Chasing Purpose | Pastor Brandon Beals

Hey, everybody, this is Pastor Brandon. I want to thank

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Thank you for watching. Enjoy the service. I love it.

My mom is afraid of live fish. I was thinking,

what is my mom afraid of everything? My wife deathly

afraid of spiders Like you guys all think dibeals fearless.

Nothing can move that woman. She is you can't budget.

Just show a spider you'll see. I want to say

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms.

We would not be here if it wasn't for you.

And thank you for loving your kids, loving your grandkids.

Thank you for everything that you do. We are beginning

a new series today called Chasing Purpose. The beginning of

the year, we spent several months looking at the life

of Solomon, and I think we all concluded by the

life of Solomon that there's a lot we learned not

to do from Solomon. But now we're going to spend

the next couple months and we're going to look at

words of wisdom that Solomon shared. So Solomon actually wrote

several books in the Bible, but specifically he wrote the

Book of Ecclesiastes and he wrote the majority of the Proverbs,

and in those even though Solomon struggled to apply his

wisdom to his own life, there are many things that

Solomon taught us that we can learn from, and that's

what we want to highlight. Over these next few weeks.

We're gonna pull certain passages from Ecclesiastes, certain passages from Proverbs,

and then we will share them and apply them.

To all of our life. But just as a quick.

Reminder, Solomon was David's son from Bathsheba. Solomon was raised

in affluence. He was raised against from the fighting, war

filled life of his father, and he grew up with

the best of everything.

Dad made sure he ate.

The best food, he had, the best clothes, he had,

the best teachers. He grew up in massive extravagance. By

the time he was eighteen nineteen twenty years old, he

becomes king of Israel. He reigns over Israel for forty years,

and in the time that he was king, he expanded

Israel's kingdom to be the most powerful, wealthiest nation in

the world. But most of all, Solomon was known for

his wisdom, his supernatural, God given wisdom.

If you were to say Solomon, what.

Was his superpower, you would say his superpower was his wisdom.

And Solomon was able to parlay that wisdom into extraordinary wealth.

He had so much wealth and power that it allowed

him to live this extravagant, pleasure filled life.

Today we see all of.

Our politicians fighting over what happened on Epstein Island. You're

outraged by what's happened on Epstein Island.

I don't want to destroy.

Your veggie tails upbringing.

But that was Solomon.

Solomon said this when he looked at his entire life

and everything that he'd done. In Ecclesiastes two ten, he

declared this, I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I

refused my heart no pleasure. I want to ask everyone

to buy your heads, close your eyes. I want you

to repeat this prayer after me. Everyone said, Dear Jesus,

speak to my heart, change my life in Jesus' name.

Amen.

For the next few weeks, we are gonna look specifically

at things that Solomon wrote in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books. In the Bible

because it's basically Solomon's autobiography.

He wrote it towards the end.

Of his life, reflecting on the answers to life's biggest questions.

And what he's striving to.

Do with Ecclesiastes is he's striving to answer what is

the meaning of life?

Does life have a purpose?

Is really in the end?

Is life worth living?

And he attempts to explain the world and all of

its complexity and all of its confusion and all of

its frustrations with striking honesty, and I gotta be honest.

So Solomon is the ideal person to answer this question,

because here is a guy who possessed the wealth, the wisdom,

and the opportunity necessary to carry out all of the

experiments required to investigate the meaning of life. Solomon experimented

with life and discovered when it was all said and done,

that there's no lasting satisfaction in pleasure, possessions, power, or prestige.

And in considering the meaning of life and his life

worth living, Solomon came to four conclusions, and I want

to share those with you this morning. And after Solomon

came to these four conclusions, he then comes up with

his final answer, what is the meaning of life? Is

life worth living? I think on this Mother's Day you

are going to find some incredible wisdom for you to

instill in your kids. After the first service, it was

person after person after person came up to me and said,

that's what we want to teach our kids, that's what

we want to raise our kids with. That is what

is the legacy we should be leaving in our children.

