Still Empty | Myles Holmes

Praise the Lord.

Let's give I thank you to Jackie.

If you have your Bibles, you can take them and open them to Ecclesiastes chapter one.

If you don't have a copy of God's Word, uh the ushers are coming down the aisles right now.

You can flag one of them down.

They'd love to get a copy into your hands, which you can keep as our gift to you.

I already said Happy Mother's Day to you.

Now I want you to know that life is meaningless.

And that's how expository preaching works.

That sometimes the celebrations on the calendar don't necessarily line up with the subject of the word, and yet we love the word at this church, and so we want to continue to get into it.

Ecclesiastes chapter one.

If you need to find Ecclesiastes, you open up to Psalms in the middle of the Bible, you keep going, uh a few books right, you'll pass Proverbs, you'll get to Ecclesiastes.

We're in verses 12 to 18 this morning.

And as you are turning there, I want to ask you a question.

When was the last time?

Now you're gonna have to be honest here, when was the last time you had that sort of settled feeling in your heart that everything was enough?

I mean, I mean, exclusively in your life, because we have it in moments, right?

We have these moments where for maybe a few split seconds everything in our life kind of fades out of the background.

And answering that question of when was the last time you felt like it was enough is easy in moments.

I can think about moments like my wedding.

As I walked Amber as Amber walked down the aisle, I knew the scam was complete.

I tricked her before she could figure it out.

And now I locked her in for life.

I think about moments like the birth of each of my children.

I think about moments like the call to come to redemption church.

As you think about your life, I'm sure there are moments too.

Maybe it was when you got that first call for the career that you had worked so hard to get into.

It was when you bought that first home.

It was when your kid got accepted into the school.

We we have these moments and they're good moments.

But I'm talking about something more than just a moment.

I'm talking about that settled feeling, the one where you actually feel like you've arrived and there's nothing left to pursue anymore, where you can sit down and imagine this.

You sit down for 10 minutes and nothing comes to your mind about what you need to do.

The to-do list doesn't get any longer.

When was the last time you felt that?

Now I'm seeing some of you shaking your head, and you are with me.

I think you and I are probably in the same boat if you are trying to think about this and not sure that you've ever felt it.

Maybe you felt close before.

Maybe you've tasted what you thought was like, okay, this is the appetizer to the main meal that is that feeling of enoughness.

That feeling that lets you say with the psalmist, the Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

You ever read that familiar passage and you say, well, I mean, the Lord is my shepherd, but I certainly want.

And the thing I want seems to be moving farther and farther away from me the more I work towards it.

You know that feeling, church?

Strange thing is you can find countless examples of the people who have made it to the top of their pursuit, to the top of their thing.

And strangely enough, these people all say the same thing.

In fact, last summer we had an example of it when a golfer, the number one golfer in the world, sat down at a press conference before the open championship.

His name is Scotty Scheffler.

People at Redemption Church have golfed with me.

They say I kind of look like him when I golf.

And those are the same people who are laughing right now.

He is the number one golfer in the world.

He is sadly 29 years old.

He's won three major championships and has been the best golfer for the last three years, almost by every measure.

He's at the top.

Listen to what he said before the open championship.

He said, There's a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life.

And you get there, you get to number one in the world, and they're like, What's the point?

He says, I really do believe that, because what is the point?

And then he goes on to say that winning a major championship feels great for about two minutes, then it's over.

Now I have to disagree with Scotty here.

I think I could probably make it feel great for like three minutes at least.

You with me?

Like I could probably do four minutes even.

And yet you see what he's saying.

You get that thing, and then there's the next thing.

Scotty said it's it's not a fulfilling life.

Now, this is the best golfer in the world who's standing at the very top, who has achieved it and more, and he's saying out loud what you and I, I think, sometimes question in our mind on a Sunday night before a busy week.

And I want you to know that Scotty Scheffler was not the first one to say this.

That 3,000 years ago Solomon said the exact same thing, and I want you to see it in these verses.

We're gonna read them together, and as we do, would you stand with me?

Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verses 12 to 18.

Ecclesiastes 1:12–18

I, the preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.

