Sunday 09 • 08 • 19

Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. We're starting a new series today on the book of Ecclesiastes, and as has been our practice since this spring, we're going to read God's word aloud together. I'm asking you to pull out your bulletin or look on the wall behind me as we read this first chapter together from Ecclesiastes 1.

Are you ready? Three, two, one, go.

The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does God mean by all the toil at which He toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north. Around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits, the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things nor will there be any remembrance of greater things yet to be among those who come after. I, the preacher, have been king over Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under the heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of men to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said in my heart, I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceive this also is but a striving after wind, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. — Ecclesiastes 1:1-18

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Would you join me in prayer? Father, we thank you for this book. There's nothing like your word. We pray now as we open it, Lord, as we hear it, as we say it out loud, or as we hear it preached. Father, we pray that you would come by your power and open our hearts, help us to understand what you have to say to us. We pray that we would leave this place changed and knowing more of you from the time we spend in your word. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

A Difficult Book

In the 1960s, a little book was published called "A Grief Observed," and it was a memoir of a husband watching his wife die slowly and very painfully. The author wrote out his dark thoughts. There were things like this:

It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill just goes on.

I mean, that's heavy, right? Dark thoughts. Listen to this one:

Where is God? Go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, the sound of bolting and double bolting from the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.

Dark thoughts, right? Now, some people were comforted by that book, but lots of people were really disturbed by it—because the author was C.S. Lewis. That C.S. Lewis. The guy who wrote "The Screwtape Letters" and "Mere Christianity" and "The Chronicles of Narnia"—all these books that had been such an encouragement to so many Christians with words of hope, explanations of who God is, lots of rich theology. And here is this book filled with raw pain, raw emotion. And a lot of people were really rattled by that.

That's how many people experience Ecclesiastes, which we're starting today. Did you listen to what we just read? Listen again to verse 13:

It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of men to be busy with.

I mean, how's that for a memory verse for this week? Right? Encouraging, right? Or listen to this one, verse 14:

I have seen everything that's done under the sun and behold, all is vanity, a striving after the wind.

Anybody got that on their fridge at home? I don't think so, right? Welcome to Ecclesiastes. Welcome to Ecclesiastes.

We're going to spend our fall looking through this book that's filled with raw questions and doubts and struggles. And there are many people who love God's word, and they get here and they're like, "What is this doing in my Bible?" This is a hard book.

For some people, this book is especially hard because it doesn't offer explanations or rich theology or encouraging stories. It doesn't wrap up neatly. This is a difficult book. I mean, this is not your nice Southern read-this-at-the-family-dinner-table-when-you-have-the-whole-family-together book. This is a gritty book. This is a book where the writer says things out loud that many of us think but we would never say in a community group. We never say around other Christians. This is hard material.

Do you ever have a kid who asked that question—why? Why? Why? Or maybe you were that kid. Maybe you're the kid who's frustrating the teacher and frustrating your parents. It's like, "Why is the sky blue? And why is blood red? And why do we have to sleep at night?" Frustrating because they're all the why questions. This book is like that. Ecclesiastes is that kid asking the questions. And it's hard for people who want neat categories and clear answers.

And yet, there are so many generations before us who, in opening up this book, have found it to be immensely comforting to read. The American author Herman Melville called Ecclesiastes "the truest of all books." Centuries before him, English poet and writer John Donne loved this book because he said the author "pours out his soul and hides nothing." So lots of people have found this a place of comfort.

But a great question: who is Ecclesiastes for? Ecclesiastes is for the thoughtful and the bored, for the frustrated, for the doubtful, for the one who says, "I'll take your doubt and raise you one." For those who've suffered, for the contrarians—those people who are like, "Yeah, but... yeah, but," right? Those people. Ecclesiastes reminds us of things that don't fit into neat categories.

Ecclesiastes says things like this:

Sometimes the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.

Do you hear that? This is somebody who's taking a swipe at neat sentimentality and clichés and just wrapping it all up nice. Or:

Sometimes the good lose and the wicked prosper.

I mean, this book is kind of angry at points. Like, why is it like this? Why, God? Unmet expectations. Ecclesiastes makes us think about things that maybe you'd rather not think about. Maybe you'd rather just move on. It can be uncomfortable to a lot of people. And yet, to many people, church feels like the last place where you can be honest, the last place where you should talk like this and ask questions.

