So in 2003, four psychologists studied the notable quotations of famous people who had lived in the last few hundred years to find out what they said about the meaning of life. What is the meaning of life? They actually analyzed the quotes of 195 men and women And this was kind of a summary of what they came up with. What did their quotes reveal about the meaning of life? One theme, the theme that came through the most is life is primarily to be enjoyed and experienced. Enjoy the moment and the journey. That was 17% of the people in this study reflected that. People like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Cary Grant and Janice Joplin. Second was, we live to express compassion to others, to love, to serve. That was 13%. People like Albert Einstein, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama. Another theme that they noticed was the idea that life is unknowable. It's a mystery. Again, 13%. people like Stephen Hawking, Bob Dylan. So they were going on a range of different type of people, philosophers, scientists, artists. Hawking wrote, if we find an answer to that, that being why we in the universe exist, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason for then we would know the mind of God. Another category of answers reflected in 11% of the respondents was life has no meaning. Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, John Paul Sartre, people like that. Clarence Darrow compared life to a ship that is, quote, tossed by every wave and every wind, a ship headed to no port and no harbor with no rudder, no compass, no pilot, simply floating for a time, then lost in the waves. Another 11% of the answers said things like, we live to worship God and to prepare for the afterlife. And that was people like Desmond Tutu, Billy Graham, and Mother Teresa. 8% indicated in their writings that life is a struggle. That would be people like Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, and Jonathan Swift. Swift wrote that life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it. Only 5% said. this, we are to create our own meaning of life. And I say only 5% because, again, they're taking people over the last few hundred years. Maybe later in this series, I'll reflect some current, more current people and their thoughts and quotes. I have a ton of them. And that percentage has gone up of the people that would say this. But in this survey, it was 5% people like Carl Sagan and Carl Jung. Sagan said, we live in a vast and awesome universe in which daily suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. We are the custodians of life's meaning. And then lastly, some people just said life is absurd or life is a joke. Albert Comus, Oscar Wilde. Now, long before any of these people lived or wrote, there was a teacher in Israel whose name we don't know, but whose reflections on life we have. in the book that we know as Ecclesiastes. And today we are beginning this series in Ecclesiastes with the subtitle Living with the End in Mind. I think that's what Ecclesiastes is about. It's learning how to live now with the end in mind. And we'll fill that out more today, some, but also over the next several weeks, Lord willing, what that means to live with the end in mind. So I invite you today to the very beginning of Ecclesiastes, and if you're looking at it in a hard copy Bible, you've got Psalm, Proverbs, then Ecclesiastes. We're gonna look at verses one to 11. Today's sermon is how not to find what you're looking for. how not to find what you're looking for. So will you stand with me as we read God's word? And today we're reading from the Christian Standard Bible. Normally we read from the NIV. Today we're gonna read the Christian Standard Bible. I'll explain that later in the message. The words of the teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem, Absolute futility, says the teacher. Absolute futility, everything is futile. What does a person gain for all his efforts that he labors at under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets. panting, it hurries back to the place where it rises, gusting to the south, turning to the north, turning, turning goes the wind, and the wind returns in its cycles. All the streams flow to the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are wearisome. more than anyone can say. The eye is not satisfied by seeing or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. Can anyone say about anything, look, this is new? It has already existed in the ages before us. There's no remembrance of those who came before and of those who will come after. There will also be no remembrance by those who follow them. This is the word of God. You may be seated now. Ecclesiastes is a tough book. It's a dynamic book. It's an interesting book. It's a fascinating book, but it's a difficult book. It's a challenging book. And so, along the way, today, through the week, any Sunday that you're in the series, whether I'm preaching, Pastor Corey's preaching, whoever, if you have questions, We're giving you a simple way to ask those. You can text those five letters, right? 