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

I've seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind.

What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

I said, in my heart, I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me.

And my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.

I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

For in much wisdom is much vexation.

And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can grab a seat.

We read here, he is the king of Israel.

He has more wisdom, he has more wealth, he has more power, he has more resources than any human alive at that time, or that has been alive since.

And in the book of Ecclesiastes, he is on the pursuit of finding meaning and satisfaction, and it's an incredibly interesting experiment because he has all the resources you could ever possibly imagine to pursue it.

Notice then what he says in verse 13.

Look it down at your copy of God's word with me.

He says, I applied my heart to seek and search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.

This was his aim.

He says he applied his heart, and this phrase is really a key to the entire passage.

For Solomon, this wasn't a hobby.

It wasn't a weakened pursuit.

In the original Hebrew, this is the language of total devotion.

Everything that Solomon had, his inner being with all that he had, his full intelligence, all of his effort that he could muster up, all the resources of the kingdom which he stood over, all of his skill, he committed it to one project, to know what life is actually for.

To know what would finally satisfy.

Notice then in verse 13, the tool that he names, he doesn't apply his heart randomly.

There is a tool that he uses to know what to apply his heart to.

He applied his heart, he tells us, by wisdom.

Wisdom.

Biblical wisdom is it's not intelligence, it's not IQ.

Wisdom in the Old Testament is the ability to see clearly and act skillfully.

You see reality clearly.

You ever met someone without wisdom?

Don't look at them right now.

They just don't see the world the right way.

And so then they're not able to act rightly.

Wisdom is seeing reality clearly and navigating it skillfully.

It's the ability to know how things actually work and to act accordingly.

And so Solomon then is saying not that he tried hard to find satisfaction, that he tried the right things.

He brought the best instrument a human being can bring to the search, the God-given ability to think well and act rightly, and he used all his resources behind this wisdom to answer the deepest question a person can ask.

Now, as you and I sit and read and study Ecclesiastes, again, this is a cup of coffee with the wisest man who ever lived, learning from his experience.

This matters for you and I because Solomon, the way that he applied his heart, is describing something that every single person in this room understands.

Every single person in this room does the exact same thing that Solomon was doing.

You apply your heart to what you believe will satisfy you.

If you're taking notes, this is an incredibly great principle to write down.

This is so helpful to know.

It is a human principle.

We're understanding theologically what God has taught us about humans and being a human.

As a human being, you always apply your heart and your effort to the thing that you believe will satisfy you.

The teenager who hasn't put down the video game controller for six hours.

It's not necessarily that he's lazy.

He's devoted to a console.

He's applied his heart to the things he believes will give him what he is looking for.

The executive who's logging 70 hours at work each week isn't necessarily just a workaholic.

They are a believer.

They are applying their heart to the thing they're convinced will finally be enough.

To the father or to the mother who has made their kids their entire world.

They're searching, applying their heart to the place they believe satisfaction will come from.

We all do it.

The very core of what it means to be human is to search for happiness, to seek satisfaction, and to apply our heart, all of our efforts to the pursuit of that thing.

We give our best effort to something.

Now the variable between us is what we aim that at.

So when Solomon then tells us what happened, when he applied his heart to everything, he's telling us this morning what's going to happen when you and I apply our heart to our aim.

Solomon says, I've done everything.

I've searched everywhere.

And you know what we're gonna find over the next few weeks, especially in chapter two of Ecclesiastes, is this kind of categorical, hey, look, I looked here and it wasn't there, and I looked here and it wasn't there, and I looked here and it wasn't there either.

And this morning at the end of chapter one, what he does is a 30,000-foot view over everything he pursued to tell us this that our best efforts will not cut it.

And it's the first thing I want you to see this morning.

First thing I want you to see this morning is that your best effort is going to cost you.

Your best effort costs you.

Look then at his conclusion in verse 13.

I love to see it.

I love everyone's eyes looking down at their copies of God's word.

Notice what Solomon says it is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

Solomon gets going on his pursuit, and he's got a complaint.

His complaint is not that it's too hard, his complaint is not that it's too demanding, his complaint is that it is unhappy.

