I'd invite you then to turn with me to Ecclesiastes, the first chapter. Ecclesiastes chapter 1, we will only read just a few verses here from verse 12 to verse 15. Ecclesiastes, as probably most of you know, deals with some of the most fundamental questions of life. those nagging questions that continue to strain at the periphery of many days, if not most days of our life. Questions of what's the purpose of life? What's the meaning of the things that I do on a day to day basis? What's the point? We've probably all been there. What's the point? Why Why do I do what I do? Why is life the way it is? What is the purpose here? It's not a book that's easy to preach from because it's difficult to understand the parts of Ecclesiastes. And we're just gonna look at four verses today. It's difficult to understand even those four verses without understanding the larger picture of where Solomon ends up. It's easy to get lost in the despair. of his words because he speaks the truth and he doesn't sugarcoat it. He doesn't make it easy to go down. It's not a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. He just comes out and tells us the reality of life. For over a year back in February of last year, God placed this book on my heart and I preached a sermon, I believe this February 21st on the first. Eleven verses of this book. And I have been seeking to avoid it ever since. The Lord has had this book on my heart for. Many, many months now. When our family was confronted with the deepest loss we've ever faced, I was simply afraid of the book. Each week, I tried to be honest with the Lord as I would seek counsel of what he would have me to present and to speak on and the passage he would have me to take. And I would try to be honest. And to this point, God has had other things for me to share to my relief. but I couldn't escape it this week. He brought us back here. And today, he's directed my heart to these passages. As I've thought about it, it felt, if I can describe it in some way, it's like the gravitational pull of a black hole to these passages, these verses. And I pray that it is of help to you today, as it has been for me. That we would look at these verses and it perhaps will be the first of many. I don't know. We'll leave that to the Lord. But I do want to look at this passage and I want to speak to you today about finding fullness and emptiness. Finding fullness in emptiness. Solomon is already written and he's talked about the vanity of life, he's asked a number of rhetorical questions already. He's talked about one generation comes, another generation goes. One follows the other, the sun rises, the sun goes down. He said in the first few verses here, and the world goes on. He says, all things are full of weariness. A man can't utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing in verse eight. Verses nine and 10, he talks about what is, is what will be. There's nothing new under the sun. And then verse 11, kind of the, kind of the breaking point, I think, of this opening part of the passage, he says, there's no remembrance of former things. Nor will they be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. And so you see, as we before we read our text today, it's it's easy to get lost in the in the pieces of Ecclesiastes and not see the brighter hope that is all throughout it. And that is the conclusion of Solomon. It's easy to agree with him, not an agreement in cynical despair. and not see what Solomon is actually trying to say. And so today I want to just bring to you some thoughts that God has given to me in these passages, in these few verses, and then we'll probably turn to the close of Ecclesiastes and read from there as well. But I want you to know that there is fullness to be found in life in this world. It's not from this world, but God can give it to you even in this world. Solomon goes on in verse 12, I, the preacher, have been king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight and what is lacking cannot. be counted. Finding fullness in emptiness, and I believe that's what Solomon will will provide for us and show us if we will look closely with him. And perhaps in in your own life, there's that struggle, and I think that there's the struggle in all human hearts. What's the point? What's where can I find meaning and purpose in my life? What is the reason for getting up in the morning and going to work? What is this all about? And maybe maybe you feel empty. like so many others do today and so many others have. Maybe there's an emptiness there. I want to tell you and present to you from the word of God that there is fullness to be found. There is satisfaction to be had. And I want you to come along with me as we look at these verses and come along with me as we listen to the preacher here, as we listen to this wise man, this Solomon. And I want you to understand a little bit about what he saw and what he found and how he found fullness and emptiness. And it is I want you to understand the vantage point from which Solomon writes. his experience. In fact, from this point to the end of Ecclesiastes, or at least the later chapters, Solomon is going to show you, this is how I came to this wisdom. He starts with the lesson. He starts with the truth. He begins with it. And then he tells you, this is how I found out. And that's why this book is difficult to preach from because what I