Audio Transcript:

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We are in our advent series. This is our third week. This is the time of the year, a tradition of the church where we spend time pausing from typical activity. We like to rush through books here. We go through them very quickly from a broad lens, and pastor Jan takes us through like 25 verses each week and 45 minutes in a masterful way. This is a season of pausing, and we pause to reflect on the old, the essentials, the basics of our faith, that they might become new and we might be able to see the light of Christ in them afresh.

In this season, it's hard for me to adapt to that, just in those songs, you might have known there's a solemnity, there's a longing, that's a part of the services in this season and that's in intentional. We like to make it feel like a party, like the heavenly sanctuary here regularly. It's still a party, just a different kind of party. So the whole service has a bit of a different feel today, and one of the things about advent was that it was a stripping, a pruning period for the people of Israel, where the prophets did not speak between the Old Testament and around the time of Christ coming for 400 years.

And God stripped them of the prophets, the priests, the Kings, the temple was essentially in shambles, had seen its glory days and it was a time for the true believers to really just be forced to decide, "Am I following this God in darkness?" We just position ourselves here as people waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ, we've seen him come, we've seen his glory. He was the exact imprint of the nature of God when he came and now we're awaiting that day that he comes back. It's a whole different feel. Today I'm going to take up the topic of joy and it's very much a conversation of where we should not be looking for joy, but in the process we can then find where we can get it, find the source.

And so, I'm going to read from Ecclesiastes six versus one through 12, that's the whole chapter, and we will get started. This is the word of God. "There is an evil that I have seen under the sun and it lies heavy on mankind, a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions and honor so that he lacks nothing of all that he does desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity. It is a grievous evil. If a man fathers a 100 children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life's good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.

For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything. It finds rest rather than he, even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good. Do not all go to the one place. All the toil of man as for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool, and what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite, this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more vanity and what is the advantage to man for who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow for who can tell man, what will be after him under the sun?" This is the word of our Lord. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father we come to you today just with a mixture of emotions. Lord, we live in this world yet we are not among this world, those of us here in Christ, Lord, we are waiting, our soul longs, all of creation longs for your return. But Lord, you call us to endure, you call us not just to walk in this life but to run. Lord, we pray through your word, just bring us to a greater position of joy and you let us be filled, let us be full so that we might take on the challenges, the callings, the trials, the triumphs, and march forward in them for your glory, that your name might be magnified.

Heavenly Father we ask you to strip away all those things, those idols, those distractions that are just keeping us from just loving you from enjoying you, from seeing you and all of your glory, and just appreciating just Christ coming and how he gives us access to you. Heavenly Father, just let your name be magnified. Let your spirit be among us, in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Now, I grew up playing a game called King of the Hill. It's a savage, savage game. So you basically, wherever you are, if you have a hill and a few children you play and basically the whole time you're literally just trying to run to the top.

Simultaneously, all the other children are trying to run to the top, they pool, they kick, they'll hit. They'll try to trick you to get to the top. And the objective of the game is to be that person at the top, be the king. The hard part is that once you're up there, you're battling, you're fighting to keep your place. And when you make it to the top, it just continues. The game doesn't really end until everybody quits or until someone's mom calls you in or until someone just establishes dominance at the top of the hill.

And the thing about this game is that when you live in a small community, once you establish dominance within a little circle, you conquer that hill. There's always another hill with a different group of kids, a different just larger hill, different challenge to take on. So, in kindergarten, once I establish my reign over Janine and Brian and Jeffrey and my babysitter Sharky's house, is a nice, like maybe six foot hill. The next challenge was the kids at my brother's soccer games, the other little siblings, it was just a constant like, "Where can I climb?" The ultimate place to play King of the Hill was at my local high schools, Friday night football games.

Under the lights, to the side of the bleachers while the game was going on, you'd have a few dozen, fourth and fifth graders just pummeling each other, just battling out, trying to pull each other's limbs off just to get that glory at the top of that hill, that feeling of, I've made it, I've done it. And could there be any better glory than that for a fourth or fifth grade boy? It was probably more entertaining than the football game to a lot of people considering that the team stunk, but we can chuckle, we can sear at the thought of this game. Those of you who know me might be like, "This explains a lot, Pastor Andy, that slow voice, that permanently concussed persona of yours, that basic personality and level of culture."