The word it means grievous.

It is the language of affliction.

And before Solomon finds anything, the verdict is in.

The search is over.

The pursuit itself, he says, wears you down.

Wears you down.

The pursuit costs you.

In 2011, Walter Isaacson published a definitive biography on Steve Jobs.

And he did, it's a great biography, he did what every great biographer needs to do.

He showed the amazing things about what Steve Jobs accomplished, alongside some pretty devastating realities.

Alongside the documentation of the genius of Apple's creator, was this that Steve Jobs was almost a completely absent father.

For years he even denied the existence of his own daughter.

Lisa Jobs would write a memoir.

It's a sad account of a daughter who really wants their father to show up, but a father who doesn't, who's always busy, who's always on to the next project, who's always on to the next thing that's going to change the world.

And you and I can stand here, you know, 15 years later and say, yeah, certainly it did change the world.

And yet the question that Lisa then asked is at what cost?

Even at the end of Steve Jobs' life, he would sit with this biographer and tell him that one of the things that he regretted was that he had wished he spent more time with his kids.

And so here it is: the most successful human who maybe ever lived sits at the finish line and he looks back on his life and he names exactly what the pursuit cost him.

Yes, I made all these great things.

Yes, I made a product that changed the world.

But giving his best effort was robbing him.

By the time he looked, it was too late to get it back.

Solomon looks at his pursuits and he has a word for that.

He says it's unhappy, it's an affliction, it's grievous.

It comes from somewhere.

Every time you give your best to something, you are taking from something else.

Now you and I like to act like our effort is infinite.

Like we can just keep adding and adding and adding to our schedule and doing more.

If we just drink more coffee, we just wake up earlier, then we can fit this all in the schedule.

But Solomon is here to remind us that we are finite beings.

You are a finite person.

You have finite energy.

I know you guys are with me on that one, right?

Young parents, big bags under your eyes.

You could hardly wake up, your eyes are heavy.

We have finite energy.

We have finite time.

We cannot do everything.

Now, alongside that reality of our smallness, our finitude is also this busyness epidemic we live in.

When was the last time you talked to someone who wasn't busy?

I remember being a youth pastor talking to teenagers who in the summer are verifiably not busy.

And I said to them, hey, how's your summer going?

And they're like, oh man, I'm just so busy.

And I said, Well, what are you busy with?

I played soccer last weekend.

That's not busyness, but yeah, they feel this busyness.

And all of us feel it.

When was the last time you talked to someone who is not busy?

Everyone is busy.

The thing you need to see this morning is that busyness is always just a redistribution.

You can never add anything to your life.

You can't.

You can only take away from other things.

You are always moving from something to somewhere else.

The man who describes himself as a hard worker.

You follow him home, and there might be another word for it.

He's not busy with work, he is lazy with his family.

The energy has gone somewhere else.

The father presence went somewhere else.

The family whose calendar is consumed by kids' sports, which I am not at all against, and yet feel the need to recognize together that you cannot commit to those things without robbing from something.

It is just a reality.

The question is, what are those extracurricular activities taking from?

I can tell you what it's not taken from.

It's not necessarily taken from work.

Hockey games aren't usually scheduled on a Tuesday at 11 a.m., are they?

Why is that?

Because no one would miss work to take their kid to a hockey game.

When are they scheduled?

Sunday mornings.

Well, what's the heart behind that?

Well, we can make time for this by robbing from here.

You always make a sacrifice to pursue these things.

The question is, what's the cost?

What's the cost?

And we see this everywhere.

We see it in ministry too.

It's a sad reality that there are many pastors, there are many elders, there are many ministry leaders who sacrifice their family on the altar of ministry, robbing the time that they need to shepherd their family, care for their family, lead for their family in order even to give it to the church.

Solomon takes a step back to say, hey, listen, you've just taken folly with all your busyness.

You've taken folly and you've baptized it.

You've tried to make it look like something good.

You've called busyness productivity.

You've called it being a good provider.

Solomon then looks at it from the top as the man who actually got there.

And he's unwilling to call what we call ambition ambition.

