Sound Bites: Chandler on Ecclesiastes 1-2
I haven’t had the chance to listen to sermon podcasts in awhile so to my delight, I found most of The Village Church’s sermons transcribed and online. Although I miss out on Matt’s comedic and dramatic timings, I still get the meat, and it’s been good to have something to read during my lunch break. Right now, I’m revisiting Ecclesiastes - the recount of King Solomon, the man who had everything but could not find joy under the sun.
Part 1: The Sixth Sense
Look at verse 8, “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” … Life is more like the film “Groundhog Day” than anyone wants to admit.
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Søren Kierkegaard said, “Sin is building your self-worth on anything other than God.” Because when you take a good thing…remember the six things we mentioned, religion, power, wealth, pleasure, friends and work. They are good things. They are not intrinsically evil things. They are good things, but when you take a good thing and you make it an ultimate thing, you have ensured that that thing will drive you into the ground.
Part 2: Quenched
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has placed eternity into our hearts. … What the text means when it says that God has placed eternity into our hearts, is that at some level, in the deepest parts of our souls, our souls remember, however that happens, what life was like before the fall. So, the soul, at some really deep level, has had this groove cut into it, where it remembers what it was like before sin entered into the world. And so, we remember, at a really deep level now, that at one time, we were full and at one time, we were happy and at one time, there was nothing weighing us down. And the soul is groaning, according to Scripture, to get back there. The problem is, the groove is shaped like eternity and all that we have to fill it with is temporary. And so, we cram it with temporary, fleeting joys, and it never fills it. And so, we think if it gets bigger, if we can make it bigger, the temporary pleasure lasts a little bit longer or if we continue to get a little bit larger, we can finally fill the chasm. But it’s never going to take place because it’s not going to be big enough. And here’s why I’m afraid for you. Solomon finally got to the end of his goals and said it’s all vanity, and you do not posses the resources to ever get there. And so, my fear for you is that you’re going to spend the rest of your life chasing your tail, chasing what you already posses, that has brought you no lasting happiness, only to die on the treadmill.
Part 3: The Gift
(Ecclesiastes 2:14)“The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool!” I have this really good friend who pastors a church in Seattle, one of the hardest places, I think, to do church in the country, and he has this saying. He says that “Death is the great equalizer.” Death is the great equalizer because no matter how high you ascend, you’ll eventually descend six feet under.
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99% of all conflict comes from what I’m about to say. The majority of human beings believe that people and circumstances exist to make me happy. So, when they’re not happy, who’s to blame? People and circumstances. So if you do not ascribe enjoyment as belonging to Christ and Christ alone, you almost ensure that your reality will be filled with bitterness, resentment and unforgiveness.
