Ecclesiastes

Thank you. Good morning. I'm DJ Hill. I'm a partner here at Grace along with Laura, my wife, and three daughters. Today's reading is from Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, verses 9 through 12. Two are better than one, because they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two can withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Thank you. Thank you, DJ. I was pleased to discover that you're literate. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This is the fourth part in our series called The Traits of Grace, where we're going through and we're just talking about the things and the aspects that make grace, grace, that make us who we are. Part of it is getting to pick on each other a little bit. And so this week is one that is, this is near and dear to all of our hearts. If this is, If you have been at Grace for any amount of time, then this is something that resonates deeply with you. It's something that characterizes us and who we are, and it's something that we choose over and over again in the way that we structure ourselves, in the way that we do things, and in the kind of church that we want to be. And so this morning, we get to talk about the fourth trait, which is that we are partners at Grace. We are partners. And we say that we don't have members at Grace, that we have partners instead, which is actually kind of funny to me that I'm such a stickler about having partners instead of members, because I've been doing vocational ministry 20 years. And one of the things I've always thought is kind of funny about the church is the way that we like to name stuff. Like we're super cool and we're coming up with new things. I was the small groups pastor at my previous church and I watched those things. First, when I was growing up, it was called Sunday school, right? And then in the 90s, we changed it to small groups. Now we're fancy. And then small groups weren't fancy enough, so we started calling them community groups or life groups or discipleship groups. And then there was this whole movement in the last couple of years to start house churches. And you're like, well, what's a house church? Like, well, you gather together and you kind of pray for each other and you talk about things you worship. I says, oh, it's like a small group. Like, no, no, no, house church. Well, what do you do on Sunday? Well, we go to big church together. Oh, so it's a small group. Like that's what we do. We like to rename things so that outsiders can't figure out what's going on in here. And it's really, it's just stupid. And I did it too. I was talking about this with my wife, Jen. And I was like, what are some other dumb church names that we've come up with over the years? Like on Sunday mornings, instead of calling it the service, we call it the gathering. And instead of calling it a sermon, we call it the talk, right? Because we're just trying to be cooler and more relevant in what we do. And she got on to me. She was like, you were guilty of this. She said, what was your ministry called in your first church? The first church I worked at was in Franklin County, Virginia, Rocky Mount, close to Smith Mountain Lake. And I had a buddy that started a church called Covenant Community Church. I believe it's still going. And we met in this old colonial home out in the middle of nowhere in the farmland of Franklin County, Virginia. We had about 30 people who came every week, which, by the way, we're about the same size as Grace is now based on the amount of families that stood up. We don't have space but for 30 people a week if you guys, if you families come every week. But I led a ministry. It was the student ministry, and I called it One because it was based on, I believe, Luke 15 where Jesus is talking to Mary and Martha, and he tells Mary, you need to worry about but one thing, and it's loving me. And so I called it One, which was aptly named because that's about how many kids I had per week on the Wednesday, right? And then I get to the big church with 200 kids in the middle school, and that was my ministry, and I called that Up and Out, right? Well, what's Up and Out? Well, it means love God, love others, love up, love up, love out. Oh, that's great. Well, who's it for? Well, it's for middle school. So it's middle school ministry? No, it's up and out. It's up and out, right? And this is what we do. We come up with dumb names for stuff and they're unnecessary and we don't need them and Grace is guilty of this too. I don't know if you know this, but if you haven't been going to Grace for a long time, you might not know that this is called Grace Hall. Now, I've never called it that, but the people who came before me call it that. This is an auditorium, and really, that's insulting to auditoriums. This is a big room with a pole in it, right? That's what this is. So I'm real big on just call it what it is. If it's Sunday school, call it Sunday school. If it's a small group, call it small group. But if it's ministry, call it ministry. So why am I such a stickler about, no, no, no, at Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. And I catch heck for this. I'll be talking to elders or leaders in the church or people who have been going here for a while and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, well, how many members do we have right now? Or what's the membership vote on that? Or are they a member of the church? I'm sorry, they're partners of the church. Like, we got you, buddy. We'll help you carry this load of calling things partners. And everybody kind of giggles at me that I'm a real dummy for insisting that we use the term partners. And I understand. I would make fun of me too if I were you. But let me tell you why I'm such a stickler about this word partner and why it really does define who and what we are at Grace and what we're trying to do. The first reason is not the main reason, but the first reason is the one that I repeat often. A lot of you can probably say this as well. You probably know how the sentence ends, but members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. That's one of the first reasons. At Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. Members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute, right? If you become a member of something, what do you become primarily concerned with? What are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this thing? If you joined BJ's, what are the rights and privileges I get? Costco, you get a dollar slice of pizza. That's a pretty good right and privilege. You join Northridge Country Club, what are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this place? Right? When you're a member, you kind of sit back and you go, well, what's in it for me? What do I get out of this? What can I consume? When you're a member, you expect a certain experience. You expect to consume a certain experience. And then when you can't consume it, you critique it. Until you do get to consume the experience you want. As a pastor, I don't really want a church full of members who consume an experience and then critique it when it's not what they want. We want partners who partner with us because partners tend to contribute. Partners take ownership and what they're partnered in and see it as their personal responsibility to see the success of this thing work out. And really, the more I thought about it this week, because we're going to talk about how this is true, but the more I thought about it this week, the more satisfied I was with understanding partners this way. Partners share the burden. That's what partners do. Partners share the burden in myriad ways. The greatest picture of partnership that I've seen in the Bible, and I love this picture in the Bible. I don't have any tattoos, not because I think they're sinful or something, but there's nothing I want to put on my body that I'm sure I'm going to want there in 20 years. So I haven't done anything yet. But if I were going to get one, it may very well be an image of this story. When I think about this story and this scene in the Bible for too long, I'll tear up. I'll start to cry. And I'm going to read this to you, and you're going to think, why is this dude tearing up at this story? Listen, first of all, the older I get, the more I tear up at. Jen and I are back onto watching the Great British Baking Show, and we cry at the end of every episode because we're so happy for Juergen that he gets to call his wife again. Like, we're so thrilled that we tear up, and then we look at each other, and we laugh. And the older I get, the more stuff I cry about. And if you want to judge me for that, I'll tell you right where you can put your judgment. But when I think about this passage and the picture here, it moves me to tears because of how powerful it is. So what's happening is we're in the book of Exodus. I'm going to read from chapter 17. And in the book of Exodus, God's children are wandering through the desert. They're being led by Moses. And a man named Amalek comes up against them with his army and he attacks the Israelite people. He attacks the Hebrew people. And so Moses sends his general, Joshua, out to battle. And he says, I want you to go and I want you to fight against Amalek. And I'm going to go up on the top of this hill and I'm going to hold my staff over my head. And when you're down there fighting and you look up at me, as long as my staff is up over my head, you will prevail. So go and fight. So Joshua does. He gathers the army and he goes and he fights. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. It's such an incredible picture. Moses says, go down there and you fight that battle. And I'm going to hold this staff over my head. And as long as I hold it up, you guys will prevail. But you know, holding a stick over your head burns the shoulders a little bit. It fatigues the muscles. And so every now and again, he had to shake it out. He got weary. He got tired. He couldn't hold it up. He couldn't carry that burden. And as he got weak, the men on the battlefield began to suffer. And so he had to find the strength and pick his hands back up again for as long as he could to carry that burden. And eventually Aaron and Hur, H-U-R, burden. The burden was too great for Moses. The responsibility was too much. It was too much for one person to handle. There's not a single person here who could have held that over their head for the duration of time that it would require for Joshua to defeat Amalek. And so he needed help because it was too much. And so God sent him partners to bracket his arms, to hold up the staff when he was too weak, to carry that burden when he couldn't. And it is, to me, one of the most poignant pictures in the Bible of community and friendship. And if I'm honest with you, I think that's exactly why it's in the Bible. Whenever you read anything in the Bible, you've got to ask yourself, why is this so important that God wanted me to know about this thousands of years later? Why this detail? Why this story? Why not just write Joshua defeated Amalek? Why not just write Amalek came up against the forces of Israel and God blessed Israel and Israel won? Why not just skip it and go on through? It doesn't matter. I'm sure they had plenty of skirmishes over the 40 years that they were in this desert that we don't know about it because they're not recorded in history. Why this one? I'm convinced. This is just me. I didn't learn this in seminary. Okay, this isn't gospel truth. But if you were to ask me, why is this in the Bible? It's because it's a picture of community. It's a picture of partnership. And it's to show us that there are times when we can't carry the burden on our own and we need people around us to bracket us and hold it up. There's times when the people who we love very much are weary and they can't hold the burden up anymore. And we come and we bracket them and we hold their hands up for them until their strength returns. It's such an incredible picture. And so at Grace, that's what we are. We are partners. We see and we notice when the burden gets too much. And we bracket and we put our hands on the people that we love and we help them carry the load until their strength returns. At Grace, we are partners. And so that word partner is so much deeper to me than a simple, clever replacement for member. That comparison, members consume and partners contribute, that's just the surface level of what a partner is at Grace. Partners carry the burden. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We partner in the things that God would have us do here. This starts at the staff level. We have staff meetings every Tuesday. And we talk about everything that everyone is doing. And no one carries their burden by themselves. We talk about when Summer Extreme is coming up, we talk about it in staff meeting. We begin talking about it in February and March and saying, Aaron, our children's pastor, Julie, what can we do to help you? How can you use us? The weeks leading up to Summer Extreme, I tell the staff, hey, we all work for Aaron. She's our boss. Whatever she needs the next couple weeks, that's what we do. When we're heading into the Christmas series and the Christmas service, we work for boy Aaron, worship leader Aaron, the bad Aaron. We work for him. For two, three weeks leading into that, what can we do? How can we help you? What do you need? We speak into everything that we do. What's going on in student ministry and how can we help? Before we do a series, we all talk into it. Before I do sermons, we all talk into them. We share the burden across the spectrum. And so we believe that trickles down to everyone in all that we do. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We don't just sit back and say, well, I hope the church is able to do that. Let's see. No, we jump in and see a personal responsibility. There was a great example a few minutes ago. I ran to the hallway after the children's dedication because I like to make sure that while I'm preaching, I don't need to use the restroom. I like to be 100% focused on you. So I ran over there to take care of business. And then I came back. And as I was in the hallway, it dawns on me, gosh, we've got a lot of babies being handed into that small space back there because we got child dedication today. I wonder if we're double staffed. And I looked at a lady who just happened to be standing in the hallway. She was just fodder. She came to attend the service this morning, and I looked at her and just presumptuously said, you might have to jump in that room this morning. She goes, yeah, no, I'm going to stick around and see. That's partnership. There's a need here. I'm a partner of the church. I'm going to step in and I'm going to help carry that. We're going to build a building. We have land we're looking to build. We need partners, which are not to stand back. I hope the church can do this, but actively, how do I partner with the church to make sure that this can happen? In our small groups, your small group leader asks a question, and it's a bad one. It's a dud, right? It's just a dead fish in the middle of the room. You're like, I don't know. I don't know how to answer this question. Your partner in ministry, bail them out, man. Say anything. Say what you're doing for dinner tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Just get the conversation going again. If Erin looks tired, if her hands look weary, if we see the same faces in those hallways and in that back room week in and week out, volunteer, step in, bracket, hold. We jump in. We are partners in ministry. We share the burden in what's happening here. We believe wholeheartedly in that. So at Grace, we are partners in ministry. More importantly than that, at Grace, we are partners in life. We partner with each other through all the seasons of life. One of the things that I've gotten to see more than ever in my position is the wisdom of Solomon when he writes in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that happens to you happens to everyone else. Every struggle that we walk through is shared by those who came before us and will come after us. And when I think about life and how I get to see these common struggles meted out through all the folks that God allows me to minister to, I just think of people coming out of college in their 20s. And that place where you are, where you're just trying to figure out, who am I? Can I get a job? I'm going to be homeless or live in my parents' basement forever. Can I figure this out? Who am I going to marry? Who am I going to meet? Do I want to build a family? Is that a thing that I want? And then you do get married and you're trying to figure out how can we make it together? What's going to happen here? And then maybe you build a family or maybe you start to build a career and you're just thinking about how do I take the next step? And you have people around you and you have all the same stressors. It's all the same stuff. How am I going to figure this out? How am I going to work out work-life balance? If I'm single, when am I going to meet the person that I want to spend my life with? If I'm married, is this the right person that I actually did want to spend my life with? Like all the things, right? And then you have kids and I'm standing up here and I don't have too many years as far as parenting is concerned on the people who were up here, but there's some with just brand new babies and I've got a six-year-old. I know that I don't know what's ahead of me, okay? So don't hear ignorant arrogance in this, but I also know that these folks over here that just have this tiny little baby and I've got my six-year-old, boy, there's a lot of space and stress to cover between six months and six years old. And so I know a little bit about what they face. And we know a little bit more about what to pray. And then those of you who have kids in high school or older, you know that I'm sitting at six years old and I'm going, gosh, I'm so stressed. And you're like, you don't know nothing. Shut up with your stress. You know what I wouldn't give to just lose an hour of sleep a night and know that my kids are okay? And then they go to college and then they get jobs. And then you look at your husband and your wife and you try to figure out, do we still like each other? Because we just ran a small business for 25 years. We were ships passing in the night trying to get things done. How do we figure out this marriage, right? And then it's not too long that you're empty nesters when you start to take care of your aging parents and all the challenges that are there and everything that awaits you doing that. There is nothing new under the sun. I have watched so many of my friends enter into that phase. And then you leave that phase and you get the joy of being a grandparent maybe. And then you start to age. And aging stinks. And you move into that phase. But in all of that, everything that you're experiencing where you are, all the folks who are older than you have walked through that. And all the folks who are younger than you will. And there is nothing new under the sun. And we face those things. And in the midst of those predictable cycles come the unpredictable diagnoses and loss and triumphs and promotions and surprises and tearful blessings. But it's all things that everyone else has experienced too. And so at grace, you should never walk through that alone. Whatever that is, whatever the fill in the blank is, if you're a part of grace, you should never walk through that alone. You should never, ever walk through parenthood alone, through trying to figure out what to do with this little human, you shouldn't feel like you're facing that alone. When your kids are in middle school, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you're single and you don't know if you're going to meet your person or not, that you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience tragedy, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience triumph and celebration, you shouldn't walk through that alone. Is there anything sadder than someone experiencing tremendous joy, getting the best news possible, and not having anyone to share it with? No, that's heartbreaking. You shouldn't walk through caring for your aging parents alone. You shouldn't walk through empty nesting alone. We shouldn't walk through any of that stuff alone. We were not designed to walk through it alone. That was not God's intent. We are partners in life. We walk with each other. And we have a friend whose strength is failing. And she doesn't have the strength to fight for her marriage anymore. She's done. It's hard. Her shoulders are tired. We come beside her. We get her a seat. And we bracket ourselves against her and we hold her hands until she has the strength again. We have friends who are parents and they've given up and they don't know what to do. We bracket them and we hold them up. We have a friend who's facing addiction or sin and they feel like giving up. Their arms are tired, and they just can't hold out anymore. We come alongside them. We press up against them, and we hold their hands up in the fight until their strength is restored to do it again. We are partners in life. I am convinced that one of God's greatest gifts is that of community and friendship. There is almost nothing in my life I hold more sacred than the people who I love, than the friends who are close to me, than the people who have come alongside me and held up my hands when I was too tired, than the people who I've stood beside and watched them regain their strength and stand back up. At Grace, we are partners, and that means we are partners in life. And here's the other thing I'll mention. I had a lunch with someone this week. And I found out that over COVID, one of them lost both of their parents. Another one of them had to put their parents into memory care and separate his parents. That's an incredible burden. And they've been carrying it alone. And I told them I was going to say this. Grace, don't walk alone. They didn't tell anybody. How can the church do what it needs to do if you carry all that yourself? If you sit there on the top of the hill, holding it up, struggling, crying, failing, knowing that it's all going to have to collapse. Tell us. Tell us. Let us come alongside. Let us hold you up. And this is where I would press in and chide you a little bit if you're a longtime grace person. At grace, and I would assume most places, we love to be, are anxious to be, excited to be, happy to be the person who stands in brackets. We will do this for you all day long. We will do this for you for as long as it takes until your strength is restored. We're happy to do that. We do not at all want to be the person here needing help. But this doesn't work if we don't let other people partner with us too. So get over yourselves, Grace. Let people help you. Let people be your partner too. Finally, we are partners in faith. We do not walk the spiritual journey alone. Most importantly, we're partners in faith. We come alongside one another and we help one another grow. We're going to talk more about this next week, how we can be partners in faith when we talk about how we are step takers. But at Grace, we are partners in faith. We come alongside one another. We foster one another's spiritual life. I saw somebody say this week or last that they are convinced, and I am too. I totally agreed with this, the longer they are in the Christian faith, the longer they are in this Christian life, the more they believe that it is simply about hanging on. It's simply about clinging to Jesus. That's why I think when Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to put on the full armor of God, he says, put on the full armor of God, and he goes through all the things that you're supposed to put on so you can stand against the wiles of the devil. And then at the end, he says, and when you have stood firm, stand firm therefore. Just another one. When you have done it, when you fought the good fight, keep fighting, keep standing firm, keep clinging. In every list of Christian attributes, you will eventually find perseverance. Just hang on. Just cling to faith. I'm reminded of what Jesus says to John the Baptist when John the Baptist essentially says, hey, I'm pretty sure you're Jesus, but you've kind of let me down here because I'm going to lose my life in this prison. And Jesus says, yeah, you are. And blessed are those who do not fall away because of me. Blessed are those who still choose faith in me when I've let them down because their expectations of me were wrong. I'm reminded of when Jesus told the gathering of people that unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And all the crowds went, that dude's weird. And they left. And he looked at his disciples and he said, are you going to leave me too? And Peter says, you're Jesus. Where are we going to go? You don't make any sense to me. I don't want to cannibalize you. I'm not into that. But I also know who you are. Where else am I going to go? That's faith. We know Jesus. Where else are we going to go? Even when he mystifies us, even when it doesn't make sense, even when it's hard to figure out, even when we're faced with those situations where we go, how does a good God let stuff like this happen? We cling to faith. And sometimes our hands get tired. Sometimes clinging to faith is hard. And so we need godly people around us who love us and who love Jesus to hold our hands up for us and help us cling to faith when ours is failing. That prayer that's prayed, Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. When we pray that, you know how he helps you sometimes? By bringing friends in to encourage you. A phone call or a text or an email or a lunch. So most importantly, Grace, we are partners in faith. We help each other cling. We help each other thrive. We help each other strive. We help each other take steps towards Jesus. That's what we do. That's why I asked DJ to read a 300-fold cord. I want us to use our tremendous community and our tremendously deep friendships to be partners in ministry, to be partners in life, and to be partners in faith. And my closing encouragement would be that if you were one who feels like you don't have that yet, pray for it. Pursue it. Ask God for it. You'll find it. If you are one who does feel like you have this, and you do have good and rich and deep friendships here, please know that God did not give you that community just for you or the people who are already in it, but that the job of a good, godly, biblical community is to turn outwards and to say, who else needs what we got? Because it's pretty good. Who else can we partner with? So when I say at Grace we have partners, we don't have members, this is what I mean. And this is why I'm a stickler about it because I believe it's that important. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are and what you've done for us. Lord, I pray that if there's somebody here who doesn't know you, who hasn't accepted Jesus as their Savior, that they would do that. God, I lift up once again these families that are represented today. Would their extended families partner with them in the raising of these children in godly homes? Would the friends of these mamas and daddies rally around them and raise their hands up when their arms are weary? For the people in this room and listening who are caring for aging parents, God, would you surround them with people to raise up their hands? God, for the folks here who need you, who are tired, in whatever it is, would you surround them with godly community? Would you surround them with partners who pick them up? And God, for those of us who need help, for those of us who are tired, for those of us who just don't know if we can hold it up anymore, would you give us the humility to reach out to our friends, to our community, and to our partners, and experience the life-giving goodness of your community, God. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..