He calls it an unhappy business for the Son of Man to be afflicted with, to be busy with.

For the things that you're pursuing in life.

Who is paying the bills?

Is it your family?

Is it the church?

Is it your health?

Who is per who's paying the bills so that you can pursue those things that you think will make you happy?

Your best effort establishes that for us.

But anyway.

If it's not heavy enough, it gets even heavier because the way that most of us react when we hear something like that is like this.

Well, then I'll just redistribute the time.

I'll look at my calendar, I'll take a step back, and I'll just move some things around, and maybe I can find balance.

Maybe I can spin all these plates properly if I just try harder and smarter with better intentions.

And Solomon's next move is to grab us by the shoulders and look into our eyes and say, listen, it won't be enough either.

That won't work either.

Because the thing that you're chasing, the pursuit of satisfaction in this world, it has a ceiling built into it, so that no amount of effort, no amount of wisdom, no amount of sacrifice can get you above this ceiling.

It's the second thing I want you to see this morning.

That your best effort has a limit.

Your best effort has a limit.

Look at verse 14 with me.

Solomon says, I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind.

Solomon has a word for you here.

You think, listen, I know Solomon must have pursued a lot of things, but I don't think he did what I'm doing.

Solomon says, This, I have pursued everything, not just some things, not most things, I have done it all.

And as we go through Ecclesiastes, you're gonna see this that Solomon's life has been like a conveyor belt where all the things of the world come past him, and he picks it up and tries to squeeze as much joy out of it as he can, and he keeps coming back to this conclusion, vanity of vanities, meaningless, empty.

Now again, we remember Solomon keeps reminding us who he is.

I, the preacher, have been king in Israel.

He is the man with the resources, the wisdom, the relentless devotion to the search for satisfaction.

And as Solomon pursued satisfaction, he says, I tried everything.

He went to Costco and he skipped the sample tables.

He got all the products.

I tried it all, nothing satisfied.

He comes back with this verdict in two words.

It is vanity and it is wind.

We saw vanity last week.

You remember?

You remember the word havel in the Hebrew.

Vanity, breath, vapor, the thing that, the the frosty breath that comes out on a cold morning that is immediately gone, never to be seen again, that you could try to grasp at, but you'd look silly.

Solomon here gives us a second image.

It is the striving after the wind.

It's running after the wind.

It is feeling the breeze, and then it's this ridiculous image of running, trying to find the breeze.

That is what Solomon is saying.

Pursuing satisfaction in this world is like here.

Striving after the wind.

I mean, I try to think about a contemporary example because I don't know many people who actually have tried to chase the wind.

And so I thought about this.

You know anyone who is really obsessed with Bigfoot?

You know, I mean, if if this is you, just tune out for a few seconds here, because this is not gonna be a good illustration for you, okay?

But but have you ever seen someone who's just obsessed with finding Bigfoot and they're showing you the pixely images and they're going on YouTube to videos that have been viewed by 17 people and were posted in 2007, and they're showing look into this force and you're gonna see Bigfoot, and you and you just look at the person and you say, I mean, you are just you're you're wasting your time.

You're trying to find something that doesn't exist.

And the problem with it isn't how hard you're trying to find it, or or you know how many resources you have.

The problem is that you just will not find something that doesn't exist.

Have you ever heard a sermon preached on Bigfoot?

That's where we are in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Striving after the wind.

Solomon's looking at us and saying, Listen, we're all chasing Bigfoot.

We're all striving after the wind.

We're all in this world trying to pursue satisfaction under the sun.

And listen, we're as silly as a person striving after the wind.

We're as silly as a person on YouTube, on those 20-year-old videos looking for Bigfoot.

You can't do it.

Now in verse 15, he tells us exactly why.

He gives us a proverb.

What is crooked cannot be made straight.

What is lacking cannot be counted.

Solomon writes a proverb.

The proverb does what all proverbs do.

It says one thing with complete clarity.

There are things, Solomon says, your best efforts cannot provide you.

What Solomon is doing is drawing a hard line around human effort and saying this here is what it can provide you, here's what it can't.

It can't make crooked things straight.

