Control & Gratitude

[SPEAKER_01]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit CitizensChurch.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you have a Bible to turn to ecclesiasties, we're gonna be in a lot of verses, in ecclesiasties this morning, we're gonna start in chapter one and just a minute and as you're turning there, if you're new to citizens, welcome.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name's Jamen, I'm one of the pastors here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you do something with me?

[SPEAKER_01]: If you have been here for a bit, this may be familiar to you, but would you pray a simple prayer with me and just repeat after me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Hold your hands out like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And pray God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is a gift, you are the giver, thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Cambridge, England, there's a clock called the Corpus Clock.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's in the library of the Corpus Christi College, which is on the campus of Cambridge, but you can see it from the street.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it sits in a glass, that's on the street level.

[SPEAKER_01]: I read about it in a book by my friend, Zach S. Wine.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not a normal clock.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very strange clock.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it's a artistic, metaphorical, confrontational critique of time in life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I have a picture of it to show you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what is unique about this clock confrontationally unique.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't keep perfect time.

[SPEAKER_01]: So instead of working like a normal clock does, occasionally it'll speed up and it'll move faster than what seconds move.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it does that because that's an experience in life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes life moves faster than we wanted to move.

[SPEAKER_01]: Any student in the room, when you get back to school, after Christmas break, you will think that Christmas break went by too fast.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because time feels that way, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Occasionally, the clock will go slower, than what a clock is supposed to go.

[SPEAKER_01]: It won't move as fast as seconds move, because some things in life feel like they take forever.

[SPEAKER_01]: I gave myself two weeks ago, one of those at home COVID tests, where you have to touch your brain with a Q-tip, and you're supposed to touch your brain with a Q-tip for 15 seconds, and those 15 seconds felt like an hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes life moves slow like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is a science to time, but then there's the lived experience where some things fly by than other things slow down.

[SPEAKER_01]: An hour at the spa feels different than an hour at the DMV, everybody knows that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the corpus clock reflects that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then see the creature on top of the clock looks like something from the upside down.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's called the Cronophage, which is a Latin phrase that means the time eater.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what happens is, is every 59 seconds, right at 59 seconds, the time-eaters jaw snap shut.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because once that minute is over, you can never get that minute back.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's behind the jaws of the time-eater.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a punchy way of saying, time is eating your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can regret the past, you can miss the past, you can learn from the past, you cannot return to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can't relive it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Once it's gone, it's behind the teeth of the time meter and never returns.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every hour, the clock does not chime like a normal clock does.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every hour, it makes a different noise.

[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of a nice melody, the clock makes the noise of chains shaking and a hammer hitting a coffin.

[SPEAKER_01]: because with each hour that passes, we are all one hour closer to our death.

[SPEAKER_01]: Happy New Year.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a Latin inscription under the clock.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have it for us in English.

[SPEAKER_01]: It says this, the world and its desires pass away.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the conclusion that time offers about life, the world and its desires pass away.

[SPEAKER_01]: A red and article about the guy who created this clock and it said that he wanted to create a clock that showed the passage of time as a destructive force.

[SPEAKER_01]: So time speeds up when you want it to slow down and it slows down when you want it to speed up and every minute that passes is behind the teeth of the time meter you can never get it back and every hour of life is an hour closer to death the world and its desires pass away.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you want this clock hanging up in your home?

[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a bummer.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that what it communicates.

[SPEAKER_01]: is not right or true.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just reminds me of things I don't like to think about.

[SPEAKER_01]: It reminds me of things I'd rather ignore.

[SPEAKER_01]: It reminds us of things we actually spend a lot of energy distracting ourselves from.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we don't have to think about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mortality, the brevity of life, all of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about it today because this is the first Sunday of a new year and this is a time of the year.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not everybody.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to assume this about everybody.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this is a time of the year where many of us are reflective about the passing of time.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're reflective about life.

