It’s not inside, It’s on top

We are in a series of significance and trying to find

meaning and we're trying to be free to be ourselves and not be

influenced by others in any way whatsoever.

I mean, Stephen has no role and Chad has no role in my life.

I thought I was just, it's still sore, but it's, but it's Chad.

How are we doing? But I mean, I mean, it's a it's,

it's a bit of a pushy hit, but it's, it's been trained to be

the lion of the tribe of Judah. Then are we all trying to find

significant somehow? So we're doing a little series

called if you weren't there last week, Finding Sofia.

Sofia is wisdom. And we are in a world that we

are meant to be travelers, we are meant to be sojourners in

this world. God did not make this world

permanent for us. We are meant to be passing

through. But what happens is the world

grips us and we start storing up like the world stores up.

And the book of Ecclesiastes is actually written to us to make

sure we store in our stuff in the right place.

I got a phone call from Nazna this week.

So when you get a phone call from Nazna, after you've smacked

everybody in Nazna for collecting shells, you're very

nervous when the phone rings. I think, Oh my hat, they're a

little offended. So I got a phone call.

I said hi, said hi. I said we listened to your

preach. I said really?

I said I just want to correct you.

It's Pansy shells we pick up, not calories.

So to all the people from Naz there, God bless you as you pick

up Pansy shells and my friends who phoned me so they're going

to be a next week, I'll introduce them to you.

The Pansy shell collectors better.

My business partner phoned me this weekend.

We collect about a ton of rubbish a day at our business.

We have a food business and we have lots of rubbish packets and

cups and about a ton a day. And because we are on the main

highway of the country, we have to take it into town because we

don't have facilities where we are to burn it and to get rid of

it. So we have to go into town and a

ton of rubbish is a lot of rubbish.

But it rained for two days and so actually he couldn't take the

rubbish in the one day because it was just absolutely poorly as

dangerous. And so when he went into town

this week, what actually happened?

As you go in, we live just outside Harry Smith.

As you go into Harry Smith, there's a, there's a, there's a

drop. And as you went down two days of

rain, the one ton had turned to 2 1/2 tons because of the rain,

because the, the cardboard absorbed the rain.

And what actually happened for a second is that the trailer went

down, the rubbish came forward and the front of his car lifted

up. And for about 3 seconds, he was

facing oncoming traffic with the front of his car lifted up where

you steer from and the trailer pushing down.

And he spoke of that absolute fear of having no control of the

vehicle. And then it came right, And he

managed to get it to the to the dump.

That's what the Book of Ecclesiastes is about.

It's about unhooking the trailer so that the weight of our

experiences and the weight of the expectation of the world

when we're going downhill doesn't somehow push us down and

lift our wheels up so that we don't know how to steer.

Amen. And so that's what this book is

about. It's not an easy book.

It's a it's, it's quite a difficult book to understand.

But to the believer, we are actually misfits and strangers

in the world. The Bible calls us aliens.

Here we are travelling through, yet we make this life permanent

and lose sight of eternity and store up treasures for ourselves

here instead of the life to come.

Blaze kids. Pastel says this.

All men seek happiness. This is without exception.

Whatever different means they use, they all tend to this end

of happiness. The cause of some of people

going to war and the cause of others avoiding it is for the

same desire in both to be happy. This is the motive of every

action of every man, even those who kill themselves.

And so we are absolutely gripped by happiness.

We do things to avoid pain and to be happy.

You would have done it already today, stayed in the shower a

little longer, eaten your favorite food just to be happy.

And you leave your job because you not happy.

And you leave your marriage because you, she doesn't make me

happy anymore. And so somehow this modern day

philosophy that has gripped our hearts in a woke environment is

like, I deserve to be happy. I've worked really hard, I've

studied really hard, I've got a degree and I deserve to be

happy. It was never about you.

It was about God. It was about God's design of

your life to be alive at this time for a purpose.

And we get sucked into a world and the measurements of our

world is exactly the same as the world.