There are things, loved ones, that you just cannot get for yourself.

Your effort has limits.

Now, this is the heartbeat of Ecclesiastes.

The heartbeat of this book is Solomon showing us what you get when you chase what the world offers over what God gives.

And here he brings our mind to the absurdity of it.

Chasing what the world offers, it's like having a bucket with a hole in it and trying to fill it up.

Doesn't matter how hard you try, put all the effort in you want.

Try to outthink the bucket.

Work harder, pour out more, do everything you can to keep that bucket full.

It does not matter, there's still a hole in it.

The bucket is still empty.

This is what Solomon is saying about life.

Work as hard as you want.

Give it your best effort.

Put all your effort, all your intelligence, all your wisdom, all your devotion into that bucket.

The limit is not your effort.

The limit is what the world can actually provide from your effort.

Your best effort has limits.

Let me get then specific.

It's easy to say that maybe at a 30,000-foot level.

Let's think together.

Here are four things that your effort can and can't do.

Four things that your effort can and can't do.

Loved one, notice that your best effort can produce success.

It cannot produce meaning.

It can produce success.

It cannot produce meaning.

You can work hard and build a great career.

You can hit the numbers.

You can get the title.

You can make the income that you always dreamed would finally satisfy.

Your effort can win you those things.

At the end of the day, when you sit in that office that your effort earned, the question will still rise up underneath all of it.

Is this it?

Is this all there is?

Is this the point?

You didn't fail.

You succeeded.

And you got to the top and you looked around and you're with Solomon.

You're with Scotty Scheffler.

I mean, it just feels empty still.

Listen, you can get success, you can't get meaning.

Second thing that your effort can accomplish is this your effort can produce accomplishment.

It cannot produce worth.

Couldn't produce accomplishment.

It cannot produce worth.

You can perform, you can achieve, you can build a resume, you can get really good grades.

Okay, students, kids in the worship center right now, do that, okay?

It's really important.

Do it.

Parents nudging their kids right now, do that.

It's really important.

But listen, this is what I want you to tell you about achievement.

You can accomplish great things, but all these accomplishments were never designed to tell you who you are.

And all they do is lead you down this road where you attach your worth to your accomplishment and you will always ask, is it enough?

And it never will be.

You can accomplish great things.

You cannot find worth in your accomplishments.

Third thing I want you to see that your effort can and can't do, your effort can produce a plan.

Your effort can produce a plan.

It cannot produce peace.

You can optimize everything.

You can have a budget.

You can have your finances in control.

You can have your diet under control.

You can be building out a five-year plan.

You can be prepared, the most prepared person in every room that you walk into.

The anxiety still doesn't leave.

You can plan every detail of your life down to the minute and still everything's one phone call away from falling apart.

You can make plans, you can be prepared.

You cannot find peace in them.

Last thing I want you to see that you can and can't do by effort, your best effort can produce a reputation.

It cannot produce a rest.

You can make people think well of you.

You can be someone, you can build something that impresses other people, your neighbors, your colleagues.

You can build a reputation.

You know what the problem is?

Is that as soon as you are known as the person you want to be known for, you become exhausted because you have to keep being known as that person.

And there's no rest in it.

You can build a reputation, you cannot build rest.

Loved ones, do you see yourself here?

Success without meaning, accomplishment without worth, a plan without peace, reputation without rest.

And we look at a list like this, and the work for us to do right now is to ask ourselves, what ceiling am I bruising myself against right now?

What pursuit am I chasing that just has a limit to the satisfaction it can actually provide?

That I'm asking it to give me something it isn't actually designed to give.

And as we think about that, some of us just need to be honest right now to say we're just not ready to hear it.

We still think if I just get a little farther, if I just try a little harder, if I just get to the next stage in life, if I just do the next thing, then it will finally be enough.

What if God, what if God has you here this morning?

What if God brought our whole church into the series of ecclesiastes for this one purpose?

To save you some time in your life, to confront you with this reality that the thing you have put your hope in is an empty hope, that the thing you have pursued with all of your energy is an empty pursuit.

What if what God wants to do is show you what the destination that you have been running towards all of your life looks like before you get there?