[SPEAKER_01]: One year is behind us, another year is in front of us.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a time of year where many of us, especially in our part of the world, many of us are powering up to face another year.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have resolved things, we're changing things.

[SPEAKER_01]: The gym is packed, churches full.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're doing our best, maybe, to run out in front of the time eater.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in many ways, not that everyone would say it this way, but what we want to do is we want to live in this year better than we lived last year.

[SPEAKER_01]: We want to live in 2026 with more wisdom than we lived in 2025.

[SPEAKER_01]: And even if you wouldn't put those words to it, even if you're not doing that, I don't know if anyone who would say I resolve to be more foolish this year than I was last year.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's something good about being reflective like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's something good about

[SPEAKER_01]: Considering your life, considering the passing of time.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, in order to do that, the way the Bible would guide us, there is a kind of confrontational wisdom we can't ignore.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's really easy to ignore because it's uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a book of the Bible, hopefully it is open in front of you, and this book of the Bible has a similar feel as the corpus clock.

[SPEAKER_01]: In certain places, it feels like it mocks life like the time you do does.

[SPEAKER_01]: It reminds us,

[SPEAKER_01]: of our mortality and how absurd life can be.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to begin this year, Church, returning to the wisdom that this book offers.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've talked about it before.

[SPEAKER_01]: It will be familiar to many.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's important.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's important.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because you ask these one, verse 13, says it like this, I applied my heart to seek and to search out wisdom all that is done under heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have seen everything that has done under the sun and behold, all is heaven, a striving after wind.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the author of Ecclesiastes.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's just called the teacher throughout the book.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's likely Solomon King Solomon, but it's possible that it could be someone else.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's an incredibly confrontational book of the Bible because of what he says, how he reflects on his life.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm reading a book about the book of Ecclesiastes that is so good.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's by a pastor at theologian named Bobby Jamison.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the content from this morning came from that book.

[SPEAKER_01]: You should read it.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't have time for it, I'm going to quote about half of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he says this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ecclesiastes is an ancient work of philosophy written by someone who relentlessly sought to observe, understand, and especially experience everything that could possibly lead to lasting happiness.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ecclesiastes tells the story of someone who saw it all, got it all, experienced it all, and in the end found a fault with it all.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like Bono, despite all these all's, the author of Ecclesiastes still didn't find what he was looking for.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he found that having it all won't make you happy.

[SPEAKER_01]: He found that everything is never enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that message of the book is summarized in the Hebrew word that you heard.

[SPEAKER_01]: He repeats this Hebrew word 38 times in 12 chapters.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen everything that's done under the sun and behold, all is heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't say that.

[SPEAKER_01]: in your Bible, it says vanity or meaningless or something like that, but it's a Hebrew word that literally means breath or smoke or vapor and the author of Ecclesiastes uses this word metaphorically to critique life.

[SPEAKER_01]: He leans into this metaphor to make an accusation.

[SPEAKER_01]: about life.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love the cold.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was born in the wrong state for somebody who loves the cold, but when it is cold, I like to be outside in the cold and it hasn't been very cold this winter, but on one cold morning I went outside with my coffee in a book and I just set out there in the cold and every time I took a breath I could see my breath.

[SPEAKER_01]: which is not usual in Texas, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because it was cold, my exhale was visible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was made visible by the cold.

[SPEAKER_01]: If somebody who speaks Hebrew was sitting there with me and they saw that breath, leave my mouth, they would look at it and they would point and they would say, hevel, that's what hevel is.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the teacher of Ecclesiastes uses that word to make an accusation about life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is breath.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he doesn't just mean it's short, although it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you could see your breath and if you tried to grab it, it would slip through your fingers.

[SPEAKER_01]: You couldn't control it.

[SPEAKER_01]: You couldn't grasp it.

[SPEAKER_01]: You couldn't do anything with it, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So here's Jamison again.

[SPEAKER_01]: Human life is Hevel since like breath and quickly disappears.