And the book of Ecclesiastes says this.

What do you profit? What do you gain?

Yeftron, the Hebrew bird is yeftron.

And so we start to measure our profit with the exactly the same

as others. My highlight of this week, my

absolute highlight of this week was walking into town to a

meeting of a man who is probably in this auditorium today.

He's a highly successful, highly trained man.

He's an expert in his field. He works at thousands of rands

an hour, but when I saw him on Friday, he had taken off work

and he was having breakfast with his wife and children.

And I thought, you know what, He's lost money.

But he's understood Ecclesiastes.

He's understood that this wife that he has is a gift from God

and he doesn't have to work himself to the absolute bone to

get the absolute maximum amount of money to get his children

completely trained to the highest job so that they can buy

big houses, so that they can reproduce the cycle that keeps

going. He's actually said, no, hang on,

I need to enjoy this gift. And this is a book about gains

and gifts. And we have to know how to

measure gain and we have to know how to measure gift, because if

we measure gain with the ways of the world, we'll do exactly the

same as them. We'll start collecting watches

and we'll start collecting pens, and we'll start collecting guns

and we'll start collecting cars. These are temporary things that

are going to disappear when you leave.

Amen. Not easy things, eh?

And so the ways that reading Ecclesiastes, if you can put up

on, actually put up the little Cremora advert for a moment.

Coffee and Cremora. Yep, Creamora.

Where'd she put it? That was how I like my creamora.

Now she hides the. Creamora, the non dairy Creamer.

It tastes so rich and creamy, you'll expect to find it in the

refrigerator. There's no Creamora in the

refrigerator. It's not inside.

It's on top. It's not inside.

It's on top Creamora, the top of the coffee Creamer.

Guys, not inside, it's on. That's what this is about.

He's talking about wisdom and he's talking about money.

He's talking about drink and he's talking about sex and he's

talking about the deep things that are affecting the young

people of Pretoria. And he says it's not inside,

it's on. It's on top.

And the book is written really for four reasons.

If you look at the end of Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 12,

it says this. You can just put the scripts up.

I'll tell you the four reasons why it's written.

Besides being wise is the end of the book.

Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people

knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with

great care. The preacher sought to find

words of delight, say delight. I spoke to one of the

physiotherapists of the cricket teams.

He's not a Christian, but he's a friend of mine.

I had breakfast with him this week and he said to me, he said,

Rory, I'll listen to your first talk on on Ecclesiastes.

He says, what's the point then if work is meaningless and money

is meaningless? And what is the actual point?

I said keep listening to the series.

I didn't give you the answer. I just gave you the problem.

My job is not to feed you. My job is to irritate you.

We are Protestants. We are meant to protest.

We are meant to protest about what life is about.

I said you're a cricket coach coaching.

I said what is the point of a cricket team?

To make more runs? To do what?

To make get a bigger contract? To do what?

To get a bigger house so that you can send your kids to better

universities. What's the point?

You've got to ask yourself what the point is of making money.

It can't just be to get a bigger house that when you retire you

get a smaller house and give your furniture away.

It's got there's got to be some pointed.

So, so if you're a rugby player, you want to be a spring back for

what? And if you're a spring back,

then what do you do? You get a contract in Japan when

you're older to get more money. So what?

So you can work really hard when you're young so that you don't

have to work when you're old. It seems crazy.

Or do we actually do we actually find purpose in our work so that

we can actually work forever? It's like I'm, I'm not and, and

it, and everybody asks, I'm working really, really, really

hard for what? You've got to know why you're

working hard. There's got to be a reason for

working hard. It can't be friends because you

had a student loan and now your kids who don't have a student

loan because you have enough money to pay them off and they

go to university and they start drinking.

And then you say to me, you don't know how hard I'm working

to send you to university. You're about to experience it,

guys. Your kids have just left for

Stellenbosch. They're going to fail their

first year. They're going to drink

themselves to death. Not to death, but they're going

to drink themselves. They're going to save themselves

crazy. And you're going to say, but

I've worked so hard. You did exactly the same thing

you say, but I've got a student loan.

