Thank you so much, Terry. So before we get started, I know since we have the kids in the room, I need five volunteers, five kids who would normally be heading off to one of our K to five classes. And the one rule is it needs to be a kid who understands money a little bit. Okay, if you understand money, okay, come on, I need four more, come on. Okay, come on. Oh, come on, come on, I need, I'd like five volunteers. All right, well Charlotte, I volunteer you, come on. Two more? You get free money out of it. Okay. All right, well there we go. Okay, all right, so here we go. I'm gonna give you guys something you've probably never seen before. These are genuine, oh, these are genuine $2 bills. Have any of you ever seen a $2 bill before? Really? Your mom has one? Better question, go see if your parents have ever seen a $2 bill before. Okay, so if you come up here, if you come up here, on this table, I have 200 dimes. Now, think about it, 200 dimes, how much money is that? It is 210 times. 200 times 10 cents, right? So how many dollars is this? It is, by all of our two dollars, It's more than all of your $2 bills put together. This is about $20 in dimes. So here's the deal. Who wants to go first? Okay. I don't know your name. Aiden. Okay, so Aiden, let's make a deal here. You've got the $2 bill. You can have that and walk away totally just say, woo, free money. you can give me the $2 bill and you can choose one of these dimes. And if you find a dime that has a sticker on the back of it, then you get all the dimes. So you get the whole $20 worth of dimes, but I get to keep the $2 bill. What do you think? A 50-50 chance? Well, choose one. You want to keep the $2? OK. All right. What do you think? I think you forgot to put the sticker on, so I'm going to keep it. You think I forgot to put the sticker on? OK. So what do you think, Charlotte? OK. What do you guys think? Does anybody want to play the game? So you give me the $2, all right, and now you look at the back, walk away, can you just keep the money? Yeah, yeah, for real. Or you could, if you win, you can walk away with $20 worth of dimes. What do you think? Yeah? All right, here we go. Here we go, let's see. And? Oh. All right. It's a funny game, isn't it? You look at it and it's like, wow, well all of a sudden I've got nothing, right? And yet it seems like, this is, It's an interesting thing that we look at the way the world's games work versus the way the gospel works. With Jesus, we come, and does he say, I need your $2? No. And yet, what does he give you? Does he offer you $20 worth of dimes? No, He offers you Himself. He offers you love and forgiveness. He offers you eternal life with God. And so because of, you know, we look at that and we realize the gospel is so much better than any game like this. And this is where we realize Jesus is so good that he doesn't ask for anything except our faith. All we do is believe him. And what he offers us is called grace. So part of that is you guys can keep the money anyway. Be blessed. Thank you for coming up and being part of it. And we'll talk about these dimes some more in a few minutes, so be listening. Is it real? Yes, it's real. Go back to your seats now. As Jerry said, I'm not one of the pastors here. If you're a visitor, welcome. We're so glad you're at Harvest. And I strongly encourage you to come back next week when you'll hear from our from our senior pastor preaching. But it's always a blessing and a joy for me to be able to bring God's Word. So if you have a Bible handy, we're gonna be in the book of Ecclesiastes today. We're gonna be in Ecclesiastes chapter five. So if you have your Bible, if you have an electronic device, I'd invite you to that. Wall Street from 1987, and the hero of the movie was played by Shia LaBeouf. It was a largely forgettable movie that you shouldn't waste your time on. But it did have one scene that stuck with me, that I thought of as I was reading our text this week. Shia LaBeouf's character is an investor on Wall Street, and he's talking with Josh Brolin's character, who is the CEO of a rival firm. And young Leboeuf asked Brolin, so what's your number? The number that you would need just to walk away from it and live. See, I find everybody has a number, and it's usually an exact number. So what's yours? And Josh Brolin looks at him, thinks for a moment, smirks, and he says, more. More. That's really a pretty good assessment for what's going on in our hearts when it comes to possessions, isn't it? It's like when you're watching your baby learn how to speak. The first word a baby learns to say is mama. The second word the baby learns to say is? No, exactly. Got some parents in the room. Right? And the third word they learn? More. It's very much baked into our hearts from the earliest days. More. It's the foundation of our economy. We have a whole industry called marketing, whose whole reason for existence is to create in your heart a desire for more. To go with this, we have an industry that helps you make smart investments. We have another industry full of get-rich-quick schemes. Our hearts are hardwired to want. We want money. We want stuff. We want savings. We want financial security. There is another thing we want, though, if you think about it. We want contentment. Don't