You see, Solomon realized that he lived in a broken world.

Does this sound familiar?

Filled with oppression of the powerless and poor?

Sound familiar?

Solomon realized he lived in a world that was full

of a violation of justice.

And in this.

Fallen, broken world, there were many painful, complicated questions, but

he answers them in Ecclesiastes.

So what are the conclusions? Four of them?

Solomon came to, let's breeze through them really quickly. Number one,

they're so encouraging by the way. Number one, Solomon says

life monotonous.

It's monotonous.

Ecclesiastes one, two, four He says meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless.

Everything is meaningless. What do people gain from all their labors?

In other words, what do people gain from all this

time they work super hard and inquire things and build businesses.

What do they gain at which they toil under the sun?

Then he says, generations come and generations go, but the

earth remains forever.

Did you know that in the Book.

Of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says the word meaningless or depending on

your translation, vanity thirty eight times says meaningless. It actually

comes from the Hebrew word heaven, and that word means emptiness, futility, vapor.

He then uses the phrase under the.

Sun, which is meant to emphasize the monotony of life

twenty nine times. And he's defining the outlook of life

from a human perspective, or from a human point of view,

what the world says you should chase after He says,

in the end, you are going to conclude life is monotonous.

The sun rises, you get up, you go to work,

the sun sets, you stop.

Working, and you go to sleep, and you.

Repeat until you die.

And Solomon literally says, you know what, I realized that

this was the life of my father before me, that

this was the life of my grandfather, that this has

gone on for generations.

The same thing. Life is monotonous.

Second thing, he concludes, the pursuit of wealth is futility.

He says this, he tells you all the stuff he'd

acquired in his life. He says, I tried cheering myself up.

This is two verse three with wine.

He said.

I wanted to see what good there was for people

to do under heaven in these few days of our life.

He said, so I built great projects. I built houses

for myself.

I planted vineyards.

I made gardens and parks, and I planted all kinds

of trees. I made reservoirs, groves of flourishing trees. I

had male servants, I had female servants. I had servants

from my male and female servants that were born into

my house.

That became my servants.

He said, I own more herds and flocks than anyone

before or after me. I am asked silver, I am

asked gold. I had treasures. I acquired male and female singers,

and I had a harem as well. And he said,

I became greater than anyone before me or anyone after me.

I shared with you when I did the series on Solomon,

that if you were to take Solomon's estimated wealth, and

you were to increase it for inflation, he would be

worth in today's dollars about three hundred trillion dollars.

This guy.

As far as the pursuit of wealth, he won, and

in the end he said it was meaningless.

And here's what he concluded.

Remember he's looking at back towards the end of his

life and everything he'd built, and he said, every building.

I'd built, every work of.

Art that I'd purchased, every vineyard I'd grown, every treasure

that I'd accumulated, is going to end up rubble and

dust someday.

He concluded that none of this lasts. I don't know

about you.

I love to travel, and I love to explore the

world and see things, and I love visiting Italy, one

of my favorite places on the planet. You know, when

you do when you go to Italy, you see a

bunch of sites that are basically rocks, and you remember

what used to be and what you're supposed to do

is to see all these rocks and imagine the majesty

that used to be rome but now it's rubble. Also

love going to Israel. You know what happens when you

do an Israel trip. By the way, it's really meaningful.

You should do it.

But all you see in Israel is piles of rocks,

and they tell you.

The story about this rock.

This rock is from the temple that Solomon built, that,

by the way, no longer exists and is just a

pile of rubble. That is what Solomon concluded, before everything

he built turned into a pile of rocks, that it

was inevitably going to become a pile of rocks. I

don't know some of you will be familiar with this,

but have you ever.

Heard of the Crystal Cathedral.

In the seventies, eighties, and nineties, the Crystal Cathedral, built

by Robert Schuller in his church was the greatest church

building built in America. It was built over by Disneyland.

It became a tourist attraction.

People would travel from all over the.

World to see this church building that Robert Schuller had built.