All right, guys. Good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and I'm so grateful that you've joined us on this October Sunday. I'm hopeful that we don't have to hear that noise again, but who knows? Who knows? Some of you may have noticed that I'm wearing Georgia Tech colors for no particular reason. I just thought I'd wear them today. But speaking of suffering, speaking of UNC football, today's message is about suffering, so it kind of works out, those of you who stayed up late to get your dreams crushed last night. This morning, we're talking about Great Is Thy Faithfulness. When we planned the series, I knew that I wanted to take at least one week and talk about a hymn. Because hymns are, if you ask me like what songs are you listening to, what Christian worship are you listening to, I have a playlist called Acoustic Hymns on Spotify, and I listen to that probably more than anything. I just like hymns, and so I knew that one of the sermons was going to be focused on a hymn, but I didn't know which one, and so I did what I often do when I don't know what to preach about or talk about. I ask Jen what she thinks. Jen's my wife. She's not just a lady that I ask questions to, and I asked her what I should do, and she immediately said, Great is Thy Faithfulness. We love Great is Thy Faithfulness. It's one of our favorite songs. Jen even walked down the aisle to that in our wedding. And so I dove into the song Great is Thy Faithfulness a few weeks ago to prepare for this morning. And what I was not expecting to find was that this is really a song about grief. It's a song to be sung in the midst of grief. And so this morning is necessarily about pain and suffering and struggle and grief. And we've all walked through those seasons. Some of y'all know our story well enough to know that 2019, early 2019 to the end of 2020, were some hard years for Jen and I. In early 2019, her dad John was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he fought the good fight for almost two years and died in the last days of 2020. And that was probably the first time that we moved through that kind of profound grief at loss. And it really shapes you when you walk that path. In a lot of ways, there's my life before we walked that and life after. And the perspectives are very different. And one of the things that I learned in that season of suffering and loss and grief was, and I know that this is, I'm just getting right to it. I know it. I know this is heavy. I know this is even grim, but it's just true. And this is the way that my mind works. Maybe that's why one of my favorite books in the Bible is Ecclesiastes. But as we were walking with John on his journey to eternity, it occurred to me somewhere in there that best case scenario in life, you walk with your parents into death. When you are born, the best possible outcome for that relationship with your parents is to accompany them as they transition into eternity. That's the best possible outcome. It's a path we all have to walk. In fact, if we don't walk that path, holding our parents' hands as they fade away, if we don't walk that path, it's because something more sad than that happened, right? They lost you. You were estranged. It was tragic and sudden when they passed. I know that's dark and I know that that's heavy, but I think it's a helpful reality to understand that when you are born, hopefully to loving parents, that the best case scenario for that relationship is for you to one day hold their hand as they pass into eternity. If you have walked that path, you know what an incredible honor it is. I was talking with somebody this week who lost their brother, and he was able to sit with him for the last two weeks while he faded. And I just said to him, it's a unique privilege in life to be invited into that sacred space, isn't it? And he said, yes, very much. So I would say, if you are walking that path, if you have walked it, when one day you find yourself walking it, I know that it is not much solace, but consider yourself blessed. It's a blessing from God to walk with a parent, to walk with a loved one in that way. We don't all have that opportunity. But if that's the best case scenario, what that means is life is going to be filled with strife. Life is going to be filled with grief. I make the comment sometimes that no one dodges the raindrops of tragedy for their whole life. No one does. Something sad will happen. Grieving, suffering, loss is a ubiquitous part of the human experience. Just this last week, within the last week, I went to the funeral of a 40-year-old friend of mine who suddenly passed away. I told you guys about this last week. She has two kids, middle school and elementary school. It's tragic. On Wednesday, I drove to Asheboro and I did the funeral for a man that went to my church in Atlanta who moved up here. And I sat with his kids. He has kids are twins they're both 53 and I talked with his daughter very successful woman she was really struggling and I was talking to her and I just mentioned to her that she had walked through this before and I was sorry that but she knew this path because she had lost her mom and she said said, well, this one, she said, yeah, but this one feels different because I had my dad at that one and I don't have parents anymore. It's hard. I told you I was on the phone yesterday with somebody from our church who just lost their brother. As soon as I hung up that phone call, I called somebody else in our church whose dad just started in hospice care. There is a reality in this life of pain and suffering. And in light of the ubiquity of that human suffering, we can be grateful for a Bible that includes the book of Lamentations. In light of the ubiquity of human suffering and grief and tragedy and loss, we can be grateful for a Bible that includes the book of Lamentations. Now, the book of Lamentations is not a popular one, okay? If you have a Bible, if you were faithful and you brought your Bible this morning, I'm so glad that you did. If you don't have a Bible, you can get one in the seat back in front of you. Turn to Lamentations for me, and you'll be able to look at some of these things as we look at them here in a few minutes. It's five chapters, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations. If you get to Ezekiel, you've gone too far. If you can't find it after a few minutes, use your table of contents or hand it to the person next to you who's a better Christian. The book of Lamentations is a collection of five poems that are laments. And a lament is an expression of anguish or grief. It is an expression of deep sorrow. And Lamentations is not the only place where these laments make an appearance. I told you last week as we were talking about Psalms that there's several different categories of Psalms. And one of the categories is Psalms of Lamentations, Psalmsms of lament. We find poems of lament in Job. We find them in Isaiah. And so all through the Bible, we have these poems and these songs and these writings on laments, on deep anguish and deep grief. And I am grateful for a Bible that has those. I'm grateful for a Bible that does not hide from that part of the human experience. We do not serve a God that seeks to whitewash those things and push those off to the fringes and off to the side while we're happy and joyful over here. And in a lot of ways, I'll talk about towards the end, pain and grief and loss can sometimes seek to drive a wedge between us and God and push us further away from God. And so it would seem to his benefit to kind of cast aside, put pain in the shadows so that we don't acknowledge it. But God, in his goodness and in his wisdom and in his word, has chosen to bring pain front and center and show it to us over and over and over again and even show how the saints have responded to it. So we do not have to be afraid of pain or grief and we don't have to pretend like it doesn't exist. We don't have to whitewash it. And because God doesn't flinch about including pain and grief and the reality of suffering in his word, then we don't have to flinch about including it in our church. The church should not be a place where we take people who are grieving and who are hurting and who are suffering loss and put them to the side and ask them to quietly get over it until they can join our happy, joyful circle again. That's not how church works. That's not how the Bible works. That's not how God works. So that's not how we should work. It is okay and right and good to bring our pain and our grief into the middle of the fellowship and say, this is what I'm doing. This is what was happening to me. And this is how I'm suffering. We should do that. But I'm grateful for a God, for his word that does not hide from the reality of suffering and loss. Because everyone in here, everyone in here over the age of 30 has a place they can go. If I were to ask you what was your hardest time, you have a place where you can go. You have something that you encountered that was sad, that was hard, that challenged your faith. And maybe it was so profound that you even mark your life by it. There was me before that and me after that. And if you are one of the lucky few who says, you know, I really haven't known that season, I'm so happy for you. You will know it. You will. It's a reality of life. We will walk through times of profound suffering and grief. And the Bible doesn't flinch about that. And I have committed to you that I will preach about that reality just as often as it comes up in Scripture. Because shame on us if we perpetuate this idea of faith that tells us if we'll just pray hard enough and love hard enough and be faithful enough that we will dodge the raindrops of tragedy, that God will put a protective shield over the ones he loves the most who are the most faithful. That is not in the Bible. That is not in that situation too. And so God includes it in his scripture. And in doing that, I believe that poems of lament imbue human suffering with a sacred dignity. I believe that these poems of lament, that finding deep anguish and grief in scripture, imbues our suffering that we walk through with a sort of sacred dignity. And I don't really know how best to explain it except to say that I'm fond of reminding myself and reminding you guys when I can that we all stand on shoulders. You are who you are, for better or worse, because of the shoulders you stand on. Because of your mom and your dad and your grandparents. Because of the people who were around you when you were being formed, because of the successes or failures that came before you. You stand on those shoulders. I've reminded us as a church, we stand on spiritual shoulders. We do not, as Grace Raleigh, float out in the ether untethered to church history. No, we are a part of church history. We are carrying the torch for our generation, but we are standing on shoulders that go back thousands of years. We stand on shoulders of faith. And in suffering, I think it's important to acknowledge through scripture that we stand on suffering shoulders as well. The generations who have come before us, they know suffering. They know hardship. And the reality of it is, whether we like to admit it or not, we're the lucky ones. Our generations experience far less suffering than their generations. It was not lost on me, and even in other countries. It wasn't lost on me last week as I was at the funeral for Jodi, that we're in a room, there's 750 people in there because this tragic thing happened. This mom died. And 750 people stopped their Saturday and went to a room and celebrated her life and worshiped God together. While on the other side of the globe, there's Palestinian and Jewish moms dying who are not getting services. They don't have time to stop and bring 750 people in and celebrate that life. Life just marches on. And so, comparatively speaking, we are the lucky ones. But just like getting to walk with your parents in their final hours doesn't make those final hours not sad, acknowledging that we are comparatively lucky doesn't make our hurt hurt less, which is why I think the song Great Is Thy Faithfulness can be one of hope. It can be a profound anthem for us during pain. But to understand Great Is Thy Faithfulness, we've really got to understand the book of Lamentations. So you've got it there open in front of you, and I don't expect you to look at this right now, but it's five chapters. Chapters one and two and three and four are acrostic poems. They're all 22 verses. Each verse starts with a different Hebrew letter, obviously in the Hebrew, not in the English that we are looking at or whatever language you read your Bible in. And then chapter three is a little bit different formulaically than the others. But all five chapters are poems and all five chapters are poems of grief and suffering and strife. If you've ever tried to read through Lamentations, I did, sat down, read it cover to cover before I started to write the sermon on it. It's a hard book to read. It is not a hopeful book. It is not, besides what I'm going to show you, besides this one little nook right in the middle, it is not a faith-filled book. It is a book of despair. And so I wanted to acquaint you with kind of the sense of the book of Leviticus so we can understand the deep anguish that the author is talking about. It's attributed to Jeremiah historically, but recent scholarship calls that into question. But we're going to say Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations. Look with me at chapter 2, verses 11 and 12. These are hard verses, but I want you to see the kind of pain that he's talking about here. as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city as their life is poured out on their mother's bosom. I cannot think of anything more profoundly sad than that. That a mom clutching her small child as that child's life is poured out on her chest. And I do not think that was a figurative verse, because the book of Lamentations is written in a response and reaction to the downfall of Jerusalem being conquered by the Babylonians and the Jewish people being carried off into slavery. The book of Lamentations is written while the smoke rises from the ashes of Jerusalem in the background and slavery awaits in the foreground. So please understand that to the Jewish mind, to this person, to Jeremiah, and to those who would read it, the anguish they are expressing is because of actual grief that they are seeing. Women and children dying in the streets is what they are seeing as the city is conquered. But it's not just that that they are grieving. This also is a grieving of a loss of a promise from God because God promised to care for his people and God promised to look out for them. He promised to protect them. And more than anything, he promised them that land, the land that they were on. And then God allows a foreign army to come in to destroy his city, the crown jewel of Israel, to lay waste Jerusalem and the temple and take his children that are claimants of his promise and march them into slavery in a land where they don't belong. Back pretty close to where Abraham came from originally. So when they are marching, it is not just the sights that they have seen that have broken their hearts. It's not just the ones that they have loved and lost that have broken their hearts. It's not just the future that they face that's breaking their heart, but it's also the thought, the reality to them that their God had failed them. Their God had broken his promise. Either he was unfaithful or he was weak. But their hopes had been dashed. It's with that that Jeremiah writes these laments. This verse in particular struck me about women and children in the streets as their city was destroyed around them. I wrote this sermon in the days following the original Hamas attacks a couple of weeks ago. And I didn't have to imagine what it would look like to see what Jeremiah was writing about. Because all I had to do was turn on my TV. And you see horrific pain, horrific violence, and horrific evil. I watched a dad celebrate when he found out that his eight-year-old daughter was dead rather than captured because being captured was worse than being killed. That's sad. And my heart breaks for not just the Jewish people who have lost their lives, but for all the Israelis. It's multicultural that have suffered needlessly for this. And my heart breaks for the Palestinians who are caught in the middle of a war that they did not choose to wage. And I don't know the answers there. I don't know the right thing to do. The only thing I know to do is to pray for them. Don't turn our eyes from it and pretend like it's not happening. To be grateful that we don't live in a place where we have to suffer in that way. I've thought over and over and over again what I would do with my young family if I was unlucky enough to be born in Palestine. How do you protect them? And the thought that really struck me as I was reflecting on that and reading these verses is that there truly is nothing new under the sun. Jeremiah wrote these words 2,500 years ago. And here we are right back in the same place. Women and children are dying in the streets of Israel. The suffering until Jesus comes back is unavoidable. And then you flip to the end of Lamentations. The very last verses. This is the time to finish on a high note and encourage God's people. Isn't it, Jeremiah? Not to him. He finishes it this way. I sure do like the sound of pages turning in here. That's good. Verse 21 and 22. Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored. Renew our days as of old, unless you have utterly rejected us and you remain exceedingly angry with us. The end. That's the book. It ends with a dot, dot, dot. God, please restore us. Please take us back. Please make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Please, God. Unless you're just going to forget us. That's it. There's no resolution there. Which is why I think that these verses in chapter 3 are remarkably powerful verses. These verses are the only hopeful, optimistic verses in the whole book of Lamentations, and we find them in the dead center. And if you know your hymns, these verses are going to sound really familiar. Look with me at chapter 3 and listen to these words. Verse 21. I love the way he starts this verse off with that phrase, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. This I call to mind, but therefore I have hope. In the midst of all the suffering he's written, he's seen the ashes of Jerusalem are fading behind him as he's led into slavery. He has seen the very worst of human suffering. He has finished the book with uncertainty, but in the middle of it, almost like a nail being driven into a wall with a curtain, just letting it drape there, holding up the last tendrils of faith is this declaration of hope in the middle of it. But this I bring to mind and it gives me hope. Great is your faithfulness. Your mercies are new every morning. You provide for me and I believe in you and I hope in you, God, because I know that you are good. Despite everything that I've seen, despite everything that's happened, despite all the questions that I cannot answer, I know that you are good. And see, I always thought that Great is Thy Faithfulness was a jubilant song. It was to be sung in seasons of plenty. It was to be sung when we realize we're blessed. Great is your faithfulness, O God, my Father. All I've needed, your hand has provided. I have all that I need. Morning by morning, new mercies I see. I thought it was a song to be sung in the midst of plenty. But it's actually a song to be declared in the midst of grief. Which is interesting to me that Jen chose it. We're not too far off. As the song to walk down the aisle, maybe she knew something that I didn't about the years ahead. But make no mistake about it, and I love this. Great is thy faithfulness is an anthem of defiance. You understand? The song, great is thy faithfulness, is an anthem of defiance. And here's what I mean by defiance. Because when you've walked through grief and pain and hurt, you know something to be true. Those things have whispered in your ears. When you are hurting, when you are suffering, when your life is marked by sorrow, that pain whispers in your ear. The same thing it was whispering to the ears of the Hebrew people as they marched away from the ashes of Jerusalem. That pain will whisper in your ear, your God is not big enough. Your God has forgotten you. Your faith has failed you. Your faith is not serving you. Your God is too weak. He's too apathetic. Or your faith is weak. or this is your fault, that pain and grief will begin to drive a wedge between you and God. It will whisper things when you're trying to fall asleep that your faith has failed you and your God has failed you. And if you let it linger long enough, it will work to convince you to walk away from your God. And when you go to the place you went when I talked about your darkest hour, we both know we heard those voices then. We both know we hear them sometimes now. We know people who have let those voices win and have walked away from faith because the pain was too great. So it is those voices that this anthem is defying. Jeremiah was hearing those voices as he wrote Lamentations, and yet in the middle of it, nail in the wall, he hangs his hope. Great is your faithfulness, he declares it, despite everything going on, despite the fact that, God, you could have stopped that and you didn't. God, you made us a promise and it feels broken. Lord, I don't understand how these things can be happening to these people. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair. How can you possibly watch the news and see what's happening in Israel and not be moved? How can you possibly watch the news and see what happened in Maine this week and not be moved and not wonder and not ask those questions that we all ask in the midst of pain. God, why are you letting this happen? And I don't understand. And I can't explain why. And I don't know what to tell my kids. And my faith feels weak. But in the midst of that dismay, I choose to sing with Jeremiah and all the saints, great is your faithfulness. God, I don't understand this, but I know you're good. Great is your faithfulness. God, I don't have enough to get through today, but I know you're going to give me the strength. I love that line, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, even in the darkest of times. So from now on, for the rest of your life, when you hear the song, great is thy faithfulness, I want your mind to rush to Lamentations chapter three. I want you to see it holding up the tendril of hope and faith and our creator and uncertain times and things we don't understand. It's an actual choice to choose faith in those moments and declare to God, I don't understand it, but great is your faithfulness. And it's an anthem of defiance because when we choose to sing it in the midst of pain, we are telling those voices of pain and grief and fear. Not today. You will not rob me of my faith today. This pain will not take my faith from me. And it will not take it from me because I know who my Jesus is. And I love him I trust him and I know he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And I don't see how, and I don't see why, and I don't know when, but one day he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And so today this pain will not take my faith from me because great is his faithfulness. And I will declare it even when I don't feel it. So in a minute, we're going to sing. And when we do, let this be an anthem. If you're walking through pain right now, sing it. Defy it. Declare it. When you hear it in the future, sing it as an anthem that my faith will not be shaken by the circumstances that I'm walking through. But I know that for me, for the rest of my life, whenever I hear great is thy faithfulness, I will remember it as an anthem of defiance that in the midst of the greatest suffering and the greatest trials, we stand up and we choose to sing, God, I don't understand, but I know you are good and great is your faithfulness. Let's pray. Father, your faithfulness is steadfast. You have never broken a promise. You have never not done what you said you were going to do. There's so much that we don't understand, God. There's so much in life at times that seeks to rob our faith from us. And so, God, we pray that you would give us strength for today. Continue to give us hope for tomorrow. That we would declare this as an anthem against the evil one who would seek to tear down our faith. Lord, if there are those here who are listening, who don't feel like your faithfulness is really great right now. Would you give them the strength to sing? Would you give them the strength to declare? Would you give them the strength to defy today? God, we thank you for being good. Thank you for loving us. We thank you for being faithful to us. Help us see it more and more. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, guys. Good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and I'm so grateful that you've joined us on this October Sunday. I'm hopeful that we don't have to hear that noise again, but who knows? Who knows? Some of you may have noticed that I'm wearing Georgia Tech colors for no particular reason. I just thought I'd wear them today. But speaking of suffering, speaking of UNC football, today's message is about suffering, so it kind of works out, those of you who stayed up late to get your dreams crushed last night. This morning, we're talking about Great Is Thy Faithfulness. When we planned the series, I knew that I wanted to take at least one week and talk about a hymn. Because hymns are, if you ask me like what songs are you listening to, what Christian worship are you listening to, I have a playlist called Acoustic Hymns on Spotify, and I listen to that probably more than anything. I just like hymns, and so I knew that one of the sermons was going to be focused on a hymn, but I didn't know which one, and so I did what I often do when I don't know what to preach about or talk about. I ask Jen what she thinks. Jen's my wife. She's not just a lady that I ask questions to, and I asked her what I should do, and she immediately said, Great is Thy Faithfulness. We love Great is Thy Faithfulness. It's one of our favorite songs. Jen even walked down the aisle to that in our wedding. And so I dove into the song Great is Thy Faithfulness a few weeks ago to prepare for this morning. And what I was not expecting to find was that this is really a song about grief. It's a song to be sung in the midst of grief. And so this morning is necessarily about pain and suffering and struggle and grief. And we've all walked through those seasons. Some of y'all know our story well enough to know that 2019, early 2019 to the end of 2020, were some hard years for Jen and I. In early 2019, her dad John was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he fought the good fight for almost two years and died in the last days of 2020. And that was probably the first time that we moved through that kind of profound grief at loss. And it really shapes you when you walk that path. In a lot of ways, there's my life before we walked that and life after. And the perspectives are very different. And one of the things that I learned in that season of suffering and loss and grief was, and I know that this is, I'm just getting right to it. I know it. I know this is heavy. I know this is even grim, but it's just true. And this is the way that my mind works. Maybe that's why one of my favorite books in the Bible is Ecclesiastes. But as we were walking with John on his journey to eternity, it occurred to me somewhere in there that best case scenario in life, you walk with your parents into death. When you are born, the best possible outcome for that relationship with your parents is to accompany them as they transition into eternity. That's the best possible outcome. It's a path we all have to walk. In fact, if we don't walk that path, holding our parents' hands as they fade away, if we don't walk that path, it's because something more sad than that happened, right? They lost you. You were estranged. It was tragic and sudden when they passed. I know that's dark and I know that that's heavy, but I think it's a helpful reality to understand that when you are born, hopefully to loving parents, that the best case scenario for that relationship is for you to one day hold their hand as they pass into eternity. If you have walked that path, you know what an incredible honor it is. I was talking with somebody this week who lost their brother, and he was able to sit with him for the last two weeks while he faded. And I just said to him, it's a unique privilege in life to be invited into that sacred space, isn't it? And he said, yes, very much. So I would say, if you are walking that path, if you have walked it, when one day you find yourself walking it, I know that it is not much solace, but consider yourself blessed. It's a blessing from God to walk with a parent, to walk with a loved one in that way. We don't all have that opportunity. But if that's the best case scenario, what that means is life is going to be filled with strife. Life is going to be filled with grief. I make the comment sometimes that no one dodges the raindrops of tragedy for their whole life. No one does. Something sad will happen. Grieving, suffering, loss is a ubiquitous part of the human experience. Just this last week, within the last week, I went to the funeral of a 40-year-old friend of mine who suddenly passed away. I told you guys about this last week. She has two kids, middle school and elementary school. It's tragic. On Wednesday, I drove to Asheboro and I did the funeral for a man that went to my church in Atlanta who moved up here. And I sat with his kids. He has kids are twins they're both 53 and I talked with his daughter very successful woman she was really struggling and I was talking to her and I just mentioned to her that she had walked through this before and I was sorry that but she knew this path because she had lost her mom and she said said, well, this one, she said, yeah, but this one feels different because I had my dad at that one and I don't have parents anymore. It's hard. I told you I was on the phone yesterday with somebody from our church who just lost their brother. As soon as I hung up that phone call, I called somebody else in our church whose dad just started in hospice care. There is a reality in this life of pain and suffering. And in light of the ubiquity of that human suffering, we can be grateful for a Bible that includes the book of Lamentations. In light of the ubiquity of human suffering and grief and tragedy and loss, we can be grateful for a Bible that includes the book of Lamentations. Now, the book of Lamentations is not a popular one, okay? If you have a Bible, if you were faithful and you brought your Bible this morning, I'm so glad that you did. If you don't have a Bible, you can get one in the seat back in front of you. Turn to Lamentations for me, and you'll be able to look at some of these things as we look at them here in a few minutes. It's five chapters, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations. If you get to Ezekiel, you've gone too far. If you can't find it after a few minutes, use your table of contents or hand it to the person next to you who's a better Christian. The book of Lamentations is a collection of five poems that are laments. And a lament is an expression of anguish or grief. It is an expression of deep sorrow. And Lamentations is not the only place where these laments make an appearance. I told you last week as we were talking about Psalms that there's several different categories of Psalms. And one of the categories is Psalms of Lamentations, Psalmsms of lament. We find poems of lament in Job. We find them in Isaiah. And so all through the Bible, we have these poems and these songs and these writings on laments, on deep anguish and deep grief. And I am grateful for a Bible that has those. I'm grateful for a Bible that does not hide from that part of the human experience. We do not serve a God that seeks to whitewash those things and push those off to the fringes and off to the side while we're happy and joyful over here. And in a lot of ways, I'll talk about towards the end, pain and grief and loss can sometimes seek to drive a wedge between us and God and push us further away from God. And so it would seem to his benefit to kind of cast aside, put pain in the shadows so that we don't acknowledge it. But God, in his goodness and in his wisdom and in his word, has chosen to bring pain front and center and show it to us over and over and over again and even show how the saints have responded to it. So we do not have to be afraid of pain or grief and we don't have to pretend like it doesn't exist. We don't have to whitewash it. And because God doesn't flinch about including pain and grief and the reality of suffering in his word, then we don't have to flinch about including it in our church. The church should not be a place where we take people who are grieving and who are hurting and who are suffering loss and put them to the side and ask them to quietly get over it until they can join our happy, joyful circle again. That's not how church works. That's not how the Bible works. That's not how God works. So that's not how we should work. It is okay and right and good to bring our pain and our grief into the middle of the fellowship and say, this is what I'm doing. This is what was happening to me. And this is how I'm suffering. We should do that. But I'm grateful for a God, for his word that does not hide from the reality of suffering and loss. Because everyone in here, everyone in here over the age of 30 has a place they can go. If I were to ask you what was your hardest time, you have a place where you can go. You have something that you encountered that was sad, that was hard, that challenged your faith. And maybe it was so profound that you even mark your life by it. There was me before that and me after that. And if you are one of the lucky few who says, you know, I really haven't known that season, I'm so happy for you. You will know it. You will. It's a reality of life. We will walk through times of profound suffering and grief. And the Bible doesn't flinch about that. And I have committed to you that I will preach about that reality just as often as it comes up in Scripture. Because shame on us if we perpetuate this idea of faith that tells us if we'll just pray hard enough and love hard enough and be faithful enough that we will dodge the raindrops of tragedy, that God will put a protective shield over the ones he loves the most who are the most faithful. That is not in the Bible. That is not in that situation too. And so God includes it in his scripture. And in doing that, I believe that poems of lament imbue human suffering with a sacred dignity. I believe that these poems of lament, that finding deep anguish and grief in scripture, imbues our suffering that we walk through with a sort of sacred dignity. And I don't really know how best to explain it except to say that I'm fond of reminding myself and reminding you guys when I can that we all stand on shoulders. You are who you are, for better or worse, because of the shoulders you stand on. Because of your mom and your dad and your grandparents. Because of the people who were around you when you were being formed, because of the successes or failures that came before you. You stand on those shoulders. I've reminded us as a church, we stand on spiritual shoulders. We do not, as Grace Raleigh, float out in the ether untethered to church history. No, we are a part of church history. We are carrying the torch for our generation, but we are standing on shoulders that go back thousands of years. We stand on shoulders of faith. And in suffering, I think it's important to acknowledge through scripture that we stand on suffering shoulders as well. The generations who have come before us, they know suffering. They know hardship. And the reality of it is, whether we like to admit it or not, we're the lucky ones. Our generations experience far less suffering than their generations. It was not lost on me, and even in other countries. It wasn't lost on me last week as I was at the funeral for Jodi, that we're in a room, there's 750 people in there because this tragic thing happened. This mom died. And 750 people stopped their Saturday and went to a room and celebrated her life and worshiped God together. While on the other side of the globe, there's Palestinian and Jewish moms dying who are not getting services. They don't have time to stop and bring 750 people in and celebrate that life. Life just marches on. And so, comparatively speaking, we are the lucky ones. But just like getting to walk with your parents in their final hours doesn't make those final hours not sad, acknowledging that we are comparatively lucky doesn't make our hurt hurt less, which is why I think the song Great Is Thy Faithfulness can be one of hope. It can be a profound anthem for us during pain. But to understand Great Is Thy Faithfulness, we've really got to understand the book of Lamentations. So you've got it there open in front of you, and I don't expect you to look at this right now, but it's five chapters. Chapters one and two and three and four are acrostic poems. They're all 22 verses. Each verse starts with a different Hebrew letter, obviously in the Hebrew, not in the English that we are looking at or whatever language you read your Bible in. And then chapter three is a little bit different formulaically than the others. But all five chapters are poems and all five chapters are poems of grief and suffering and strife. If you've ever tried to read through Lamentations, I did, sat down, read it cover to cover before I started to write the sermon on it. It's a hard book to read. It is not a hopeful book. It is not, besides what I'm going to show you, besides this one little nook right in the middle, it is not a faith-filled book. It is a book of despair. And so I wanted to acquaint you with kind of the sense of the book of Leviticus so we can understand the deep anguish that the author is talking about. It's attributed to Jeremiah historically, but recent scholarship calls that into question. But we're going to say Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations. Look with me at chapter 2, verses 11 and 12. These are