you wish that you could just have peace in your heart when it comes to your stuff? This is what our text is about today in Ecclesiastes. So I would invite you, rise and let's hear from the word of God. I'm gonna be reading Ecclesiastes chapter five, starting at verse eight. This is the Christian Standard Bible translation. If you see oppression of the poor and perversion of justice and righteousness in the province, don't be astonished at the situation because one official protects another and higher officials protect them. The profit from the land is taken by all. The king is served by the field. The one who loves silver is never satisfied with silver. Whoever loves wealth, is never satisfied with income. This too is futile. When good things increase, the ones who consume them multiply. What then is the profit to the owner except to gaze at them with his eyes? The sleep of the worker is sweet. Whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of the rich permits him no sleep. There is a sickening tragedy which I have seen under the sun. Wealth kept by its owner to his harm. That wealth was lost in a bad venture, so when he fathered a son, he was empty-handed. As he came from his mother's womb, so he will go again. Naked as he came, he will take nothing for his efforts that he can carry in his hands. This, too, is a sickening tragedy. Exactly as He comes, so will He go. What does the one gain who struggles for the wind? What is more, He eats in darkness all His days with much frustration, sickness, and anger. Here's what I have seen to be good. It's appropriate to eat, drink, and experience good in all the labor one does under the sun during the few days of his life God has given him, because that is his reward. Furthermore, everyone to whom God has given riches and wealth, he has also allowed him to enjoy them, take his reward, and rejoice in his labor. This is a gift of God. For he does not often consider the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with the joy of his heart. Here ends the reading. You pray with me. Lord, we gather today as people who are so easily distracted by the trinkets of this world. I stand here as a person who is far from mastering the principles that I'm called to teach. Lord, help us all to hear your word today and to grow in the mindset that you would have us to have towards our stuff. You are God, we love you, and we need your help right now. In Jesus' name, amen. And please be seated. All of us have bad habits, things we do that's just hard to stop doing. They just seem to happen. And our text today that we just read is going to look at four bad habits that we need to quit. So the first one is this. Stop being surprised by corruption in the world. Our text today begins with something you already know. Life isn't fair. It seems like it's particularly unfair to the poor and vulnerable. Last year, there were about 275 cases of senior citizens being the victim of identity theft. 275 per a couple of seniors in the room. Any seniors here who have $33,000 lying around that you don't need? No? There's no end of burglaries, no end of stolen cars, no end of shoplifting. You talk to the police and often they'll tell you that if there's not a violent crime as part of the theft, there isn't really much they can do except file a report. As Ecclesiastes is looking at this, and sees it all too often, bribery and payoffs are behind this, right? If you see oppression of the poor and perversion of justice and righteousness in the province, don't be astonished at the situation because one official protects another official and higher officials protect them, this idea of bribery. It's less common in America, but it certainly is alive and well and very common in other parts Ecclesiastes sees that the bribes go up and up. The prophet from the land is taken by all and the king is served by the field. Everybody gets a cut. In the end, these prophets roll all the way up to the king. Now, I will say, if you're looking at your Bible and you're looking at a different translation than the Christian Standard Bible, I guarantee you it says something very different from what you see on the screen here. The Hebrew in this verse is extremely difficult and the translations are doing their best with it. The translation we have here in the Christian Standard Bible is pretty close to word for word. So, there is this chain of bribes and payoffs that goes all the way to the top. Even though bribery is pretty rare in America, it's not entirely unheard of. The mayor of New York was charged with soliciting bribes just a couple of days ago. There's nothing new under the sun, is there? So, Ecclesiastes tells us, stop being surprised by corruption in the world. And you know why corruption is so prevalent? Because money lies. So we're warned, next, stop being tricked into thinking that money will make you happy. Paul tells us the love of money is a source of all kinds of evil. Ecclesiastes makes basically the same point. Money has this weird power. I'm sure you understand, right? Our kids already understand this. Very early in life, we realize that there are things in the world that we want and the way you get them is with money. And then we learn at some point that some things are expensive and it takes a while to save up for it. Or we learn that you can go through hard times and it's handy to have some money set aside. Maybe you think that if you have enough saved up, You'll be happy. Maybe you have a magic number that you want to see in your 401k. But it's never really enough, is it? Like that scene from Wall Street. If we were to ask our hearts what the right number is, won't our hearts just answer, more? Ecclesiastes tells us this is futile. The one who loves silver is never satisfied with silver. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with income. This too is futile. This word futile, it's like a vapor. It's like a light fog in your backyard at dawn. Give it an hour and it'll be like the fog was never there. It's like the steam rising up from your pot of spaghetti. You see it a couple inches above the pot and then it just vanishes into the room somewhere. That's the satisfaction that comes from money. It's fleeting. You might be excited about it for a minute, but then it's gone. In verse 11, we're invited to imagine that We had a bunch of money or stuff, and all of a sudden, there's a crowd around us wanting a cut. I've heard so many stories of athletes coming out of college who are suddenly fabulously wealthy because they've become a pro, and they find themselves obligated now to give lavish presents to family and friends, and they're surprised at how quickly the money disappears. It was in their hands for a moment, and then suddenly, everybody claims a share. You might think that the answer here is just to have a good financial plan, but not so fast. In verse 12, the sleep of the worker is sweet whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of the rich permits him no sleep. In verse 12, we learn that those who are super careful about their money have a different price to pay. They have to worry about their investments. Is their money really working for them? Do they need to shift it from one savings plan to another? This verse is not about guaranteeing a good night's sleep for a blue-collar worker. Instead, it's trying to show the difference in being content with a simple life versus the strain that comes with having to worry about wealth. And yet, even though we've all heard this before, maybe we even believe it. How many of us still struggle with this nagging idea that we would be happier with more money? But even then, the disappointing thing about money is how quickly it disappears. Ecclesiastes here calls it a sickening tragedy. Now, It's not exactly clear what it means when it says, wealth kept to by its owner to his harm. But I think the idea is something like this. Some people are so obsessed about accumulating money that they deny themselves reasonable necessities. We saw this when we were living in Maine, for example, where people would say, we will not turn on the heat in the house until November 1st. October can be a chilly month in Maine. It snowed a couple times in October. It would regularly get down into the 30s, maybe the 20s. And yet people would say, the calendar doesn't say November, no heat. In their desire to save money, they chose to make their families shiver. Does that make sense? And then the sickening tragedy here that this brings up is even after everything they went through, everything they endured to save up money, suddenly it was lost in some bad investment. This even pours into a generational effect since he'll have nothing to leave to his son. The whole picture here is pretty bleak. Verse 15 says, as he came from his mother's womb, so he will go again. Naked as he came, he'll take nothing for his efforts that he can carry in his hands. This too is a sickening tragedy. Exactly as he comes, so he will go. And what is the one gain who struggles for the wind? What is more, he eats in darkness all his days with much frustration, sickness, and anger. We go beyond a simple, you can't take it with you, right? We understand that's true. But the point here is that many people spend their whole life struggling for money that they can't take with them. And they don't even enjoy it when they have it on their, on their face, there aren't many verses in the Bible that sound more depressing than Ecclesiastes 5.17, is there? And this brings us around to the last warning. Stop being thankless about the blessings you have. So having spoken of sickening tragedies, our text wraps up by looking at what's good. God has provided so much for us. He's provided us food and drink. He's given us work to do in which we can find joy in a job well done. For our kids, right? You guys can be satisfied with good grades in school and the joy of learning things you didn't know before. But have you noticed that we grumble about this too? We complain about our jobs. We go into the kitchen, we look at a full refrigerator, a full freezer, a full pantry, and then we complain what? There's nothing to eat. We whine about, why do I have to go to school? We look at all these things and they seem so, so ordinary. And in our heart of hearts, we want so much more than ordinary. Isn't this why social media depresses us? We look at Facebook or Instagram and we see people who seem so happy in such beautiful places, doing such fun things, and we look at them and we despair because our