[SPEAKER_01]: A new car is Hevel since the moment you drive it off the lot, it starts losing value.

[SPEAKER_01]: Beauty is Hevel since age never subtracts wrinkles.

[SPEAKER_01]: It only adds them.

[SPEAKER_01]: meaningless, pointless, futile, inigmatic, hot air absurd.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is heavily because, in a sense far more fundamental than you want to admit, life is uncontrollable.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I don't like about the corpus clock.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not what it says about time that I don't like.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's what it says about me that I don't like.

[SPEAKER_01]: What it says about us.

[SPEAKER_01]: We aren't in control.

[SPEAKER_01]: Time marks the things that we most love in life.

[SPEAKER_01]: We live in a heaven world.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so you can summarize the case that at Pleisiastes makes in three statements that I want to consider.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is heaven because you don't get what you want.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is heaven because you get what you want and it's not what you want.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is heaven because you don't get what you deserve.

[SPEAKER_01]: So life is heaven because you don't get what you want.

[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter 4 of verse 7 says that this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I saw heaven under the sun.

[SPEAKER_01]: One person who has no other, either sun or brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches so that he never asks for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure.

[SPEAKER_01]: This also is Hevel and an unhappy business.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says, I saw someone.

[SPEAKER_01]: who had a really successful career, built something worth building, used his energy, his efforts, his talents to create something that was worth creating and then he didn't have anyone to share with.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he did something good and still didn't get what he wanted.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our family has a tradition on New Year's Day every year will sit around a dinner table.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll just ask questions.

[SPEAKER_01]: And those questions are directed at processing the last year and then looking forward to the year to come.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's questions like, if you could relive one day from 2025, what day would you relive?

[SPEAKER_01]: What was the best meal you ate?

[SPEAKER_01]: In 2026, what's one thing you want Dad to stop doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: Which is always risky.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things we asked is if you could change anything about 2025, what would you change?

[SPEAKER_01]: And my daughter, one of her friends, moved to Oklahoma last year.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, I wish she would not have moved, because she didn't want that to happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: My son immediately said the Luka trade.

[SPEAKER_01]: His favorite team traded his favorite player, and he didn't want that to happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: Kerry, my wife said, I would change all the sports injuries.

[SPEAKER_01]: We had Ashragadai concussion about a month later, Adi messed up her knee, had some broken bones, and we didn't want that to happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: As their parents, we did not want that to happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we would change that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, would you change about 2025?

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone has an answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone, in less we are being hyper-spiritual.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody could answer that question, because everyone's experience of the last year at some point is you wanted something that you did not get.

[SPEAKER_01]: And for some of us, these answers are actually really painful.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's I didn't want the cancer I got.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't want the divorce my parents got.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't want that phone call I got that said things that I wish I could on here.

[SPEAKER_01]: The job I didn't get, the relationship, I lost, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is heavily.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those kinds of realities exist because of the heavy reality of life that we are not in control.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the greatest example that we're not in control is that we cannot secure for ourselves the things that we want.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes in life though, it's heavily because you get what you want, and it's not what you want.

[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter two, verse 10 says, at this way,

[SPEAKER_01]: I kept my heart from no pleasure for my heart, found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil, then I considered all that my hands had done, and all the toil I expended in doing it, and behold, all was heaven, and a striving after when there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says, I gave myself a yesterday.

[SPEAKER_01]: anything my heart desired and he's rich and he's powerful so he has the money and the resources and the power to secure everything that he wants and he names it and if you read the book he names it in the book food and parties and experiences and sex and romance and travel all of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says I indulged in everything and here's what I discovered everything is never enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is friends.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is a poorly kept secret that money and things and people and experiences don't make us as happy as we believe they will.

[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes we only discover that when we get the people and the money and the things and the experiences that we wanted.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like the worst state of disappointment in life is when you get everything you want and you still don't have the ability to enjoy everything you have.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everything is never enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's Hevel.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's Hevel.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes in life you don't get what you deserve.