would like to do is take you through chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, all the way to 12 to see the whole picture, but time will not allow that. And I want to laser focus in on the reality and the thought of finding fullness in God amidst the emptiness of the world. And that's your choice. fullness in God or emptiness with the world. And we can trust this Solomon to tell us something about this, mainly because God inspired him, the Spirit of God did to write it, but also because of the vantage point from which he wrote, the place from which he wrote. He identifies himself and he says, I am king over Israel. From this vantage point, Solomon could see more than most. From that height, from that lofty position as king of Israel, he could see things that you and I probably won't ever see in our life because we likely will never be the king or queen of anything. But Solomon was. He'd reached the heights. He'd reached the top of the ladder. He was at the first rung. He was above all others. He knew what it was to have all the comfort and the riches of the world. He knew what that was. He knew what it was to be honored by other people, to be almost probably worshiped and praised and respected by others. We read of his request of God when God said, what would you have me do for you? And he answers wisely in saying, give me wisdom in order to judge Israel rightly. And that was, by the way, the very specific wisdom God gave to him. Sometimes we think Solomon asked to get wisdom in general sense, and certainly he was wise in many ways. But you read about his life and it didn't end all that well for him because he wasn't all that wise in all ways. He asked God to give me wisdom to guide and lead Israel. And that's the wisdom that God gave to him. But from that vantage point, he could see a lot of things. He could see what comforts the world had to offer. He knew what it was to be served by others. And it's interesting because I think this is the very vantage point that many people want to reach the top. I had one young man one time, I was his manager at work, and I remember we had one on ones and then we had an annual review and all the normal things that go along with an employee. a manager and employee relationship. And he looked at me and he said, how do I get where you are? And I thought all I thought automatically you're thinking wrong. You're thinking wrongly about this. And I told him as I didn't strive to get where I was. I wanted to do a good job, but this is what people want to do. They want to climb the ladder until they're at the top. Well, Solomon was at the top. And this is what he's going to tell us about what he discovered there, the emptiness. of the world. No matter how high you climb, no matter how much you might gain in this life, Solomon found it to be empty, and he called it. In ESV is striving after when I believe the King James, its vexation of spirit, it's the idea of just a futile effort, just emptiness and futility. So before you spend your life or one more day seeking this vantage point, thinking that from there you will find the happiness and the contentment that you're looking for. Before you spend one more day doing that, I want to invite you to come along with me and hear from a man who was already there and listen to what he has to say from that place to save you a lot of time and heartache. So this was where he spoke from. I, the preacher, been king over Israel and Jerusalem. And he tells us that he undertakes a purposeful search. I applied my heart to seek and to search out. Notice that emphasis on the search and the seeking. You need not think for a moment that Solomon's search was insufficient, that somehow he missed something that you would see. He applied his heart with the wisdom that God had given him and the vantage point from which he had given it. And he said, this is what I find. I find in this life, in the activities of man, vanity and vexation of spirit and a striving and a chasing for the wind. And for a moment, we might think, well, he missed something. There has to be something more in life than what I've experienced. I'm going to go out into the world and I'm going to seek it and I'm going to find it. We often think that way. But listen to the one who had reached the top, had received all of the goods that the world has to give him, and yet he comes to this point and he still says, oh yeah, the world? It's empty. It's vanity. It's vexation of spirit. It's a striving after wind. Trust this man and the wisdom that he had. Trust God first, but trust what he says. He searched it out. There was no stone left unturned. There will be no room left uninvestigated in Solomon's life. There'll be no pleasure passed over. There'll be no wisdom undiscovered, no secret that remains unknown. Solomon searched it and found out the truth of the condition of man in this world. So given this, it seems to me that we ought to listen to what he has to say. If there's something that has doomed our nation to the current condition we find ourselves in spiritually, even emotionally, economically, soon to be, I believe, It's the turning from God and his word and the refusing of listening to the wisdom that's found there. Solomon here is at the top of the mountain. He is king in Israel. He has made a diligent search to find out the meaning and the purpose for the activities that man is