hard verses, but I want you to see the kind of pain that he's talking about here. as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city as their life is poured out on their mother's bosom. I cannot think of anything more profoundly sad than that. That a mom clutching her small child as that child's life is poured out on her chest. And I do not think that was a figurative verse, because the book of Lamentations is written in a response and reaction to the downfall of Jerusalem being conquered by the Babylonians and the Jewish people being carried off into slavery. The book of Lamentations is written while the smoke rises from the ashes of Jerusalem in the background and slavery awaits in the foreground. So please understand that to the Jewish mind, to this person, to Jeremiah, and to those who would read it, the anguish they are expressing is because of actual grief that they are seeing. Women and children dying in the streets is what they are seeing as the city is conquered. But it's not just that that they are grieving. This also is a grieving of a loss of a promise from God because God promised to care for his people and God promised to look out for them. He promised to protect them. And more than anything, he promised them that land, the land that they were on. And then God allows a foreign army to come in to destroy his city, the crown jewel of Israel, to lay waste Jerusalem and the temple and take his children that are claimants of his promise and march them into slavery in a land where they don't belong. Back pretty close to where Abraham came from originally. So when they are marching, it is not just the sights that they have seen that have broken their hearts. It's not just the ones that they have loved and lost that have broken their hearts. It's not just the future that they face that's breaking their heart, but it's also the thought, the reality to them that their God had failed them. Their God had broken his promise. Either he was unfaithful or he was weak. But their hopes had been dashed. It's with that that Jeremiah writes these laments. This verse in particular struck me about women and children in the streets as their city was destroyed around them. I wrote this sermon in the days following the original Hamas attacks a couple of weeks ago. And I didn't have to imagine what it would look like to see what Jeremiah was writing about. Because all I had to do was turn on my TV. And you see horrific pain, horrific violence, and horrific evil. I watched a dad celebrate when he found out that his eight-year-old daughter was dead rather than captured because being captured was worse than being killed. That's sad. And my heart breaks for not just the Jewish people who have lost their lives, but for all the Israelis. It's multicultural that have suffered needlessly for this. And my heart breaks for the Palestinians who are caught in the middle of a war that they did not choose to wage. And I don't know the answers there. I don't know the right thing to do. The only thing I know to do is to pray for them. Don't turn our eyes from it and pretend like it's not happening. To be grateful that we don't live in a place where we have to suffer in that way. I've thought over and over and over again what I would do with my young family if I was unlucky enough to be born in Palestine. How do you protect them? And the thought that really struck me as I was reflecting on that and reading these verses is that there truly is nothing new under the sun. Jeremiah wrote these words 2,500 years ago. And here we are right back in the same place. Women and children are dying in the streets of Israel. The suffering until Jesus comes back is unavoidable. And then you flip to the end of Lamentations. The very last verses. This is the time to finish on a high note and encourage God's people. Isn't it, Jeremiah? Not to him. He finishes it this way. I sure do like the sound of pages turning in here. That's good. Verse 21 and 22. Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored. Renew our days as of old, unless you have utterly rejected us and you remain exceedingly angry with us. The end. That's the book. It ends with a dot, dot, dot. God, please restore us. Please take us back. Please make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Please, God. Unless you're just going to forget us. That's it. There's no resolution there. Which is why I think that these verses in chapter 3 are remarkably powerful verses. These verses are the only hopeful, optimistic verses in the whole book of Lamentations, and we find them in the dead center. And if you know your hymns, these verses are going to sound really familiar. Look with me at chapter 3 and listen to these words. Verse 21. I love the way he starts this verse off with that phrase, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. This I call to mind, but therefore I have hope. In the midst of all the suffering he's written, he's seen the ashes of Jerusalem are fading behind him as he's led into slavery. He has seen the very worst of human suffering. He has finished the book with uncertainty, but in the middle of it, almost like a nail being driven into a wall with a curtain, just letting it drape there, holding up the last tendrils of faith is this declaration of hope in the middle of it. But this I bring to mind and it gives me hope. Great is your faithfulness. Your mercies are new every morning. You provide for me and I believe in you and I hope in you, God, because I know that you are good. Despite everything that I've seen, despite everything that's happened, despite all the questions that I cannot answer, I know that you are good. And see, I always thought that Great is Thy Faithfulness was a jubilant song. It was to be sung in seasons of plenty. It was to be sung when we realize we're blessed. Great is your faithfulness, O God, my Father. All I've needed, your hand has provided. I have all that I need. Morning by morning, new mercies I see. I thought it was a song to be sung in the midst of plenty. But it's actually a song to be declared in the midst of grief. Which is interesting to me that Jen chose it. We're not too far off. As the song to walk down the aisle, maybe she knew something that I didn't about the years ahead. But make no mistake about it, and I love this. Great is thy faithfulness is an anthem of defiance. You understand? The song, great is thy faithfulness, is an anthem of defiance. And here's what I mean by defiance. Because when you've walked through grief and pain and hurt, you know something to be true. Those things have whispered in your ears. When you are hurting, when you are suffering, when your life is marked by sorrow, that pain whispers in your ear. The same thing it was whispering to the ears of the Hebrew people as they marched away from the ashes of Jerusalem. That pain will whisper in your ear, your God is not big enough. Your God has forgotten you. Your faith has failed you. Your faith is not serving you. Your God is too weak. He's too apathetic. Or your faith is weak. or this is your fault, that pain and grief will begin to drive a wedge between you and God. It will whisper things when you're trying to fall asleep that your faith has failed you and your God has failed you. And if you let it linger long enough, it will work to convince you to walk away from your God. And when you go to the place you went when I talked about your darkest hour, we both know we heard those voices then. We both know we hear them sometimes now. We know people who have let those voices win and have walked away from faith because the pain was too great. So it is those voices that this anthem is defying. Jeremiah was hearing those voices as he wrote Lamentations, and yet in the middle of it, nail in the wall, he hangs his hope. Great is your faithfulness, he declares it, despite everything going on, despite the fact that, God, you could have stopped that and you didn't. God, you made us a promise and it feels broken. Lord, I don't understand how these things can be happening to these people. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair. How can you possibly watch the news and see what's happening in Israel and not be moved? How can you possibly watch the news and see what happened in Maine this week and not be moved and not wonder and not ask those questions that we all ask in the midst of pain. God, why are you letting this happen? And I don't understand. And I can't explain why. And I don't know what to tell my kids. And my faith feels weak. But in the midst of that dismay, I choose to sing with Jeremiah and all the saints, great is your faithfulness. God, I don't understand this, but I know you're good. Great is your faithfulness. God, I don't have enough to get through today, but I know you're going to give me the strength. I love that line, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, even in the darkest of times. So from now on, for the rest of your life, when you hear the song, great is thy faithfulness, I want your mind to rush to Lamentations chapter three. I want you to see it holding up the tendril of hope and faith and our creator and uncertain times and things we don't understand. It's an actual choice to choose faith in those moments and declare to God, I don't understand it, but great is your faithfulness. And it's an anthem of defiance because when we choose to sing it in the midst of pain, we are telling those voices of pain and grief and fear. Not today. You will not rob me of my faith today. This pain will not take my faith from me. And it will not take it from me because I know who my Jesus is. And I love him I trust him and I know he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And I don't see how, and I don't see why, and I don't know when, but one day he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And so today this pain will not take my faith from me because great is his faithfulness. And I will declare it even when I don't feel it. So in a minute, we're going to sing. And when we do, let this be an anthem. If you're walking through pain right now, sing it. Defy it. Declare it. When you hear it in the future, sing it as an anthem that my faith will not be shaken by the circumstances that I'm walking through. But I know that for me, for the rest of my life, whenever I hear great is thy faithfulness, I will remember it as an anthem of defiance that in the midst of the greatest suffering and the greatest trials, we stand up and we choose to sing, God, I don't understand, but I know you are good and great is your faithfulness. Let's pray. Father, your faithfulness is steadfast. You have never broken a promise. You have never not done what you said you were going to do. There's so much that we don't understand, God. There's so much in life at times that seeks to rob our faith from us. And so, God, we pray that you would give us strength for today. Continue to give us hope for tomorrow. That we would declare this as an anthem against the evil one who would seek to tear down our faith. Lord, if there are those here who are listening, who don't feel like your faithfulness is really great right now. Would you give them the strength to sing? Would you give them the strength to declare? Would you give them the strength to defy today? God, we thank you for being good. Thank you for loving us. We thank you for being faithful to us. Help us see it more and more. In Jesus' name, amen.

Have you ever wondered if it was all worth it? All the emails and phone calls, special projects, late meetings, early mornings and out-of-town trips? Frantically shuttling bodies back and forth and cobbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? First of all, how about our boy Brad Gwynn lending his voice to that video? He did a great job. If you see him, if he comes out of hiding and you can identify him, tell him that you were impressed. This is the first part in our new series called Vapor, and I'm going to tell you all about that in a minute. But I also want to acknowledge that, Lord willing, this is the last 100% virtual service that we have to do at Grace Raleigh as the elders voted to resume in-person gatherings next week on February the 14th. So I'm looking forward to having people in this space as the service was starting. Erin came up to me and she said, just think this time next week, there will be people here. We will see smiles and we can talk to other folks because listen, I'll be honest with you. I'm tired of making small talk with Emil, our keyboard player, every week. We're out of things to talk about. I need more of you to come here and create a buffer between me and the band. I'm sick of it. But we're looking forward to seeing you next week. Those of you who can join us, those of you who can't, who don't feel comfortable coming back yet, we totally get it. Your experience is going to be the exact same. So don't worry about that. And finally, if this is news to you, if you didn't know that we were resuming in-person gatherings next week, then that just means that you're not on our email distribution list. And if you'd like to be, whether you're watching on YouTube or watching on our website, there's a link below that you can click, fill out some information, and you'll get all the latest news from Grace Raleigh if that's something that interests you. Now, like I said, this series is focused on Ecclesiastes. It's called Vapor, and you're going to find out why at the end of this sermon today. I love the book of Ecclesiastes. I think it might be my favorite book. It's definitely my favorite book in the Old Testament because Ecclesiastes just tells the truth, man. Ecclesiastes is stark. I relate to Ecclesiastes. I appreciate the courage of Ecclesiastes. But the way to think about it, I think, as we approach it together as a church, is to really think about the idea, what if Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, some of these people who have climbed the mountains in their life, they are at the mountaintop. They have all the success that you could possibly want. They have all the things, all the toys. Anything that we would look at to say, I'm going to pursue that and that's going to make me happy. That's going to make me content. That's going to provide me joy and provide what feels like a fulfilled life. Certainly they've done. And so what if at the end of their lives, they wrote a memoir and they said, after I've done everything, after I've accomplished everything that there was to accomplish, from my view on the mountaintop, let me tell you what I see. Let me tell you as I look back over the years of my life, what was worth it. Let me tell you what really brought me true joy and true contentment. Let me tell you where I felt most fulfilled. And let me tell you what I regret doing. Wouldn't you want to read that? I would. I would love to know at the end of their lives when they did everything, the American dream, everything that any of us would ever want to do, they've done. I would love to know at the end of their life what was worth it, what made you happy, and what was a waste of time. That's what Solomon does for us in the book of Ecclesiastes. Now, many of you know that Solomon was the son of David. He was the third king of Israel. We may know that he wrote Proverbs and Song of Solomon as well in the Bible. But what you may not know or remember, I think I've mentioned this in years past, but Solomon was really a very accomplished king. He was the wisest man to have ever lived. He strengthened the army. Really, Solomon's life was he drug a third world country into international prominence, into being a first world country. Economically, he raised the stakes. He built a port city to begin to receive tariffs from other nations. He built great monuments. It was a great time of peace. He built up an infrastructure within Israel and was the greatest king that they ever saw. He was a rich, wealthy man. He had everything that you could ever want. And he got to the end of his life, and he writes for us the book of Ecclesiastes, where he does exactly what I said would be great. What if somebody who had been to the mountaintop wrote a book and told us what they saw? That's what Solomon does. But what I love about this book is what I alluded to earlier. It's bleak, man. It's stark. We've been joking as a staff that we have saved the bleakest book of the Bible for the bleakest month of the year. Everybody hates February. February's tough. Ecclesiastes is tough. It is unflinchingly honest. Ecclesiastes really, parts of it isn't trying to make us feel good. It's just trying to tell us the truth. Ecclesiastes puts in our faces some pretty difficult realities. And if you're really paying attention, if you really care about the message, it's tough. But it gets a bad rap, I think the book does, because it's not just bleak. As a matter of fact, the reason I love this book is not just because it's unflinchingly honest and just blunt and just tells you how it is without any cushion or anything like that. But I actually believe that if we will courageously confront the stark realities presented in Ecclesiastes, that on the other side of that confrontation awaits us true joy and true contentment. I actually think that if we'll confront the realities in Ecclesiastes that we'll come out the other side with a greater capacity for joy, with greater contentment about the blessings that we have now, with a greater appreciation for God and with a greater desire for Jesus. And so that's what we're going to do. We are going to confront what Ecclesiastes places in front of us. We're going to sit in some difficult realities. And so I'll tell you this. First of all, this series is just that. It's a series. It's designed in four separate parts with the intention that you would consume all four of those parts. So I usually don't say things like this, but I would encourage you that if you miss a week, try to catch up before you listen to the next week or watch the next week. The last series we did, Things You Should Know, those were kind of standalone sermons. You could drop in at any point in the series, listen to the sermon, it would make total sense, and that was fine. Some series are designed that way. This one is designed to build on one another. Because of that, I'm just going to go ahead and tell you on the front end, I'm going to bum you out today. Today stinks. I'm not going to say happy things today. I don't have good news for you today. We're going to get to the end. I'm going to be building this tension to a place where it feels like now Nate's going to give us the good news, and then I'm not. I'm just going to pray, and we're going to go about our days. So just know that up front. I'm telling you now. Because I feel like that's the ecclesiastical thing to do. That's what ecclesiastes would want us to do. Sometimes we have to sit in the difficult parts of life. Sometimes we have to let things stew a little bit. And so that's what we're going to do this morning. This book starts out with what is, it has to be the most depressing opening of any book of the Bible. It's 11 verses, it's this poem or stanza, and it's just, here you go. It's just, everything stinks is what Solomon does at the beginning. I'm not going to read you all 11 