[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter eight, verse 14, says that this way, there's a Hevel that takes place on earth that there are righteous people.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is awful.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, like what the wicked deserve happens to the righteous.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are wicked people who get blessing and ease and gifts that should only go to the righteous.

[SPEAKER_01]: I said that this also is, have you seen this in your life?

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the best people I know have suffered the worst things I've ever heard of, truly.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we get all think of whether we know them personally or not.

[SPEAKER_01]: We get all think of maybe not great people who don't suffer like others suffer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I'm not arguing and ecclesiasties is not arguing that the world is made up of good people and bad people.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Christian, we're Christians.

[SPEAKER_01]: The world is made up of people who are dead and sin and people who've been made alive and Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the on the ground observation of the book of Ecclesiastes is still true.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are people who are righteous and they're treated like the wicked and people who are wicked and they're treated like the righteous.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the whole point of Psalm 73.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Psalmist looks around at the world and he says, the people of God's star, while ungodly people get fat on the surplus of food that they have.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so you've felt this.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've said something to the effect of, I can't believe that happened to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't deserve that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jamison in his book, he calls it the gut punch of seeing someone get the opposite of what their character merits.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's Hevel.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then chapter 3 verse 19 is that this way, for what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beast is the same.

[SPEAKER_01]: As one dies so dies the other, they all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beast.

[SPEAKER_01]: For all is heaven, all go to one place, all are from dust and to dust, all return.

[SPEAKER_01]: The most hevel reality of life is death.

[SPEAKER_01]: We were not made to die.

[SPEAKER_01]: We weren't made to die.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Bible says the wages of sin is death.

[SPEAKER_01]: Death is the just consequence of sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ecclesiastes is not contradicting that, but it is observing something that is also true.

[SPEAKER_01]: Humans and animals share the same fate and there's something unjust.

[SPEAKER_01]: The children of man, it says die.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone is so much child, every human being's life is way more valuable than a beast than an animal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Humans matter more than any other created being.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, their life ends the same.

[SPEAKER_01]: They share the same fate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every hour, the clock doesn't chime, it makes the noise of a coffin, because it's an hour that we just like all the animals are one hour closer to death.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: We all know instinctively that life should be different than that.

[SPEAKER_01]: In a sense, the dignity of being human deserves a different end than the end of animals.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, life is out of our control.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not completely, but more than we want to admit, we don't get what we want, we get what we want, it's not what we want, we don't get what we deserve, that's life.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know this hasn't been very positive, but stay with me, it gets better, just not yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: When faced with a life that we can't control, ecclesiasties is going to name two strategies that we employ to try to control our life, that we could name more than this, we only have time for two.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are strategies that we use to have improved our life, and there's so common in the room around us.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will know more, and I will try harder.

[SPEAKER_01]: When faced with the parts of life that we can't control, we will power up by knowing more and by trying harder.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is the stuff of so much of the resolving that we do around this time of year.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm resolving to conquer my life by accumulating information, and I'm resolving to improve my life by putting in more effort.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I can gain control over my life by knowing more.

[SPEAKER_01]: We treat life like it's a problem that we can solve.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if I can just learn all the answers, I can overcome the hevel.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Ecclesiastes talks about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ecclesiastes exposes that in verse 17, chapter 1.

[SPEAKER_01]: I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.

[SPEAKER_01]: I perceive that this also is but a striving after wind.

[SPEAKER_01]: For in much wisdom is much vexation.

[SPEAKER_01]: and he who increases knowledge and increases sorrow.

[SPEAKER_01]: The word vexation can mean anger, anxiety, sadness, frustration.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the point is not that knowledge is bad or that it's wrong.

