Finding Purpose and Meaning in Life: Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in

practical ways. Here we are.

We are back.

The Bible Guys are back in the house.

The Bible Guys plus.

One minus bar Ba. Chris Sarba is out this week.

But you and I are holding down the fort and

I have the inimitable Wesley Woods with us.

Yes, I am here.

That's fantastic. So I'm so glad you're here. It's a

day after Christmas and we're all still kind of reeling.

Hopefully you got all the wrapping paper out of the

place and you haven't eaten all of the bad scene.

I think they're still full.

Yeah, exactly. Well, so today we have a segment called

Guess the Word. Okay, and so if you've ever played

like taboo or one of those games, so what I'm

going to do is I'm going to give you clues. Okay,

if you can guess the keyword. There's one word I'm

trying to get you to get. But I have five

words I'm not allowed to say. Okay, that would really

make it easy.

Okay, all right, here we go.

Okay, so the first one is this this time of

year has thirty one days and it's the time of

the year. We're in the winter. No season, Nope, it's

followed by January. February no, followed by January. January comes after.

It, December. There you go in December.

I wasn't allowed to say cold Christmas, winter month, or November.

I'm thinking, like winter, are you yep?

Okay, good job. Okay, so you got December there. So

the second one would be you build it out in

the yard with your kids. So yeah, there you go, snowman,

very very good. Okay, oh my goodness. You want Santa

to fill it with all kinds of stocking. There you

go stocking. I wasn't allowed to say, oh, snowman. I

wasn't allowed to say snow, frosty, abominable, carrot, or olaf.

Okay, yeah, But as soon as you said build it outside,

I'm like, it's got to be a yeah.

And then stocking. I wasn't allowed to say fireplace, chimney,

hang socks, or feet okay, okay. The next one is

the one up front who helped Santa sleigh. Oh I

said sligh. I wasn't allowed to say sleigh, but yeah,

I read.

No, you didn't say slay help Santa.

Yeah I know, but I said slagh. So our listeners

get fifty thousand points. But when I tell you there,

so those of you that have been listening for a while,

you should be gaining some big points. I wasn't allowed

to say red nose, reindeer, sleigh or bright man. And

then uh, it's probably in your living room with lights

Christmas tree. Yes, okay, but that's not the word. But

now that you've said tree, it's a certain color, and

we say it it lasts for a long time. So

that's what's the color of your tree?

Green?

Okay, what's the word that comes before green that references

those kind of trees? Oh, it references those kinds of trees,

lasts a long time, A real tree, A something green? Oh,

something green. Oh you know our listeners are screaming at

hollered and throwing stuff. It's evergreen.

Yeah, evergreen there during the pine cones and everything.

Evergreen is the word we were looking for, so tree, needles, winter, plant,

and pine. So once you said tree, I could use tree,

but before that I couldn't. So yeah, all right, well, hey,

well I guess that mean all our listeners got fifty

thousand points for that one too. Yeah, so some of

you came away with a one hundred thousand points to day.

Congratulations to you. Yeah, we're so proud of you, and

I'm feeling particularly generous. Usually zar Ball only wants to

give like a thousand points.

Oh so this is like extra Christmas. This is day

after Christmas.

You got to be spreading Christmas cheer, just blowing the points.

We got a bunch of extra points. Yeah, because our

bus been so greedy with them all year. Yeah, we've

got a bunch of them. We got to get rid

of them for the end of the year.

They's watching right now. He can't even say anything. That's right,

that's right.

That's tough. Well we are today talking about how there's

a season for everything. Yes, and there's a famous song

by the Birds called what Wesley.

I can sing it? Yeah, go ahead, do everything turn. Yeah,

that's all you get. That's it, turn Turn Turned by

the Birds. Yeah.

Is quoting this passage from the Bible, right, So nineteen

sixty five top chart topper, Yeah, was quoting Ecclesiastes chapter three,

And that was your Christmas gift to our listener.

Yes, it can't give you anything better.

You love them so much you sang for them. It's

just like zar ball. Yeah, right, So he loves to

sing for people. He loves the tap dance and ice

skate and all this kind of thing.

Do it all he can't. Yeah, he should have been

a one of the people on Broadway. He should have

been like in a player.

Yea a Broadway actor. Yes, that's what he should have been.