But more seriously in our culture, the reality is that at all ages, we're playing a game of King of the Hill in order to try to find our joy, that we're constantly looking at those above us with envy, and we look at what they have. We look at what they do, where they live, the car they drive, their spouse, their children, their lifestyle, their vacations, and we make idols out of it. And we can't be joyful with where we are. So we work, we strive harder to make it there. We're always working up, simultaneously we're always keeping an eye out for those below us. We get caught up in the game and we begin to think that we're positionally above them because of our strength, our wit, our cleverness, our hard-earned stamina, instead of God's grace.

We do all that we can to keep those people at bay, if anything, we'll connect with them. We'll forge an alliance to use them to get past who's in front of us only to break it immediately after. Sometimes we actually do make it to the top. You realize it's not that fun at the top. It's really hard to maintain that position with all of the attacks coming our way. And you know what? It might just be better if we vacate that spot at the top and just be paralyzed down at the bottom in a position worse often than we were before we started playing.

Other times at the top, we get there and we establish dominance and we're not fulfilled. So we go looking for another hill where there's greater competition, we can forge a greater sense of purpose, a hill that offers more satisfaction on the surface. So many of us try to keep pushing up without realizing that pushing upward, pushing upward is only setting ourselves up for a greater crash, a greater sense of discontentment and despair when we finally realize that it's all in vain.

The climb is always upward, it's always steeper once we engage in this game, we fail to see CEO after CEO, athlete after athlete, artists after artists, celebrity after celebrity, politicians, after they've made it to the peak, made it to the pinnacle of their field, they have a breakdown, they self destruct, they get divorced. They just plan a mission to space to really fill the emptiness in their hearts.

And furthermore, we're deaf and blind to those who have gotten there within their spheres. We're blind and deaf to the scriptures that tell us that the top does not actually satisfy. We don't believe that the money, the adrenaline and the pleasure of the perks they claim the honor don't actually satisfy. So, naively, ignorantly, stubbornly, cynically, we think that when we get to the top we'll handle it differently. We'll know we won't be disappointed. We won't just succumb to pride, we won't succumb to despair, we won't look for other hills to decline, we'll know when to stop, but that's pride, that's thinking we're different, we're special.

Altogether we play this endless game, practice is thinking we end up being exhausted, often end up being broke because there's typically a pay to play structure, and we lack for true joy, just when all of our efforts don't pan out, we're broken, when they do pan out and it doesn't fill us, we're still broken. So what are we to do in this game of King of the Hill? With our trace amounts of energy, where do we go to find true lasting joy? If there was ever a man who could tell us, who could speak into the joylessness, the vanity of playing King of the Hill, pursuing joy satisfaction in things that the world offers it's king Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes.

Who was he? Scripture tells us he was literally king of the mountain. Scripture doesn't say that phrase, but he was king of the mountain. He was David's chosen heir, king of Israel, God's chosen people at the strongest and richest point in their history. He literally was the king of the Temple Mount. It was his hereditary right to build the temple of God on a mountain. He had literally built the temple. He literally built the palace and had mountains and mountains of silver and gold. If he were alive today, he'd be everything that Kanye West proclaims about himself, like ultra famous, huge following, millions and millions of followers, but he'd also follow his 700 wives, 300 girlfriends and all their fashion tips and relational drama online.

Solomon would proclaim Jesus as King, but then do a lot of stuff that really makes you wonder, does he think he's king or Jesus is King, he'd have a lot of non-believers, a lot of believers following him because of his God-given gift of wisdom. His gift of verse, his cultural analysis. Scriptures tells us that foreign kings and dignitaries just paid tribute, literally just sent money to him to honor him. And they would travel hundreds of miles to just hear him speak. So we have in our scripture today from Solomon, perhaps the world's richest, wisest, most powerful and influential king in history, writing at the end of his life about the lessons that he learned.

And what does he say? Solomon in Ecclesiastes says, "Playing the world's game of King of the Hill in the pursuit of joy is a grievous evil of vanity." Verses one and two. "There is an evil that I've seen under the sun and it lies heavy on mankind. A man to whom God gives wealth, possessions and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity, a grievous evil." From his unique experience of having it all, Solomon points out the vanity of seeking joy in a lot of specific things.

So verse two, joy is found in wealth, possessions and honor, Solomon expresses. It's not found in these things. It says, you can have all these things in life, but a stranger enjoys them. What's the point of gathering all of them? What's the point of building it yourself up only to not know who it's going to go to next? Verse three, joy is not found in having children and family. "If a man fathers a 100 children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul was not satisfied with life's good things. And he also has no burial. I say that a stillborn child is better off than he."