verses, but I did want to give you a sense of the sentiment of this passage. And so I'm going to read you verses 3 and 4 and 7 and 8 as kind of summary verses of how Solomon chooses to open up his memoir telling us how he found what he really believes leads to true contentment and true joy. This is what he writes in verse 3 and 4. That's rough, man. That's rough. He says he sees all the toil. A generation comes and they pour out and they build up and they build armies and they build buildings and they have careers and they build families and then they go. And then the next generation does it. And then that generation fades away and the world remains the same. It doesn't matter. It's just an endless cycle. And then he has this line. I think it's such a great line. I love this picture. All the streams flow to the ocean, yet the sea is never filled. All the water on all the continents, all the little brooks and streams flow to rivers, and all of those rivers empty themselves out into the sea. All the water from the world is emptied out into the sea, and yet the sea is never filled. The eye can never see enough. The ear can never hear enough. That's bleak. But it's true, isn't it? You feel that it's true. You know that it's true. It feels appropriate on Super Bowl Sunday to bring up a quote from the undisputed king of Super Bowls, Tom Brady. It's hard for me to say this. For those of you who don't know, if you haven't heard of Tom Brady, God bless you. You are a fortunate person. But I'm going to fill you in, okay? He is quite simply, and this is hard for me to say, the greatest football player who's ever lived. He just is. I'm a Peyton Manning guy. I like Peyton Manning. I don't like Tom Brady. But darn it, he's good at football. Every other sport has these conversations about who's the greatest of all time, and I pick this guy, and I pick this guy, and we kind of debate back and forth. Football, that's done. There's no debate. He's the best ever. Today, he plays in the Super Bowl. He already has six championship rings. He's won six times. Do you understand that if he wins today, that he will have more Super Bowl championships as an individual than any single franchise in the NFL? That's absurd. The dude's ridiculous. And he was asked recently, Tom, which one of your championships is your favorite? Which one of your Super Bowl wins is your favorite one? And when that question was posed, I immediately thought, well, it's the first one, right? It's got to be the first one, because that's kind of, he cracked the egg there, and that was the sweetest, and then after that, you know, whatever. Or maybe there was one where there was some life circumstances going on, and it made that one particularly sweet. So I was interested in the answer. And without missing a beat, he just kind of smirked and he said, the next one. The next one's my favorite one. The next one means the most. The eyes never tire of seeing. The ears are never done hearing. All the streams flow to the ocean, and yet it's never full. It's just a fact of life, isn't it? It's never enough. Dude's won six Super Bowls. Couldn't Atlanta just have one of those? The most important thing to him is the next one. And that's how we are too, isn't it? Every time we buy a house, what do we do? We know what our budget is. We know what's smart to spend. But then this house at this level has these features that I really, really need. I didn't need them before, but now I need them or I will not be happy. We buy at the apex level, right? We always want the next promotion. We always want the next thing. We always want the next vacation. We can never have enough good meals. Look at me. I can never have enough good steak. I always want the next one. How am I going to cook that one? Who's going to come over then? We're always thinking about the next thing. We always want more, more for ourselves and more for our kids and more for our families and more for our friends. We always want more. We never tire of seeing or hearing. Solomon's right. He's right when he opens up that way. And we in our guts know it. But he doesn't just do these blanket statements where he says, guys, listen, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. He actually gets into specifics. He gives us his different pursuits. And he starts off the next chapter and a half, the second half of chapter one and all of chapter two, he details these pursuits. The first one he says is that he pursued wisdom. He pursued wisdom. And this doesn't mean just biblical wisdom. This is like academia. This is knowing a lot of things. This is he was a very learned man. He says this. He says, So he decided, I'm going to make my life about being smart. I'm going to make my life about pursuing wisdom. I'm going to be the smartest person in the room, in every room that I go into. And by all accounts, he did it. He says here, I knew more than any of the kings that preceded me. I am the smartest person in the room. And then we also know, and I mentioned this already, that he was the wisest man to ever live. Solomon knew all the stuff, man. He had the doctorates. He probably had some honorary doctorates. He knew who the minority whip was in 1976. Like he knew the things. He was up to date on current events. He understood photosynthesis. Like he got all the stuff. He could answer the questions. He was the one you wanted on your trivia team. Like I said, he was the smartest person in the room in every room that he went into. He was the best. He had accomplished that. He climbed that mountain. He was the obnoxious guy that has an office lined with bookshelves that just kind of say to you with a smug smirk, yes, I've read all these and I know everything they say. That was Solomon. But at the top of that mountain, he says this in Ecclesiastes 1.17, I perceive that this also is but a striving after the wind. It was a waste. I banked my contentment and my joy and my happiness. I made my life about pursuing wisdom, about being the smartest person in the room, about reading all the books and knowing all the things, and I did. And from that mountaintop, it was a vanity of vanities. It was a chasing after the wind. I wasted my time. So, he pursued pleasure. He decided that he was going to pursue pleasure and deny himself nothing. Look at how he describes it. I said in my heart, and that's exactly what he did. He had the best parties. He drank the best drink. He had the best food. I bet he committed a big portion of his life to throwing these big royal parties that were just the absolute best. They were super fun. He had all the biggest people come in. He brought in international celebrities, and they went after it. He was a member of the best country club. He sat on the porch, and he had drinks with his buddies every afternoon. He went on the shopping trips and he did the vacations and he had all the fun. I don't know what an ancient yacht looked like, but his was trending on Twitter when he got it. I guarantee it. He had all the stuff. He had all the fun. And then when all that fun, when all that partying wasn't enough, he built monuments. He built things for himself. Like I said, he built a whole city with a port in it. He built a temple. He built a wall around Jerusalem. He did public works projects. He had the lake house, right? He went ahead and sprung for the beach house. He got the top floor where the elevator is the front door. He went ahead and got the fun car. He went ahead and he bought the boat. He did all of that. He had been there. And then he pursued carnal pleasure. We find out other places in Scripture that the man had 300 wives and 700 concubines. He literally denied himself nothing. If his eye saw it and he wanted it, he had it. And I think that's important to understand because I think often that's what we think would make us happiest. If I could just have the thing, then my life would be better. If I could just move into that neighborhood, if I could just have a relationship with that person, if I could just be done with this relationship and start a new relationship with somebody that is X, Y, or Z, if my kids can just accomplish this thing, if I just didn't have this problem in my life, if I could just have that job. We often set our eyes on things and think, if we could just have that thing, I would be more joyful and content. If I could just have that thing, I wouldn't be so stressed. And what Solomon is saying is, he had the thing. He had all the things. He had 300 wives and 700 concubines. He built, he had vacation homes. He did all the fun things. If his eye saw anything, he had it. He denied himself nothing. And from that mountaintop, Solomon says this, His eyes never tired of seeing. His ears never tired of hearing. All the possible streams of pleasure were flowing into his life and it was never full. All he wanted was the next one. Maybe if he just had a few more wives. Maybe if he built another city. Maybe if he had another boat or did another deal, then he could rest. He says, nope, I had it all. And it was a vanity too. It was a chasing after the wind. And then he turns his eyes to one more thing and he pursues ambition, career. He pursues accomplishment. He built up the kingdom. He drug it out of the third world into the first. He was successful at this. He was the CEO that first takes a company into being a Fortune 500 company and then a Fortune 50 company. He nailed the GameStop stock several times in his life. He knew what he was doing. He accomplished great things. He chased career. He chased power. He got all the promotions you could possibly want. He did way better with the company than anyone ever thought he could. He was the one that you went to to say, what should I do with this deal? He accomplished everything that there was to accomplish in career. And at the end of that, at the end of that pursuit, he again said, this is a vanity of vanities. It is a chasing after the wind. In Solomon's conclusions to his different pursuits, I'm reminded of another football story. Maybe this is appropriate for Super Bowl Sunday, or maybe I just need to expand my experiences. But if you like football, then you will also like Brett Favre. He was a great quarterback for the Green Bay Packers in the 90s. And Brett Favre is one of these good old country boys. He played at Southern Miss. He coaches high school football now. He still does interviews with a sleeveless shirt on because he can. And he's just that kind of guy. And he kind of, I heard a story from one of his wide receivers one time that he would literally, the coach would call in a play and he would, we're not going to do that, and he would literally draw a play on the dirt in the NFL field and tell everybody what they're going to do. That's just the kind of guy he was. So everybody liked him. And there's a famous story that after his first Super Bowl in 1997, they won. And the media is looking for Brett to ask him some questions about winning. And nobody can find him anywhere. So somebody, one of the staffers or trainers, goes to find Brett, and they actually find him in a bathroom stall, hunched over, crying. And I don't know exactly how the conversation went. I read this years ago, but the thrust of it is they found Brett crying and they said, what are you doing? And he goes, I just thought that there would be more. What do you mean? He said, I thought it would feel different than this. I thought it would feel better than this to finally win one. Can you believe that? He gave his whole life, dedicated his whole life to the craft of football. Little League and high school, it consumed his college years. Then he devoted himself, and he had a rocky beginning as a quarterback. It took him a while to get his feet underneath him and to prove himself. And now here he is. He's the best player on the best team, and he just won the biggest game, and he was the MVP of it. And his conclusion is, I just thought it would feel better than this. I thought I would finally have something. But it's the same conclusion that Solomon draws. Vanity of vanities, chasing after the wind. And I think that that is such a perfect conclusion for Solomon to have drawn, for Brett Favre to have stumbled into. Because that phrase, vanity, or chasing after the wind, really, if you read this in the original language, comes from the Hebrew word hevel, H-E-V-E-L, hevel. And hevel is really best translated as vapor or smoke. It really means vapor or smoke. It has kind of this enigmatic quality. It's this picture of, if you think of smoke, smoke is there, you can see it, and it looks like if it's solid enough, if it's coming off of a big fire, that you could reach out and grab it. But if you reach out to wrap your hand around it, it just slips through your fingers. It's there one second, you see it, it's very real, but as soon as the flame goes out, you kind of just watch it dissipate. It's there one minute. It's gone the next. Right? And that's what Solomon says all of those things are. You think that pleasure is going to make you happy. You think that if you just get the next thing, if you just get the next house, if you just have that next relationship, that when you get there, that's what's going to make you happy. That's what's going to do it. Then your soul can rest. He tells you that when you get to it, you're going to reach out to grab it. And it's going to disappear. You're going to look at it. You're going to see it. You're going to turn your head. And then when you look back, it's going to be gone. And you're going to start chasing the next thing. That's why this series is called Vapor. Because that's what Solomon says it is. As a matter of fact, I believe, based on Ecclesiastes, that Solomon would look at a vast majority of Americans and say to them, you're wasting your life. You're chasing vapor. It's going to disappear on you. I think he would look at the vast majority of people in our culture and remind them, all the rivers flow to the sea. It's never going to be full. You aren't either. You're wasting your life. The good news is, God gives us something that's not vapor. That's not a waste. But we're going to talk about that next week. Let's pray. Father, would you let the weight of Ecclesiastes rest on us? Would you let us sit in this? Would we honestly consider what in our lives is vapor? Will we consider, God, what are we chasing that we can never catch? What is it that we want that will never satisfy? Father, I ask specifically for those listening, those people who call grace home, would you give us the courage that Ecclesiastes requires to admit to ourselves and to you where we're chasing things that we can't catch? Would you create in us an earnest desire to reach for the things that we can have that will satisfy us, that will ultimately draw us near to you, that will help us desire Jesus even more. Would you be with us throughout our weeks, Lord? Help us to be people who pursue you, who want to know you, God, who lean into you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Have you ever wondered if it was all worth it? All the emails and phone calls, special projects, late meetings, early mornings and out-of-town trips? Frantically shuttling bodies back and forth and cobbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Hey. That music trails off for a while. I didn't really want to step on it. But good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you or if you're watching online, thank you so much for making us a part of your Sunday morning. This is the last part in our series called Vapor, where we've been moving through the book of Ecclesiastes together and kind of pulling out some of the themes. And we've said all along that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. February has done its part for sure. Hopefully it'll finally stop raining and we can get some consistent sunshine. I think somebody told me it was going to get up to 76 degrees today. That's unheard of. That's amazing. I'll find a way to get outside. But as we finish up this series, it's important to remind you of something that I've said all along while we've done the series, which is that these are not four standalone messages. These are four messages that are meant to be one big long message. It's four parts of a whole. And so we need all of them and they build on each other. And we've been kind of getting to a place where we could culminate in this week. I've said the whole series that if you look at the realities of Ecclesiastes and face them with courage, that you'll come out the other end with a lot of things, but one of the things is a deeper desire for Christ. And so this morning, we're going to talk about how we get to that place. If you read the book of Ecclesiastes, and that's all we have. Imagine we didn't have the Bible. All we have is the book of Ecclesiastes. That's a pretty depressing book, right? If that's all we have, we don't have any hope beyond that. We don't get the book. We don't get the New Testament. They don't talk about Jesus. We don't see the other books in the Old Testament that talk about a promise of a Messiah and tell us more about who our God is. And we don't get to see the character of God revealed in those stories in the Old Testament, if this is all we have, if Ecclesiastes is it, then this is a tough book. That's a stark reality. Actually, what we learn in Ecclesiastes is, if Ecclesiastes stands alone, then fleeting joys are all that there is. If all we have is the book of Ecclesiastes, if that's all we can go on, then what we have to admit is fleeting joys are all there is. Most of the things we chased are going to be a waste of time. They're going to be vapor. We're going to spend our whole life chasing things, and we're never going to catch it. So chasing after the wind is like trying to grab smoke, right? In that life, in that chase that we're probably wasting, then we're going to experience pain. There's going to be hard days. There's going to be sad times. There's going to be a time for mourning and for death and for weeping and for loss. That's going to happen. And then last week, we talked about these joys that are God's gift to us to look around in our life and see people that we love, to look at our days and look forward to how we get to spend our days and to honor God. Those are God's gifts to us. And if all we have is Ecclesiastes, then that's it. That's all there is. Those fleeting joys. And really and truly, the people who say, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die, they're right. We should all just be Epicureans. If this is all there is, if Ecclesiastes is all there is. There's one little hint in Ecclesiastes that there's more than this. It's in chapter 3 when Solomon tells us that God has written eternity into our hearts. It's this inclination in us that there has to be more. And I think that after you read Ecclesiastes, that's really how you're left feeling. It's the way that I feel when I get an appetizer at a fancy restaurant, right? I like to go out to eat. I don't know how readily apparent that is as you look at me, but I like to go out to eat. I like it a lot. It's one of my favorite things to do in the world. One of the things I miss the most in the pandemic is going out to eat with my friends. I love doing that. And if you