occupied with in his life. And he knows the answer to the most fundamental question that we have is what's the point? Why am I alive? Why do I have breath? In these lungs, why am I now even able to contemplate such questions? In listening, I believe to the answer Solomon gives to these questions again could save you a lot of wasted time, not to mention, by the way, a lot of wasted money and effort striving for what you will never find. So listening to this answer from Solomon, I pray, will help us to gain the wisdom that he found. You know, when anyone who has come face to face with the vanity under heaven reads these words from Solomon, I think they do. I think they nod in agreement. Yeah. Vanity, vexation of spirit. Chasing after wind. And maybe even there's a bitter laugh as they acknowledge the truth of the statement. But I want you to know something. I think Solomon wants you to know something. And I think more importantly, God wants you to know something. That's not the conclusion he makes at the end. That's not where Solomon ends. It's not where Solomon finishes. He's going to finish in chapter 12. And he's going to work his way from here to there, wrestling with the truth of this reality of the emptiness of this life and this world apart from God. And by the way, that's what he said under the sun when he speaks of vanity and emptiness. He is speaking of this world, this life. He clearly is not speaking of the life and the world that is to come. He's not speaking of a life lived in fellowship with God. He's speaking about just living your life on the the rat wheel of the world of just going around and around and around and getting nowhere. He is telling us the truth about life under the sun. It's full of vanity and emptiness and the activity that we go through day in and day out. It feels like a striving after wind. We work as hard as we can work. We are diligent as much as we can be diligent. He's going to go into, by the way, in the next few verses that we'll not have time today, he's going to talk about the vanity of living wisely. He's going to talk about the vanity of trying to live a life of pleasure. And he's going to talk about the vanity of all kinds of other things. But his simple statement is, it's vain here, but this is not Solomon's ultimate conclusion. This is not the end of his search. It's the beginning. And he says to us that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. That's when wisdom begins to be unlocked. And so if there is no fear in you, there likely is no wisdom in our nation can account for that as well as our fear of God has declined. So, too, has the wisdom of our decisions. But this is, again, not Solomon's conclusion, Solomon felt the vanity of life, like all men, he felt it personally. Men that lived thousands and thousands of years ago knew nothing of the modern conveniences that we take for granted would stand here in amazement to watch us drive up to this building and these things called cars would be baffled by it. And yet he speaks words that are just as true to your heart and mind today as if he spoke them yesterday. because they're words from God who does not change, and they're words to a human heart that, by the way, does not change either. I pray that you'll listen to what he has to say. And after all, as we see Solomon feeling this personally, understand his vantage point as king, we understand, by the way, that probably didn't shield him from the emptiness of life. It probably exposed him to the emptiness of life, even more so than you and I. Because again, after all, there was nothing that he wanted that he could not obtain. There was no treasure that he desired that he couldn't get. There was no wisdom, no comfort. No pleasure that he could not obtain, yet this nearness, his nearness to all those things probably just made the emptiness of them more acute, don't you think? The more he gained, the more he realized. There's just nothing there. There's just nothing there. How many people that have just in the eyes of the world reach the epitome of success and they're sad and miserable and broken and lonely and empty? And how many people on the other side of the equation? I've been to Ghana, Africa, or in Liberia, and I've met those people there. Some of them have a fraction of what I have. And I remember when I came back from my first trip over there, and the place that I worked for asked me to write an article, they had a newsletter, so I wrote an article. And I wrote an article of what was one of the things that impressed me most. I went over there for the first time naively thinking these people were going to be sad. They weren't. Certainly not God's people. They were content and joyful. And how much brokenness and heartbrokenness and emptiness is in the land of plenty here. Solomon knew that. His awareness of this is something we should take note of. What I want to share with you today is what Solomon wanted to share with you, what I think God wants to share with you, and to tell you about finding this fullness in emptiness. Finding fullness in emptiness. And I want to guard your heart from what might be considered an Eastern religious viewpoint of finding nirvana and emptying yourself of everything. That's not what we're after here. It's finding fullness in God. Verse 14, if you'll look there with me in the second half, I have seen everything that is done