And now you spoiled them so they don't have a student loan.

So Solomon got spoiled in David's house.

He never paid a price for the blessing that he had.

And so he just kept perpetuating extravagant living with no

meaning. And now he's at the end of his

life and saying, hey, guys, hang on.

Whoa, you can't just go to varsity and save yourself away.

Even if you're passing. There's got to be more meaning.

So while your kids are drinking and exploring with drink, you're

looking at this thing of a week really, really hard.

And I deserve actually happiness.

Stop causing me stress. And both of them are wrong

challenging. Hey, it's nice to see you come

back. The preacher sought to find

words of delight and uprightly he wrote words of truth, Say

delight. The book of Ecclesiastes is

actually a book of delight. God actually designed us

according to his pleasure. So it says in Ephesians chapter

one. I'm created according to the

will and pleasure of God. When God made me had fun, and

when God made you, he had fun. And so we, especially in

Pretoria, we love the will of God, the will of God, the will

of God, the will of God. The God is crossed.

God is angry, slightly irritated with me.

No, no, no, no, he's not. God is actually a pleasurable

God. He's a God of delight.

And when he writes a book, even if it's a hard book, the heart

of it, the first point of it is that it'll cause us joy.

I ask people say to me, how do you describe the word delight?

I said it's opposite of the heavy and if you want to further

meaning, it's it's opposite of the dark.

And and so God writes a book of the light opposite of the heavy

and opposite of the dark. He wants to actually bring us

into a spacious light place where we actually can explore

the meaning of life. Amen.

The second reason why he writes it, it says the words of the

wise are like goats, say goats. If you don't know what that is,

it's a it's a stick with electricity and you when you

poke a sheep or a goat or a cow and like nails firmly fixed are

the collected sayings. They are given by 1 shepherd.

So I've got to stick with the nail.

And what I'm doing for this series is I'm just I'm just I'm

just and you think, hey, man, foot shack, it's like it's like

I'm just I'm just I'm just I'm just sticking this nail all over

you this so that that you can you see I'm not choosing a girl.

Otherwise, somebody will lay a complaint.

And so I'm going to spend about 6 or 8 weeks just sticking nails

into here. So it's just sticking them in

here. And you think, but that's not

very comfortable already. But that's why the book was

written, so that you can actually reassess your life and

think what's really meaningful. How am I spending my time?

How am I spending my money? How am I spending my words?

Lord God, will you speak to me? That's why the book is written.

Amen. The third reason it says, and

the end of the matter. Verse 13 The end of the matter.

All has been heard. Fear God and keep His

commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

This is how the saying goes. If you fear God, you'll fear

nothing else. If you don't fear God, you'll

feel if you'll fear everything else.

So what is the end of man? The chief end of man is to fear

God and obey his commands. How must I treat my wife?

Fear God and obey his commands. How must I spend my money?

Fear God and obey his commands. How must I train on the rugby

field? Fear God and obey his commands.

How must I play the drums? Fear God and obey his commands.

How should I cook for my family? Fear God and obey his commands?

And we don't need psychologist friends.

We just need to fear God and obey his commands.

We can sort ourselves out. You can sort your marriage out

to those two words. Fear God and obey his commands.

Stop treating speaking badly to your wife.

Fear God and obey his commands. And the final thing, so pleasure

the prodding, the pattern. That's how we do for God will

bring every deed into judgement with every secret thing.

Everything will be judged into judgment for every secret thing

with a good or evil. God has actually given us a

preparation to get ready for the ends of our life.

And it sounds very terrible, but actually all of our lives are

going to end and all of us have got different ways of bringing

them to an end. Like my eyes are getting worse

every day, so are yours. So what I do is I get the nicest

pair of glasses that I can possibly get to try and actually

put you off attention that my eyes are getting worse.