So anyways, we are in Ecclesiastes chapter three. If you

haven't read Ecclesiastes chapter two, you should. He talks about

the futility of pleasure. He talks about the fact that

being wise you're not going to last any longer than

being a fool being. He talks about the futility of work.

He's put his hands to work and while it's satisfying,

sometimes it doesn't fulfill and so he's struggling with that.

But then you finally get to Ecclesiastes chapter three, and

he says, for everything there is a season, a time

for every activity under the sun under heaven. A time

to be born and a time to die, a time

to plant and a time to harvest, a time to

kill and a time to heal. A time to tear

down and a time to build up. A time to

cry and a time to laugh, a time to grieve

and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones

and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace

and time to turn away. A time to search and

a time to quit searching. A time to keep and

a time to throw away. A time to tear and

a time to mend. A time to be quiet and

a time to speak, a time to love and a

time to hate, A time for war and a time

for peace. What do people really get for all their

hard work? I've seen the burden God is placed on

us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its

own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart.

But even so people cannot see the whole scope of

God's work from beginning to end. So I conclude that

there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy

ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat

and drink and enjoy the fruits of the labor, for

these are gifts from God. And I know that whatever

God does is final. Nothing can be added to it

or taken from it. God's purposes that people should fear him.

What is happening now has happened before. It will happen

in the future as it has happened before, because God

makes the same things happen over and over again.

Yeah that's good.

Okay.

It's kind of similar to what we talked about in

previous days in terms of there being nothing new under

the sun. Yeah.

So as you would read the Book of Proverbs and go, hey,

these are all good things, I should apply my life

the Book of Ecclesiastes. Until you get to the very end,

I would say, there's interesting thoughts there, but you wouldn't

want to build your life around the Book of Ecclesiastes

because you've got this guy who's kind of spiraling. Yeah,

he has good moments and bad moments, and good moments

and bad moments through the whole book. So he has

moments where he's like, man, God is good. We should

enjoy life, and everything He's given to us is a blessing.

And then I'm miserable and God just keeps doing stuff

over and over again, and there's no hope, and he

flips back and forth, back and forth. So I would say,

you don't take the Book of Ecclesiastes as advice for life.

Always like you would the Book of Proverbs, you take

it rather as an understanding of the futility of a

life that winds up being wasted, right, And so you

see him kind of spiraling here. But he has some

really great phrases in chapter three, in particularly a time

for everything.

Yeah yeah, I like verse three, especially as we're moving

into a brand new year, A time to kill and

a time to heal. When I read that, I immediately thought of,

what are some things that we need to kill in

our own lives? Oh yeah, and not carry into twenty

twenty five. So there are some probably some habits, There

are probably some thing there could even be jeff, some

bad relationships, right, we need to sever So don't kill

the person. I'm not advocating that, but I'm saying.

Necessarily yeah, no, I'm joking, that's not.

But there's some relationships where God has kind of been

nudging us that this relationship isn't and he's healthy, it

needs to come to an end, but we keep kind

of dragging it along like a dead mule, and God

is saying it's time to cut the cord on that one.

So yeah, I just kind of think about that as

in January. A lot of times people think of new things,

new goals, new habits. What are some things that we

need to leave in twenty twenty four, Yes, and not

carry into twenty five.

That's right. So it's interesting each of these seem to

have most of them have a negative and a positive. Yeah,

there's a time to be born. There's a time to die.

None of us want to die, yeah, you know, but.

We want to prolong the living part as long as

we can.

Life has there's a cycle right to life in general.

There's a time to cry, a time to laugh. We

don't want to cry, we want to laugh. Yeah, there's

a time to embrace and a time to turn away.

None of us want to leave, you know, the people

we love. But there's times when you have to. And so,

you know, I think of this passage a lot. Chris

makes fun of me sometimes, My wife makes fun of

me all the time time about this phrase that I

really believe, duties never conflict. I've mentioned this on the

podcast before. Duties never conflict. And this is one of

those passages. There is a time when I have to

turn away. I don't want to leave, I want to

keep embracing. But I do have to because the duty

that's pulling me away is greater than this desire to

stay in the moment. I have to go do this thing.

And so, you know, Solomon is kind of saying that

there's a priority to life. There's a rhythm to life.

There are things sometimes you have to do, the things

that are hard, or the things you don't want to do.