day seems so ordinary. The face in the mirror looks so ordinary. How very, very discontent we are. I do want to take one moment to disagree with one translation decision that the Christian Standard Bible makes. It says here a couple of times in these last verses this word, reward. And this can indeed be translated reward, but it usually means something more like your portion or your share. And I think that's more appropriate here. The word reward in English carries the idea that you've earned something and take his reward and rejoice in his labor. This is a gift of God for he does not often consider the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with the joy of his heart. Now we finish with a curious verse. What does he mean by this? The whole book of Ecclesiastes has been talking about the struggles in this life and how impossible it is to find meaning in anything without God. Right? We're calling this series living with the end in mind. Living with the knowledge that 10 out of 10 people die. That reality could easily drive us to despair. And I think here at the end of chapter 5, Ecclesiastes is offering us an alternative to despair. It offers the opportunity of being filled with gratitude each day. When we're filled with gratitude for the blessings that God has given us each day, then we can have joy instead of despair. And this leads us to what I think is the main idea that God wants us to hear from this text today. God's word for us today is this, leave a legacy of contentment instead of worry. I'm getting this from the main themes of our text. Our finances get us stressed and worried. It mentions that the outcomes of our financial decisions can roll down to our kids. So we see a legacy there. The text prescribes a solution seeking contentment in what God has provided. It's not unusual for us to think about what kind of an inheritance we might leave to our kids. And we usually think about that in terms of assets. But what if we could realize that far more important as an inheritance to leave them is a model of a life lived well in obedience to Jesus. It starts with being content. Not just acting like everything is okay, but being genuinely Content. That's the kind of legacy we should be most focused on leaving behind. That's the kind of legacy that will never rot. It will never lose value. It will never be stolen. And with that in mind, let's think of a couple of ways we can do that. Okay. How to leave a legacy of contentment. First of all, stop dreaming of getting rich. There is no end of biblical teaching on this. Jesus said we can't serve God and money. Paul said the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Jesus told a parable of a rich man who wanted to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. We could go on and on through so many of the parables, so many proverbs about the deceitful lure of wealth. Christian, do you realize how much more God holds out to you than money? I want to talk about a main way that people these days think they're going to get rich. It's the lottery. Right? We saw our kids up here getting a hard introduction to the lottery, right? Realize, this table, you can't really see it. I understand that. And I can't lean it over to show you because it would make a mess. This is only 200 dimes. Let me paint you a picture of the lottery. Let's imagine that you could take dimes and lay them down side by side, one after another. If we went from here over to Publix, it would take about 89,000 dimes. OK? Now. Let's imagine instead we went to, oh, I don't know, Anchorage, Alaska. We went all the way from the front door of Harvest all the way to Anchorage, Alaska. And we're just going down, laying down dimes. Dime after dime. Dime after dime. Somehow they float across lakes and rivers. Dime after dime. Dime after dime. OK. to Anchorage, Alaska, 3,000 miles away. Now, one of those dimes is a winner. The North Carolina Education Lottery says, here's the deal. You give us a $2 bill and we'll let you walk this whole line from Harvest Community Church to Anchorage, Alaska. Walk down that line and if you can pick the right dime off the ground, if you pick that one right dime, then you're a winner and you can have the jackpot. Where would you go to choose the winning dime? Would you go somewhere in Kentucky? Maybe you'd go look on the shore of some obscure lake in northern British Columbia. If somebody ever offered you the lottery using a picture like this, would you ever play? This is what it's like playing the lottery. In China, they have a festival each year where Everybody goes out in the street and they burn cash to their ancestors That sounds ridiculous to you realize buying lottery tickets is just about as foolish Friends stop dreaming of getting rich leave a legacy of contentment With what God has already provided you next King big bucks. I No. In fact, you can read the four gospels and you will not find a single time where Jesus asked for a donation to his ministry. What was Jesus interested in? People. He invested in his disciples. Every time he went somewhere, his focus was on meeting people and changing their lives. He didn't care if they were rich or poor, old or young, healthy or sick. He invested in people. When Jesus looked at his 401k statement, it