Father, we thank you that we can be here tonight to celebrate Jesus, to celebrate that light. As Paul said, you've called us out of darkness into this marvelous light. And God, I pray for those that are here tonight that haven't found the light, that have not connected with Jesus yet, that this would be their night to get things right with you. And Lord, for others, maybe the most tragic, those who have been in church all their life, but have never connected with their Savior, the One who gave His life for them to transform their lives from that dark evilness into something beautiful. Father, I pray tonight that Your Spirit would go to work in here. There are people that need to be saved, people that need to be delivered from all kinds of bondage, people who need to find truth, people who need to swift-kick God. I pray that You would just step in and minister, God, through Your Word tonight. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. You may be seated. All right. It was nice of my daughter to leave me a drink. It's pretty good chocolate peanut butter. I'd recommend that. I want to I want to just say a few words. I like this last service because I can go to midnight. We've got plenty of time. But Jose Fernandez is one of our missionaries that we support. It's kind of a unique situation. He's a church planter of a Brazilian church, a Portuguese speaking church in Orlando. Does it? Would you stand up just for a minute? And I want to use him and give him a hand. Absolutely. And I will testify that there is nothing better than a Brazilian barbecue. I will assure you of that. And I, and I'll have my ticket next week, but I want to tell you about this man because he is, he is exactly what I'm going to be talking about in my message today. And for the next eight weeks, we're going to be talking about Solomon's life. Now, King Solomon was the second King of Israel. And he writes the book of Ecclesiastes around 940 BC. So this book's almost 3,000 years old. And I entitled the series Wisdom for Dummies. And don't be insulted by that because I think Solomon wrote it for himself. I think that's why he wrote this, was to remind himself of what he needed. But Solomon's life is so out of whack and so the opposite of Jose Fernandez and Jose Fernandez is doing exactly what I'm going to talk to you tonight about. This man had a great job in Brazil, making great money. His life was good. He could have stayed there and he would have had a great life. He'd have gone to heaven, but he left it all to come and clean homes. and plant a church so that his people could find Jesus. And you know what? You talk to the man. He never sleeps. And yet he's full of energy. He's full of passion for the Lord. He's always excited about what God's going to do next. And Jose, it's an honor to work with you, my brother. Thanks for being here tonight. Okay, let's talk about Ecclesiastes for a minute. Don't get too worked up about that title. It's a Hebrew word that means the teacher. All right. Solomon is David's son, King David's son. And around the end of his life, Solomon writes this little book that we have here. And for the next eight weeks, we're going to go through the book of Ecclesiastes. Now it's simply some teachings of wisdom that Solomon wished he would have gotten right now. Solomon's got it all. If you don't believe me, go home and read first Kings chapter three, four, five and six. Solomon has all the wisdom from God. Solomon has the money. He has the power. He's got clout. He's got buildings. This guy's got it all. But he made one crucial mistake. He turned away from God's teachings in this fact. God said, do not marry a woman who's not committed to me, who's not committed to God. Now, Solomon not only made one mistake, but Solomon married 700 women of noble birth. All right. I don't know. I can't tell you what all went on there. Thankfully, the Bible doesn't tell us that, but a lot of it was for political reasons. He's building bridges. He's building his power base and he's being like everybody else. Now that's a huge mistake. But then he has 300 concubines. Now you can look that word up for yourself, but it's women that he also had relationships with, but apparently they weren't of noble birth. So they were a little lower on the, on the rung. But here's what happened to Solomon, a guy who's got direct visions from God. He talked to God. He had dreams and God spoke to him, read first Kings. But after he got married, these wives began to influence him. Maybe some of you guys are familiar with that. Hopefully for the good, right? But as he got older, they began to say, now, Solomon, if you really love me, you'll build an altar for my God, not just your God. So Solomon begins to set up these places of worship to these pagan gods and not just to some outcast God, to the gods of Chemosh, of Molech, who are some of the most detestable gods. They're demonic. There's no other way to get around it. There was about child sacrifice and prostitution. Terrible, terrible pagan gods that the Israelites had fought the people to get away from these gods. And Solomon sets up places of worship to these gods. And it says in first Kings that his heart was pulled away from the true God because of his wives. and because of the bad choices that he made. So the teacher writes to us to help us make some better choices. Now, Ecclesiastes can be a bit on the depressing side, but we're going to turn it around and look at the positives as we work our way through this text. So we're going to start in chapter one, verse one, and we're going to tackle this tonight. Would you stand one more time out of respect for the word of God? These are the words of the teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem. Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all of his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. Sunrises to sunsets and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south, turns to the north, round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There's nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, look, it is something new. It was here already long ago. It was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow. You may be seated. Now, what are we going to do with this? Well, it's really a picture and the really the entire book of Ecclesiastes until you get to the last two verses is Solomon telling you what life is like without God. It's a journal of his. history, his story of what happened to him after he turned his back on God. It's like the teacher that was trying to explain the circulatory system, how the blood works through our, our system. And he, she could tell by the looks on the kids' faces, they weren't getting it. And so she's finally, she said, look, if I stood on my head, what would happen? And I said, well, all the blood would run to your head and you would get flushed and eventually you would you would pass out from all the blood running to your head. She said, that's correct. But that's how you explain how the blood flows. She said, but why is it when I stand upright that I don't have the same problem with my feet? And the kids got a big smile on her face and they said, because your feet's not empty. Maybe, maybe this is our problem. Maybe our problem is we can't take in God into our minds because our minds are so full of this world. That's where Solomon was. And you may be here tonight and you're going to say, I'm a follower of Christ, Joe. My head is just full of God. Well, maybe. But my guess is there's still a competition going on between the world. and the word. There's a competition going on in our lives. We are sold out for Christ, but there's still that battle with the flesh, with the world, with my own desires. And that's where Solomon found himself. And what happens is when you're living a life without a relationship with God, I don't care who you are, from what end of the economy you are, what will happen is you will begin to look for some other purpose and meaning in your life. And that's when we turn to material things. That's when we turn to drugs. That's when we turn to that new job or that new wife or that new husband or that new position or that that position of power or whatever it is, it all comes down to this. It's all about the next high. And that's where Solomon was. And Solomon has it all. When you read his story, he's got the money. He's got the buildings. He's got the food. He's got the trips. He's got the prestige. The whole world is coming to listen to Solomon because he's so smart. They brought in boatloads of gold to him. Look at when you read First Kings, you'll be astounded at the amount of gold that was just delivered to him. They said, look, here's 10 tons of gold. Can we have dinner with you? And he'd say, yeah, come on in. You read the stories for yourself. It's incredible. But Solomon said, I got to have another high because once he turned his back on God, he had to have something else. Now, I don't know what it is for you. But if you're in that spot tonight where Jesus is not that high, if the word of God is not the center of your life, then you're going to be caught up in one of these traps because God is not the center of your life. Now, John 10, verse nine, Jesus said, I am the gate on the way. I know if you want to get to the father, you're going to have to come in the right gate. And Solomon said, if you don't go in the right gate, look at my life. My life will show you what happens If you don't go the right way, Psalm 14, one, David said, the fool says in his heart that there is no God. But in Ecclesiastes three, nine, God said, I put eternity in your heart. God put inside each one of us a desire for something beyond ourself. I don't care how hardened you are. I don't care what kind of an atheist you think you are here tonight. Deep inside, you know, there's got to be something bigger than you. I don't care how much you think evolution may be true, that it all just showed up, it all just happened, we're a product of chance. Deep inside you, you know better than that, because God has put eternity inside of you. And as we look at this text tonight, it shows us in Solomon's own life and his own words, the realities of what your life will be like without God. Reality number one is that your work will be meaningless. I read the story a couple of weeks ago about Henry Moore. Henry Moore is a 63 year old man in California who dug a 60 foot hole in his front yard. He went out and he bought one of these metal detectors that supposedly can detect gold and it started going off. And so he started digging and it kept beeping. So he kept digging a 60 foot hole in his front yard. That'd be hard to do in Florida because you'd be a little wet, but, but You know, he said, I just knew there had to be gold down there. And he said, I did what anybody would have done. And I thought, yeah, probably so. Always looking for something more in this world. And yet, Paul said in Second Corinthians five, he said, God's given us a ministry of reconciliation. Now, I