Did you know that by twenty ten that church was bankrupt.

At the same time, around the same area was the

TBN Trinity Broadcasting Network complex. All of the grounds, all

of the buildings, there were fountains and statues. Use Christians

from all over the world just wanted to make the

journey to what they thought was Christian mecca and stand

on the TBN grounds. They just announced that last week

that massive media organization in the hundreds of millions of

dollars that were spent to build that grounds were bankrupt.

All of the buildings that were remaining are being torn

down and turned into a low income housing development. Solomon

concluded the pursuit of wealth futility number three.

He concluded in the end, wisdom is vanity.

Here's what he said about wisdom. So remember Solomon's thinking, Well,

the answer is not wealth. Maybe the answer is be

as smart and as education as you possibly can be.

Chapter two, verse twelve.

He said, Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom,

and he said, and also madness and folly. So he's

basically comparing, you got a smart, wise person here.

You got a crazy person over here.

And he's saying, if you got a choice wise or crazy,

choose wise. But he said, I thought that wisdom is

better than folly. It's you know, it's better to be

smart than crazy, he said, just as light is better

than darkness. And he said, the wise have eyes in

their heads, and the fools they walk around in darkness.

He said, But then I came to realize something that

in the end, the same fate overtake them both. He's like,

you can be the smartest person that ever lives, and

you can be the craziest person that ever lived, and

in the end end up with the same fate in

the same place. And that leads to his conclusion number four,

that death is absolutely inevitable. Some of you are thinking,

thanks for this on Mother's Day. Pebe, I promise there's hope.

He says this verse fifteen. Then I said to myself,

the fate of the fool is gonna overtake me too.

What then do I gain by being wise?

I said to myself, this too is meaningless, for the wise,

like the fool, will not be long remembered. Their days

have already come when both have been forgotten. And like

the fool, the wise too must die.

And he said, I looked at.

Everything I'd spent my life building, acquiring all the things

that I'd taught my kids, that this is the goal.

Pursue this business, pursue this wealth.

And then he said, and then I stepped back, and

I just thought, in the end, I die just like

everyone else. The verse in Hebrews that says that a man,

and it's referring to men and women. When it says so,

I meant man generically. It says that a man is

destined to die once you know what we all have

in common.

That is going to happen.

And then after that, he said, the second team thing

that everybody will experience and then they'll face the judgment.

So every single one of us will die. It is inevitable.

Solomon is literally saying that I tried to enjoy everything

I bought, was trying to enjoy everything I owned.

Man, I was trying to enjoy all.

The pleasure that I could have. And he said, but

the whole time death was looming. You might have seen

me post this on social media, but one of my

good friends and mentors tragically died last week.

Here's the story.

He came to our church and he ministered here last summer,

and he also ministered at our Seattle campus, and he

invested in our staff for a week.

And in the time that dian I spent with him and.

His wife val Like, he just he talked about what

he'd invested his life in, and he talked about all

the people that he'd poured into and all the churches

that he'd poured into. And then we got to the

point where he talked about all the things he was

excited to do when he retired in seven to ten years.

And he talked about all the things that he loved

in addition to Jesus and ministering to leaders and church work.

And he talked about, I love cars, and I love

wood making, but the thing that is my passion is beekeeping.

And he talked about his love for beekeeping. And if

you saw the dude, he looks like Goldberg, the professional wrestler,

imagine him in a beekeeper outfit.

I did too as he talked about his love for beekeeping.

Die and I drove home after the dinner we had

with them, and he was so compelling in the way

he talked about it that Die actually said to me,

we should consider beekeeping. This is how like he good

he was at this. Here's the story of last week.

He had just finished his network conference leading all the

churches that he leads, and he was running to a meeting.

But before he went to the meeting, he wanted to

do something with his bees.

So he threw on his beekeeping.

Gear and was taking care of his bees and he

got stung on the neck and had a massive allergic reaction.

He thought, this is not normal. The way I feel

is not normal. So he thought, I've got to run

into the house. We don't know exactly if he's gonna

run in, Grab Benadril, go call nine to one one.

