Okay, very good. All right, let me grab my Bible here. All right, so tonight the question is, why are we here? That's a pretty good question, isn't it? I mean, why are you here, right? Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. That's why you're here. All right, so this summer I did some work at Amazon. Anybody ever buy anything from Amazon before? Anybody ever come to your house with one of those Amazon boxes? The little smiley face on it? Like my little thing here, you see the little smiley face? Yeah. OK, well, that's all right. It's probably best if he doesn't come. Well, anyway, I was there. And I heard this story about this lady who worked there. And you know what she did every day? She would go to the break room and just sit in the break room. And she would sit there and sit there and sit there. And then when her shift was over, she'd go and clock out and she'd drive home. Then the next day she would come in, clock in, go to the break room and sit there, sit there, sit there. And then she'd go clock out and go back home. Then she'd get her paycheck and then she'd come and do it again. Guess what happened to her? No. She was fired, yes. She was fired. She lost her job. Why did she get fired for that? She wasn't working. She didn't understand what her purpose was there, right? Why was she there? So pack boxes and put boxes from one place to another. That's why she was there. She wasn't there to just sit in the break room. She thought she was there for that purpose. But no, that's not the reason. Probably some of you will be sitting in school tomorrow, right? Ashlyn, are you listening? You'll be sitting in school, or maybe you'll be doing some work at home or something like that. And you'll have to ask yourself, why am I here? Why are you at school? Why are you at school? To learn things, right? You're there to learn things? Yeah? That's right. So that's your purpose. Now, some students, I've noticed, have a different purpose for being at school. They want to hang out with their friends and talk, or they want to get people to try to laugh at them, and they want to be distracting. Or some people, they just want to sleep the whole time, or they just want to draw pictures, and they don't care about the lessons. You know anybody like that? I used to be like that a little bit. But that's not their purpose, is it? That's not really the purpose. The purpose is for them to learn things. And how do we know if they've done a good job or not? How do we know if you've achieved your purpose? Ashley, you're not achieving your purpose. How do you know at school if you've achieved your purpose of learning? Do they ever do anything to maybe evaluate how much you've learned or something like that? Any kind of quizzes or tests or anything like that? Anybody ever had a quiz or a test or anything? I had to give out a quiz today to some people. I did. So that sort of tells you if you're doing a good job or not sometimes. Sometimes not, but sometimes. All right, so this is the big question. Why are we here? But the big question is, why are we here on Earth? Why are we here at all? Maybe you never thought about that before. All right, that's right. We're here because God made us. But why did God do that? That's the question. Well, you don't have to answer it. I'm going to spend this whole time trying to answer it. But think about that. Why are we even here? Well, in Genesis, who knows who the first two people were? What were their names? Adam and Eve. That's right, Adam and Eve. Here's what the Bible says. girls you listen your purpose is to listen right now so god created man in his own image in the image of god he created him male and female he created them and god blessed them and said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth so he said i've made a man and a woman and i want you to have Dominion over the earth. What does that mean? Take care of the earth. That's right. Taking care of the earth. And he also, God made a garden for them. Did you know that? Does anybody remember the name of the garden that God made for them? The garden of? I can't come up with it. Eden is right. The garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden. So they made a garden and he put Adam and Eve in charge of it. They were in charge of the garden. What do you have to do in a garden? Normally you have to take care of weeds. They didn't have to worry about weeds yet. But they probably still had to take care of some things here or there or make sure things were growing the right way And I don't know just generally straighten up. I don't know I don't know what they had to do But maybe they had to start like I think they had to maybe like make the garden bigger or something like maybe they were supposed to like Make more of it or something. I don't know and God walked with them there and know we have to pray to God and that's very good that we get to pray to God and he hears our prayers but for Adam and Eve God would show up at night and and talk with them face to face and walk with them and because he wanted that's one of the reasons he wanted them to be there so he could talk to him not because he was lonely but just because he it gave him joy to do it So here's why God created us. First, we're God's image bearers. We're made in the image of God. There's a lot of discussion about what that means to be made in the image. You know what an image is? This right here is an image. It's projected, an image projected on a screen, like those mountains. They're not the real mountains, right? This is not the real mountains. I'm not going to climb up the screen here. No, it's just a picture. It's an image. A representation. That's what we are. We're sort of like, maybe not exactly a picture of God, but a representation, sort of a stand-in. We're God's people here. That's sort of the idea. That's what God intended. So we're supposed to be representing God here on Earth. And we're supposed to be having dominion over the Earth. That means we're supposed to be stewards. You know what that is? Having good stewardship. That's like if somebody leaves you in charge for a while. Anybody ever been left in charge for a while? Or does anybody ever have a pet or something? You have to take care of a pet. Or if you have a, anybody ever have any money? You're supposed to, sorry, you're supposed to just immediately go and spend it all? Right, you're supposed to be, you can spend some of it. I know you leave out, you would spend it, but no. You're supposed to be a good steward. That means you're supposed to, you know, do some good things with your money and maybe give some of it and maybe save some of it for something more important than just some candy right now or something like that. So we're supposed to do that with the earth. We're supposed to take care of the earth. Yeah, we are. That's a big job, isn't it? Yeah. There's a lot of ways to do that. And then we're also supposed to have fellowship with God. That's what God's plan was anyway. For us to have fellowship. For us to be his children. That's what God wants. So that we can experience God's joy and his love. All right. Now that's the reason we were created. so that we could be in charge of the earth and so that we could represent God here and so that we could spread God's love and joy and act on his behalf and treat others with respect. That's why we're here. Okay, that's what the Bible says. Do you notice maybe sometimes we don't do that, right? Sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes we don't do it the right way. So sometimes we're not good representatives of God. Sometimes we're not good stewards. And sometimes we don't have fellowship. Oh, somebody's got to go see their mom. All right, so well, there we go. We're going to talk about King Solomon for a minute. Anybody remember King Solomon? Does anybody know King Solomon's dad's name? All right, no problem, no problem. Gotta take care of business here. King Solomon's dad was... King David, right. So Solomon, Solomon was the wisest king. He asked for wisdom. And so he also probably wrote the book called Ecclesiastes, which if you're here on Sunday morning, you might've heard a little bit about Ecclesiastes. You remember that? Yeah, okay, good, good. So anyway, remember what he did was he was searching for the answer to this question. Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? except for he was so rich and powerful and wise, he could really try to get to the bottom of it. So he could try all kinds of different things to try to figure out what the purpose of life was, how to have a happy life. All right, flip the next slide real quick. I want to introduce you to somebody else real quick. This is sort of like the modern day equivalent a little bit. So anybody know who this is? This is Jeff Bezos. He's the CEO of Amazon. That means he's in charge of Amazon. He's the owner of it, too, I guess. Well, recently, he became the richest man in the world. He has over $200 billion, more than anybody ever in the history of the world. So just to break that down a little bit, and some of these figures are a little bit just kind of close, anyway. 200 billion, that's pretty big, right? Here's what it breaks down to. It's $320 million every day. Yeah. $13 million every hour. That's really hard to think about, isn't it? $200,000 every minute. And over $3,000 every second. That's how much he makes. $3,000 would be pretty good, right, if I was going to give that out sometime? Oh, that would be great. He makes it every second. Whoa, that's a lot of money. Man. So what would you do? What would you do if you had that much money? Right. That's so much money you can't even spend all of it. If you go to the store, nothing costs that much. So it's like, you could even buy the whole store and it wouldn't cost that much. So it's like, what do you even do? That's a weird question to think about. What kind of thing should you do with all that money? I mean, what could you do with it? I don't know. That's weird to think about. Anyway, King Solomon kind of had a similar amount of money. Maybe not quite that much, but he had more than he could even spend. And he got a chance to try to figure out what to do with it. All right. Oh, sorry. We can leave that up. All right. Let's see. I'm not going to read this whole thing, but here's a couple of things that he did. He says that, He says this, he says, vanity of vanities, says the preacher. All is vanity. That means everything's a waste of time. Everything is meaningless. Nothing's worth anything. What does man gain by working? Generations go and generations come, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, the sun goes down, the wind blows, the streams run, and it's just a bunch of weariness. What's the point of it? Shh. What's the point of it? That's what he says. He's tired of doing all his things, and then he goes and tells us what all the things that he was doing. Here's what he said. He said, I said in my heart, come, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself, he said to his own heart. He said, I'm going to try to have as much fun as I can. Maybe that's what life is about. By behold, this was vanity, worthless. I said of laughter, it is mad. It's silly. And of pleasure, what use is it? I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine, my heart still guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly. He said, maybe I could be foolish, and that would make me happy. No, turns out not. Here's what else he did. He said, I have made great works. I built big buildings. You think that would be a good thing to do? Sure. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of trees. I made myself pools of water for the forest. I have possessions of herds and flocks. I have silver and gold. I have the treasure of kings and provinces. Everything that I could ask for, everything that I want. I could have anything, and I've done everything. Not only that, later on he said, I've done scientific stuff, I've written poetry, I've done this, I've done that. And at the end he says, none of it really makes me happy. He says, all those buildings I built, all that kingdom, eventually it's going to belong to somebody else. And I might not even be in control of it. I'll be gone. Or these buildings that I'm building, eventually they'll fall down. Or it's like everything that he can do, none of it will really last. And so he thinks, what's the use? What is it? What's the point of this? It's like when Jeff Bezos is no more, somebody else is going to have all that money and do something else with it. Or sometimes people who are rich, sometimes they lose their money or something bad happens. And he says, oh, you just never know. Or even if I'm real smart, some foolish person could live longer than me. So what's the point of it? So anyway, that's what most of Ecclesiastes is about. But then at the very last, he says this. He says, the end of the matter, all has been heard. He said, all he's going to say, this is the conclusion. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. That's the answer to the question. Go back to the previous slide. That's the answer to the question. Why are we here? Fear God and keep his commandments. That seems kind of weird that that would be the answer to the question. But it is. Fear God and keep his commandments. We're here to bring glory to God. So what we're really doing is, if you have a choice, you can build your own kingdom, or you can help build God's kingdom. That's our choice. If you build your own kingdom, and you probably will not be successful, but if you are successful, it will still not quite make you happy. It doesn't, just because Jeff Bezos has $200 billion, it doesn't make him sleep any better at night. Sometimes it probably makes him sleep less at night. Now he's not necessarily the worst guy in the world or anything. He tries to do some good things with his money sometimes. But, you know, it's... It's that one day that kingdom is going to be gone. One day some other person is going to come in and buy Amazon. Or maybe it will be a different company. Or some other company will come and they'll be even better. And that's just the way it goes. So if you build your own kingdom, eventually it's not going to satisfy you. But if you build God's kingdom, it will satisfy. You will have joy and peace and happiness and love and good relationships if you build God's kingdom. And so that's our choice. So that's what God wants us. That's why we're here. We're here to help God build something. God wants to build something out of us and to display his love to other people, to treat other people the right way. and to help him advance his kingdom. And one day Jesus is coming back, and if you're a child of God, you'll be a part of his kingdom. Just like I hope you can be part of his kingdom right now. That's what God wants us to be. That's why we're here. All right, let's bow our heads. We're going to pray. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had together tonight, and help us to understand about building your kingdom instead of our own kingdoms, and help us to understand what our purpose is and what all this is about. In Jesus' name, amen.