go to like a normal run-of-the-mill place like Olive Garden and you get the calamari appetizer, they're going to bring you this big basket, right? I like calamari. I don't know if you guys do, but I like calamari. They're going to bring you a big basket, and it's going to have a whole cup, like an extra ramekin, and you can just bring more, more of this sauce, the sweet and sour sauce or whatever it is. And if you don't watch it, you can load up on calamari, right? You can load up on this appetizer. But when you go to a fancy restaurant, when you go to one of those big deal downtown restaurants, and you see that they have calamari on their menu for the competitive price of $18, you think, I'm going to be the big dog. I'm going to do something for the table. Watch this, guys. Go ahead and get that calamari started for us, right? Look at me. And then they bring to the table, you've been there, you've seen it, they bring to the table the sample size, right? It's like, it's a rectangular plate. It's this long, it's thin. If your appetizer arrives on a plate shaped like this, you paid too much for it. Just a blanket policy. And they set that down in front of you. And there's four different, like there's two rings kind of just laid gently on each other with some cilantro over the top of it. And there's four of those. And you're like, thank you for these bites. I would like more bites, please. Like this is it? Everybody gets a taste of calamari? And then that's done. There's got to be more to it, right? I think this is what Ecclesiastes makes us feel. We finish it. You read it. You confront the realities. It ends with this sentiment. That's a wonderful sentiment. The end of the matter is this. All has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. So best case scenario in Ecclesiastes, you keep your head down, you honor God, and you hope that more good things happen to you than bad things happen to you. There you go. Kind of feels like someone just put a few pieces of calamari in front of you and you go, is this it? There's got to be more to it. And that's why I wanted to spend this week saying there is. There are 65 other books. Ecclesiastes exists within the canon of Scripture. And when you lay it against the messages in the other books, then you can really see that I believe Ecclesiastes is designed to point us to our need for Jesus. Ecclesiastes, I think, is designed to point us to our need for Jesus. That we finish reading Ecclesiastes and we go, gosh, there's got to be more than this. There's got to be more than just putting our head down and trying to be good people and hoping that not too many bad things happen to me and that I'm wisely investing my life. There has to be more than this. And there is. The more than this is Jesus. That's the more than this. So Ecclesiastes is there so that we read it and we absorb the messages of it and we let the stark realities hit us and we let those go. We let those say to us there must be more and that more is Christ. And here's how I know that this is true. I think that Ecclesiastes serves as a really great preamble to my favorite chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. If you were here a few summers ago, you know that we did eight weeks in Romans chapter 8. It is, to me, the crescendo of hope in the Bible. It is a remarkable chapter. And I believe that Ecclesiastes, maybe better than any other book outside of Romans, lays the groundwork, lays a preamble for us to really be hit with the grandeur of Romans chapter 8. There's a particular portion of it, chapter 8 verses 18 through 30, that I think reads like portions of Ecclesiastes and then finishes with the hope that Ecclesiastes just leaves us wanting for. And so that's what I want to do this morning is look at Ecclesiastes as a lead-in to Romans chapter 8 and see what truth there is in Romans chapter 8 and how Jesus is this more that we've all been yearning for. So read with me. If you have a Bible, you can read along. If not, it'll be on the screen. It's going to be a long passage, but I think it's worth reading all of it. Verse 18, Listen to this. Now hope that is seen is not hope for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And then on down to 28, this is so good. Ecclesiastes is all over that passage. Look at how Paul starts it. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The sufferings of this present time. That's ecclesiastical. That's what Ecclesiastes says. That no matter what you do, you're going to suffer. No matter what you do, it's going to sometimes feel like chasing vapor. The reality of this life is that it's hard. There are seasons of difficulty and grief and pain. The reality of this life is that divorce exists and cancer is a thing and that secret sins eat us alive and that people disappoint us and that we disappoint ourselves and that we lose people that we don't want to lose, that we watch people who are better than us go through pain that we don't feel like they deserve. It's we turn on the news and there's another school shooting. We turn on the news and there's another riot. That's the suffering. That's what Ecclesiastes acknowledges. And that's what Paul acknowledges in Romans chapter 8. But he immediately buoys it, balances that out. I consider that the sufferings of this present time, all that stuff we talked about in Ecclesiastes, are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. So then he starts talking about this glory that's going to be revealed, this hope that we look forward to, this thing that's the future, the more that Ecclesiastes leaves us wanting for. But if you go down through the passage, you see these connections. It says that creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. And then it says that we know the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Groaning for what? Groaning for Jesus. Groaning for what we groan for. For the adoption as sons and daughters. For the glory of God. We talked about this. This creation groaning. We talked about this in the second week. We talked about that everyone walks through pain. And I said that pain is not punitive, that God is not tightening the screws on us because we misbehaved or we didn't do enough or because we don't love enough. He's not punishing us. Pain is the result of a fallen and broken world. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. It was perfect. It was exactly as God wanted it to be. But Adam and Eve sinned and they broke God's rest and they were separated from God. And then we come along in that sin, continuing to be separated from God. And we have this profound sense, just like Ecclesiastes says that eternity is written on our hearts, we have this profound sense that everything's not okay, that there has to be more than this, that it has to be different, that certainly, God, you look at what happens and it grieves your heart too. That's creation groaning, don't you see? Ecclesiastes was just describing the groanings of creation. That's the earth itself crying out for the return of God, for Jesus to come and make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. There's this picture in Revelation, I believe it's in chapter 6, where the voices of the martyrs are under the throne of God. The martyrs are under the throne of God, people who have died for their faith, and they basically say, how much longer, God, before you go make things right? That's how we feel when we lose someone too soon. That's how we feel when we try really hard to have a kid and we can't. That's how we feel when terrible things happen that we can't explain. It's ecclesiastical. It's creation groaning. When is this going to get better? And then it says, and I love this phrase, especially those of us who have the first fruits of the Spirit, those of us who have eternity written on our hearts, those of us who know Jesus, who are believers, who call God our Father and Jesus our Savior, it says that we, us Christians, because we know there's more, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption of sons and daughters. We groan inwardly when creation, when these hard things happen. We groan inwardly when we watch our friends walk through difficult times, and we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters. We yearn for that. That's part of being a Christian, is in the midst of hard times to say, come, Lord Jesus, please, don't make us wait any longer. That's why when I watched my father-in-law pass away a month ago, I looked on him with a degree of jealousy because his eager yearning is done. His groaning is over. And now he has the glory that Ecclesiastes leaves lacking and that Paul alludes to in verse 18 and that we're going to talk about here in a minute. But this first part of that passage, 18 through 30, it's ecclesiastical. It's the same themes and things that Solomon brought forth there. And it points to something. He concludes it in a lot the same way that Solomon concludes it, Romans 8, 28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. So, so far, it's pretty similar. So far, Ecclesiastes says, life is going to be hard. There's going to be some groaning. This is not going to feel right. You just need to understand that that's part of the deal. And then Romans, or Paul says in Romans, there's going to be suffering. Creation's going to groan. You're going to feel this eager yearning in yourself. You're going to feel that things aren't right, that there has to be a little bit more than this present reality. You're going to feel that in your bones. And his conclusion is, but we know, even though you feel that, we know that all things work together for the good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, which is strikingly similar to the way that Solomon concludes Ecclesiastes, which is to say, the end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear the Lord and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. It's the same conclusion. These things, life is going to be hard. We're going to groan together for this better eternity. And so the best we can do right now is to just love God and hope for the best. Except Paul doesn't stop there. Paul doesn't stop there. He follows it up. Here's what happens when we love God and we hope for the best. on it this morning, but what I believe is that if you choose God, then he chooses you. And so if you are here this morning and you're a believer, then God has chosen you. If you say, God, yes, I'm in, I need you, then he chooses you too. And in choosing you, he's going to adopt you so that Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. We are invited into this heavenly family. But the real word I want us to look at is that word justified. That word justified is an amazing word. Those whom he foreknewed, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified. Justified is an incredible word. Because the reality of the condition of our souls is that we are guilty before Almighty God. We have sinned and offended him in myriad ways. Some known, some unknown, some before we knew who he was, and then we've been washed and we are grateful, some long after we knew who he was, some yesterday, some this morning. The reality of our souls is that we stand guilty before Almighty God. And there is nothing that we can do to fix it. And the penalty for that guilt is death, is eternal separation from God. We will never re-enter into the rest that he created us for. We will never experience the glory that Paul talks about as he's comparing it to the sufferings of this present time. When we are guilty before God, we do not experience the glory of being with God. And truly all there is, is this life. And truly all we can do is eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. And we are guilty. But Jesus condescended to become flesh, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross for us. And at the conclusion of that death, when he rose to life, Romans 8 tells us that he goes back up into heaven and he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for you. He has leaned over to God and he has said, I know that they were guilty. I know that they offended you, but I died for them. They're good. He justifies you. He makes you not guilty in the heavenly court of law with his death. Do you understand that with his death, that the way that he justified you is if you go back to your very worst day, if you go back to just the bottom of whatever your barrel was, that he died for that day. And he looks at that day and he says to God the Father, they're good for that day. I've paid the penalty for that. You can declare them not guilty. I've clothed them in my righteousness. You don't have to look at that day anymore. You can look at my perfection clothing them. They are justified. And to me, what's even more amazing than that is, think about the worst day you got coming up. Think about your potential to fall off the wagon and make poor choices and find yourself at the bottom of another barrel. Think about the wandering that you do after you accept Christ as your Savior. And know that Jesus died for that day too. Know that Jesus justified you for that day too. That he looks at the Father and he declares you not guilty for all the days. That's an amazing reality to me. And here's what's even better. If you want to be justified, I don't know if you are or you're not, but if you want to be declared not guilty of your sins and justified before Almighty God, all you have to do is believe in that justification. All you have to do is believe what I just told you, that you stand guilty before God and that Jesus came and lived a perfect life and he died for you. And in that dying, he justified you. He looked at your worst day and he said, it's all right. You're not guilty of that. And he looked at your worst potential and he said, it's all right. You're not guilty of that. I've got you. Now walk like you're justified. And then he says this. He doesn't stop with justification, which would be enough. That's what Jesus' death won us. But he says those who are justified are also glorified. This is the glory that Paul is talking about in verse 18. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. And then the whole passage talks about yearning for that glory, for the redemption of our bodies, for the return of creation, that the creation groans, yearning for this perfect eternity. And then he says, Why? Because Jesus died for you and justified you, and now you're going to be glorified. He has got you, and one day you're going to end up in this perfect eternity. And that's what glorification is. And that's the hope that we have. That's how we can say it's all going to be okay. Because we don't have to admit that somehow it's going to make sense in this life or this world. But we know as Christians that one day our labor will be over and our souls will find rest in God and we will be in a perfect eternity with him. That's our hope. That's not vapor. That will not put us to shame. And if we want to know what that glory is like, the Bible tells us. In another one of my favorite passages, Revelation 21, 1 through 4. John writes this, city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and the death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Ecclesiastes is done in Revelation 21. That's the end of the Bible. It's the new heaven and the new earth. It's a picture of the perfect eternity that is waiting on us, that Jesus has won for us, that he justified us to qualify for, and then we will be glorified into that eternity. And in that eternity, there is no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. There's none of the bad stuff. In Ecclesiastes, that passage, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for laughing. In heaven, it's all laughing, man. There's a time for death and there's a time for birth, not in heaven. In heaven, it's all births. It's all building up. It's all celebrations. It's no pain. The former things, the things that make our souls groan, the things that Ecclesiastes forces us to confront about this life, those things have passed away. Those things are no more. There is no pain, and there are nothing but happy tears in heaven. That is the eternity that Jesus has won for us. It is the glorification that Jesus died to justify us so that we would qualify for that glory. It is the hope that we hold on to. It is the thing that we know for certain is not vapor. It is the time we know for certain that pain will not hurt. It is that pain will not happen. It is the time that we cling to, that we hope for, so that finally all the things in this life that don't make sense, that we can't piece together, that we don't understand, that seem inconsistent and would tempt us into losing our faith or becoming embittered. It's in this glory in Revelation 21 that all those questions are answered, that we see the very face of God, that we understand all the things that we've struggled with. It's in that moment that we no longer have to fight against ourselves and our demons, in which we can no longer relate to Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. That is the hope that we cling to, Christians. And when we cling to that hope, we don't have to make sense out of everything. When we cling to that hope, we don't have to understand how it's fair that John was so good and we lost him early. When we cling to that hope, I don't have to understand how my college roommate passed away at the age of 30 and left behind small children. I don't have to understand that because there's coming a day when it's going to all make sense. And so our job is to cling to it with patience. That's what Paul says, that if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. So we look to our Jesus. We desire him more. Come, Lord Jesus, today. And while we wait, we are patient, and we cling to the one thing that isn't vapor. And what we find there in the presence of Christ is true joy. In fact, true joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. True joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. Joy that is not fleeting. Joy that is immutable. Joy that doesn't go away. Joy that's not impacted by circumstances. True joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. So that is where we go. We go there now while we can, and we wait on an eternity while we are there all the time. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your son. Thank you that he covers over our worst days. That he covers over the worst in us. Jesus, thank you for coming and for dying. We know that when the time came, you didn't want to. But you did anyways because you love us. God, I can't imagine what it was to watch your son do that. But you led him for us. And we are grateful. I pray that we would, all of us, lean more into him. If there's someone here today who doesn't know you or watching or listening who doesn't know you, I pray that they would believe in that justification, that they would want it for themselves, that they would know you today. God, thank you for the message of Ecclesiastes. Thank you that it points us to the rest of the work that you did. God, give us the patience and the perseverance and the hope to continue to cling to your promises. It's in your son's name we all pray. Amen.