Some of you just think if I had a child, that would make me whole. Long life will not give us joy. Verse six, even though he should live a thousand years, twice over you, enjoy no good. Do not all go to the one place. And so he's saying more time will not satisfy. How many of you live ... I like to the daydream about what if the day was 26 hours? What if there is 27 hours? Just those extra margins of time. How much more could I accomplish on a daily basis in a week? The sleep, the extra bits of work, the opportunity to work out, more time to meditate on scripture and pray, do my devotions, talk to my wife actually.

And he says that wouldn't deliver. You could have a thousand years twice over. Work will not give joy. "All the toil of man is for his mouth, his appetite is not satisfied." So what he's saying here is that, people often throw themselves into work for satisfaction. And in Boston, this is a big thing. We derive a lot of our sense of our identity, purpose, joy in this. It says, what does it result in? It results in more work. When you work, you want more things? Well, you desire more things? You pay for more things that only creates the need to work more. And all that is vanity. Furthermore, wisdom.

Verse eight, "For what advantage has the wise man over the fool?" And so he's tapping into, a lot of people go through, they pursue prosperity, they pursue wealth, they pursue relationships, they pursue children, long life, health, work. And when that doesn't work out, they start getting intellectual and pursue knowledge, pursue how to use it wisely, and he says this does not work. A lot of people who begin without the strongest upbringing in education. A lot of people who are maybe foreigners coming into a new land, just really trying to grasp the culture, just pour themselves into this, and it doesn't work, it doesn't satisfy.

Furthermore, friends, verse eight, "And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living?" And so he's tapping into, there's a lot of people who really don't have much of everything that I've listed so far. And so what do they take comfort in? They take comfort and being able to relate to the common man, they take comfort and, "Hey, I don't have that much, but I can connect with people." Or those who are wealthy of means say, "I kind of come from a different place, but I'm going to find out how to actually just meet the common man and live with him." And Solomon, that may was his position, given his birth position. He says that does not work.

Lastly, verse nine, control. This is in the middle clause that in Hebrew, it says, "Those with the wandering of the appetite or eyes." There's another group of people that they look upon life, they hear this critique of how everything doesn't work. It doesn't satisfy, but these are people who say, "No. If I were in control, if I planned this, if I had it my way, if you followed me, it would work out." There's a cynical person that thinks, if I could have planned it, it would work. And Solomon says no, it's vanity, and it's a striving after the wind.

So, I want to clarify. Solomon's not saying that these specific things are inherently bad. More often, it's better to have these things. You can do great things for the Lord with wealth. You can do great things with children. It's great to have friends, great to have health long life, great to have work and wisdom. But when they become the pursuit of them becomes the ultimate means for our satisfaction. That's when we go wrong. And that's when we are positioning ourselves for the despair and disappointment.

I ask you do any of these fields stick out to you? I know this is basic Christianity. This is, don't make idols out of things that are not God, but really we need to check ourselves on this. In my life I say, I love my children, I love them more as Jesus, my wife, my children, but if my children prevent me from watching a Barcelona soccer game, and I'm angry all day, that entertainment, that endeavor, that thing that I think will fill me, it's controlling me, I'm practicing a form of functional idolatry. So what is it in your life? We have to check ourselves season to season, month to month, day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, our hearts are idol factories, and we misplace the proper love on the good things that God puts in our life. So what is it for you?

And really I'm trying to bring you to a point of bleakness. We should be brought to a point by Solomon by this text, by what I'm saying of, well, what's left in this life, in and of itself, what's left that will satisfy? And Solomon found this out the hard way, we can learn from him, but really there is nothing in and of itself. There's no person who can satisfy in and of themselves, who can meet our needs that only in ways that God can.

So Solomon brings us to this point of despair. And this is similar to the point of where was Israel during the intertestamental period? Israel had its glory days. It was really a 1000 years before Christ came between the time the temple was built to the time that Christ came, and just very slowly, the Lord stripped and stripped and stripped everything that they could make an idol of way to really prime the hearts to get people to want to have see Jesus come, see the true Messiah, receive him into their lives.

So, what is it for you? Do you feel this disparity, do you feel this disappointment in life as I present it to you, the vanity of pursuing ultimate joy in these things. That's kind of the point of this text, and it should lead you to ask, "How am I living? What do I need to ask the Lord to strip away? What is he blocking from me right now that I'm striving and striving, climbing and climbing to get that I need to just stop pursuing and turn and gaze upon him, gaze upon what he's already provided for me today?"