We just know that he started sprinting into his house,

but the rush of adrenaline mixed with the allergic reaction

from the beasting caused him to have a heart attack

and die immediately in his backyard. I just you can't

hear a story like that and not step back and

think about your life and what you invest your life in.

Solomon concluded that the vast majority of his life was

meaningless because what did he instill in his kids. He

taught them pursue wealth, pursue pleasure, build businesses, bigger houses,

nicer cars, chase what the world says to chase. And

at the end of his life he said it was meaningless.

And then he comes to his final conclusion. So he said,

these are the conclusions I've came to. But is there

a purpose in life? Is life worth living? And he

transitions the conversation to a perspective.

That moms you need to have dads.

We need to have when it comes to what we

instill in those that are coming after us. He said,

it all boils down the perspective, because if you look

at life through a human lens without God, you will

decide it is truly meaningless, a chasing after the win,

and that instead you must look at life through the

perspective of faith in God.

Now and quickly tell you a story.

My parents are moving to the house they're going to

grow old together in and in their selling of their

other house, and they're moving and downsizing. They keep throwing

stuff at my sister and I to take, but this

is for you.

You gotta have it.

Every time we would go over there, I would back.

Of my trucks full of stuff.

My dad slid into the back and it's all kinds

of family documents and mementos and bills from the nineteen seventies.

The Lord knows why they kept all those things, but

they did. And the very last time I went to

their house, my mom said, Brandon, I found this letter

from your grandfather to your dad. Unfortunately, I told my

mom save this letter.

I want it forever.

My mom said, well, I need to show it to

your father first and then I'll give it to you.

And what does she do? She lost it. So trust me,

this is what it said.

We're gonna find it. It was two and a half pages.

It was from nineteen sixty six. And remember, nowadays, we

take for granted how we can communicate with people. You

text them, you FaceTime them, you call them, like communication

with anyone in the world is instantaneous. But for those

of you that were around in the sixties and seventies,

if you called somebody from another state, you had to

pay expensive long distance fees. So instead of calling people,

you would often just send them letters. And you know how,

like we send a letter, it's cute and it's fun,

but any usually comes within forty eight hours when you

send a letter back then, a letter could take two

to four weeks to show up. So here are the

revelations that I learned about.

My parents from said letter.

Okay, I knew this that my dad graduated from high

school at seventeen and immediately he was an Italian from Boston,

grew up in the city. He immediately graduates and lists

in the Air Force. He gets stationed at a missile

base in Great Falls, Montana, my mom is like a

fifth generation rancher, Irish rancher in Montana. That our family

is settled in Great Falls, and the area back in

the seventies and eighties was known as Irish Acres because

of our family was Irish and they settled in that

area is known as Irish Acres. So my mom all

she knew was this small country town in Montana. She

meets my dad at an soo dance, They fall in love,

get married, have me. Then my sister moved to Seattle.

The rest is history. That is all I knew until

the letter. Letter went something like this, Walter, it was

good to hear from you. I'm surprised to hear you

are engaged. He had never introduced my mom to his parents.

My mom was still in high school. You know why

your parents don't tell you these things because they don't

want you to do what they did. And my grandpa

in this letter says, you know, I was trying to

discourage you from immediately joining the military.

I was disappointed when you moved, and.

He said, but you know, Barbara, sounds great, and I'm

happy for you and your mom, and I are going

to try to make it out for the wedding. That

was the letter I read this. I looked at my

mom and said, you were seen when you got you

were in high school.

I had none of this I knew.

And over the last probably ten years, I have asked

my parents many times, why why Seattle? Like I would

go visit all my Italian relatives with my dad in Boston,

and I'd be like, Dad, if you didn't want the country,

why didn't we move to Boston, this place is awesome?

And then the amount of times I said to my mom,

like we had the like dreamy life in Montana, lived

around all of our family and all of our cousins,

and I go, Mom, why did you let us move

from Montana? And here's what I always heard from my dad.