[SPEAKER_01]: What we're doing right now in this moment is I am communicating information that I hope that you're receiving a green with learning being helped by.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's not bad, but it is limited.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a limit to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes the more we know in a have a life, the less answers we have.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes what wisdom dies is wisdom will give us more insight into what's wrong, but not more ability to fix what's wrong.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the smartest people I know are the most unhappy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of red books, lots of well thought opinions, lots of sleepless nights, lots of anxious thoughts, not a lot of joy, because if we're treating, we're trusting in our own reasoning.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we're leaning on our own understanding, the way Proverbs would say it, and we're treating life like it's a problem to solve, our solutions can never outpace the problems.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's always something to fix, always someone to change, always more to learn, always something about me to improve, something in my circumstance to adjust.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the end of that is vexation, anxiety, anger, frustration, because it never stops.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other strategy is effort.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just gonna try harder.

[SPEAKER_01]: We treat life like it's a competition to win.

[SPEAKER_01]: The way Ecclesiastes describes it as we live for gain.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we try to be better and do better and have more.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so life is about being a better spouse or a better parent or a better student or a better athlete or a better looking person or a better Christian.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, better than who?

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: That changes based on how I'm doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: That goalpost always moves.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's exhausting.

[SPEAKER_01]: One author described it as running as hard as we can to stay in the same place.

[SPEAKER_01]: So again, the problem with life is a competition of win.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that we never win, you might.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's that even if we do, we don't like the trophy we get for winning.

[SPEAKER_01]: We get all that we want, except the ability to enjoy all that we have.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everything is never enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the author of Cleasy Astys talks about money this way in chapter five.

[SPEAKER_01]: He who loves money will not be satisfied with money.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, he loves wealth with his income.

[SPEAKER_01]: This also is heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: When goods increase, they increase to eat them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what advantage has their owner, but to see them with his eyes, sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.

[SPEAKER_01]: He won the money competition.

[SPEAKER_01]: He won.

[SPEAKER_01]: Had more than everybody else, he got the wealth.

[SPEAKER_01]: And with his wealth, while his poor servant slept soundly, he tossed and turned with fear that I might lose it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Fear of he's didn't do for me what I thought it would.

[SPEAKER_01]: He won riches and he lost sleep.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's another famous philosopher who said it this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: More money, more problems.

[SPEAKER_01]: If my meaning and my happiness,

[SPEAKER_01]: In life is tied to what I gain.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's tied to outpacing those around me.

[SPEAKER_01]: What I have is more compared to what others have.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's striving after the wind.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is... Heffel.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't get what we want.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't get what we want, it's not what we want.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't get what we deserve.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if we power up, but if we try to grasp,

[SPEAKER_01]: the breath, and treat life like a problem to solve the solutions outpace the problems we get more answers and more anxiety.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we treat life like a competition to win, the more we get, the more we want, and that's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have come to love the book of ecclesiasties.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are parts of it that I read, and I'm like, I can't believe this book is in the Bible.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what I love about ecclesiasties is, it has two voices.

[SPEAKER_01]: ecclesiasties has a shouting voice.

[SPEAKER_01]: It shouts evil for 12 chapters.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the voice that we've been hearing.

[SPEAKER_01]: It also has a softer voice.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not as loud.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't take up as much ink.

[SPEAKER_01]: We would not appreciate it as much if it was the only voice.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need both voices to understand the wisdom that God's offering in this book.

[SPEAKER_01]: But every now and then the book stops shouting, hevel, and it speaks a soft, beautiful wisdom, and before God friends, this soft, beautiful wisdom is changing me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Please ask these three says that I have seen the business that God has given to the children a man to be busy with.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has made everything beautiful in its time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Also, he has put eternity in the man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

[SPEAKER_01]: I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live.

[SPEAKER_01]: Also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is God's gift to mankind.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is a gift.

[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was heaven, I thought I was at our control, thought it was breath, thought it was absurd.

[SPEAKER_01]: In chapter 5 verse 18, behold, what I've seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment and all the toil with which one toils into the sun, the few days of his life, that God has given.

[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter 8 verse 15, and I commend joy.