And there's an element of the text, it's morbid, it's not the most joyful passage. It talks about death a lot. It talks about having children and having no burial. It's worse than being a stillborn child who never even lived. When we pursue joy and things of the world, there's a restlessness that is created in us, that it's a burning unquenchable fire that in comparison, it's better to not exist at all than to experience that. A lot of you know this, a lot of people pursue joy in things that are not God himself and there's despair.

You're left to contemplate. "Okay, what does this mean for my life?" Death becomes a pretty good option. I ask you, if anyone's here today, what are you doing with that? Are you trying to medicate with just vain endeavor of, what's going to fix, be my next fix. What's going to be my next adrenaline rush to distract myself from this disappointment? Furthermore, just on the topic of funeral, Solomon asks, "In the quest of these things and the climb to attain these things that you think will satisfy you, when you pause and think about the way you're going about it, who's going to be at your funeral?"

This is just a pointed question, are you living in such a way that God doesn't matter, people don't matter? Just being of service to him in your life, providing a great witness don't matter? Who's going to be there at the end? And as Christians, we need to be really careful not to let the ministry replace our close friends. The people that we know that we can probably minister to the best, because we were raised similar to them, we look like them, we talk like them. We need to invest in them.

And now we're brought to this low point and Solomon does, and that's intentional, again, in advent, we need to feel the bleakness of this point. Israel for all of its history, turned everything good that God gave them into an idol. We need to make sure that we're not doing the same as we await Christ second coming. And so what can cure us of our lack of joy? Solomon suggests two things. First he says, that in order to find joy, we must recognize the limits of our own wisdom. That's in verse 10, 11.

"Whatever has come to be, has already been named. And it is known what man is and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words the more vanity and what is the advantage to man?" And so what he's appealing to is the creative order. He's preparing for your comebacks for our challenges of, "No, God, if only you gave me this, no, God, if you let me have my way here, I wouldn't be questioning you like this."

And he's saying, "Pause, think about God. He's the creator, you are the creature. He has infinite wisdom, you have finite wisdom. And when you submit, you give him the ability, let him be God of your life. You're submitting to his infinite eternal wisdom. You are not God, you don't know what's going to happen today, tomorrow, the rest of eternity. Your wisdom is limited. So when you face a circumstance in your life that you don't like today, don't lash out, pause and see, trust that God's decision, his design, his will is what is best for you."

Solomon's trying to bring us believers as followers. He is saying, how can you have joy? You can stop this process of constantly questioning God, let him be God of your life. So if God says to you, you want this thing, but you can't have it because that is not what is best for you. Are you going to receive him well, are you going to kick and scream? I'm the discipleship pastor here, I'm the counselor, and you see years, people hold on to bitterness because God didn't give them the relationship they wanted. God gave them struggles with conceiving children. God just didn't let that company, that endeavor pan out and they carry this bitterness, and they can never truly enjoy God because they're so mad at him.

What Solomon's saying is, the path to joy is to take the heart that God is God, his design, his will is good. When you submit yourself to that and try to have eyes for that in your life, that's a path to joy. So a lot of us, how do we experience that? A lot of us, we can look at our lives and be like, "God, in that season of life, I wanted that relationship more than anything, but praise God, you blocked it. That was all you. Thank you. I see your wisdom in that. God, I was trying to build my identity as an athlete, as an artist, as a businessman ... whatever it is for you, and you put up doors and God, thank you, I see now a little bit down the line that you needed to do that to get me to see you as God, to get me to love you as God.

You had to strip away these layers of my identity so only you remained, so that all I could look at, all that I could enjoy with all that I had was you. When you bring your faith to this level, this is really what we're talking about here is, Solomon brings us to the point that God says to Job, at the end of Job, God takes Job, another wealthy, honorable man of the ancient world, and God takes away his children, takes away his riches, takes away his honor in the community. And Job essentially discusses with his friends forever about it, all vanity, just argument that gets nowhere. And then God says, "Where were you when I created the world?"

There's an element where that's a brutal, brutal way that God engages with him. But when we pause and see that God is our creator, we are the created ones. The original intention of creation was that God was not a dictator who just created us and told us to do, told us to follow him. He wanted to walk in the garden with us. We were designed to interpret life with his revelation, his knowledge at all times. Think of Adam walking in the garden, naming the animals with him. And we understand him, he's a loving Father. He's sovereign, but his good.

So you can find joy, because when you look at him, when you start to see, "Wow, God, I see your wisdom in the way that you've opened doors for me, the way that you closed doors for me, the way you've stripped these idols out in my life." You start seeing into the heart of God, himself. You see his wisdom. You see that he is infinite, eternal unchanging, and his being wisdom, power, glory, justice, holiness, and truth. And you start to love him for that. That's something that the world can't take away. He's unchanging. And you can just go into the infinite qualities, the infinite glory, the infinite beauty of God's heart and get lost in it, and you'll never be dissatisfied.