under the sun. So again, I've looked at it all, I've seen it, there's nothing I am not aware of. And behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. Much of Ecclesiastes, as we've said, is an accounting of Solomon's efforts to find meaning in life. He gives us the conclusion here. that of all of that searching. He tells us this is what I did. I searched out. I sought what man was to do with his life, what the purpose was. And much of Ecclesiastes is the recounting of those efforts. So Solomon tells us here that he undertook a purposeful search and then immediately tells us the conclusion. He will then go into more detail. If you want to continue reading Ecclesiastes, I encourage you to do that. He's going to go into more detail of his search. And that again, we might look at more closely, but today we want to look where Solomon did. And I want to tell you what Solomon saw, everything that is done under the sun. He says he's known it, he's seen it, and it's all vanity. So that's first. The raw truth of the vanity of this life apart from God. In verse 15, what is crooked cannot be made straight, what is lacking cannot be counted. So with this statement, Solomon tells us that the emptiness we find in the world cannot be made full. That's an important lesson to know, the emptiness in this world, the emptiness we find in this life apart from God cannot be made full. The world is broken and it will remain broken. until God comes not to fix it, but to destroy it. That's what Solomon understood. This world is broken. What is crooked cannot be made straight. What is lacking cannot be counted. No man, no government, no job, no relationship, no amount of money, no achievement, no hobby, no wisdom, no foolishness, none of these and anything else can make straight in this world what is broken, what is crooked. Solomon said it, I've seen everything under the sun. I've understood it. I've seen it. And nothing can make this this crooked world straight. Nothing can fill what is lacking in this world. This, by the way, I think, and I don't want to get political, but it is at the root, I think, of a lot of the folly of our governmental policies. We are trying to make straight what can never be made straight. We are trying to fix what can never be fixed here materially in this world. In their attempt, so many in their attempt to straighten what is crooked, they generally succeeded only making it more crooked. They call evil good and good evil, and thus they make good crooked, they make criminals of the law abiding and refuse to punish the lawbreaker. They take from one to give to another, knowing nothing about either. And they thus enslave both. The one to whom they give and the one from whom they take, you see, it's not so much that the things in the world are broken and crooked, it is that the world itself is broken and crooked. So Solomon says what's crooked cannot be made straight, what is lacking cannot be counted. You can no more change the crookedness of the world than you can change the wetness of water. It's broken. We have to understand that. We have to realize that. You can no more eliminate poverty than you can eliminate fear, greed, jealousy, envy, and selfishness in the heart of man. Now, we ought to strive to help those and to love those, as we've said many times, that we can and help them. But so long as these traits remain in the human heart, the fallen human heart, we will continue to live with poverty and brokenness and sin. This is the failure of the idea of the communist or the socialist that fails to recognize the brokenness of the world and the crookedness of the human heart. I thought of this and I thought if there was ever a Sisyphean task, you know, Sisyphus, the one judged for his whole life in Greek mythology to roll the stone up the hill just to have it fall down again. And he was forced to roll it back up again, have it fall down again and over and over. And in Greek mythology, that was to go on for eternity. Anybody ever feel like your life is like that? Just rolling the stone up just to let it fall down again. to end up where you began. I will tell you this, if there ever was a Sisyphean task, it is the task of changing the fundamental brokenness and crookedness of the world. It's broken. Don't misunderstand me, it does not mean that we ought not to do damage control and to mitigate suffering where we can. We should. And in loving one another, we should try to ease one another's burdens. But Solomon looks at the world and he says at the end of his search, at the end of his investigation, at the end of his study and his contemplation, he looks out in the world and he says, it's broken. This world's broken and there's no straightening what's crooked about it. It's broken because the human heart is broken. As I've shared with you before, if you ever find a perfect church, please tell me. So that I don't ever join it. The moment I join it, it becomes imperfect. Because I bring with it a brokenness of this sinful flesh that continues to wrestle with that, that inwardly desires to please God, that we've been studying in the letter of Romans of late. The world's broken. It just is this. This idea of trying to fix this world, we need to take very cautious care that we understand the reality of this life. We were trying to make this life straight, easy and full when this life is crooked, difficult and