This is such an important book. This is such an encouraging book. "What is this doing in our Bible?" it tells me something about God. It tells us something precious about God—that God loves questioners. God loves the kid who's asking why. God loves those who are struggling to make sense of this world. God has all kinds of patience for that. And church is a place where it's okay to talk about those things.

Ecclesiastes tells us that God can handle our hard questions. Our "This doesn't add up, God. This doesn't make sense."

Wisdom Literature

Now, Ecclesiastes is one of three books in the Old Testament that's called wisdom literature. You've probably figured this out if you've spent any time looking at the Bible. It's filled with all kinds of different genres of literature, all kinds of different ways of writing. Some are narrative that read like a story. Some are songs like the book of Psalms. Some are pithy quotes. This cluster of books, the wisdom literature, speaks in kind of a different voice than the rest of the Bible.

It's like people from New Jersey. Right? I went to college here in North Carolina, and I remember meeting the first person I'd ever met from New Jersey, and I was like, "How do you talk like that? That seems so hard to make words that way." And later on, this girl became one of our friends. She was from Matawan, New Jersey. I was like, "Couldn't it be... it's like, ow." And it's so funny because later on, we ended up living there, and our first son was born there. So irony of ironies. But look, like New Jerseyites, wisdom literature speaks with a different accent. And it may be an accent that, like for me when I first heard the New Jersey accent, I was like, "Really? How do you talk like that?" Wisdom literature is like that. It speaks with a different accent from the rest of the Bible, and it may be hard.

So you read the book of Job, one of the other wisdom books. And the book of Job is all about suffering, and it's all about explanations for suffering. It's like watching a ping pong match between people who are offering different explanations for what's going on. Back and forth, back and forth.

Or you read the book of Proverbs, another book of wisdom literature, and it's like pithy quotes that your dad said to you. Right? Like, consider the ant, son. These are the kinds of things that come up. And then here's Ecclesiastes, the book of questions and doubts. What about this? See, all of them speak with a different accent than maybe we're used to hearing.

I think that even in the church, wisdom is not something that's very valued. This is why I never hear sermons in churches from these three books often. It's hard. It doesn't feel comfortable. And I think wisdom is also devalued in our culture today. I mean, think about the marketplace of what people really want out of life right now. You say, what would make your life better? And the answers are things like a greater salary, job opportunities, a relationship, a break—those are the things we want. But I hear almost no one say, what we need right now is wisdom. More of that, please. And yet I think we could all agree we're in a particular moment in history where we really need wisdom as a culture. So let's not skip this one.

Who Wrote Ecclesiastes?

When C.S. Lewis first published A Grief Observed, he didn't sign his name to it. He signed what's called a pseudonym or a pen name, and the name was N.W. Quirk. He didn't call his wife Joy by her first name either—he referred to her as H in the book. It wasn't until after he died that the book was republished with his name on the front cover. I want to think about that. Why would an author use a fake name, a pen name, or a pseudonym on a particular book?

There are lots of examples of this. There's a woman named Mary Ann Evans who published books under the name George Elliot. She did so because she lived at a time in England where women's writing was not considered with the same merit as men's. So she published under a male pseudonym so that her writing would be considered seriously. Or more recently, J.K. Rowling published a series of crime novels and she used the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. She did so because she wanted people to look at the books on their own merit and not through the lens of the Harry Potter world—just considered as their own.

Here we have C.S. Lewis publishing under N.W. Kirk. Here we have another example of this because historically, the church has recognized the writer of this book as King Solomon, the son of David. Now, who else could say some of the things in here? Being son of the king, giving himself over to wisdom. As we read in verse 16:

I cried great wisdom surpassing all who were in Jerusalem before me. My heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

He was the literal son of David, the next king on the throne. And the introduction to both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes sound exactly the same. One begins, "The words of the preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem." The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. Right? Almost the same. And yet he uses a particular word that I want you to use throughout this series. He calls himself Kohelet. You see this in verse one:

The words of the preacher, literally, the words of Kohelet.

Kohelet is a word that means preacher or teacher. So here's Solomon using a pen name. And I want to ask, what for? It's very, very important that we understand this.