wasn't a list of mutual funds and dollar signs, it was a list of names. Imagine if everybody in this church had that same kind of passion. Imagine the difference we could make in each other. Imagine the difference we could make in the world. So let me challenge you here. It's the fall. We have a whole list of community groups that are just getting started. What if you replace entertainment night for your family? One night of the week, and go be part of a community group. Maybe pick one where your family can be together, or maybe it works better to go in different directions with husband and one, and wife and another, and kids in the youth group. What works for your family is what works for your family. But what if instead of binging on Netflix, we could choose to binge on each other? Can you imagine what this church would be like if we really invested in people the way Jesus invested in people? And why shouldn't it start with you? Why shouldn't it start with you? Will anybody remember how you binge-watched The Mandalorian? No? Will they remember the time that you sat across their kitchen table all night with them, crying over the struggles in their marriage? Yeah. They'll never forget that. Leave a legacy of investing in people. Next, increase your prayer portfolio. To the secular world, it's hard to imagine anything more pointless as an exercise than prayer. But let me ask you something. If you've read much of the Bible at all, does it seem like the Bible puts a pretty high value on prayer? Yeah? Pretty good. Thumbs up, yeah? If the Bible talks about how valuable prayer is, shouldn't we listen to it? All right, friends, listen. I can't help but notice that you're sitting in a church this morning. You could be downtown tailgating, getting ready to watch the Panthers lose again. You could be walking in the park, you could have slept in, but you didn't. You're here. We're glad you're here. But why are you here? You're here because you believe that there's something to this Jesus thing. If Jesus thinks prayer is important, shouldn't we? If Jesus constantly found time to pray, shouldn't we? And I'm not saying we should go around praying something like, Jesus, please let me win the lottery. Okay, that would be foolish. But Jesus taught us that prayer changes the world. And anybody who has prayed can tell you that prayer changes the one who prays. It was so sweet when one of my daughters said to me, Daddy, I love coming downstairs every morning and smelling the coffee in the pot and seeing you sitting in the living room reading your Bible and praying for us. I've messed up so many ways as a dad. But I'll tell you, that's a legacy that I'm happy to leave to my kids. Wouldn't you like to leave a legacy like that? Finally, live with the end in mind. That's been the title of this whole series, living with the end in mind. Living like you realize that there really is a finish line. There's a point where the road ends. There's a point when your race is over. I want to tell you about a church in the Czech Republic. From the outside, it kind of looks like an ordinary church from medieval Europe, right? But this church is remarkable. It's believed to contain the skeletons of perhaps as many as 70,000 people. The building itself is decorated with bones everywhere. Bones decorate, if you notice, the whole wall behind it is full of a big display of bones. Let me ask you, could you worship God in a place like that? It's super creepy. It may be the strangest church in the whole world. But you know what? If we had enough time, we could decorate this church just like that. We could decorate it with my bones. we could decorate it with your bones. We could decorate it with the bones of our children. And the fact of the matter is, if the Lord tarries, these bodies just end up being a pile of bones in the end, right? This isn't meant to depress you. It's meant to help you see the urgency of the moment. The bones in that church don't care how cool your new iPhone is. The bones in that church don't care what kind of car you drive. If my future is to eventually be a pile of bones, to just be a memory to the people who knew me until we're reunited in heaven. What kind of legacy do I want to leave behind? Ecclesiastes says that it's far better than leaving a legacy of money, or an old couch, or a bunch of old dishes nobody wants. It's better to leave a legacy of contentment, of living with joy every day, with what God has provided and seeking to be a more faithful disciple of Jesus every day. So friends, leave a legacy of contentment instead of worry. So we're going to take a minute here. and I'd invite you to pray. Pray privately in the quiet of your own heart, but we're gonna cry out to God about our attitudes towards money. Every one of us has a lousy attitude toward money, and God already knows that. But I would invite you, let's take a minute, and pray that God would help you to stop worrying. Pray that God would help you to be content with what he has provided, to trust him for what tomorrow's needs will be. Cry out that he would help us to leave a legacy of contentment to our children and our grandchildren. And if the Lord tarries to as many generations as it takes, Let's pray that we would leave a legacy of contentment.