empty apart from God. How many times have you rolled the boulder up the hill in your life just to watch it roll back down? How many tears have you shed? How much sweat have you expended to make that that is crooked, straight apart from God? How many times have you thought this time will be different? This time is going to be different. Just to find out that it wasn't. Trying to find fullness in an empty world. Trying to find water where there is none, trying to find food where there is none. How many of your friends and family, even coworkers, do you see pushing that boulder up the hill? And as you observe them doing it, you say to yourself, it's just going to roll back down, it's not going to do what they think it's going to do. How many times have you in pain watched loved ones do that? Trying to find fullness in an empty world. I know these thoughts and this kind of sermon. I know it won't sell books. I know it won't fill many church pews. I know it won't get me booked on a podcast or an interview with somebody on television. I don't care. The world is broken and there's no fixing it. The world's broken and there's no fixing it. The things that are lacking can't be counted. When you say these are bold words, these are maybe they sound strange, maybe they don't. To me, they sound strange as I thought them, as I studied about them, as I looked at what Solomon says, they sound strange even in my ears as I say them. But maybe they don't to you, but they do to me. But if they do sound strange to you and you think maybe, preacher, you've gone just a little bit too far. Maybe you're putting too fine of a point on this. Maybe you're just trying to be dramatic. I assure you that is not the case. I'm simply reading what Solomon said, a man much wiser than I will ever be. And he looked out into the world and he told us, look, the world is empty and it's broken. And if you don't believe him alone, Then listen to the rest of Scripture and may you listen even to to John the Revelator and Revelation. But beginning in Isaiah all the way back in the Old Testament, these later prophets from Solomon, Isaiah said this about this world. For behold, God says, I create new heavens and a new earth and the former things shall be remembered that shall not be remembered or come to mind. He's not going to fix this world, according to Isaiah. He's going to bring a new one. And isn't that wonderful? Because this world is broken. He's not going to fix it merely. He's going to get rid of it. He didn't just mend my heart a little bit when he saved me. He gave me a new one, one that wasn't ever broken and never will be broken again. But this world, Solomon says, look, look out at it. He says, I have From my lofty vantage point, I've looked out over all the world and I've seen it's broken and it's empty. And even Isaiah is going to repeat it. I'm going to create new heavens, according to God. Second Peter 313, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. He's not saying we're waiting for God to fix this place. He says we're waiting for a new one. And then, of course, in Revelation chapter 21, verse one, John says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. He saw the new heaven and the new earth. So so we can't escape it. We can't escape it while we're here, while we are here in this life, this world's broken. It's crooked. It can't be made fit, made straight. What's lacking can't be can't be filled. If you feel that emptiness, if you feel the emptiness of this world, don't despair. You're feeling what is true. Don't look for an answer to the brokenness, look for the fullness that's found in God, not a broken world. No matter how high you might climb, no matter how many riches you might obtain, if you feel that emptiness of life apart from God, then I praise him because the spirit of God is bearing witness with you of the truth of the emptiness of this life. You want to know what our biggest problem is, one of them. One of our biggest problems is that we expect God to make this world the next one. We want God to make this life as happy and healthy and wonderful as it can possibly be. And when it doesn't happen that way, we get frustrated and disappointed. And God says to us, this world, why are you looking there? Why are you looking at a broken world and expecting it to give you what you need? If you feel like the world is broken, then here's Solomon and realize that your conclusion about life is consistent with his. You've come to the same conclusion. You're right. You've come to the same conclusion that the wisest king, save one who has ever lived, came to one who had the vantage point of having all that he had, that life had to offer, that emptiness that you feel inside of you, if you are apart from God, that emptiness, there's a reason for it. It just stands to reason. You live in an empty world. You can't fill from an empty vessel. You busy yourself with empty tasks. You push that boulder up again and again and again and again. You push it up that hillside knowing inwardly that your effort will be useless once again, but not knowing what else to do. As the decades of your life pass, I'm getting ready in a year to turn to my 50th, which is ridiculous. But as the decades of your life pass, you'll begin to see more and more the futility of placing your hope in this world. As loss occurs in your life, as that boulder gets