383, is that five or six? That's five. Five letters. You can send a text to that. We'll get it. Or you can also send it to my email address, which is on the screen. And all of that will come in. We may, we probably will not be able to do that in live time. There's a chance we might. But, yeah. at some point we'll work it in, in the pastor's heart each week. We'll send out some answers or maybe I'll try to answer them on Sunday. I think we probably, if people are interested, I was thinking even maybe occasionally once a month or so just having maybe a Q&A after the sermon that you can hang around afterwards and bring your lunch or whatever if you want to do that. I think this is a book that needs a lot of dialogue back and forth and I am anticipating questions to come up and maybe some of them I'll be asking you. So before we dive in to actually this passage, although as part of our diving into this passage, I want to give you an introduction to Ecclesiastes. This is a book that we've never gone through at Harvest. There have been a couple of sermons, one-time sermons on a portion of it, but it's new to us. And so I want to just give you some background so you'll understand where we're going with this book. First of all, what about the title? What is Ecclesiastes? Why is the book called Ecclesiastes? Ecclesiastes is the main speaker in this book. It's not the proper name of an individual. It's more like a title. Now, many of you will know the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and then the New Testament was written in Greek. But after the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, there came a Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is separate from the New Testament, called the Septuagint. Well, in Hebrew, this word, which is in our English versions as Ecclesiastes, is koheleth. And it just basically means one who assembles. It's like an assembler. So for instance, some of your translations will read the teacher or the preacher. The idea is in an assembly, the person who's leading or teaching. And so that is what is written in the original. And then the Greek Old Testament came along and translated that with Ecclesiastes. And it's just been transliterated over into us. So that's why this book is called Ecclesiastes. It refers to the one that is teaching. All right, that is what, that's where we get the title from the book. Who wrote it? Now, a lot of people, the traditional view has been that Solomon wrote it. A lot of people believe that. What does the book itself say? Verse 1, the words of the teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem. That's why a lot of people say, oh, it must be Solomon. But it's interesting to me. I don't personally believe that Solomon wrote the book because The books that Solomon wrote in the Old Testament bear his name, like Proverbs. If you go back the book right in front of Ecclesiastes, you got Proverbs, it starts out the Proverbs of Solomon. And then the book after Ecclesiastes is Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, and it says this is the Song of Songs of Solomon. Why would Solomon not name himself as the writer if he wrote it when he did that with the other books he wrote? Also, Solomon's reign is clearly evoked, especially in the early part of the book, there's no doubt. That's why my summary is that it's probably not Solomon, but the author associates himself with Solomon. Ecclesiastes is the title. This is the assembler. This is the one leading the assembly. And things that are said as we get into it about Solomon, it gives the impression that he has many predecessors as kings in Israel, but we know that there was only one predecessor to Solomon, right? His father David. There was David, then there was Solomon. So it doesn't seem to fit that Solomon himself is the actual one who wrote, he could have written it, But I see a similarity with a New Testament book that we studied a couple years ago at Harvest. Some of you here, you remember we went through the book of Hebrews, and the author of the book of Hebrews is unknown to everybody but God. And so maybe Ecclesiastes is that way too. We're not sure. The main thing, it's part of God's word. It's inspired. It's in his word and we will treat it as such. Well, What kind of literature is this in Ecclesiastes? So let's talk about the genre, because the Bible's not just one uniform book. It's a united book. But there are a lot of different kind of genre. You've got law and you've got prophecy, you've got wisdom literature, you've got parables, you've got narrative. In fact, that's the largest type of genre, 40% or more of the Bible. is narrative. And then you've got gospels, you've got epistles, you've got letters. So what is it? Well, Ecclesiastes fits into wisdom literature. But wisdom literature is very different than, say, epistles. In the epistles, we get a lot of straightforward commands. They're words from God directly to us, like, for instance, Ephesians 4.25. Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor for all members of one body. God used the apostle Paul to write that, but it's a direct command from God to his people. Now, wisdom literature is also God's word, but it's a lot of reflections of people in their words to God or about God. And so you don't get the direct commands that you get in the epistles. And so, for instance, every statement that appears in wisdom literature I want to say this carefully because I want you to understand, we have the highest, complete, absolute trust in the scripture. All of God's word is inspired and true, but it's true in what it intends to say and teach us, but every individual statement is not necessarily a true statement. Here's what I mean by that. Take the book of Job. Do you know the story of Job? Job had all these sufferings and trials. This is wisdom literature. And he had these friends that came along and said, oh, here's your problem, Job. This, this, this, this, this. Now, the Bible records all of their statements. But are all of those statements true? No. But The book of Job in what is teaching as a whole is true because it's God's word, and yet it gives us this honest reporting of what his friends told him. And so when we come to Ecclesiastes, I think there's a similarity in what the ultimate meaning of it all is, it's all true, but every individual line, you have to take it in context. Because Ecclesiastes is a wrestling. It's a journey. It's