And that's where Solomon's trying to bring us when he says, "Stop fighting, let him be God." And really the message of the Bible is that, God can just say, "I'm God, you're not, follow me because it is what is best for you." But he sends Jesus, so he can say, do all of that to say I'm sovereign, I'm God. But he sends Christ to show his goodness, to communicate his heart to us. We have sinned against him, Adam and Eve sinned against him in the garden and all of us since then have sinned against him. All of history points to Jesus is coming. It gives us assurance. God says, Man, you have a problem, you have sinned against me and my glory, majesty, sovereignty, I'm going to be the solution for you."

When we see his sovereignty, we see that all history brings us to Christ. We see his providence showing his goodness, and we begin to look at our own lives and we say, "He can work out this situation. This is not what I want. I might not blatantly profess praises for this hard mercy, this hard stance he's taken with me. But I see how he's used all of history for my good, for the opportunity to have peace, salvation, joy with him through Christ. Let me trust him in the moment."

And so Solomon shows us that our wisdom is limited, we need to trust God's wisdom. But then furthermore, he says that, in order to bring us to where we can find joy, he says, joy must come from the outside. Verse 12, "For who knows what is good for man while he lives a few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man, what will be after him under the sun?" And so these are rhetorical questions. This is what he answered in verse 10, the answer is God, man in and of himself does not know what is best for him. Man is not eternal, he doesn't know what's going to happen to him. Who decides what's best for him? God.

This is not something within ourselves. We have to let God's rule and reign come into our hearts. We have to receive him. And that's what Christmas celebrates. The source of our joy is not anything that we can find in the world in and of itself. There's a lot of good things that we can enjoy and that we can redeem through salvation in Christ. But the source of our joy is the person of Jesus Christ. We have joy because he broke into creation to be the means for peace with God. It was for the joy that was set before him, he came, he endured a humble life, primarily with the purpose of going to the cross for us, that he might be the sacrifice so that we can have peace with the Father.

Jesus leaves his heavenly dwelling, the heavenly Mount Zion, where he was worshiped by angels, descends his hill to come to us that our joy might be complete. While we're trying to climb up a hill, climb up a ladder, he comes down for our sake. He exchanges heaven to be born in a little shack, laid in a manger, spend the first 30 years of his life toiling as a carpenter. He never lived the glamorous earthly life with the house, the wife, the children, the prosperity, and many points he was homeless though. Though a heavenly choir attended his birth, he came here and he received insults and slander. He considered it a joy to be sent to the cross, to die for his enemies.

He didn't live without wrestling through these challenges, they were real, but he threw it all. He was the most joyful of men, and scripture tells, our joy can be complete with him. And that this connects back to our wisdom is incomplete, our joy is incomplete a part from the person of God. And so if anyone today, if you are identifying, I am building my identity, I am trying to find the deep soul satisfaction that I know only God can offer in something else, I beg you to repent, prevent yourself from the future pain, trust God with it. This basic Christianity, trust that he is better.

Some of you think you have good lives, stable lives, but I say, trust the Lord. He's going to deliver more than you can imagine. It's not going to be without struggle, it's not going to be without trial, and Christians we have to really grow in our ability, not just to appreciate what God brings us in salvation through Christ, not just love him for his grace, mercy that we see on the cross. We have to love God for who he is, only learning to love him in and of himself, just digging into his being, digging into his wisdom, digging into what it means that he's internal, infinite, that is where we'll have the sustenance to remain steadfast as we await his return. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we just praise you for just the joy that Christ had to come here to be the propitiation, be the atonement for our sin, for a part of his work, his life, death, and resurrection. We can't have peace with you. We can't have you. We pray, Lord, help us to just cherish the fact that we know that when you save us, you never leave us or forsake us. You provide the sustenance that we need, you arrange all the trials, the triumphs, the traumas, all to your glory and for our good.

And Lord, let us not be people who kick against your design, kick against your plan, but let us be people who have eyes to just see you, to love you, to enjoy you through whatever you have in store for us. Holy Spirit, I pray just if anybody is just clinging to just different aspects of this world, different materials, different experiences, different pleasures, Lord, help them, convince them that what you offer to them is better. What you offer in Jesus Christ, let them look into the heart, the person of Jesus Christ in whom the fullness of your Deity dwell, the word of God himself and let them be satisfied in you. I pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.