Have you ever wondered if it was all worth it? All the emails and phone calls, special projects, late meetings, early mornings and out-of-town trips? Frantically shuttling bodies back and forth and cobbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Hey. That music trails off for a while. I didn't really want to step on it. But good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you or if you're watching online, thank you so much for making us a part of your Sunday morning. This is the last part in our series called Vapor, where we've been moving through the book of Ecclesiastes together and kind of pulling out some of the themes. And we've said all along that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. February has done its part for sure. Hopefully it'll finally stop raining and we can get some consistent sunshine. I think somebody told me it was going to get up to 76 degrees today. That's unheard of. That's amazing. I'll find a way to get outside. But as we finish up this series, it's important to remind you of something that I've said all along while we've done the series, which is that these are not four standalone messages. These are four messages that are meant to be one big long message. It's four parts of a whole. And so we need all of them and they build on each other. And we've been kind of getting to a place where we could culminate in this week. I've said the whole series that if you look at the realities of Ecclesiastes and face them with courage, that you'll come out the other end with a lot of things, but one of the things is a deeper desire for Christ. And so this morning, we're going to talk about how we get to that place. If you read the book of Ecclesiastes, and that's all we have. Imagine we didn't have the Bible. All we have is the book of Ecclesiastes. That's a pretty depressing book, right? If that's all we have, we don't have any hope beyond that. We don't get the book. We don't get the New Testament. They don't talk about Jesus. We don't see the other books in the Old Testament that talk about a promise of a Messiah and tell us more about who our God is. And we don't get to see the character of God revealed in those stories in the Old Testament, if this is all we have, if Ecclesiastes is it, then this is a tough book. That's a stark reality. Actually, what we learn in Ecclesiastes is, if Ecclesiastes stands alone, then fleeting joys are all that there is. If all we have is the book of Ecclesiastes, if that's all we can go on, then what we have to admit is fleeting joys are all there is. Most of the things we chased are going to be a waste of time. They're going to be vapor. We're going to spend our whole life chasing things, and we're never going to catch it. So chasing after the wind is like trying to grab smoke, right? In that life, in that chase that we're probably wasting, then we're going to experience pain. There's going to be hard days. There's going to be sad times. There's going to be a time for mourning and for death and for weeping and for loss. That's going to happen. And then last week, we talked about these joys that are God's gift to us to look around in our life and see people that we love, to look at our days and look forward to how we get to spend our days and to honor God. Those are God's gifts to us. And if all we have is Ecclesiastes, then that's it. That's all there is. Those fleeting joys. And really and truly, the people who say, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die, they're right. We should all just be Epicureans. If this is all there is, if Ecclesiastes is all there is. There's one little hint in Ecclesiastes that there's more than this. It's in chapter 3 when Solomon tells us that God has written eternity into our hearts. It's this inclination in us that there has to be more. And I think that after you read Ecclesiastes, that's really how you're left feeling. It's the way that I feel when I get an appetizer at a fancy restaurant, right? I like to go out to eat. I don't know how readily apparent that is as you look at me, but I like to go out to eat. I like it a lot. It's one of my favorite things to do in the world. One of the things I miss the most in the pandemic is going out to eat with my friends. I love doing that. And if you go to like a normal run-of-the-mill place like Olive Garden and you get the calamari appetizer, they're going to bring you this big basket, right? I like calamari. I don't know if you guys do, but I like calamari. They're going to bring you a big basket, and it's going to have a whole cup, like an extra ramekin, and you can just bring more, more of this sauce, the sweet and sour sauce or whatever it is. And if you don't watch it, you can load up on calamari, right? You can load up on this appetizer. But when you go to a fancy restaurant, when you go to one of those big deal downtown restaurants, and you see that they have calamari on their menu for the competitive price of $18, you think, I'm going to be the big dog. I'm going to do something for the table. Watch this, guys. Go ahead and get that calamari started for us, right? Look at me. And then they bring to the table, you've been there, you've seen it, they bring to the table the sample size, right? It's like, it's a rectangular plate. It's this long, it's thin. If your appetizer arrives on a plate shaped like this, you paid too much for it. Just a blanket policy. And they set that down in front of you. And there's four different, like there's two rings kind of just laid gently on each other with some cilantro over the top of it. And there's four of those. And you're like, thank you for these bites. I would like more bites, please. Like this is it? Everybody gets a taste of calamari? And then that's done. There's got to be more to it, right? I think this is what Ecclesiastes makes us feel. We finish it. You read it. You confront the realities. It ends with this sentiment. That's a wonderful sentiment. The end of the matter is this. All has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. So best case scenario in Ecclesiastes, you keep your head down, you honor God, and you hope that more good things happen to you than bad things happen to you. There you go. Kind of feels like someone just put a few pieces of calamari in front of you and you go, is this it? There's got to be more to it. And that's why I wanted to spend this week saying there is. There are 65 other books. Ecclesiastes exists within the canon of Scripture. And when you lay it against the messages in the other books, then you can really see that I believe Ecclesiastes is designed to point us to our need for Jesus. Ecclesiastes, I think, is designed to point us to our need for Jesus. That we finish reading Ecclesiastes and we go, gosh, there's got to be more than this. There's got to be more than just putting our head down and trying to be good people and hoping that not too many bad things happen to me and that I'm wisely investing my life. There has to be more than this. And there is. The more than this is Jesus. That's the more than this. So Ecclesiastes is there so that we read it and we absorb the messages of it and we let the stark realities hit us and we let those go. We let those say to us there must be more and that more is Christ. And here's how I know that this is true. I think that Ecclesiastes serves as a really great preamble to my favorite chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. If you were here a few summers ago, you know that we did eight weeks in Romans chapter 8. It is, to me, the crescendo of hope in the Bible. It is a remarkable chapter. And I believe that Ecclesiastes, maybe better than any other book outside of Romans, lays the groundwork, lays a preamble for us to really be hit with the grandeur of Romans chapter 8. There's a particular portion of it, chapter 8 verses 18 through 30, that I think reads like portions of Ecclesiastes and then finishes with the hope that Ecclesiastes just leaves us wanting for. And so that's what I want to do this morning is look at Ecclesiastes as a lead-in to Romans chapter 8 and see what truth there is in Romans chapter 8 and how Jesus is this more that we've all been yearning for. So read with me. If you have a Bible, you can read along. If not, it'll be on the screen. It's going to be a long passage, but I think it's worth reading all of it. Verse 18, Listen to this. Now hope that is seen is not hope for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And then on down to 28, this is so good. Ecclesiastes is all over that passage. Look at how Paul starts it. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The sufferings of this present time. That's ecclesiastical. That's what Ecclesiastes says. That no matter what you do, you're going to suffer. No matter what you do, it's going to sometimes feel like chasing vapor. The reality of this life is that it's hard. There are seasons of difficulty and grief and pain. The reality of this life is that divorce exists and cancer is a thing and that secret sins eat us alive and that people disappoint us and that we disappoint ourselves and that we lose people that we don't want to lose, that we watch people who are better than us go through pain that we don't feel like they deserve. It's we turn on the news and there's another school shooting. We turn on the news and there's another riot. That's the suffering. That's what Ecclesiastes acknowledges. And that's what Paul acknowledges in Romans chapter 8. But he immediately buoys it, balances that out. I consider that the sufferings of this present time, all that stuff we talked about in Ecclesiastes, are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. So then he starts talking about this glory that's going to be revealed, this hope that we look forward to, this thing that's the future, the more that Ecclesiastes leaves us wanting for. But if you go down through the passage, you see these connections. It says that creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. And then it says that we know the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Groaning for what? Groaning for Jesus. Groaning for what we groan for. For the adoption as sons and daughters. For the glory of God. We talked about this. This creation groaning. We talked about this in the second week. We talked about that everyone walks through pain. And I said that pain is not punitive, that God is not tightening the screws on us because we misbehaved or we didn't do enough or because we don't love enough. He's not punishing us. Pain is the result of a fallen and broken world. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. It was perfect. It was exactly as God wanted it to be. But Adam and Eve sinned and they broke God's rest and they were separated from God. And then we come along in that sin, continuing to be separated from God. And we have this profound sense, just like Ecclesiastes says that eternity is written on our hearts, we have this profound sense that everything's not okay, that there has to be more than this, that it has to be different, that certainly, God, you look at what happens and it grieves your heart too. That's creation groaning, don't you see? Ecclesiastes was just describing the groanings of creation. That's the earth itself crying out for the return of God, for Jesus to come and make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. There's this picture in Revelation, I believe it's in chapter 6, where the voices of the martyrs are under the throne of God. The martyrs are under the throne of God, people who have died for their faith, and they basically say, how much longer, God, before you go make things right? That's how we feel when we lose someone too soon. That's how we feel when we try really hard to have a kid and we can't. That's how we feel when terrible things happen that we can't explain. It's ecclesiastical. It's creation groaning. When is this going to get better? And then it says, and I love this phrase, especially those of us who have the first fruits of the Spirit, those of us who have eternity written on our hearts, those of us who know Jesus, who are believers, who call God our Father and Jesus our Savior, it says that we, us Christians, because we know there's more, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption of sons and daughters. We groan inwardly when creation, when these hard things happen. We groan inwardly when we watch our friends walk through difficult times, and we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters. We yearn for that. That's part of being a Christian, is in the midst of hard times to say, come, Lord Jesus, please, don't make us wait any longer. That's why when I watched my father-in-law pass away a month ago, I looked on him with a degree of jealousy because his eager yearning is done. His groaning is over. And now he has the glory that Ecclesiastes leaves lacking and that Paul alludes to in verse 18 and that we're going to talk about here in a minute. But this first part of that passage, 18 through 30, it's ecclesiastical. It's the same themes and things that Solomon brought forth there. And it points to something. He concludes it in a lot the same way that Solomon concludes it, Romans 8, 28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. So, so far, it's pretty similar. So far, Ecclesiastes says, life is going to be hard. There's going to be some groaning. This is not going to feel right. You just need to understand that that's part of the deal. And then Romans, or Paul says in Romans, there's going to be suffering. Creation's going to groan. You're going to feel this eager yearning in yourself. You're going to feel that things aren't right, that there has to be a little bit more than this present reality. You're going to feel that in your bones. And his conclusion is, but we know, even though you feel that, we know that all things work together for the good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, which is strikingly similar to the way that Solomon concludes Ecclesiastes, which is to say, the end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear the Lord and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. It's the same conclusion. These things, life is going to be hard. We're going to groan together for this better eternity. And so the best we can do right now is to just love God and hope for the best. Except Paul doesn't stop there. Paul doesn't stop there. He follows it up. Here's what happens when we love God and we hope for the best. on it this morning, but what I believe is that if you choose God, then he chooses you. And so if you are here this morning and you're a believer, then God has chosen you. If you say, God, yes, I'm in, I need you, then he chooses you too. And in choosing you, he's going to adopt you so that Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. We are invited into this heavenly family. But the real word I want us to look at is that word justified. That word justified is an amazing word. Those whom he foreknewed, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified. Justified is an incredible word. Because the reality of the condition of our souls is that we are guilty before Almighty God. We have sinned and offended him in myriad ways. Some known, some unknown, some before we knew who he was, and then we've been washed and we are grateful, some long after we knew who he was, some yesterday, some this morning. The reality of our souls is that we stand guilty before Almighty God. And there is nothing that we can do to fix it. And the penalty for that guilt is death, is eternal separation from God. We will never re-enter into the rest that he created us for. We will never experience the glory that Paul talks about as he's comparing it to the sufferings of this present time. When we are guilty before God, we do not experience the glory of being with God. And truly all there is, is this life. And truly all we can do is eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. And we are guilty. But Jesus condescended to become flesh, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross for us. And at the conclusion of that death, when he rose to life, Romans 8 tells us that he goes back up into heaven and he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for you. He has leaned over to God and he has said, I know that they were guilty. I know that they offended you, but I died for them. They're good. He justifies you. He makes you not guilty in the heavenly court of law with his death. Do you understand that with his death, that the way that he justified you is if you go back to your very worst day, if you go back to just the bottom of whatever your barrel was, that he died for that day. And he looks at that day and he says to God the Father, they're good for that day. I've paid the penalty for that. You can declare them not guilty. I've clothed them in my righteousness. You don't have to look at that day anymore. You can look at my perfection clothing them. They are justified. And to me, what's even more amazing than that is, think about the worst day you got coming up. Think about your potential to fall off the wagon and make poor choices and find yourself at the bottom of another barrel. Think about the wandering that you do after you accept Christ as your Savior. And know that Jesus died for that day too. Know that Jesus justified you for that day too. That he looks at the Father and he declares you not guilty for all the days. That's an amazing reality to me. And here's what's even better. If you want to be justified, I don't know if you are or you're not, but if you want to be declared not guilty of your sins and justified before Almighty God, all you have to do is believe in that justification. All you have to do is believe what I just told you, that you stand guilty before God and that Jesus came and lived a perfect life and he died for you. And in that dying, he justified you. He looked at your worst day and he said, it's all right. You're not guilty of that. And he looked at your worst potential and he said, it's all right. You're not guilty of that. I've got you. Now walk like you're justified. And then he says this. He doesn't stop with justification, which would be enough. That's what Jesus' death won us. But he says those who are justified are also glorified. This is the glory that Paul is talking about in verse 18. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. And then the whole passage talks about yearning for that glory, for the redemption of our bodies, for the return of creation, that the creation groans, yearning for this perfect eternity. And then he says, Why? Because Jesus died for you and justified you, and now you're going to be glorified. He has got you, and one day you're going to end up in this perfect eternity. And that's what glorification is. And that's the hope that we have. That's how we can say it's all going to be okay. Because we don't have to admit that somehow it's going to make sense in this life or this world. But we know as Christians that one day our labor will be over and our souls will find rest in God and we will be in a perfect eternity with him. That's our hope. That's not vapor. That will not put us to shame. And if we want to know what that glory is like, the Bible tells us. In another one of my favorite passages, Revelation 21, 1 through 4. John writes this, city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and the death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Ecclesiastes is done in Revelation 21. That's the end of the Bible. It's the new heaven and the new earth. It's a picture of the perfect eternity that is waiting on us, that Jesus has won for us, that he justified us to qualify for, and then we will be glorified into that eternity. And in that eternity, there is no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. There's none of the bad stuff. In Ecclesiastes, that passage, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for laughing. In heaven, it's all laughing, man. There's a time for death and there's a time for birth, not in heaven. In heaven, it's all births. It's all building up. It's all celebrations. It's no pain. The former things, the things that make our souls groan, the things that Ecclesiastes forces us to confront about this life, those things have passed away. Those things are no more. There is no pain, and there are nothing but happy tears in heaven. That is the eternity that Jesus has won for us. It is the glorification that Jesus died to justify us so that we would qualify for that glory. It is the hope that we hold on to. It is the thing that we know for certain is not vapor. It is the time we know for certain that pain will not hurt. It is that pain will not happen. It is the time that we cling to, that we hope for, so that finally all the things in this life that don't make sense, that we can't piece together, that we don't understand, that seem inconsistent and would tempt us into losing our faith or becoming embittered. It's in this glory in Revelation 21 that all those questions are answered, that we see the very face of God, that we understand all the things that we've struggled with. It's in that moment that we no longer have to fight against ourselves and our demons, in which we can no longer relate to Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. That is the hope that we cling to, Christians. And when we cling to that hope, we don't have to make sense out of everything. When we cling to that hope, we don't have to understand how it's fair that John was so good and we lost him early. When we cling to that hope, I don't have to understand how my college roommate passed away at the age of 30 and left behind small children. I don't have to understand that because there's coming a day when it's going to all make sense. And so our job is to cling to it with patience. That's what Paul says, that if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. So we look to our Jesus. We desire him more. Come, Lord Jesus, today. And while we wait, we are patient, and we cling to the one thing that isn't vapor. And what we find there in the presence of Christ is true joy. In fact, true joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. True joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. Joy that is not fleeting. Joy that is immutable. Joy that doesn't go away. Joy that's not impacted by circumstances. True joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. So that is where we go. We go there now while we can, and we wait on an eternity while we are there all the time. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your son. Thank you that he covers over our worst days. That he covers over the worst in us. Jesus, thank you for coming and for dying. We know that when the time came, you didn't want to. But you did anyways because you love us. God, I can't imagine what it was to watch your son do that. But you led him for us. And we are grateful. I pray that we would, all of us, lean more into him. If there's someone here today who doesn't know you or watching or listening who doesn't know you, I pray that they would believe in that justification, that they would want it for themselves, that they would know you today. God, thank you for the message of Ecclesiastes. Thank you that it points us to the rest of the work that you did. God, give us the patience and the perseverance and the hope to continue to cling to your promises. It's in your son's name we all pray. Amen.

