind of, if you've read Ecclesiastes, this will kind of be the epitome of what you're probably familiar with, because this kind of repeats itself throughout the text.

So Ecclesiastes chapter one, verses two through 11. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. So again, this is, the author is now recording what the preacher says. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What is man gained by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

A generation goes, a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north, around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits, the wind returns.

All the streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There's nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new? It's already been in the ages before us.

So that's a, that's a girl, right? That's an encouraging, no, that's kind of discouraging to hear that, and this notion of vanity, that's what the ESV translate the word, I think in Hebrew is hevel, translates, 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.

They've used vanity in those, futility, and that's the same word that we read last week in Don's sermon, 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, and really impacted me thinking about this week, and hopefully you're thinking about just craning, looking for the glory of this to come, but futility, meaningless, that's the vanity when it's used here, these are the words that we want to have in our minds, because I think vanity can mean different things to different people, but also I saw words like smoke, or vapor, so everything is vanity, it's just that idea that, oh, there's smoke, oh, I don't got it, oh, there's some, I don't got it, you know, it's just that 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, 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, 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, it's not all of creation, it's not ever, it's just here, in this creation, that's what we're talking to, so the scope, when we hear some of these phrases, put that in your mind, under the sun, is referring to our limited existence, 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, 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, there's just trash, and it's just a little bit of a 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, 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, just, the waves come in, and they go out, in, and out, over, and over, and it's, nothing's really being accomplished, 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, 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, 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, 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 gonna be like that smoke, it's just gonna 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, like, we can go through those things thinking about, well, I know soon enough, we're gonna get a new house, or we're gonna get a new, you know, whatever it is, something new, it's gonna 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 gonna get a little bit better, as soon as this thing changes, so I worked at MPI Research here in Matawan, now Charles River, for 17 years, as a toxicologist, and even there, you know, just that idea of that struggling with my existence, like, what am I doing with my life, so I tell myself, like, look, I am, Jesus is ambassador there, I am salt and light, 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, that's my opportunity to share the gospel, and that's right and true, that's not wrong, but what I was confronted with, it seemed like, day after day, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not sharing Christ, I'm not sharing my faith, it's just, maybe people see me, I'm just sending these emails, analyzing data, like, am I making a difference?

Seems like complete vanity, and then, so then I take a new mindset, and I think, well, we're there, the goal is to create new medicines, and we're gonna eliminate, or at least limit suffering, we're gonna allow humans to live longer, okay, so that'll kinda carry me through these daily struggles, these daily, just mundane tasks, but even if 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 gonna suffer, people are still gonna die, that's not gonna, we're not gonna have a, it's like smoke, 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, like, we live in these homes, and we, for the first year in Montaquari, we have to, our water comes from the rain, so we have these big buckets, you kinda see them, I sometimes see them, like, on farm property, where they catch water off their barns and stuff, but 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, so you're always trying to get water, it's raining, we gotta 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, then you gotta filter it, and you gotta wash the dishes, and just, moving to Indonesia, where I thought, now I'm doing God's work, now I'm sharing the gospel with these people who never heard it, so much of my life is just taking care of clean water, way more than it is here, and I really appreciate coming back, technology, and dishes, and dishwashers, I mean, and washing machines, and dryers, and just the fact that water just comes out of spouts, fresh, clean, just wherever you want it, it's amazing, and I'll just pause here, because I don't want anyone to hear that work is meaningless, 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, that's, we're supposed to be working from now on, that's why we were created, that was before the fall, our work is good, keep doing your jobs, keep using your gifts for God's glory, for God's glory, and making mankind better, like, just the inventions and stuff that's here is so much better than that third world country, and we don't wanna worship those things, but I can really appreciate it, I think we can make a real difference in a limited sense, and that's the rub, so we're gonna make this new invention, make our life easier, but it's in the scope of eternity, it's not really, so don't make that your motivation, and that's kind of the rub of it, and so then I start thinking, well, maybe it's just a wisdom issue, you know, like, if I had more wisdom, I could find out a way to apply my efforts that instead of 90 of my time being just sort of mundane, trivial task, I could get it to like 70 or 60 of just that, and then 40%, I'm like, sharing my faith, or I'm really doing something for the kingdom, so read with me in Ecclesiastes, a response to that type of thinking, still in chapter one, verses 14 through 17, is 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 is striving after wind.

What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said in my heart, 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.

So after acquiring all this understanding, all this knowledge is 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, 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, our life comes to us moment by moment, one moment disappears before the next comes along, 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, but I think that's the promise of knowledge and wisdom, is that somehow, we get enough knowledge, then we're so limited, we have no idea what's gonna 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, if we just measure enough stuff, you see it in the healthcare world, they talk about it's gonna be personalized medicine, we're gonna 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 gonna get you what you ultimately want, 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're in, 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, like it's just, what are we doing?

You know, that's fine, they even made a movie about that idea, Saber Metrics, is about the Oakland Athletics, a baseball team, they were the first ones to employ that kind of technology, or using the big data, 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, 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, we know that, we don't know what's gonna happen, we can kind of read some general principles, but by and large, there's no guarantee, and I think all of it, is just screaming like Romans 1, that God is in control, we are without excuse, the universe is telling us about the eternal godhood, that he is eternal, so we got this side, so it seems like the one ditch over here, is like it's all just vanity, whatever, I just live my dumb days, or the other one as well, might as well just go all in, just eat, drink, and be merry, get everything out of this life I can, to seek pleasure, maybe that's a strategy, and so our boy here in Ecclesiastes, he gave that a shot, read with me in chapter two, in verses nine through 11, beginning of chapter two, is this long stretch, where he talks about all the stuff that he did, he went all in, and what this world has to offer, and he did it all, but we're just gonna kind of get to his conclusion, verses nine through 11 of chapter two, it says, so I became great, I surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem, also my wisdom remained me, so he wasn't just half cocked, just flying off the wing, he still had wisdom, and whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them, I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil, that I considered all that my hands had done, and all the toil I had expended in doing, and behold, all was vanity, and a striving after win, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun, 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, but if we're honest with ourself, I think we can capture a hope in us that's not founded in eternity, so we see Solomon, like he had all of it, we even see people in our current era, that seem like they have everything, they have all the power, they have all the money, or whatever it might be, and you know they're not satisfied, 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, whatever it is, if it's wealth, we're just always gonna want more, and maybe you've experienced that, so there's some wisdom here, I think of just like great fame, some examples like, who's the greatest college men's basketball coach ever?