heavy, As those years go by, you'll begin to say, Solomon, I get it. This place is broken. Why am I looking for fullness here? This is, by the way, the reason we ought to listen to godly elderly people. The very people that most relegate to the sidelines, we ought to be listening to. Those men and women who've come near to the end of their journey and have discovered for themselves the truth of Solomon's words, listen to them. Encourage your young people to listen to them. Those who have found fullness in God amid the emptiness and brokenness of the world. Again, sadly, it's these very people that are often ignored. What they have to say doesn't agree with what most are trying to do. So they set him aside. The world struggles mightily with a task that Solomon and those who have discovered the truth of what he says, as we watch the world struggle mightily, trying to find fullness in an empty world apart from God. And we stand to the side watching them. And then in love and compassion, we come to them and we say to them, my friend, what you're doing is futile. What you're searching for is not there. You're looking for fullness in an empty world. You're looking for that that is, that you're trying to fix, that that can't be fixed. But God can fix it, and He can fill your heart. But the world listens to that, and they push it away. They tell those who tell them this truth, and they say to them that they don't want to hear it. And then they lower their shoulder in obstinate rebellion to the truth, and they drown out the words of God with the sheer exertion of their energy as they try to push that boulder up one more time, saying to us, no, this time it will be different. This time, I'm going to find what I'm looking for myself. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be the captain of my own ship, and I'm going to push that boulder up, and it's going to stay there. And all the while, with tears on their eyes even, we would say to them, no, That boulder is just going to roll right back down again. You'll be right back where you started, empty and without God. And I want to tell you today that there's fullness to be found in God alone. Nothing else. Nowhere else. Not in your money, your riches, your strength, your youth. These things mean nothing apart from God, but so many as they they try to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and say, No, I am going to do it. The minute the minute you stop saying that and say, God, if it's going to be done, you're going to do it. You're on your way to fullness. And the longer you say, I'm going to do it, the further you get from where God can fill you. And emptiness will be your your life. I don't want emptiness to be your life. I don't want emptiness to be in the life of anyone, because that's all this world has to offer. But God can fill your heart with joy and peace. Don't in obstinate rebellion continue to push that boulder up the hill. Listen, today, if it is you today, maybe you're refusing to admit and acknowledge the emptiness of your life apart from God. And I just ask you, what boulder are you pushing up today? Which one was it yesterday, last year? I hope this truth catches your attention. But I don't want to leave you there. This is why, again, Ecclesiastes is a challenging book. It's not where Solomon ends, it's not there isn't only emptiness, there is fullness to be found in God. But I want this to catch your attention. I do want you to recognize that the things in this life are crooked, they're broken, they're empty, and that you will never find anything there that will fill you. And so as we close, turn with me to the close of Ecclesiastes chapter 12. Many of you have been anticipating this, no doubt already. What is the point? Where is the fullness? Where does Solomon end up if this is where he begins the emptiness and the brokenness of the world? Does he end there? Does he die a bitter, cynical man? Doesn't appear that that is the conclusion. of the matter, it sounds something very different, beginning in verse nine of chapter twelve. Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge. Listen to the carefulness with which this preacher. Sought and dealt with with knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The preacher sought to find words of delight and uprightly he wrote words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads, this again back to the elderly godly people in our life. I hope you have a lot of them and I hope you listen to them. The words of the wise are like goads and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings they are given by one shepherd. My son, be aware of anything beyond these. of making many books, there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh." And this is where we want to conclude today. The end of the matter, all has been heard. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. The truth of God's word, if you are to find fullness in this life, it is to be found in the truth of God's word, the weighing of them, the studying of them, and even the careful arranging of them in your life. God's word can bring fullness to a day that otherwise would be empty. if you would study them, carry them with you and be purposeful and thoughtful about it. It's not meant to simply be read, though certainly that is good. But this word is meant to be weighed and to be studied and to be arranged carefully. So that over time and over the years, it continues to inform through your mind this incredible thing that God has given us, this brain, this ability to think and to reason. Then not to end there. Well, never let the Word of God end there. Let it then filter into your heart and to become more ingrained inside of you. And then it just naturally begins to inform you. And you begin to see the emptiness of the world and the fullness that is alone in God. And you begin to all of a sudden make decisions that are much more sound, much more wise, because you understand the truth of what Solomon is saying and the truth of what God's word says, because you understand that the word of God is solid there. There is nails. Goads, nails firmly fixed. They are nails that fix our lives to the truth given by the shepherd of our souls. The one who desires to lead us and comfort us and provide for us. The fullness that not just fills, but overflows in the midst of an empty world. And don't you think that's what people are wanting to see? And what ought to make a Christian, a believer in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, identifiable in a world lost in emptiness. There goes somebody who's not only full, but they're overflowing. And somebody even that people would look at and go, They have endured great struggle in their life. How is it that they're content and at peace? And I'm not talking about a fake, silly, made up thing. I'm talking about a steady, sure, solid confidence in God and a fullness in him that the world knows nothing of because the shepherd of our souls is given it to us that he might lead us and guide us to that place. And then finally, the conclusion of it all. This was probably not news to you from the moment that I began making my remarks today. What's the point? Why are you alive? Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. You've heard that before, no doubt. But do you understand fully what it's saying? Perhaps we do, because it's not complicated. It doesn't take any kind of advanced degree to understand what Solomon is saying, what's the point? Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. I've said it before, if you look in the Hebrew here, that word, the word duty, d-u-t-y, is not in the original. And so in some ways you could say it this way, fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole of man. It's not just what you're supposed to do. It's who you are, if you are to find life. One who fears God has a reverence, an awe, and respect for him, which is in, of course, the Hebrew word translated fear. Afraid, the way sometimes we might think of it, I suppose is in the word, but deeper still is the fear and the reverence and the awe. of a God who from nothing called all of this into existence. And keep his commandments. And Mark tells us what that is. The great commandment, Mark chapter 12, verse 28, one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another and seeing that he answered them well, that is Jesus answered them well, they tried to trip him up on the resurrection as they had tried to trick him on many other questions. One of the scribes came up at that point, and he asked the Lord, which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, the most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. There it is. Fear God, and love God. Because to keep God's commandments, we must love him. In fact, trying to keep God's commandments apart from loving Him is another one of those exercises in futility. He's not after your outward obedience merely. He desires that. He wants that. He's called for it. He's owed that. But He wants your heart. That's what He wants. And if our whole duty, if the whole point of our life is to fear Him and to love Him, or to keep His commandments than it is, of course, to love Him. If you find emptiness in the world, I want to point you to God, you'll find fullness there. You'll find fullness with Him. Maybe you know the fullness of God, you've been saved, you have that time and place, moment when God changed you, made you new. Maybe though you've allowed the shiny object of the world to distract your attention, and maybe you've chased after whatever that shiny object is. I don't know what it would be for you in your life. God does, and if he's bringing it to your attention now, I want you to think about it. Whatever that shiny object is that you think is gonna bring you fullness, when whatever it is is broken and empty, I want you to see the futility of your efforts. and return again to the commandment that we've been given to love God. And to do that, by the way, it will require all of our effort, all of our time, all of our everything. Many times people have debated, it's a worthy thing to discuss. Are we to tithe? Are we to give God 10%? No. And some people I go, whew. No, you're not supposed to give him 10%. You're supposed to give him 100. All of it. And the beautiful thing is when you give him all of it, when you give him all of you, he will give you all of him. and you will be the one advantaged by that exchange. But the longer we look to the world to fill us, the more empty we will become. I pray that the word of God would work in your heart, that whatever the Lord might be speaking to you, that you would listen, and that I would listen, that each one would hear what he has to say. Let's have a song.