somebody who's talking about this and that, and I'm looking at life, and I'm looking at life under the sun, and it seems like this, but then, no, maybe it seems like this. Well, what about this and that? And he's going back and forth, and a lot of it's there to make us think. It's there to make us ponder and reflect. There's a lot of back and forth. And so, sometimes the author will share thoughts that seem to be contradictory, but that's so that we will think about it. And there's another example like in Proverbs. There are two verses back to back in Proverbs. Answer a fool according to his folly, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the very next one says, don't answer a fool. Is that a contradiction? No. There's value in each one of them. A proverb is a general truth. And so you have to think it through in each specific case. Ecclesiastes is a little bit like that. And so we're gonna, that's what makes it challenging. because you're reading along and you're like, yeah, I agree with that. Well, I don't know if I agree with this. Well, we're gonna try to piece it all together. And on the Sundays that I don't really know what it means, Pastor Corey will be speaking on those days. Christopher Wright says that this book, reading this book as a journey or as a quest, because that's what it is, it is a journey, and we need to read it which I love, by the way, the graphic that Nikki created, living with the end in mind, going down the road, because it's a journey, means that we should not judge every verse on its own along the way, as if it is making a definitive statement that we must accept as true. The teacher is poking and prodding conventional wisdom and theories, trying things out. observing multiple situations and events, making a great mental effort to get his head around the baffling enigmas of life. So that helps us begin to wrestle with things like, how can something in the Bible say that everything is meaningless, or everything is vanity, or everything is futile? Well, we'll work it through in context. We have to know who is saying it, what they're referring to, what else did they say, what conclusion is ultimately drawn, what does the rest of the book say about it, and what does the rest of Scripture say about it? So that's how we're gonna deal with these naughty issues. So the genre is wisdom, and I like the way that one commentator, Tremper Longman, calls it specifically a framed wisdom autobiography, a framed wisdom autobiography. Now, here's what he means by that, and I agree with this approach. It's framed. Most of Ecclesiastes is autobiographical, and it's talking about things, but it's framed by a narrator at the beginning, who introduces it, that's what today is, verses 1 to 11, and then a prologue at the end, and that leads us right into the structure. Let me show you how to think Ecclesiastes is structured. There is a prologue, that's the intro, that's the first 11 verses, and then most of Ecclesiastes is what the teaching of the teacher. It goes from verse 12 of chapter 1 all the way to 12, 17. at the end of Ecclesiastes, there's this epilogue where the conclusion of everything is reached. And that also makes this challenging. Part of me wishes we could just go through the whole, that this was a conference and we were gonna meet for several days right in a row, and we could just go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and we'd go, okay, now here's the conclusion. But we know that's not quite possible. So, let's talk about the context. Now, normally, when we talk about context, we're talking about an immediate, a narrow context, the verses that lead into the verse or passage that we're studying and the verses that lead out of that. That is a literary context. That's a narrow context, and that is very, very valuable. to understand passage of Scripture. But there's also a broader context. Sometimes we want to look beyond just that immediate passage and just what comes right before it. We want to understand, how does this fit in the whole of the book? In fact, how does this actually fit in the whole of the Bible? those broader context issues we don't often talk about, we don't often need to talk about, but we definitely need to with Ecclesiastes, for instance. It is Old Testament wisdom literature. But it will lead into and point towards the New Testament. So here's why that's important. What is taught in Ecclesiastes is absolutely true. It is from God, but it is true as far as it goes. Because there were things that are true today, that we know today, that the writer of Ecclesiastes would have had no way of knowing. Because he lived, or she lived, I guess it was he, because it was a king in Israel, lived so far or so long before Jesus Christ ever lived. So, for instance, some of the ways we deal with this, some of these statements that seem to be depressing, and it seems like, well, there's nothing more than just this life or whatever, is because Jesus has not come yet. And because resurrection has not been clearly taught as a biblical doctrine. There were hints of it in the Old Testament, but it didn't get clearly taught until the New Testament. So I think that's important for us to understand that. There are things that happen when God sent his son to earth. that have illuminated some things. So, let's now talk about how…let's look at verses 1 to 11. Let's talk about how this book flows. Let's look at the flow of the book. Basically, in verse 2 and 3, we get the theme. And then rest of it, verses 4 to 11, give us examples of that theme or illustrations of that theme. So let's dive in at verse 3. The theme is absolute futility under the sun. Verse 2, absolute futility says the teacher, absolute futility, everything is futile. Now the word futile