You ever had the experience of booking an Airbnb or a hotel, and you flick through all the pictures, and the pictures all look amazing, don't they?

You look at the reviews, and you know, it's all bots these days, and so all the reviews are great.

And then you get to the room and you walk in, and it smells a little weird.

And you really wish that they had developed the technology so that you could smell the room from the you know little Airbnb page, too.

And it's not as big, you realize, you know, they took this picture with one of those fisheye lens, so this room looked a lot bigger in the pictures than it actually was.

And the lighting was perfect that day because now it's overcast, and man, you can sure see a lot of the stains on these walls.

You ever been there before?

Is that just the Airbnbs that I'm booking with my budget?

Some of you are looking at me like that's what it is.

Some of you are running toward a version of your life that was photographed under perfect lighting.

And when you walk in the door, Solomon is here to tell you it's not what you thought.

Solomon says, I've been there before.

I've got the picture on my phone.

I can show you what it's actually like.

It's empty.

Don't book it.

Don't go there, don't go through all the effort of getting all the way there only to be disappointed.

I can already tell you.

It's vanity.

This is what Solomon did for you.

You know, last week we saw that that what Ecclesiastes is doing is taking us from the bottom so that to the bottom so that at the bottom we can see the emptiness and then finally look up and see God.

You know what else Solomon does for us, which is really helpful?

He takes us to the top.

And from the top he looks down to say, hey, listen, satisfaction is not found up here either.

And listen, you and I, we understand how unhappy it is to fail in life.

We understand how unhappy it is to fall short of a goal that we've set for ourselves.

We understand that the bottom is not a great place, so we understand what's easily what Solomon's saying.

Listen, at the bottom there's emptiness, you look up and you see God.

You know what the problem is?

We believe too much in the top.

We believe too much that there's satisfaction at the end of the fulfillment of our goal.

And Solomon takes us to the top.

And he's writing this so that we don't have to make that exhausting pursuit only to get there and agree with Solomon and agree with Scotty Scheffler and agree with Steve Jobs, who says the destination is not actually what it looks like.

That your best efforts will not get you the satisfaction, the joy that you want.

You notice what they got him?

You see it in verse 18?

Look at verse 18.

For in much wisdom is much vexation.

And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Loved ones, the third thing I want you to see this morning is that your best effort leaves you empty.

Your best effort leaves you empty.

Solomon again in verses 16 and 17 restates his credentials.

He again wants us to understand who he is as the most resourced, gifted, devoted human pursuer that ever lived.

He wants you to trust him.

Listen, I, if anyone knew how to run this race, I ran it well.

Verse 18, the last line of chapter one, he leaves us at the end of it all.

For in much wisdom is much vexation.

He who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

It is the most counterintuitive thing that Solomon has said.

We expect wisdom to bring relief.

We expect knowledge to bring clarity and for clarity to bring peace.

Look at the word of God, where for in much wisdom is much vexation, for in much knowledge there is an increase of sorrow.

For all that Solomon has done, for all that he has pursued.

What has been the reward of it?

According to the word of God, loved one, the greatest pursuer of all time.

What did he get at the end of the pursuit?

More vexation.

More sorrow.

I believe that there are people who have gotten there.

Or at least close enough to see it clearly.

And have come to the same conclusion that what you felt was not what you expected.

That you wanted satisfaction, you wanted fulfillment, you wanted this feeling of enoughness, you wanted this rest, but you got there and all you found was more sorrow.

All you found was more vexation, this restless irritation.

Sorrow, this grief of realizing that the thing that you gave everything to didn't give you what you were looking for from it.

Vexation and sorrow.

It's not failure's reward.

It's Solomon's saying, listen, the reward of success in life, the reward of success in life is vexation and sorrow.

Solomon felt it from the very top of the world.

Do you see what God is doing for us this morning?

He's building a theology of success for us this morning.

A theology of success.

That even if you get everything, it will not be enough.

The only question for you and I is this do you believe it?

Do you believe what the Bible says about success?

Do you believe that when when God's word says that the end of the pursuit of all the things under the sun is vexation and sorrow, do you believe what the Bible says?