So I choose them and people often in meetings say, are these

cameras? I says no, that's just the O of

Oakley. That just helps me look trendy

while my eyes are getting worse. And then you see the latest fans

come and you get clear glasses and you get steel glasses.

And the fashion has changed. And all we do with fashion is we

try and hide the process that we're going to die.

So for all you Botox people, this is my Botox.

So before you worry, before you pop everything up and everything

looks ha ha, ha, you're going to die.

Whether you die of Botox or with Botox, you are going to die.

Botox, calves, Botox. Yeah.

Botox. This, this is my Botox.

It's Oakley Botox. But you're still going to die.

So whether you're going to die with a tight face or a loose

face, you're still going to die. So that's the point.

So God actually wrote this book for our pleasure so that we

would understand him and enjoy it.

God wrote this book to deal with some of our value systems.

God wrote this book to give us a kind of a pattern of life, fear

God and obey his commands. That's you can take that for the

rest of your life. And God wrote this book.

So to be prepared for the day that will be our last, you know,

my last day of school, I don't know about you actually normally

started about the last week of school for me.

But the last day of school we don't know where, OK, because

there's no reward and there's no award in the last day of school.

So you don't do anything. So they don't really prepare for

it. I mean, I don't know if you

worked on the last day of school.

I stopped working about 12 or 14 days before the last day of

school. But God has actually said there

is going to be a last day for you.

And I actually want you to prepare for it with everything

that you've got. Amen.

OK, let's go and read Ecclesiastes.

Nice to see you. So this is a really clever guy.

He's really, really rich. He gets about 2.2 million Rand

every hour. Yeah, 2.2 million Rand every

hour. That's like walking into men and

then chilling. Louis Vuitton, iPhone, iPad.

I run, you walk down, you go to the watch shop between little

Panera Tag, Rolex. Do you have that Who Blot?

You have The Who Blot and Patrick Phillip have a Patrick

Phillip. And then you've got all that

stuff. And then the next hour comes and

you get another 2.2 million in your bank account.

You walk in the upstairs to Exclusive Books and then you go

around the corner to the gold things.

You can have some Krugerrands. You buy 50 Krugerrands and then

the next hour comes and another 2.2 gets deposited in your

accounting writers says, hey guys, I'm telling you money

can't make you happy. Norkin wisdom, Norkin alcohol.

So let's read chapter 1, verse 12.

Either teacher was king of Israel in Jerusalem.

I devoted myself to study. I went to turkeys.

Or if your dad worked really hard, you go to Stillies, but

you drink just as much. It's tellies and turkeys.

Then you find your friend who says, hey, you've lost laws,

you've lost Crystal. Watch your baby strip.

I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is

done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid

on men. I've seen all the things that

are done under heaven and the sun.

All of them are meaningless. That word meaningless is not.

It's just like smoke. It doesn't really have

definition. It doesn't.

You can't grab it chasing after the wind.

What is twisted cannot be straightened.

Say that what is twisted cannot be straightened.

What is lacking cannot be counted.

So is it wrong to go to university?

Of course that's not wrong. Why do you go to university?

Because you're gifted and you're educated and you're clever and

you should have a PhD. And we believe in advancement in

science and medical breakthroughs, and we believe in

all that stuff. But but Solomon says, but it's

not actually, it's not actually final.

And the reason why is because there's something crooked in the

world and there's something that can't be counted.

And so we are in the most advanced technological era of

the whole universe. We have had thousands of years

of medical research and we can't fix AIDS.

There's something crooked. There's something, something's

not straight, something is wrong.

And then all of a sudden COVID breaks out and the biggest

scientists in the world come up with a solution that takes

forever. But there's, and then as as that

goes down, then there's another virus that's coming out of China

now and everybody's panicking at the HMV virus.

That's good because there's something inside of our society

that is crooked. And education can't fix it, you

say, but we're going to try. You can't.

Solomon is the wisest man who ever lived.

And he said there's something crooked.

It cannot be counted. How do we have the best

negotiators in the world? And we cannot finish the the war

between Russia and Ukraine. We cannot finish the war because

there's something crooked in the heart of man.