Here's the first thing I want you to see: these are not just the words of a cynic or a doubter. These are the words of the teacher, the preacher. A cynic or a doubter is someone who is just pushing over stuff, who is just like, this world doesn't make sense, and is speaking a pessimistic voice to tear things down. But here's this teacher. He's like, I'm taking you somewhere. There's a journey we're going on. I have things to impart, wisdom to impart to you as we go on this journey.

Where he's taking us, Kohelet is taking us on a meaning quest, a search for meaning. It's a search for meaning under the sun. That little phrase "under the sun" is used 29 times in this book and it describes life as we know it. Life as it exists for all of us after Eden, after the fall, outside the garden, away from paradise, in the fallen world. Where is there meaning? He looks for contentment or meaning in all the same places we do today—in our work, in our relationships, in money, in power, in family, in wisdom. It's like a contentment question.

So this series, as we go through it, we're not going to go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, because this book sort of circles over itself.

Over again, it's got all these repeats and comes at the same subject different ways. But we're going to walk down all the roads that Kohelet goes down and say, is there meaning here? Is there contentment or joy at the end of this one?

The second reason you need to know this is a pen name is because you need to know something about Solomon. Solomon is famous in the Old Testament as the best of the best. He hits all of the best of lists. There's no single person I can compare Solomon to in our day and age. I could compare him maybe to different parts of different people. He's got the riches of a Kardashian. He's got all the talent of LeBron James. He's got the intelligence of Bill Gates and the business savvy of Steve Jobs and the power of Donald Trump. This is what King Solomon's famous for.

If you read in your Bible about Solomon, he was a man who had more wealth than anybody else listed in Scripture. A man who was filled with wisdom, multi-talented, well-read. He wrote songs. He wrote bestselling books in his day. Everything in his kingdom was gold. He ate great food. He had a thousand different options every night. He was the person who built the most incredible temple in the Old Testament. In fact, he's so famous that a queen from Africa comes to visit him just to say, are the rumors true? She goes home saying, yeah, the rumors about this guy are true. Pretty good list of accomplishments in his life.

And yet holding this up, here's the teacher and these words are attributed to Solomon. What we're supposed to do as we read this little book is go, oh, if this guy with all of his power and savvy and options and relationships and smarts, if he can't get no satisfaction—if he still hasn't found what he's looking for—then how can a chump like me? That's how we're supposed to read this book. This person who is the ultimate on all the top ten lists, if he can't find it in all those things, how can we? That's how you read this book.

So let's listen to the intro. I'm sorry for the long introduction, but let's listen to the first part of chapter one. Here's what we're going to look at—what we're going to hear from Kohelet this morning: an unquenchable thirst, empty cisterns, and a deep well. Let's look at this together.

The main question of this book is right here in verse three.

What does a person gain by all the toil with which he toils under the sun? — Ecclesiastes 1:3

I mean, what advantage is there in all the striving and sweating that we do in this life?

Every year at Christmas time, the networks play on rerun this black and white movie by Frank Capra called "It's a Wonderful Life"—the story of George Bailey. If you haven't seen it all the way through, you've surely seen clips of it. It's on over and over again at the holidays. It's a story of George Bailey who grows up in the small town of Bedford Falls and his growing frustration and disgruntledness with his life. He wants more out of life than what the little small town can offer. The thought of living in the same little old house, loving the same woman all his life, working at the family business all his life, having the same enemies and the same friends—it's just more and more distasteful to him. He says, "I couldn't face being cooped up for the rest of my life in that shabby little office. I want to do something big, something important."

Why has that black and white film stood the test of time? Why is it on repeat? I think because it gets at two of the assumptions that every person makes about this world. One is this: if importance could be found in this life, you've got to go out and get it. And second, once you get it, you will be happy and satisfied.

And Ecclesiastes one comes and pulls out two pins and pops those balloons. Here's the first balloon popping that Kohelet tells us: all your work, it doesn't work. All your toil and striving—is it getting anywhere? Is there progress?

And so he gives us this little poem here in verses four through eleven.