basically means a vapor or breath. It speaks of something that is insubstantial or it is fleeting. That word is crucial to Ecclesiastes, futile. It appears 67 times in the Old Testament. More than half of them, 35, are right here in Ecclesiastes. It's a very important word in this book. And here's some of the ways that that word has been translated in popular versions. The ESV, New American Standard, King James, will translate it as vanity. And, of course, this is a superlative here, vanity of vanities. The Hebrew words are back to back, so it's like vanity of vanities. That's a good translation. the NIV, which we normally use in NLT, translated as meaninglessness. The CSB translates it as absolute futility. Now, let me explain why we're not using the NIV today and probably not in this series. That translation, meaningless, is not wrong, but to really understand what that means in the context requires a lot of explanation every time it occurs. And since it occurs 35 times, I don't wanna explain it 35 times. No, I'm not really saying that. I was struggling with this. I talked to Pastor Corey, because I was struggling with that. I was like, there's hardly one English word that really, really gives to me, the perfect translation of this phrase. And I was struggling with it, and we were praying about it, and I was talking about it, and he said, well, have you thought about maybe using a different translation for this series? And I had begun thinking about it, and I thought, yeah, that might be a good idea. We prayed about it, we continued to think about it, and I think futility is maybe the closest expression of the way I think the argument develops in this book and the way that hopefully we're going to explain what it means. None of those translations are wrong. All of those translations listed on the Scripture are good reflection. We're very fortunate in the English language to have a lot of good Bible translations. Sometimes people ask me, what about this version? What about this version? What about... I think the best English versions are probably the NIV, the ESV, the New American Standard, the CSB. I mean, some of the ones that are listed there are probably the best ones that we have, and we're very, very blessed by it. But in this case, CSB is very close to NIV, and long before this series I was doing some of my own translation in the New Testament and comparing different versions. I think it's a good translation for us to use. Now, let's see how this word futility is used in the Old Testament. There are three categories or contexts in which it's found. The first one is when it's talking about false gods or idols, like Jeremiah 2.5. This is what the Lord says, what fault did your ancestors find in me that they went so far from me, followed, and here it is, it's translated worthless. Worthless or futile or meaningless or vain idols, and became worthless themselves. It also refers in some contexts to the brevity of life. How quick life is, Psalm 39, five and six. In fact, you have made my days just inches long, and my lifespan is as nothing to you. Yes, every human being stands out as only a vapor, Selah. Yes, a person goes about like a mere shadow. Indeed, they rush around in vain, gathering possessions without knowing who will get them. In other words, life is transient. Life is elusive. It comes so quickly. I'm not a coffee drinker. I'm a hot tea drinker. I don't know how many of you are, but you know, if you're boiling water on the stove for some hot tea or hot chocolate or whatever, you know how that steam comes up just a little bit Like, that's what life is like. It's like, it's there and then it's gone. It'd be like if you try to grab your Ziploc bag and capture the steam. You're not gonna do it because it's transient. It's elusive. Life is a vapor. And that is this same word that the writer of Ecclesiastes goes, everything is a vapor. Everything is futile. It's quick, and it's elusive. The third category, 35 times, as I mentioned, this word is used in Ecclesiastes. Let's move on to verse 3. Verse 3, ask a question, and the rest of the passage answers it. And the question is, what does a person gain for all His efforts that He labors at under the sun. Now, gain is another word that's used frequently in Ecclesiastes, no less than ten times, and it's used only in Ecclesiastes. And the idea behind gain is an advantage, a profit. It's like what is remaining? What is left over afterwards? What might be a surplus? So after you've lived your life, after you've had your experiences, after you've had your relationships, after you've had your activities, after you've had your jobs, what's the payoff of all your efforts? What's gonna be? there? What's going to be gained? What's going to be surplus? What's going to be left over? Is there anything that's going to be left behind? This question is asked three more times in the book at 2.22, 3.9, and 5.16. But notice where this realm of study is. What does a person gain for all his efforts that he labors at? Read the next three words out loud with me. Under the sun. The question is, under the sun, what can we gain under the sun? And that word basically is referring to life in this present world. apart from God. So over and over and over again, we're gonna get this expression 29 or 30 times in Ecclesiastes. This is under the sun. This is under the sun. This is under the sun. This is under the sun. This is how I see life under the sun. This is where the good I see in life under the sun. This is the bad I see. This is how it makes sense or it doesn't make sense. And we have to keep that in mind that this wrestling, this journey, this going back and forth is all about life. under the sun. It's this present life. It's not, it's almost leaving God out of the equation. It