Man wants to dominate. Man wants their authority to

rule and reign. How come, friends, after

thousands of years, 2000 years since Jesus died, we cannot fix

the war between Israel and Palestine.

We cannot the greatest negotiators in the world because

there's something crooked and something cannot be counted.

Friends, it doesn't add up. And he says, you can have a PhD

and you won't make the math work.

So must I get a PhD? Of course you must get a PhD.

People said to me, well, Rory, the way you preached last week,

we don't have to study. We don't have to work.

Now you'll go bankrupt, and then your kids will have to get

student loans. Please listen to what I'm

saying, friends. This is a very intricate book.

This is Solomon who's done everything.

He's writing back to young Tuckies University students.

US old guys can understand because we've made many of these

mistakes. And he's saying to the young

people, guys, be careful that you don't spend your life

chasing the wind. Let's go to chapter 2.

I thought in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure to

find out what is good. Say good.

That's the word tov, TOV. Say that's tov.

Say that person next to say that's tov, tof, Afrikaans, tof,

that's good. You see, Brent, that is exactly

the same word that God used when he created the world.

When God created the world, he said that is tov, that is Tov,

that is good. And the way God created the

world, as we saw from last week, he created the world cyclically.

And it says we seem to be going around in circles, Moycliffe,

Watercliffe Woolworths, Moycliffe Watercliffe

Woolworths, Moycliffe Watercliffe Woolworths,

Moycliffe, Watercliffe Woolworths and when the husband

comes out Moycliffe, Watercliffe, Woolworths and then

to break the pattern we go to Stellenbosch to break the

pattern. Then we go to Paul Jin Sacking

Woolworths. Paul Jim Cycling.

Woolworths. Paul Jim.

God's designed it like that. If you go to Cape Town, friends,

in summer and you sit at a coffee shop, you'll hear a guy

say hello. You say hello to the Afrikaans

guy who says who are mortar. Why say hello back?

You gotta say hello. Hello.

Hello. Where are you from?

I'm from Holland. Oh, what's your name?

My name is Hard Young from Holland.

I said head young. What you doing here in South

Africa? No, I it's very cold in Holland

and so I come to South Africa for the winter because down the

hook from Holland with all the crash components buy a coat.

He showed I'm going to come to South Africa so I can play golf.

Oh, head young so nice. You play golf.

You're like, oh, I like golf. How much golf do you play?

Oh, I play golf whole time. Golf.

But what do you do in the snow? No, I leave the snow.

I come to South Africa to go to Valdevi because the Valdevia 22

one, the Valdevia is cheap and so you get these, they call them

swallows. They have the summer there, then

they have the summer here and they have the summer then.

God did not design us for perpetual summer.

God designed us psychically. Summer, winter, autumn, spring,

summer, winter, autumn, spring. That's why Solomon's right, He

says, listen here guys, you are married.

Don't go to Holland for the summer and then come to South

Africa for the summer. Stay for the winter so that you

can get cold and die, so that when it dies, it will start to

live in spring. Because when it dies from the

snow, when the spring comes and the sun comes, it starts to live

again. Oh, have young you must stay at

home. We want to play golf in summer

in South Africa. He's appealing to us.

He's appealing to us. He's saying to us, Hey guys,

you're breaking the cycles of God.

You're breaking you're trying to live in perpetual.

You are making enough money so that you didn't never have a

winter. You are story of you're you're

trying to control the world and the book of Ecclesiastes is

saying you can't control the world, not with your education

and not with your money, because Tov was created by God.

Man cannot create Tov. You cannot create what is good.

And every one of us is trying to build a little bit of heaven on

earth. And God says, but you're using

your plans, not my plans. And so we have God who came to

earth to create heaven on earth. We have the devil who came to

earth to create hell on earth. And God gives us all of his

blessings. And the devil takes all of those

blessings and he turns them. And what we have actually in

many situations is hell on earth, alcohol.