It's not always pleasure. It goes back and forth. You know,

you plan your harvest and that so again life application

study Bible. You should grab one Ecclesiasts, chapter three, verse

one through eight. The notes say timing is important. I

love that. That's really a great lesson where timing is important.

It's possible to do the right thing at the wrong

time and wind up getting the wrong results.

Yeah that's true.

Right, So you can do the right thing the wrong

way and get the wrong results. You can do the

right thing with the wrong attitude and get the wrong results.

So timing and doing things the right way at the

right time with the right attitude are incredibly important. So

when God says do it, then yeah, yeah, So all

the experiences listed in these verses are appropriate at certain times.

The secret to peace with God is to discover, accept,

and appreciate God's perfect timing. The danger is to doubt

or resent God's timing. This can lead to despair, rebellion,

or moving ahead without his advice. So I recently had

a conversation with somebody who was pretty angry at God, saying,

I've done these things, and I don't feel like God's

keeping his end of the bargain. And I said, I

think that you know you have a right to say, God,

I've done all these things. I'm looking forward to you

keeping under the bargain. But getting resentful at him or

being mad at him, I said, he has not yet

done what you believe he should do. But timing is important.

So trusting God's timing is as much about your faith

as the fact that you've chosen to do the right thing.

So the one area of your faith, even though you've

done the right thing in all these areas, the area

you're being tested in is in the very area that

is most important, That is learning to trust God and

his timing. So it's not that it's never going and

I was trying to encourage this person, It's not that

it's never going to happen has not yet happened. So

it's fair to say, God, I want to please you,

show me what you're teaching me. Right, that's it. You've

pleased him in all these other areas, and now this

one hang up getting you're getting bitter towards God. And

I can understand that. I've had times in my life

where I felt like I waited too long, and then

when God shows up, it was exactly right. It was perfect.

His timing was perfect. I was frustrated for a while,

but his timing was perfect. The more you see God

do that in your life, the more confidence you get that, Okay,

I'm going to go ahead, and this is a tough time,

but he's making me stronger. I'm becoming better. I'm more

dependent on him. When I am weak, he is strong.

And then God shows up up and does exactly the

right thing at exactly the right time, and you go, whow,

I'm glad there was no other answers. Yeah one right.

Well, here's a funny thing, Jeff. Sometimes we will get

angry at God for not giving us something, and we

don't even have the capacity to handle the thing that

we're asking God for. We think we are right we think, oh, God,

give me this, give me the I can handle it,

and God is saying you can't. There's some maturity that

needs to take place before you receive that. So yeah,

I think there's a little component of that where God

the delay isn't due to God's inability. Oftentimes the delay

has to do with us, right, It's not God has

the issue.

So then he goes on and he talks about, you know,

what do people really get for all their hard work?

And he's kind of grumbling about, man, I've just been

busting my tail and I just I don't know. Your

ability to find satisfaction in your work depends on to

a large extent, upon your attitude. You will become dissatisfied

if you lose the sense of purpose God intended for

your work. We can enjoy our work if we remember

that God has given us work to do, and to

realize that the fruit of our labor is a gift

from Him. Right, So you have to see your work

as a way to serve God. So we have a

musician that is a volunteer. He's a successful jeweler and

has a good partnership, a good business, all those kinds

of things. So we're coming into this Christmas season. We

were going to host what twenty two services at Heritage Church,

our Sterling Heights campus was going to host fourteen. Originally

we were only going to do twelve, but then we

had so many tickets disappearing. We have to do tickets.

They're free. We have to do tickets in order to

know how many people are going to show up because

it's just we don't enough seats, and so we only

have seven, nine and fifty seats, and you know, we

have thousands, about thousands, about thousands people come at Christmas,

so we use the ticket things. Well, then we realize

we need to add two more services. So our worship

pastor goes to some of the volunteer musicians and he

says to this one musician specifically, hey, listen, we had

to add two more and I know it's a really

busy season for you too, so I'll go find another

person to take your place. I don't want you to

feel obligated. And this guy turned to him like kind

of shocked and frustrating. He said, I think you think

that my whole life mission is to be a jeweler.

And he said, being a jeweler is what funds my ministry?

Whow right?

Not everybody can get paid for ministry, he said, me

being able to serve God and God's people with the

gifts He's given me is the most important thing. Being

a jeweler is satisfying in that it helps me be

able to pay for the bills so that I can

do ministry right. And what a great way to view it.