doesn't completely leave God out of the equation. God clearly does things in the book of Ecclesiastes, and the writer talks about things that God does, so it's not like the person denies that God exists, but it's evaluating life under the sun. So again, the way this first passage flows is we've got the theme, he lays it out, absolute futility under the sun. And then we're gonna get some examples of it. And that's verses four to 11. In short, the reasons why we don't see any gain from our efforts is because nothing really changes except for time. In spite of so much activity, the earth essentially remains the same. Verse four, a generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. So there's specific periods of time in this world with specific human beings who walk onto the stage of history and quickly walk off after their performance, which we call life. And this happens over and over and over again. One generation goes, another one comes. One goes, another one comes. But the earth remains forever. It remains essentially unchanged. Verse 5, the sun rises and the sun sets. Panting, it hurries back to the place where it rises. Obviously, that's a phenomenological way of saying the sunrise, you know, when the sun rises and the sun sets. But that's happened in the 1400s and the 1500s and the 1800s, and it happened yesterday, and it happened today, and it's going to happen tomorrow. It just happens every day and then it goes back to its starting point. What about the wind? Gusting to the south, turning to the north, turning, turning goes the wind and the wind returns and it cycles. The wind gives an appearance of commotion like it's gonna really do something. If you lived like we did in Chicago for nine years, the windy city, there is always commotion, there's always wind, right? But if we look it through the sweep of our globe, He goes and goes and goes, and then it returns. Verse seven, all the streams flow to the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. Now, some people have suggested that the Dead Sea was in the mind of the writer here, because you've got the Jordan River constantly emptying into the Dead Sea, and the Dead Sea never overflowing. Maybe, maybe not, but either way, It's a cycle, right? Moisture evaporates from the earth. And then what happens? Rain comes and the rivers go and they go into the ocean. And that's what happens in life, in our world. And verse eight says, all things are wearisome. More than anyone can say, the eye is not satisfied by seeing or the ear filled with hearing. Just like the seas can never be filled, We can never be filled. Oh, you get hungry. You're gonna probably get hungry today. Anybody hungry yet? Anybody hungry now? You are? Would you like to just stop right now or finish the rest? You go home and eat and you'll get satisfied for a few hours maybe. You'll be hungry again, I predict. Great prediction. Now, if you have teenagers, they'll be hungry in one hour. Teenage boys get hungry one hour or 30 minutes after my wife would cook these amazing meals, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes later, the boys are saying, hey, what do we have? Go in the cabinet and eat cereal, find some cereal. And this notion of constant activity without permanent achievement is wearisome, right? That's what he's getting at. The mother walked in to her six-year-old son, and he was bawling, and he's like, what's wrong? And he said, I just learned how to tie my shoes. And she was like, that's great. You're growing up. It's a new achievement. He's like, no, that means I'm going to have to do it every day for the rest of my life. Verse 9, what has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There's nothing new under the sun. Can one say about anything, look, this is new? It has already existed in the ages before us? He's not saying there are no new inventions. Obviously, that's not the case. I like David Gibson's explanation He means there's nothing new we can ever discover to break the cycle and so satisfy us. When we conquer our solar system, humanity will then try to conquer the galaxy beyond it. We never have our fill. That's the point he's making here. Verse 11, there's no remembrance of those who came before and of those who will come after. There'll also be no remembrance by those who follow them. It's pretty sobering. isn't it? No remembrance of those who came before. Those who come afterwards, no remembrance by those who follow them. Last week was an awesome week. My wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary, and we took a trip to Maine, And we got to see some amazing, beautiful sights, lighthouses, a lot of blueberry stuff. You know, Maine's known for blueberries. So we had, you know, the fresh blueberries. We had blueberry muffins. We had blueberry ice cream. I had blueberry pie. It was neat to see these beautiful, amazing sites. In fact, last Sunday, here's where we were. We're at Cadillac Mountain at the top. This is the highest point, I think, on the eastern seaboard. It's where you can see the sun rise earliest. We did not see the sun rise that morning at 4.35 or whatever time it happened. Just a lot of beautiful, beautiful things. And we just worked our way kind of up the coast, and we're going in and out of these little towns, in and out, in and out. And it was just a great trip. But I didn't, we took a lot of pictures. Did not take pictures of this. It's funny, in all these little towns, almost all these little towns, as you're driving through these little towns, I saw cemeteries. It's funny, this is a touristy place. All these people are going to have fun and get away and this and that, and it's like, here's a cemetery. People die in Maine. It doesn't matter if you live in Charlotte, or Maine, or Nevada, or Michigan, or France, or Nigeria. This is who we are. We live, we die, and we are going to be forgotten. Think about it. How many of you or us know anything at all about our great, great, great, great grandfather or grandmother? Or ever think about them? And that's what this writer, that's what he's struggling with. It's like, we're here, but a generation comes. The wind goes here and there. The rains come. The seas fill. The rivers go into the ocean. One generation comes. It creates a lot of angst in us. The Irish rock band U2 came out with a song in 1987 which became a huge hit. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. It was their second consecutive number one on the U.S. Billboard, and it was nominated for two Grammys in 1988. Rolling Stone did 500 greatest songs in the history a few years ago, greatest songs of all time, and it was ranked 93. I've climbed highest mountains, I have run through the fields only to be with you, only to be with you. I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls, these city walls only to be with you. But I still haven't found what I'm looking for. But I still haven't found what I'm looking for." And then there are more verses, but the last verse, goes, you broke the bonds and you loosed the chains. I'm sorry, I skipped a slide. Well, it says, I believe in the kingdom come, then all the colors will bleed into one, bleed into one, but yes, I'm still running. I believe in the kingdom come. And then, you broke the bonds, you loosed the chains, carried the cross, oh my shame, oh my shame, you know I believe it, but I, Still haven't found what I'm looking for. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. So, the title of this sermon is, How Not to Find What You're Looking For. And I want to give you the answer based on what we've seen so far this morning. Here's how I can promise you, you will not find what you're looking for. And that's if you concentrate your goals on this earthly life. you'll not find what you're looking for. Whether it's fun, fulfillment, peace, if you make that your focus, Ecclesiastes 1 is clear, there's no ultimate gain in earthly pursuits under the sun. I think what God wants to teach us this morning is that ultimate satisfaction does not come under the sun. So, let's find God's perspective on life and death. Let's find God's perspective. Let's learn God's perspective. Let's look for God's perspective. We're going to do this all through this series. We're going to be looking for God's perspective. Now, again, this was written long before Jesus Christ ever lived, but we always want to ask when we're looking at the Old Testament, How does this point forward to Christ? Because all the Bible points to Christ. And the Old Testament points forward, and then the New Testament, Christ is revealed. Well, Romans chapter 8, verse 18, the Apostle Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy, are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed in us, for the creation eagerly awaits with anticipation for God's sons to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay and the glorious freedom of God's children." This word, futility or frustration, was the very same word that was used in the Greek Old Testament to translate the theme verse of Ecclesiastes' futility. And while the teacher in Ecclesiastes does acknowledge God at different points in the book, essentially he has assessed his world and our world under the sun apart from God's intervention. It's a fallen world under a curse of sin. And therefore, there's a lack of purpose and a lack of hope. But that angst, that futility, that's not the end of the story because God subjected it in that. and hope, what is the hope? That the creation itself will be set free from the bondage decay, where? In the glorious freedom of God's children. See, Paul also wrote in Galatians 3, 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us because it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. Jesus Christ is the only one who can redeem this fallen world. He's the only one that can look at a world where it's repetitive and over and over and over again, and there's no ultimate gain under that sun. He brought purpose and meaning and redemption and hope through His life, death, burial, and resurrection. Do you know Him today? Is he your Lord and Savior today? I think this is the way that Ecclesiastes 1 points forward to Jesus, because Ecclesiastes 1 should make us all feel some angst, like, I'm looking for something more, I still haven't found it. And it's like Ecclesiastes is saying, look to the cross, look ahead, look to Jesus who can redeem you. That's where meaning is found. Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it. He also said, follow Me and I will make you fish for people. That's where meaning and purpose and life is. Ultimate satisfaction does not come under the sun. So let's find God's perspective on life and death. Now, that brings us back to the title of this whole series, Living with the end in mind. What do we mean by living with the end in mind? It's gonna take us a lot of weeks to fill all this out, but in short, there's some components to it. One is living with our own death in mind. There's a really cool book, David Gibson, I quoted him earlier, called Living Life Backwards, and that's his theory that accepting death is the first step in learning how to live. And we'll dive into some of that. But it's also living with the end of the book in mind, the end of Ecclesiastes in mind, where we get the conclusion from the narrator. In other words, having a biblical worldview, grasping God's purpose, God's view for us, that's living with the end in mind. And may God help us do that. as we walk through Ecclesiastes over the next few months.