The sun goes up, the sun goes down. The sun goes up, the sun goes down. — Ecclesiastes 1:4-5

Same thing, over and over again—lots of busyness. Is there anything being accomplished? Then he talks about the wind. The wind goes around and around and around. We saw a lot of winds this week. Round and around, but it just blows. It's where Bob Dylan got his song, right? "Blowing in the wind." Just goes round and round.

Verse seven—the water cycle. It just circulates. Rains come down. The rivers swell up. They empty into the ocean. Goes back and does it again. Is there anything being accomplished? No, it's just busyness. The sea is never full.

Now, you could almost hear Kohelet saying in here like, "Stupid son. Don't you know you're just going up and down and up and down. Stupid wind. You're going around and around. Stupid rivers. You're filling up the sea but you're never full." It's never full. There's busyness. There's not progress. And he says the same is true of us, of people.

Generations come and go but the earth remains forever. — Ecclesiastes 1:4

Famous people come and famous people go. A couple years ago, the Bible commentator Eugene Peterson had somebody come to him and say, "You know what? Bono wants to meet you for all your work in the Psalms." And you know what Eugene Peterson said? "Who's Bono?" I was like, "Who's Bono? Come on." Peterson's an old guy. But last year, I'm preaching at this church and I mentioned Bono in one of my sermons, and one of the NC State students came up to me afterwards and said, "Is he in Aerosmith?" No. He is not in Aerosmith. He's in U2, the best band that ever lived. Right? But what does that tell us? Bono's not dead, and even his popularity, even his notoriety is fading. Generations come, generations go.

There is no remembrance of former things nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to come to those who come after. — Ecclesiastes 1:11

We have an unquenchable thirst to be satisfied. Go out and get it. That's what George Bailey is doing. But see how Kohelet takes a little pin and pops that balloon. He shows us something else. He says that there are empty cisterns everywhere. A cistern is like a reservoir underground that collects water, that you draw water out of to feed your crops, to take care of your needs. And look what his answer is. He's like, "If you could have all of life, if you could get everything you wanted, would it bring meaning? Would it bring contentment?"

Vanity of vanities. — Ecclesiastes 1:2

All the cisterns, they're empty. All of them are dry. This is the theme of the book right here in verse two. Now, "vanity" is not a great translation of the word. I want you to know the word in Hebrew because we're going to hear it over and over. The word in Hebrew is Hevel. Can you say that with me? Hevel. Doesn't that sound awesome? It doesn't mean vanity in the sense of pride. This is much more like emptiness.

You've probably seen the new rave right now replacing cigarettes—vaping. People walking down the street with a little silver device or a Juul, and a little puff of vapor comes out their mouth and then just disappears. This is what Hevel means. It's like vapor. It's gone. It's elusive. It's over. It's short-lived. It's like waves on the beach. It's like the wind. You're holding on to it, but it also means enigmatic, mysterious, elusive—something that can't be grasped, something you can't hold on to. Joy, a great meal, pleasure, power. "Nothing gold can stay." It doesn't add up. You can't control life. If you're looking for this, this is the vaping book of the Old Testament. Vapor. It's here and it's gone.

Here's the point: Contentment in this life never comes through gain. It never comes through addition. The contentment you're seeking will never come through gain. The generation above mine—I'm a Gen Xer—the baby boomers, were known for like, "Hey, whoever dies with the most toys wins, right?" Contentment is found in getting more stuff in this life. The eighties were all about that. And what does Kohelet say to that? No.

Nothing new under the sun. — Ecclesiastes 1:9

Don't fret. It's always been like this. Anything you get, it's not lasting. Of course, he wouldn't deny that there's innovation. He's not saying there's no innovation in technology like steam engines and light bulbs and landing on the moon and the iPhone. He's not denying those things. He's like, "Those things may bring convenience, but do they bring contentment? Do they bring meaning to our lives? No. They may make it easier, but life is still hevel."

One of the commentators I read for this series talked about his cousin who had just come back from his second tour of duty in Iraq with the armed services. He'd been home for a couple days, and typical with a lot of people who've seen really hard action in war—

He suffered from night terrors and had trouble sleeping at night. So one of the first days back, they go to the mall together, and this soldier only lasted about five minutes. He had to get out of there. The commentator talked to him and said, "Are you okay? What happened in there?" This is what he said: "After you've seen what the world is really like, it's hard to have patience with a mall. Aisles and aisles of stuff. Food court with all the options. People buying things they don't need. After you've seen what the world is really like, it's hard to have patience with it."