If you begin to realize that the work God gave you, you

might feel like, you know what, I'm a shoe salesman,

What good does it do shoes wear out? Right? But

if you could see it instead to say, God gave

me this ability to make money with selling shoes. I'm

going to do the best I can so that I

can have the most impactful ministry right because and then

go find your purpose in ministry. Go find the thing

that God would have you do serving God, serving his people,

And then understand that the job that you have through

the week might be simply to pay the bills so

that you have a roof over your head, food in

your belly, a vehicle that can move you around, some

clothes on your body, so that you can go and

do the ministry that He has designed for you, and

what a great perspective. And this is kind of the

frustration he has, is he is struggling understanding what is

the purpose of my work? Yeah, and you know, my

friend who's this musician, says, the purpose of my work

is to be able to fund the fact that I

get to do ministry.

Now, Jeff, what would you say to the person who says,

you know, I love that story, but I don't know

where I fit in. I don't know what Should they

just dive in somewhere serve for a while, see, Like,

what advice would you give that?

Yes, first of all, you know, I would recommend understanding

that God has given you. He shaped you for ministry.

Rick Warren kind of famous for that statement. Right shape shape,

He gave you spiritual gifts. Discover what your spiritual gifts are.

Talk to your pastor, talk to a faith leader, talk

to somebody and say, help me discover my spiritual gifts.

And then he gave you a specific heart. There are

things that you love that other people don't love as

much as you. Right, Maybe you love serving orphans, or

maybe you love helping start new churches, or maybe you

love hospitality, or maybe you love caring for people who

are struggling in the moment. Right, God has given you

a heart that he hasn't given everybody else, and so

that's unique. He's given you certain abilities in your life.

You know, for you, you've got this great radio voice.

You've got this great ability to communicates. It may not

be the thing you love all the time, but you

do such a good job presenting and communicating. Matter of fact,

a lot of times you wind up being a spokesperson

for here to church. You've been on all the TV

channels that they haven't you recently, Yeah, the mall across

the streets closing and they gave us a bunch of

stuff equipment out of the mall, and so you wind

up being kind of the spokesperson. You kind of have

this great presence that way. God gives you. That's an

ability he gave you as opposed to me. A lot

of times, I want to know in front of the camera,

it's just not my gift. So He's given you abilities

like that. Other people. It might be the ability, you know,

for me working in the nursery or whatever. My grandkids

are over and all of a sudden, I realize the

diaper needs to be changed and I'm like, oh, no,

I know, I know technically how to do it functionally,

it's just it's a mess. Next thing, you know, I'm

tangled up cover and tape powders all over the room

and it's.

Just just a full on disaster.

Right, That ability is not great. But there's others change diapers.

Are not even thinking about it, right, it's just my mom.

Just I have friends that are so amazing with power

tools and constructing a thing. I just had a friend

walk through our house and I'm needing to build a

shower and he goes, oh, this is all you have to.

Do blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

And I'm like, all you have to do that sounds

like building the pyramids, But to him it just makes sense.

He just does stuff all time that way. So you

have abilities, So you have spiritual gifts. Discover what they are.

You have a specific heart that there's things that you

love or care about more than others. God's given you

certain abilities that you can do that are just natural

to you. You don't think they're a big deal because

you're good at them. And I look at those same

abilities good point and I'm like that's amazing. I see

somebody here a ticket an engine, go, oh, I know

what that is. Take it apart. Rebuilding is done in

an afternoon. I'm telling you, if I took that engine apart,

it would never get put back together. Never. Never. But

for me to get up and speak in front of

ten thousand people on a weekend, no big deal. Right,

Whereas you would die, you know not you You are

also great speaking of other people would die if they

had to get up in front of a crowd. Right,

It's just we have and so it's just natural. It's

a natural thing. So abilities personality, your personality maybe is

extroverted or introverted. You tend to be a positive thinker

or a negative thinker. Maybe you see the potential in

things or the potential dangers. You have a unique personality, right,

And they've identified somewhere between sixteen and thirty two different

kinds of nuanced personality types. And it's unique to you.

And then your experiences, your experiences, the things that you've done.

My daughter the other day was talking, she was chit

chatting with some friends and she was talking about a flight.