Do you believe, loved one, that even your best will leave you empty?

Even your best will leave you empty.

You know, Ecclesiastes wants us right here.

Solomon wants us looking at the emptiness because before we can see the cure, we have to know the diagnosis.

He is the doctor coming in the room who maybe he has a cure, but you gotta know how bad things are before you'll you're willing to listen to what the cure is.

Solomon applied his heart.

He deployed all of his wisdom, he gave all of his energy, exhausting every effort to the pursuit that you and I are on, only to arrive at vexation and sorrow.

And he's teaching us this.

You have the choice.

You can chase what the world offers.

Or you can receive what God gives.

And if you chase what the world offers, you will end where Solomon ends too.

This is where Solomon found himself.

Going to the top, he found vexation and sorrow.

But loved one, I want you to know about another figure in God's story who went the opposite direction.

Who instead of climbing to the top to find vexation and sorrow, he descended into vexation and sorrow itself.

When Jesus came to this world, they called him the man of sorrows, and he did not get there accidentally.

He arrived there on purpose.

It is who he came to be.

It is what the prophet Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus was born, described him as.

In Isaiah 53 is saying he was despised and rejected by men, men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Solomon, he climbs to the top of the world.

He experiences real sorrow, real emptiness, and he has no answer for it but to come down and to tell us: listen, there's nothing up there either.

Jesus, he did not climb to the top to find sorrow.

He descended from the top.

He was in heaven, experiencing the fullness of satisfaction in the presence of the Father for all of eternity.

He left heaven, descended from the top, and became sorrow itself, taking on the emptiness that sits at the end of every human pursuit.

Emptying himself, we're told in Philippians, of divinity in order that he might take on suffering as the man of sorrows.

Carrying all of it for us.

Every sorrow, every vexation, every moment of arriving somewhere you worked your whole life to get only to feel nothing.

Jesus came and he took all of it.

He, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 21, he who knew no sin became sin, so that in him the crooked could finally be made straight.

Solomon says in verse 15 what is lacking cannot be counted.

Jesus, loved one, Jesus went into the lacking, into the darkness, into the grave, into the full weight of all of our emptiness, and he came out the other side so that what was lacking through the resurrection of Jesus Christ could be filled.

This is where emptiness points.

Your problem, loved one.

Your problem is not that you need more effort.

Your problem is not that you need a new strategy.

Your problem is that you cannot find satisfaction under the sun.

And the joy of the gospel, the news that we celebrate every week as we sing, sing is this that Jesus became the man of sorrows, that you might enter into eternity for eternal joy.

That's the gospel.

That's where this series is going.

That's where we're eventually gonna get, but you'll notice Solomon doesn't take us there right away.

We're two weeks in, and in these early weeks, Solomon doesn't want to resolve our problems.

He wants to diagnose them.

And we're here for the summer with Solomon, who is a faithful doctor showing us what is wrong before he can show us the cure.

Loved one, the cure is coming.

September 5th.

The very last week we're in Ecclesiastes.

The cure is coming.

For now we sit in the diagnosis.

We do the honest work, the uncomfortable work.

Even your best leaves you empty.

Solomon's sermon's not over.

A series is not over.

And the emptiness we feel is not the end of the story.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you that you love us too much to avoid a hard word with us.

And that you've met us this morning through your word and by the power of your Holy Spirit to confront us with a sobering reality.

That the way that many of us have spent most of our lives does not lead to the place that we wanted to go.

Much vexation, much sorrow, says Solomon.

And we have tasted it and seen it.

And yet, Lord, we've continued to believe that true fulfillment is just on the other side of a little bit more effort and a little bit more time.

We pray, Lord, that we would consider your son, Jesus Christ, who came from heaven, who came from perfection, who came from eternal joy and bliss, in order that he might step into our sorrow and take on our sorrow for us in order that we may receive his joy full, complete, and eternal.

God, I pray that we would receive it now, and I pray that receiving it we would sing with joy, declaring praise to the man of sorrows, Jesus Himself.

We pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Would you stand and sing with me?