Now, I don't want to poison your experience at Crabtree Valley this week—or maybe I do. But that is a Kohelet statement, right? That's empty. It's hevel. See, afterward, when we see what the world's really like, the things set in front of our eyes don't satisfy. The places of rest offered us through our ears don't bring real rest. It's hevel.

The generation above mine says life is about getting more stuff—baby boomers. But the generation below mine, the millennials, they've got a different version of the same thing, right? You guys here are millennials in this room. Your generation thinks collecting experiences—you know, travel, doing, having all these awesome experiences. Not a lot of stuff. It's having great experiences. That's where life is to be found. And what would Kohelet say to that?

Is there anything of which it can be said, "This is new"? No, it's been here already in the ages before us. — Ecclesiastes 1:10

See, this author is not really a pessimist, but he is a hard-nosed realist. This book comes at us like a splash of cold water in the face. He's saying, "You're not in control of your life. The things you're pursuing are not going to satisfy you. Whether it's experiences or stuff, relationships, work, money—these are dry and empty cisterns."

Is Kohelet being mean, or is he being kind? I would put to you that Kohelet is not just being mean. He's not just knocking over your sandcastles for the fun of it. He's saying your sandcastle is built right where the waves are about to crash. It's just not going to work.

What a gift this little book is! Here's a memoir of the wisest, richest, most powerful person you've ever read or heard from, who's saying, "This isn't it. What you're looking at—dry cisterns, dry cisterns." Kohelet is doing us a favor. And every week as we come, we're going to look at different passages and see how Kohelet is showing us that's another sandcastle in front of the waves.

The Teacher and the Rabbi

We're going to listen to the teacher, but then we're going to listen to another voice every week. We're going to listen to the teacher and the rabbi. If Kohelet is the questioner, then Rabbi Jesus offers answers.

I want to point you to words about the rabbi from the Gospel of John.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. — John 1:1-5

I know these words are familiar from Christmas time if you're a Christian. We always talk about Jesus coming, the light into darkness—great words. But I want you to notice what it says here: He was the Word. He is the Word of God. In Greek, the logos of God.

Now, that's a phrase borrowed from philosophy—a big technical term in Roman society that means not just that Jesus is a word, but that Jesus is the meaning. Jesus is the reason. What he's saying is that all the questions of all the philosophers throughout time, Jesus is the answer to those things. He is the meaning maker. He is the meaning. Jesus is the answer to Kohelet's meaning quest.

Ultimately, this is what Kohelet is pointing us to. Imagine a timeline: past to future. Here's where Kohelet stands in history, where I'm standing. The cross is yet to come. This is Old Testament. Kohelet could only guess at where he stood in history and what God was going to do. But he's after Eden. He's saying life past Eden is hevel. And yet he's pointing us—there's got to be a deep well. All these cisterns are dry. There's got to be a deep well.

And what Kohelet can only guess at, you who own the New Testament can know. Jesus is the meaning maker. Jesus is the logos of God.

He is the one who puts everything into focus. Now let me show you what this looks like and how this works. How is Jesus the meaning maker? That word Hevel appears in several other places in your Bible. And I want to just point out a couple of these.

In Genesis chapter four, we read a story about a mom and a dad and two boys. This is a story about Adam and Eve after they've been evicted from the garden and their first two children, Cain and Abel, very famous story. After they're kicked out of the garden, they go and work the land. They have two sons. The first one's name is Cain. The second boy who comes along is Abel. And they have been given a promise before they were kicked out of garden. God said to them, look, one of your children, a descendant after you, will come and will undo all the damage, will come and he will crush Satan's head under his foot.

So here's Adam and Eve and their firstborn sons. They name him—very significant how they use names. Name him Cain, which means acquired. And Eve says, by God's help, I have acquired this child. They think this is the child who's going to deliver them from the curse, he's going to make everything right again. So when the second boy comes, they name him Abel, but that's not the real word. That's an anglicized version of the word hevel. They name him hevel. Meaninglessness. Vapor. Here's my son vapor. But it's because they expected Cain was going to fulfill the promise and we don't know what to do with this other one.