They were talking about turbulence while they were flying, and

my daughter goes, oh, yeah, one time my dad and

I we were flying to a meeting at the White

House and we had horrible turbulence whatever whatever, whatever in

what you went to a meeting at the White House. Yeah,

And so that experience for my daughter is unique. How

many of her friends have been at a briefing at

the White House? Right, that's an experience that's unique. Or

when she went to Togo with me or whatever. She's

had all these really unique experiences that are only for

her only. She's had her combination of experiences, and so

it's built her up to this point in her life.

And you too, you've had unique experiences that are unique

to you. And so the positive experiences you can learn from,

but the negative experiences really form us and shape us.

And so God will never waste your hurts. He never will.

And so when you take those things, your spiritual gifts,

your heart, your abilities that are unique to you, your

personality that's unique to you, and your experiences, your good

ones and the bad ones. Those shape you to do

certain things in the Kingdom of God that are unique

to you. That's how you begin to find your purpose.

And so for me, my spiritual gifts tend to be

have an apostolic gift. I start new ministries and new

things and plow into unengaged places or unreached places and people.

That's one of them. I also have wisdom and discernment

show up often in any of the spiritual gifts tests

that I take, and leadership evangelism would be the fifth one.

Those ones always show up in there, and so it's

not a surprise to me that I'm the chairman of

the board of the organization one of the largest church

planning movements in the world. It's not the only, but

it's one of them in the world. That I pastor

church spend a lot of time on stage teaching the

Bible and counseling people with what wisdom those things make

sense to me. Then my heart is I really care

that people know God and know God's word and benefit

in this life a better life by applying His words

and having assurance of salvation and eternity through Jesus Christ.

Right, So this.

Evangelism thing, these abilities is really important to me. My

personality is on stage, I'm more of an extrovert, but

maybe personally I'm a little bit more of an extrovert.

I'm more of a thinker, that kind of thing. Intro strategy, introvert,

I'm sorry, introvert, more of a strategist. I would rather

have a intimate friendship conversation with you know, two or

three couples with my wife than to be walking through

massive crowds all the time, you know, the kind of thing.

And so I wind up doing better in smaller groups

than in larger groups, except when I'm teaching. And then

my experiences have been I've been a part of some

very very small churches. I've been a part of one

of the largest churches in America. I've seen, you know,

thousands and thousands of people come to faith in Christ

in other ministries, and I've been a part of it

in our ministry. And those experiences, along with all of

the intercultural stuff working in the Muslim majority world, those things,

those have all shaped kind of the direction of my life.

And then I just looked for ministry opportunities in those areas.

And I think that's the key point, Jeff, because I

think that's where people get hung up sometimes in that

because they don't necessarily know which direction to go, they

do nothing.

So I would say experience the adventures in life happen

with yes, Yeah, they never happen with no. So when

you have an opportunity and you think you know what

my heart is. I really care about moms and I

care about young children, and my spiritual gift seems to

be this mercy serving kind of a gift. And my

abilities are that I've got some background and raising kids

and do those things. And my personality is that I

love being serving other people and out in front, or

maybe I love being behind the scenes and just make

sure details get done. My experiences are that I already

have some skills in this thing. Hey, I see at

Heritage Church, for instance, there's an opportunity in the nurseries.

I'd love to jump in and just serve moms who

are struggling that week and serve their little babies and

their little kids or whatever. Maybe and then you test

drive it and then you go ooh, that's not my deal.

What I see instead is the administrative side of serving families.

I'd like to get over in the minute and test drive,

test drive things. When an opportunity comes up, say yes,

test drive it for a while, see if it works.

Do you have the skill set? Are there skills you need?

To develop and then go try another thing, and try

another thing, but don't give up. What Solomon is saying

is my work was only for me, and it feels

like it's no purpose. And I'm telling you, when you

find purpose in the work you're doing, it's almost always

because you're making a difference in other people's lives and

you're fulfilling God's purposes in the world around you.

Yeah, no, that's awesome.

Well, good Wesley, thank you for joining us today. And

I hope as people are heading towards the new year,

that this would be an inspiration that you would do

the work. Sit down with a piece of paper, write

out your shape in those five areas. It begins searching, God,

what is it that you want me to do different

or more or new in twenty twenty five that I

haven't been doing in twenty twenty five?

That's good?

All right? Well, God bless you, and thank you for

joining us today. We'll see you tomorrow on the Bible.

Guys,