[SPEAKER_01]: For man has nothing better under the sun, but to eat, and drink, and be joyful for this will go with him and his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.

[SPEAKER_01]: 7 times.

[SPEAKER_01]: 7 times.

[SPEAKER_01]: The shouting voice gives way to this softer voice.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the wisdom of ecclesiasties speaks of a God who gives and says the, please hear me, the only reality deeper than heaven in this world is the reality that your life is a good gift from a good giver.

[SPEAKER_01]: Enjoy it, give thanks for it, your exit, your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: The people in your life, the gifts you have, the things you laugh at, the body that is you, the place you live, the food you eat, the God-approved things that you enjoy, the sounds you hear, the things you see, every moment you inhabit and experience is a gift from God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Consider the way Jamison says it.

[SPEAKER_01]: That your life is a gift from God means that ultimate reality is not random or empty, not mute or malicious, but his personal is loving and intends good.

[SPEAKER_01]: How would your life be different if you believe that your existence is the good idea of an infinitely glad God?

[SPEAKER_01]: What would it look like to found your life on the conviction that a happy God made you because he was happy to?

[SPEAKER_01]: And would you answer the question?

[SPEAKER_01]: And whatever way it makes it, and whatever context it makes sense by yourself with others, what would it look like to found your life on the conviction that a happy God made you and gave you your life as a happy gift?

[SPEAKER_01]: What about everything wrong?

[SPEAKER_01]: What about everything painful?

[SPEAKER_01]: What about everything I can't control?

[SPEAKER_01]: What about all that I would change?

[SPEAKER_01]: What about all that's in my life that I didn't ask for?

[SPEAKER_01]: What about all the things that are absent that I've been praying for God for?

[SPEAKER_01]: What about all the things about me that I need to improve?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I need to fix.

[SPEAKER_01]: Have full?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the book shouts.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not naive to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't empty optimism.

[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't look on the bright side philosophy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life can be brutal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Deeper than life's brutality is God's generosity.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the point.

[SPEAKER_01]: that life as a gift would be this conviction, this belief that would sink like an anchor in your heart and it would sink below the unmet expectations of life and it would sink below the things that you don't deserve and below the things that you didn't get and below the things that you got and discovered you didn't want and in the deepest floor of your heart would settle this belief God has given me this life as a gift.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a problem to solve.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a competition to win.

[SPEAKER_01]: life is a gift to receive and of all the things that you have thought about your life as you have made it to another year.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is worth your time.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think this is actually where God would have a start.

[SPEAKER_01]: What would change if you founded this year on the conviction that a happy God made you and gave you your life as a happy gift?

[SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite moments on Christmas morning, my wife had this amazing gift idea for my middle child.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea was to get a pair of pajamas for my daughter, but not just any pair of pajamas.

[SPEAKER_01]: A custom pair of pajamas that had our dogs face all over it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our daughter loves our dog.

[SPEAKER_01]: She says she loves me more, but I see the way she looks at him.

[SPEAKER_01]: She adores him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when she opened that present,

[SPEAKER_01]: and saw PJs with the dog's face all over them.

[SPEAKER_01]: For a moment, she was speechless.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then she tackled Carrie and just said, thank you, thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she didn't do?

[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't get all stressed and say, how can I earn these?

[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't get critical and say, I don't like the color.

[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't worry that maybe her friends got something better than her.

[SPEAKER_01]: She received a gift.

[SPEAKER_01]: to receive the gift and respond it with joy and gratitude.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know life is complex and complicated and painful, and it doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not every moment is a joy and gratitude and tackle God with Thanksgiving kind of moment, but if life is a gift,

[SPEAKER_01]: If life itself is a good gift from a good God, then we should have fewer moments of earning, and fewer moments of criticizing, and fewer moments of comparing, and more moments of joyfully receiving and giving thanks.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your God is like a Christmas morning parent who knows you, and when he created you, he gave you a good gift of life.