Have you ever wondered if it was all worth it? All the emails and phone calls, special projects, late meetings, early mornings and out-of-town trips? Frantically shuttling bodies back and forth and cobbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Hey. That music trails off for a while. I didn't really want to step on it. But good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you or if you're watching online, thank you so much for making us a part of your Sunday morning. This is the last part in our series called Vapor, where we've been moving through the book of Ecclesiastes together and kind of pulling out some of the themes. And we've said all along that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. February has done its part for sure. Hopefully it'll finally stop raining and we can get some consistent sunshine. I think somebody told me it was going to get up to 76 degrees today. That's unheard of. That's amazing. I'll find a way to get outside. But as we finish up this series, it's important to remind you of something that I've said all along while we've done the series, which is that these are not four standalone messages. These are four messages that are meant to be one big long message. It's four parts of a whole. And so we need all of them and they build on each other. And we've been kind of getting to a place where we could culminate in this week. I've said the whole series that if you look at the realities of Ecclesiastes and face them with courage, that you'll come out the other end with a lot of things, but one of the things is a deeper desire for Christ. And so this morning, we're going to talk about how we get to that place. If you read the book of Ecclesiastes, and that's all we have. Imagine we didn't have the Bible. All we have is the book of Ecclesiastes. That's a pretty depressing book, right? If that's all we have, we don't have any hope beyond that. We don't get the book. We don't get the New Testament. They don't talk about Jesus. We don't see the other books in the Old Testament that talk about a promise of a Messiah and tell us more about who our God is. And we don't get to see the character of God revealed in those stories in the Old Testament, if this is all we have, if Ecclesiastes is it, then this is a tough book. That's a stark reality. Actually, what we learn in Ecclesiastes is, if Ecclesiastes stands alone, then fleeting joys are all that there is. If all we have is the book of Ecclesiastes, if that's all we can go on, then what we have to admit is fleeting joys are all there is. Most of the things we chased are going to be a waste of time. They're going to be vapor. We're going to spend our whole life chasing things, and we're never going to catch it. So chasing after the wind is like trying to grab smoke, right? In that life, in that chase that we're probably wasting, then we're going to experience pain. There's going to be hard days. There's going to be sad times. There's going to be a time for mourning and for death and for weeping and for loss. That's going to happen. And then last week, we talked about these joys that are God's gift to us to look around in our life and see people that we love, to look at our days and look forward to how we get to spend our days and to honor God. Those are God's gifts to us. And if all we have is Ecclesiastes, then that's it. That's all there is. Those fleeting joys. And really and truly, the people who say, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die, they're right. We should all just be Epicureans. If this is all there is, if Ecclesiastes is all there is. There's one little hint in Ecclesiastes that there's more than this. It's in chapter 3 when Solomon tells us that God has written eternity into our hearts. It's this inclination in us that there has to be more. And I think that after you read Ecclesiastes, that's really how you're left feeling. It's the way that I feel when I get an appetizer at a fancy restaurant, right? I like to go out to eat. I don't know how readily apparent that is as you look at me, but I like to go out to eat. I like it a lot. It's one of my favorite things to do in the world. One of the things I miss the most in the pandemic is going out to eat with my friends. I love doing that. And if you go to like a normal run-of-the-mill place like Olive Garden and you get the calamari appetizer, they're going to bring you this big basket, right? I like calamari. I don't know if you guys do, but I like calamari. They're going to bring you a big basket, and it's going to have a whole cup, like an extra ramekin, and you can just bring more, more of this sauce, the sweet and sour sauce or whatever it is. And if you don't watch it, you can load up on calamari, right? You can load up on this appetizer. But when you go to a fancy restaurant, when you go to one of those big deal downtown restaurants, and you see that they have calamari on their menu for the competitive price of $18, you think, I'm going to be the big dog. I'm going to do something for the table. Watch this, guys. Go ahead and get that calamari started for us, right? Look at me. And then they bring to the table, you've been there, you've seen it, they bring to the table the sample size, right? It's like, it's a rectangular plate. It's this long, it's thin. If your appetizer arrives on a plate shaped like this, you paid too much for it. Just a blanket policy. And they set that down in front of you. And there's four different, like there's two rings kind of just laid gently on each other with some cilantro over the top of it. And there's four of those. And you're like, thank you for these bites. I would like more bites, please. Like this is it? Everybody gets a taste of calamari? And then that's done. There's got to be more to it, right? I think this is what Ecclesiastes makes us feel. We finish it. You read it. You confront the realities. It ends with this sentiment. That's a wonderful sentiment. The end of the matter is this. All has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. So best case scenario in Ecclesiastes, you keep your head down, you honor God, and you hope that more good things happen to you than bad things happen to you. There you go. Kind of feels like someone just put a few pieces of calamari in front of you and you go, is this it? There's got to be more to it. And that's why I wanted to spend this week saying there is. There are 65 other books. Ecclesiastes exists within the canon of Scripture. And when you lay it against the messages in the other books, then you can really see that I believe Ecclesiastes is designed to point us to our need for Jesus. Ecclesiastes, I think, is designed to point us to our need for Jesus. That we finish reading Ecclesiastes and we go, gosh, there's got to be more than this. There's got to be more than just putting our head down and trying to be good people and hoping that not too many bad things happen to me and that I'm wisely investing my life. There has to be more than this. And there is. The more than this is Jesus. That's the more than this. So Ecclesiastes is there so that we read it and we absorb the messages of it and we let the stark realities hit us and we let those go. We let those say to us there must be more and that more is Christ. And here's how I know that this is true. I think that Ecclesiastes serves as a really great preamble to my favorite chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. If you were here a few summers ago, you know that we did eight weeks in Romans chapter 8. It is, to me, the crescendo of hope in the Bible. It is a remarkable chapter. And I believe that Ecclesiastes, maybe better than any other book outside of Romans, lays the groundwork, lays a preamble for us to really be hit with the grandeur of Romans chapter 8. There's a particular portion of it, chapter 8 verses 18 through 30, that I think reads like portions of Ecclesiastes and then finishes with the hope that Ecclesiastes just leaves us wanting for. And so that's what I want to do this morning is look at Ecclesiastes as a lead-in to Romans chapter 8 and see what truth there is in Romans chapter 8 and how Jesus is this more that we've all been yearning for. So read with me. If you have a Bible, you can read along. If not, it'll be on the screen. It's going to be a long passage, but I think it's worth reading all of it. Verse 18, Listen to this. Now hope that is seen is not hope for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And then on down to 28, this is so good. Ecclesiastes is all over that passage. Look at how Paul starts it. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The sufferings of this present time. That's ecclesiastical. That's what Ecclesiastes says. That no matter what you do, you're going to suffer. No matter what you do, it's going to sometimes feel like chasing vapor. The reality of this life is that it's hard. There are seasons of difficulty and grief and pain. The reality of this life is that divorce exists and cancer is a thing and that secret sins eat us alive and that people disappoint us and that we disappoint ourselves and that we lose people that we don't want to lose, that we watch people who are better than us go through pain that we don't feel like they deserve. It's we turn on the news and there's another school shooting. We turn on the news and there's another riot. That's the suffering. That's what Ecclesiastes acknowledges. And that's what Paul acknowledges in Romans chapter 8. But he immediately buoys it, balances that out. I consider that the sufferings of this present time, all that stuff we talked about in Ecclesiastes, are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. So then he starts talking about this glory that's going to be revealed, this hope that we look forward to, this thing that's the future, the more that Ecclesiastes leaves us wanting for. But if you go down through the passage, you see these connections. It says that creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. And then it says that we know the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Groaning for what? Groaning for Jesus. Groaning for what we groan for. For the adoption as sons and daughters. For the glory of God. We talked about this. This creation groaning. We talked about this in the second week. We talked about that everyone walks through pain. And I said that pain is not punitive, that God is not tightening the screws on us because we misbehaved or we didn't do enough or because we don't love enough. He's not punishing us. Pain is the result of a fallen and broken world. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. It was perfect. It was exactly as God wanted it to be. But Adam and Eve sinned and they broke God's rest and they were separated from God. And then we come along in that sin, continuing to be separated from God. And we have this profound sense, just like Ecclesiastes says that eternity is written on our hearts, we have this profound sense that everything's not okay, that there has to be more than this, that it has to be different, that certainly, God, you look at what happens and it grieves your heart too. That's creation groaning, don't you see? Ecclesiastes was just describing the groanings of creation. That's the earth itself crying out for the return of God, for Jesus to come and make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. There's this picture in Revelation, I believe it's in chapter 6, where the voices of the martyrs are under the throne of God. The martyrs are under the throne of God, people who have died for their faith, and they basically say, how much longer, God, before you go make things right? That's how we feel when we lose someone too soon. That's how we feel when we try really hard to have a kid and we can't. That's how we feel when terrible things happen that we can't explain. It's ecclesiastical. It's creation groaning. When is this going to get better? And then it says, and I love this phrase, especially those of us who have the first fruits of the Spirit, those of us who have eternity written on our hearts, those of us who know Jesus, who are believers, who call God our Father and Jesus our Savior, it says that we, us Christians, because we know there's more, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption of sons and daughters. We groan inwardly when creation, when these hard things happen. We groan inwardly when we watch our friends walk through difficult times, and we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters. We yearn for that. That's part of being a Christian, is in the midst of hard times to say, come, Lord Jesus, please, don't make us wait any longer. That's why when I watched my father-in-law pass away a month ago, I looked on him with a degree of jealousy because his eager yearning is done. His groaning is over. And now he has the glory that Ecclesiastes leaves lacking and that Paul alludes to in verse 18 and that we're going to talk about here in a minute. But this first part of that passage, 18 through 30, it's ecclesiastical. It's the same themes and things that Solomon brought forth there. And it points to something. He concludes it in a lot the same way that Solomon concludes it, Romans 8, 28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. So, so far, it's pretty similar. So far, Ecclesiastes says, life is going to be hard. There's going to be some groaning. This is not going to feel right. You just need to understand that that's part of the deal. And then Romans, or Paul says in Romans, there's going to be suffering. Creation's going to groan. You're going to feel this eager yearning in yourself. You're going to feel that things aren't right, that there has to be a little bit more than this present reality. You're going to feel that in your bones. And his conclusion is, but we know, even though you feel that, we know that all things work together for the good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, which is strikingly similar to the way that Solomon concludes Ecclesiastes, which is to say, the end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear the Lord and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. It's the same conclusion. These things, life is going to be hard. We're going to groan together for this better eternity. And so the best we can do right now is to just love God and hope for the best. Except Paul doesn't stop there. Paul doesn't stop there. He follows it up. Here's what happens when we love God and we hope for the best. on it this morning, but what I believe is that if you choose God, then he chooses you. And so if you are here this morning and you're a believer, then God has chosen you. If you say, God, yes, I'm in, I need you, then he chooses you too. And in choosing you, he's going to adopt you so that Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. We are invited into this heavenly family. But the real word I want us to look at is that word justified. That word justified is an amazing word. Those whom he foreknewed, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified. Justified is an incredible word. Because the reality of the condition of our souls is that we are guilty before Almighty God. We have sinned and offended him in myriad ways. Some known, some unknown, some before we knew who he was, and then we've been washed and we are grateful, some long after we knew who he was, some yesterday, some this morning. The reality of our souls is that we stand guilty before Almighty God. And there is nothing that we can do to fix it. And the penalty for that guilt is death, is eternal separation from God. We will never re-enter into the rest that he created us for. We will never experience the glory that Paul talks about as he's comparing it to the sufferings of this present time. When we are guilty before God, we do not experience the glory of being with God. And truly all there is, is this life. And truly all we can do is eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. And we are guilty. But Jesus condescended to become flesh, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross for us. And at the conclusion of that death, when he rose to life, Romans 8 tells us that he goes back up into heaven and he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for you. He has leaned over to God and he has said, I know that they were guilty. I know that they offended you, but I died for them. They're good. He justifies you. He makes you not guilty in the heavenly court of law with his death. Do you understand that with his death, that the way that he justified you is if you go back to your very worst day, if you go back to just the bottom of whatever your barrel was, that he died for that day. And he looks at that day and he says to God the Father, they're good for that day. I've paid the penalty for that. You can declare them not guilty. I've clothed them in my righteousness. You don't have to look at that day anymore. You can look at my perfection clothing them. They are justified. And to me, what's even more amazing than that is, think about the worst day you got coming up. Think about your potential to fall off the wagon and make poor choices and find yourself at the bottom of another barrel. Think about the wandering that you do after you accept Christ as your Savior. And know that Jesus died for that day too. Know that Jesus justified you for that day too. That he looks at the Father and he declares you not guilty for all the days. That's an amazing reality to me. And here's what's even better. If you want to be justified, I don't know if you are or you're not, but if you want to be declared not guilty of your sins and justified before Almighty God, all you have to do is believe in that justification. All you have to do is believe what I just told you, that you stand guilty before God and that Jesus came and lived a perfect life and he died for you. And in that dying, he justified you. He looked at your worst day and he said, it's all right. You're not guilty of that. And he looked at your worst potential and he said, it's all right. You're not guilty of that. I've got you. Now walk like you're justified. And then he says this. He doesn't stop with justification, which would be enough. That's what Jesus' death won us. But he says those who are justified are also glorified. This is the glory that Paul is talking about in verse 18. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth the glory that is to be revealed to us. And then the whole passage talks about yearning for that glory, for the redemption of our bodies, for the return of creation, that the creation groans, yearning for this perfect eternity. And then he says, Why? Because Jesus died for you and justified you, and now you're going to be glorified. He has got you, and one day you're going to end up in this perfect eternity. And that's what glorification is. And that's the hope that we have. That's how we can say it's all going to be okay. Because we don't have to admit that somehow it's going to make sense in this life or this world. But we know as Christians that one day our labor will be over and our souls will find rest in God and we will be in a perfect eternity with him. That's our hope. That's not vapor. That will not put us to shame. And if we want to know what that glory is like, the Bible tells us. In another one of my favorite passages, Revelation 21, 1 through 4. John writes this, city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and the death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Ecclesiastes is done in Revelation 21. That's the end of the Bible. It's the new heaven and the new earth. It's a picture of the perfect eternity that is waiting on us, that Jesus has won for us, that he justified us to qualify for, and then we will be glorified into that eternity. And in that eternity, there is no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. There's none of the bad stuff. In Ecclesiastes, that passage, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for laughing. In heaven, it's all laughing, man. There's a time for death and there's a time for birth, not in heaven. In heaven, it's all births. It's all building up. It's all celebrations. It's no pain. The former things, the things that make our souls groan, the things that Ecclesiastes forces us to confront about this life, those things have passed away. Those things are no more. There is no pain, and there are nothing but happy tears in heaven. That is the eternity that Jesus has won for us. It is the glorification that Jesus died to justify us so that we would qualify for that glory. It is the hope that we hold on to. It is the thing that we know for certain is not vapor. It is the time we know for certain that pain will not hurt. It is that pain will not happen. It is the time that we cling to, that we hope for, so that finally all the things in this life that don't make sense, that we can't piece together, that we don't understand, that seem inconsistent and would tempt us into losing our faith or becoming embittered. It's in this glory in Revelation 21 that all those questions are answered, that we see the very face of God, that we understand all the things that we've struggled with. It's in that moment that we no longer have to fight against ourselves and our demons, in which we can no longer relate to Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. That is the hope that we cling to, Christians. And when we cling to that hope, we don't have to make sense out of everything. When we cling to that hope, we don't have to understand how it's fair that John was so good and we lost him early. When we cling to that hope, I don't have to understand how my college roommate passed away at the age of 30 and left behind small children. I don't have to understand that because there's coming a day when it's going to all make sense. And so our job is to cling to it with patience. That's what Paul says, that if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. So we look to our Jesus. We desire him more. Come, Lord Jesus, today. And while we wait, we are patient, and we cling to the one thing that isn't vapor. And what we find there in the presence of Christ is true joy. In fact, true joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. True joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. Joy that is not fleeting. Joy that is immutable. Joy that doesn't go away. Joy that's not impacted by circumstances. True joy can only exist in the presence of Jesus. So that is where we go. We go there now while we can, and we wait on an eternity while we are there all the time. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your son. Thank you that he covers over our worst days. That he covers over the worst in us. Jesus, thank you for coming and for dying. We know that when the time came, you didn't want to. But you did anyways because you love us. God, I can't imagine what it was to watch your son do that. But you led him for us. And we are grateful. I pray that we would, all of us, lean more into him. If there's someone here today who doesn't know you or watching or listening who doesn't know you, I pray that they would believe in that justification, that they would want it for themselves, that they would know you today. God, thank you for the message of Ecclesiastes. Thank you that it points us to the rest of the work that you did. God, give us the patience and the perseverance and the hope to continue to cling to your promises. It's in your son's name we all pray. Amen.