God created it. God created it to bring heaven

to earth, to teach us what it means to fellowship together, to

teach us what it means to actually enjoy each other's

company, to teach us what the blood of His Son actually meant.

And that was never meant to be abused.

And the devil comes and says, I'll take that wonderful

creation and I will turn it around where men who get full of

hooch smash their wives faces and and we've got to go back and

say, Lord God, what is tov? What is tov?

What is tov look like? Laughter, I said, is foolish.

And what is pleasure accomplished?

I tried cheering myself with wine.

So I went to Tuckies and I went to the Strip and I laughed

myself like a Drumford greet. I tried sharing myself with wine

and embracing folly. My mind's still guiding me with

wisdom. I wanted to see what was

worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of

their lives. I undertook great projects.

I built houses for myself and I planted vineyards.

I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees

in them. I made reservoirs to water

Groves of flourishing trees. I bought male and female slaves.

30,000 people worked for him and other slaves who were born in my

house. I also owned more herds and

flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me.

I amassed silver and gold for myself, say myself and the

treasure of kings and pro. I acquired, I owned, I bought, I

undertook, I made, I acquired women and men singers.

Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Coldplay.

He's the richest man in the earth who played at your

wedding. It's like Joe Bloggs and at

yours, Coldplay. And after main course Ed Sheeran

and after putting Taylor Swift, I bought them all.

And I said, I want to tell you this guys, it's meaningless.

It's meaningless. It's meaningless.

We're putting our treasure in the wrong place.

It's meaningless as Coldplay say.

I sweep. I sweep the streets I used to

own. Taylor Swift says we'll never

get back together again. If you think I don't listen to

music. And Eddie Sheeran says perfect,

But there is no perfect. I acquired, with men and women

singers, and a harem as well, the delights of the hearts of a

man. I became greater by far than

anyone in Jerusalem before me. And all this wisdom stayed with

me. I denied myself nothing that my

eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure.

My heart took delight in all my work.

And this was the reward for all my labor.

This is my reward. I deserve this.

I've got a degree. I've worked hard.

I stay late at night. I deserve this.

The wisest guy in the world studied, worked hard, got money.

I want to tell your friends the problem with this nation is

selfishness. I did it, I acquired it, I built

it. I studied late at night, I

worked hard, I learned the latest technology.

I, I, I, I, I, I, me, me, me, me, my, my, my.

And Solomon says, I'll tell you what, guys, you're going to get

to the end of your life. It's going to go like that.

Can you build a beach cottage? Of course you can.

Is it just for you and your family?

Not if God's blessed you with finances.

God does not deny us anything that money can buy, but if we

lose the things that money can't buy, then we're in deep trouble.

And many rich men can ask him. Solomon is a combination of

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Hugh Hefner, Bill Gates.

He's a combination of the whole lot.

And he's writing back and he's I'm telling you guys, this stuff

can't make you happy. Let's go to verse 24.

A man can do nothing. Better say better, better tov,

tov, say tov. A man can do nothing better tov

than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work.

This too, I see, is from the hand of God.

Five things and we finished. He tried pleasure.

He tried pleasure, He said. I had.

I laughed. I drank myself stupid.

I ate, drank some bukas. I drank that.

What's that one you drink cold? What's it called?

Yes, Yoga Master. I saw that I had AI, had a bad

credit. You know, you can check your

credit score. I'd like a bad credit.

I had a bad credit score because my business bought a Yoga Master

machine and didn't pay for it. So I got blacklisted for a Yoga

Master machine. Your pastor?

I got the machine. You just drinking too much of it

said I've tried yoga master. I got myself slot drunk.

He said actually I've tried to hollow the woman had a Hiram of

them. They're just naked women.

I just they were just and in those days there wasn't Botox,

but the fall hadn't really happened.

So it wasn't as bad as it is today.

I've got 1000 women, thousand naked women.

I've got fruit trees. I tried I tried great projects.

I tried great projects friends. I saw today 6% of the bridges in

Joburg are working, 94% of the bridges are crumbling.