And then, you know what happens? Instead of actually fulfilling the promise, Cain kills his brother Abel, kills Hevel. He kills him. Hevel was actually the righteous one of the two boys and he kills him. And instead of removing the curse, Cain just perpetuates it. Now, Abel's death is an Ecclesiastes death. It's a hevel death. Like, what did this serve? This is just more sadness and hevel. Hevel's death was hevel.

Now, fast forward to the book of Romans chapter eight. We have this one up here as well.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly but because of him who subjected it in hope. — Romans 8

Now hang with me. This is in the deep weeds, but that word futility is a Greek word which is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in Ecclesiastes 1:2-4 as hevel. All of creation subjected to hevel. All of creation. This is life in this world, and this is the world into which God sends His Son Jesus Christ, the meaning maker.

And here's how Jesus is the meaning maker. He enters into life after Eden. He enters into human flesh. He experiences all the hevel, all of life under the sun. And last reference here, Hebrews twelve twenty four.

Come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. — Hebrews 12:24

What was he showing us? He's saying, look, yes, Abel's death, Hevel's death was meaningless. It was an Ecclesiastes death. And yet here comes Jesus and his death looks exactly the same. It looked on all accounts publicly as meaningless. Jesus lived what we call a Proverbs life. He died what looked like an Ecclesiastes death. Killed by his own people, betrayed by one of his followers, killed on a Roman cross, abandoned by those closest to him. Even at the last moment, he's saying, Father, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Looks meaningless. And yet we know. We know that he came back. That actually his death was an undoing of death. His death flipped everything on its head and changed the entire storyline for the human race. Looked like hevel but actually was the meaning maker.

Jesus Absorbs Our Meaninglessness

See, this is what we can know. Jesus comes to this Earth to absorb the meaninglessness of this world for us. He's vaporized for us so that you and I, by putting our faith in him, life can go from hevel to meaning. Life can have meaning in him. Life can have purpose.

God has not given us an airtight philosophy for why everything is the way it is. I wish that were so. So many of you have met with one of our pastors or elders in hard places in your life and been like, I don't understand what God is doing. And someone sits across from you and says, it's hard. I don't know either. But I know God's good because of Jesus and I know God is up to good because of Jesus. We have this assurance.

God does not give us an airtight philosophy. He's given us an airtight person. He's given us the person of Jesus who came and walked this life and in whom, in the ups and downs of everything you experience, you can cling to him because he is the meaning maker. He is the wisdom of God. He is the one who never changes.

He's the guarantee of our inheritance. The same yesterday and today and forever. He's the one that because of him, we can say:

All things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28

We can say, we have a God who's at work in all things according to the council of his will.

Life without Jesus—man, it is Hevel. And sometimes, I don't know where you are this morning. We come in here from all different places. But sometimes, even for followers of Jesus, it feels like hell. You're in the place where C.S. Lewis was in that book, A Grief Observed, where he's asking: Where is God and what is he up to?

I just want to invite you this morning. Maybe you're not a Christian, and I want to tell you: listen to the words of the Teacher. He's showing us every other pathway that we look—it all ends in dead ends. All of it is hollow without him. All of it is dust and vapor. And yet in him is life and hope and meaning and purpose.

And I want to invite you who are Christians, who are in dark places right now—for whom, like the world around you, it looks like you don't know where God is and you don't know what God is up to. This is what I can say to you: Your name is not Abel. Your life is not Hevel. Your life, your death—we can offer real hope to any person because I don't know what life is like, what's going on right now, what God is up to. But he is the Logos. He is the meaning maker. So I want to invite you, for either the first time or the one thousandth time, put your confidence in him. He will never fail you.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, we need hope this morning. This book resonates with me, and I think with a lot of people in here on levels that we don't often want to talk about in polite company. And Lord, we know your promise that Jesus is the meaning maker. Pray, Father, increase our faith. Help us to let go of sandcastles that are standing in the way of the waves. Lord, help us to give up on meaning quests and contentment quests that are dead ends. Father, we pray that you would increase our hope in the fullness of what you have for us in Jesus and set our joys fixed upon the ultimate joy. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.