[SPEAKER_01]: If I could sum all this up in a few words, in this heaven world, I want to trade a controlling heart for a grateful one.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we pray prayer, life is a gift, you are the giver.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying in that to be more present to the moments of life that whisper of God's kindness and His grace and His beauty, not ignoring what is a cause of the fall, but receiving what is good in God's good world.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we stopped here, it would not be wrong, but it would be incomplete.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ecclesiastes speaks of a Hevel world, but Hevel is not the end of the story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hevel is a true word.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Bible speaks.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is not the last word.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Bible speaks.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the final word.

[SPEAKER_01]: The inscription below the corpus clock says the world and its desires pass away.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a quote.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know where it's from?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a quote from a 2000-year-old letter that was written by one of Jesus' friends and followers named John.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is called First John in your Bible.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the inscription below the clock cuts off the latter half of the verse.

[SPEAKER_01]: The world and its desires pass away.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the whole thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the whole thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: First John 217.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the world is passing away along with its desires but.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whoever does the will of God abides forever.

[SPEAKER_01]: Time is a destructive force.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every minute is trapped by the time you or you can't get it back.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every hour is an hour closer to death, like this heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's out of our control.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't get what we want or what we deserve.

[SPEAKER_01]: Life is fleeting like breath so how?

[SPEAKER_01]: How can John say the one who does the will of God abides forever?

[SPEAKER_01]: How can you abide forever in a heaven world?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because our God,

[SPEAKER_01]: is so kind and so generous and so full of steadfast love that he did not stop at the gift of life.

[SPEAKER_01]: He also gave his one and only son.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus lived in this heaven world for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Completely in control, he leaves heaven and surrenders control, he does not get what he wants, he does not get what he deserves.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all of the cruelty and brutality in absurdity of the world, he takes all of that on himself in the cross.

[SPEAKER_01]: He gives up his life, the seconds of his life tick away and he shares the same fate of death as the animals.

[SPEAKER_01]: Days later, he opens the jaws of the time-eater, and he shatters heaven with resurrection to life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And to all who put their trust in him, repent of their sins, and trust in him, to all who look at him, and say, everything is never enough, but Jesus, you are all I need.

[SPEAKER_01]: He gives us the double gift, life now,

[SPEAKER_01]: The sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks be to God who gives us victory and Jesus Christ our Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christian, we have so much to be grateful for.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is so little that we control, there is so much to receive as gift.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you pray with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: God,

[SPEAKER_00]: Life is a gift, and you are the giver.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Beloved, I think there's...

[SPEAKER_01]: men and women write about this, have helpful guidance on where to go from here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what I know to do in this moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you give thanks for your life?

[SPEAKER_01]: Not asking you to ignore pain, I'm not asking you to ignore that you didn't get what you

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not asking you to ignore even the words of Jesus who would say blessed are those who mourn all of that is righteous and good.

[SPEAKER_01]: But would you just open your hands and ask God that the thing that would just sink to the deepest place of your heart?

[SPEAKER_01]: is a wise, desperate humble thank you, and then would you just fill in the sentence?

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, God, for give thanks.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you ask God to help you strengthen you, would you ask him to make

[SPEAKER_01]: the foundational conviction of this year, the thing that drives your life, the thing that settles you in a heaven world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you ask him to help you?

[SPEAKER_01]: Believe and live, that this life that you're living is a happy gift from an eternally glad God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then believe it or would you just confess Jesus in a world where everything is never enough, you are, Jesus, you are, all we need in Christian, we, oh, what, who are we, who are we, that God would be so kind to give us the double gift.

[SPEAKER_01]: the gift of life now and the gift of resurrected life forever.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our worst case scenario in a heaven world is resurrection and eternal joy in the presence of our beautiful God.

[SPEAKER_01]: What a gift.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus, we love you.

[SPEAKER_01]: We trust you, we need you.

[SPEAKER_01]: You are holy and righteous and true and good and beautiful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our hands are open to receive what you have given, amen.