I tried great projects. I just I thought of Bubble and

stirring. I thought what a great project a

dead man and his wife have undertaken.

But the Bible says his kids are going to inherit the money and

they might not look after the garden.

But I want to tell you in 100 years time Bubble and stirring

just be a bunch of weeds. It's a great project.

Everybody goes, they come from all over the world to this great

project called Bubble and Stirring, he said.

Actually, I'm the greatest man that ever lived.

I'm powerful. So I've tried power.

Look at look at, he said. He said I've got more than

everybody. I'm the most powerful man in the

whole land. I am absolutely power.

I've got 30,000 people reporting to me.

Friends, just look at every power hungry leader in the

world. They all end up mad.

Trump's going to end up like that.

He's already divorced twice. You can go through them.

Stalin and Mugabe and Hitler, they all end up mad.

Power, Solomon says, is not meant to draw attention to us or

make people scared. If you actually have a look at 1

1 Kings 10 · chapter mention

Kings chapter 10, it says this. I built the throne for myself,

Solomon. I built a throne for myself that

had 6 steps as moment you see steps.

That's why the steps are gone here, because I know what's

inside of my heart and everything inside of me wants to

climb up those stairs and preach on the stage and tell you that

I'm the boss, everything inside of me.

And I read Solomon and he says, listen, yeah, I've tried power.

Power. The only way power works in a

marriage is wife submit to your husband.

And everybody says yes and Amen. And then the Bible says, and

husband lay down your life for your wife.

And then it says wife submit to your husband.

And then it says husband lay down your life for your wife.

And it says wife submit to your husband.

And then it says husband lay down your life for your wife.

And it says wife submit to your husband.

And it says husband laid down your life for your wife and says

wife submit to your husband later.

How do you work marriage like this?

How do you work leadership like this?

Solomon says if you're going to think, if you're going to get

powerful and you're going to get influence and your church is

going to get big and people are going to listen to you, He said

you're going to abuse your power and you're going to end up

lonely and you're going to end up mad.

That's folly. He says the only way that

authority can work in the world is if you aim lower than the

people that you serve and lower and lower and lower and lower

until you're down this. And he said, I'll tell you what

guys, I've sat on a throne. I had 6 lions on either side of

the steps. I had lions next to me.

I had a big fan of gold behind me.

I used to drink out of gold cups.

If you work it out, friends, a Krugerrand cost 52,000 Rand, a

Gold Cup 500,000 Rand. He just had a collection.

I only drink out of gold cups. And he said, I'll tell you what,

I nearly went insane. He actually says this.

I hated my life. I hated my life.

He said, please, God, try me. Give me a billion and a couple

of chicks. He said I hated my life.

Friends, I've said this week, I've said this week with a few

people who are on the edge of suicide because they're not

happy. They're not happy.

We were not designed to be happy friends.

We were designed to be obedient to God and his ways and

authority is to serve and finances is to build the Kingdom

of God and not to create this nest of perpetual summer.

And I know right now we're feeling like nails are going

inside of us, but the heart of us is so that you can experience

the pleasure of God, the absolute pleasure of God, Amen.

And finally, friends, at the end of his career, he tried

pleasure, he tried projects, great projects.

This is a great project. Some of you are part of this is

a great project. You take God out of this project

and it's nothing. I remember when we got married,

a guy called Gary, I won't tell you surname.

He did our wedding and we went to go and see our wedding

photographs. And he says, my office is the

church at the bottom of the Berea.

And I went into this church that is, that is is no longer a

church. And all the walls have been

smashed down. And it's a photographic

laboratory where he does his photographs.

And I remember as a young married guy walking, I just

started to weep. I thought God, some way, some

way people undertook a great project to build this church.

And now it's a photographic studio.

And now God is starting to revive the church inside of

Praetoria and inside of Johannesburg and inside of

Soweto. And they're going into

warehouses and they're turning the warehouses into churches.