He said, Brandon, I did it because I loved your mother.

And my mom would say, Brandon, we moved from Great

Falls because I loved your father. My dad city boy,

country girl. They landed. I don't know why they chose Seattle,

but they ended up in Seattle. So I've asked these

questions for years. Here's what I learned, and I learned

the same thing that Solomon learned. Solomon says, when you

look at life from the perspective of faith, and he

said this in Ecclesiastes three to eleven, he said, God

has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in.

The human heart.

Yet no one can fathom what God has done from

beginning to end. He uses the word meaningless and vanity

thirty eight times.

He uses the phrase under.

The sun twenty nine times to emphasize the monotony of life.

He emphasizes meaningless vanity to say, the pursuit of what

the world says you should go after is meaningless.

But here he mentions God. Did you know? Solomon mentions

the name of God over forty times in.

Ecclesiastes, and he specifically and we know that in the

Old Testament there are many names for God. But Solomon

uses a specific name for God, elokeeen, and he uses

it over forty times.

And the name for God, Elkeem.

Refers to God being the God of creation who exercises

his sovereignty over all of creation.

Solomon is saying, when you view life from.

The perspective of the world without God, you conclude it

is meaningless, it might not be worth living. So but

when you view life from the perspective of someone where

God is the creator, the architect, the God is sovereignly

in control of what is happening, then you should step

back and enjoy life, he said.

You're right.

Life full of oppression, full of injustice, he says, But

ultimately it is.

Well for those who fear God.

You might wonder, due does evil ever get punished? Solomon says,

in the end, it is not good for those who

don't fear God. Solomon then goes on and he says

life is God's gift and he wants us to enjoy

it and use it for his glory. That instead of

complaining about what you don't have, start giving.

Thanks for what you do have.

He makes this statement in Ecclesiastes seven fourteen. He says,

when times are good, be happy. He said, but when

times are bad, consider this, God has made one as

well as the other. Therefore no one can discover anything

about their future. And he says, Solomon is saying this.

He's saying, we aren't in control.

Church. You really you're not in control. That is supposed

to be freeing when you realize.

That that our message to our kids needs to abandon

striving after control and instead embrace the one who is

in control. Solomon emphasizes that life without God, I mean,

it is scary. Everything that you live and work for,

it'll perish. Our message to our kids needs to be

abandoned the quest for self glory and the accumulation of stuff,

and instead be blessed and live a God centered life.

Here's what I learned about my mom from reading that letter.

I don't know.

I don't know what led us to end up in Seattle.

I just know that we serve a God who is

in control. My mom has many times said she's thankful

for Seattle because faith was introduced to our family. Because

of Seattle, my mom starts exploring faith. I get saved,

and then my mom really embraces faith. Then my sister

gets saved, and then eventually my dad gets saved. So

if you step back and you look at the journey

that brought us here, what it actually did. Is it

actually instilled in my sister and I the values that

are worth instilling in your kids. I always imagined, thinking

of that seventeen year old woman who's in high school engaged.

I didn't know this.

Journey was going to lead to Seattle, that someday her

son would end up being a pastor. I mean, faith

was not a part of our family. She didn't know

that someday her daughter was going to be an executive

at Amazon married to a pastor. And this is my

advice to you. Learn from the words of Solomon and

what Solomon realized. He said, if I could do anything

over again, I would have instilled in my children pursue God.

Pursue God, Pursue God.

All the stuff it's just gonna go away. I mean

the number of people that have owned businesses that their

kids have squandered.

The number of people that have built up.

And acquired huge wealth and left a massive inheritance that

their kids have squandered. Those people are a dime a dozen.

That is not wealth that you invest in your children.

What you invest in your children is put God.

First, pursue Jesus, pursue God, and live life from the

perspective of faith. So my question for you this morning

is are you living life for the Lord or you

live in life for the things.

Of the world.