But in Europe they're turning the churches into warehouses.

You think, what happened? Somewhere we got Britain,

somewhere we believe the lie, somewhere the ways of the world

somewhere gripped us. I thought, what is this for?

This fence is for loving God. This is for serving God.

This is for humbling ourselves. Lower and lower and lower and

lower. Don't hoot.

Tip the car guard. The car guard is there.

They, they, they, they're human beings.

They're created in the image of God.

They're yet to serve you. And as they serve you and you

serve them and they serve you and you serve them.

We won't have to turn this thing into a warehouse to store Mr.

Price clothing because we'll use it for the glory of God.

And these projects just go wrong, friends.

And you go into London, you can go into central London and you

see these apartment blocks in churches.

I think God how like this like this.

We start collecting watches, then we start collecting pens

and we start collecting cars and we start collecting guns.

And before you know, we start collecting dust.

Meaningless. Solomon says, meaningless.

Everything is meaningless. And then he says, my career,

I've worked so hard. I've worked so hard, worked so

hard. And then God says, but I'll tell

you what, Solomon, it's not permanent, but you can enjoy

your work and you can enjoy your food and you can enjoy a glass

of wine. And in that moment you will find

Tov. You'll find Tov this week is my

friend Clint. He's a coffee expert.

He came from Durban. God put our hearts together,

knit our hearts. I'm reading Ecclesiastes

thinking, oh, we've got to change the world.

We've got to double the size of our chest.

We've got to make a bigger chest.

We've got to. And then I read the Bible and it

says, you know, when Clint comes in your office and he puts a cup

of coffee down and he sits there, you must just stop

everything. You must put it aside.

He must look into his eyes. And in your heart you must say

thank you for my friend Clint. Thank you that he loves me.

Thank you that he cares for me. Thank you that he follows up my

family when I travel. Thank you that he sent me a

message that could have passed fire this morning.

Hey, strongman, preach well today.

You see, friends, God is saying this, this is important.

I arrived at church one day. I know it's a bit late, long,

but time was I'm sorry. I arrived at church one day and

I said to Adrian, you just searched instead.

Well, I said to Adrian, Adrian, we need to turn the sound down,

it's too noisy. He said, good morning, Rory.

I said Betty. He said, good morning, Rory.

I had to stop dead in my tracks. And I said, good morning,

Adrian. And out of the bell of his

heart, I said, hello, Rory. And wherever I meet Adrian now,

whether it's in the middle of Stellenbosch and an airport, I

just heard this, which means the lights are not that important.

The sound actually doesn't really matter if it's loud or

quiet. What's important is just a cup

of coffee. The fact that you and I and the

church together, that's an amazing miracle.

God would have had to do an incredible work to get us here

together. There's some Afrikaans guys here

and there's some black people here and some English people,

some guys who've got pH DS and some guys who don't even have my

trick and me here together. And, and actually, let's never

take each other for granted because this is tough.

This is good. And we're meant to use money and

serve people, but we end up serving money and using people.

It happened so quickly. What was Solomon trying to

create? He was trying to recreate Eden.

He was trying to build a garden with fruit trees.

And he was trying because he wasn't happy with one naked

woman. So he was trying a couple of

naked women, just like the garden.

He was trying to recreate what God had designed and man had

messed up. He was trying to create heaven

on earth. And God said you won't do it

according to your plan. He'll do it according to Tov.

My plan and my plan will be not a garden, but an empty hill, a

barren hill. And it won't be a fruit tree.

It will be a cross. And it won't be a naked woman.

It'll be a naked man, and instead of the pleasure of a

naked woman's body, it's going to be the pain of a naked man

who's taking all the shame, all your meaninglessness, all your

waste of money, all your waste of time, all your excess living,

all your drunkenness on the strip.

He's taking all of that into him and everybody's looking at him,

spitting in him and shouting at him and he's absorbing all your

pain and speaking over you and saying you are forgiven.

You are my son. You are designed with purpose

and gifting and love and power. Don't waste your life.