If you live for the world, you're gonna view life

from the wrong perce. I want to close by praying

for you, and then die is going to come up

and she has something that she's going to share. Lord Jesus,

I'm thankful that my parents did something that at the

time seemed bizarre and moved us to the Seattle area.

That they put us in a position where you could

find us, and in the end, we found you.

And as a result of that decision.

We're a Christian family, a family that pursues you first.

And I am thankful for that legacy that my mom

has invested into my life.

And now, Lord, I pray for the moms and dads

that are here.

That we would take a step back and we would

evaluate what the world says we should sed into our

kids and instead let us seed into our children something

that will outlive us and allow them to live life

with a perspective that can change generations. Lord, I thank

you for our church. Bless the moms on Mother's Day

in Jesus' name.

Amen, Yeah, applaud.

We're actually going to take a second offering. And if

you've been around for the last few weeks, we are

actually in a project right now called our light Bearer's

Project where we are raising funds for two things. One

is to build out our kids wing and the other

is to simultaneously bring electricity literally by putting in solar

panels in a small little village center in Dominican Republic,

which I'm going to fly to actually tonight to go

be a part of that project. It might feel ironic

that after a message that is not about building things,

we're taking an offering to build something. But Heather and

I in the first service in the front row, we're

whispering back and forth and we're like, we feel like

this actually sets us up really well because in a

service where we're talking about not building your own kingdom,

but building something that invests into kids, and what greater

thing for moms, That's what we're all about, is investing

and seeding into our kids. Then for all of us

to be a part of this project. I'm going to

have Heather share something in a minute, but I just

want to say I want to challenge those in this

room and watching online. The resources for this project are

in this house.

They are We just have to.

Determine that this is important enough for us to invest

them in, and it is. We have raised our kids,

we're both believing for our future grandkids, and we are

both personally with our husbands seeding into this project, believing

for the children that are yet to come. I found

Jesus in a kid's ministry. There are kids that are

going to find Jesus because we are going to build

out this kid's wing. Yeah.

So, like she said, Dan and I have committed to

giving to this project, not because we're gonna like our

grandkids won't be here. Both of our adult kids are

serving at other churches, but they were invested into when

they were little, and we are grateful. So we are

going to pay that forward and invest because our kids

are worth it. And like she said, it's not about

the room that we're building, it's about the environment and

the legacy that we are leaving. And liked said, you know,

we seed into things. This is an opportunity to say, Lord,

I'm believing for this. I'm going to give because i

want to see this happen good.

So we're gonnavite the ushers to come forward and the

buckets will pass. You can also give using our light bearers.

There's actually a tab on our app that says Kids

Weing project that you can donate to right there. This

shows you where we're at in our goal, and there's

QR codes there. If you'd like to learn more or give.

I'm going to challenge you. The resources are in this house.

Would you agree with me? As we pray, Lord, thank

you that you hold all the resources for this project

to invest into our kids, and now I'm asking Lord

release them in this place. Bless those who give and

trust you in their giving. God. Whether that be a

little or a lot, that's individual. But we give trusting

that you're going to use it to make the investment

into kids here something that is eternal. So we thank

you that we get to be a part of it.

It's in your name. We pray amen. As those buckets

are passing, I just want to say again Happy Mother's

Day to all the moms in the room. We have

some things for you out front. So under the front

awning you'll find a bouquet bar that is for the moms,

not for kids who forgot to get their mom something.

You have to go to Safeway.

For the moms.

You can grab one bouquet, please just one so we

have enough for everybody. Also, we have dirty sodas out there,

a couple varieties that are delicious. We have a photo

booth out there, and also you'll be handed moms a

Raffle ticket on your way out, write your name on

it and put it in whichever item you hope to win.

I think mine's the best, And dads and kids, you

can buy more Raffle tickets for the mom in your life.

If you'd like to have an incredible day, go ahead

on your feet. We say blessings. We love you, moms.

Have a great day.

Thank you for watching today's service. I hope it was

beneficial to you. Please like subscribe let us know what

you thought. Look forward to seeing you next week.