want to explain. That's a strange verse to throw at us, Joe. But here's the deal. There is our reason for living. If you're saved, if you're not saved, then the reason you're here is to get saved. If you are saved, then your purpose is to help somebody else become saved. That's it. And so if that's not your heart tonight, if your desire, if you are here and we're singing, I'm desperate for you and somebody is not on your heart, some soul, some neighbor, some friend that that God, I can't reach them. I can't do this without you. Then something's missing in your life. And you're always going to feel like King Solomon. And you're going to say meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless. Your translation may say vanity. The phrase there actually means everything is transitory. Everything is empty. He said everything is unsatisfactory. Now you think about it. You're thinking, wow, if I could just get it, if my wife was just like that wife, Solomon had thousand. Never found the one that made him happy. Well, if I just had that job that paid like his job, well, Solomon had gold brought to him by the truckload. Didn't do it because there's something inside of us that will never be satisfied by this world. And old King Solomon said, everything's meaningless. The rivers just keep going on. Sun comes up, sun comes down. One generation comes, dies. Another one shows up. Life is meaningless. without God. He's exactly right. In fact, the French philosophers have explained it in their own writings in the fifties and sixties, uh, John Paul Sartre, Albert Camus. If you like to read French existentialism, get with me later. I'll get you some therapy, but those guys, you know, that's exactly what they espoused in the sixties because they said there is no God. There is no reason for living. In fact, Camus said, the best thing a man can hope for in life is that a lot of people will come to your funeral because life is meaningless. Now let me explain to you how this progression works. If you're a theist, you have purpose. If you're a theist, that means you believe in God. Now, hopefully, if you believe in God, you know who he is. You know that you're here because Jesus came in the flesh. He was God in the flesh. God came and he died for you. You're a theist. You understand that life has meaning and purpose and that your soul has been rescued from hell by Jesus. The next level down is what's called a deist. A deist is somebody that believes that, well, there's a power out there. There's, I don't know, you can call him God if you want, but he wound things up or it wound things up and pretty much said, good luck, guys. I hope you can figure it out. The next level down is the atheist and the atheist says there is no God and there's no reason to live. Now, the true atheist, if he's really being true to his Non-belief, he would just get up in the morning and kill himself. There would be no reason to live, but very few people can really go to that level. So they become an existentialist. Now, I doubt that very many of them can say it or spell it, but this is what it means. It means life has no meaning. Life has no purpose. I'm sure there is no God. So I'm going to make up a reason for being here. And that might be another sexual conquest. It might be another drug high. It might be another another job. It might be another wife, another husband. But you're always looking for something that's going to get you to that next level because you don't have any reason to get up in the morning and you'll never find it until you say, God, what is it that you want to do with my life? What's interesting, Jesus never had that problem. Jesus only lived 33 years. Jesus was never bored. Jesus was never depressed. Jesus went about his business with a purpose. He had a reason. The apostle Paul, same thing. How about Paul? Solomon's got everything. Paul had nothing. Paul said, I've been shipwrecked. I've been beaten. I've been naked. I've nearly starved to death. And yet Paul leaves this earth with a smile on his face. We'll get to that verse in just a little while, but they understood something. First Corinthians three, 11 to 15. Paul says, he says, look, everything we do is going to be judged by God. There is a purpose. And he says, if what we've done is not for God, if it's wood, if it's hay, if it's stubble or the words he uses, it'll be it'll be burned up. But only what is done for God will will be left. Only what is done for God is what's going to stand in eternity. Maybe that's why Solomon has lost his way, because he's sure that his monuments or his wives or his gold or his prestige is going to make the difference. And it's not helping George Clooney, who I don't know that he's a Christian, but he said, He said, my father gave me the best advice of my life. He said, whatever you do, don't wait till you're 65 years old and think about what you should have done with your life. Now, some of you may be in that spot now. Sixty five is better than never. Eighty five is better than never. But the time to do something great for God would be now to turn your life around and say, you know what? I don't want my life to be meaningless. I don't want to wake up one day and be like Solomon and say, you know what? It looks like life just kind of goes on. So how can we turn our work? How can we give our work meaning? Well, it's all about the kingdom, because if our goal is to rescue other people, then it's got to be about this. So let's just put them up there. It's about kingdom building. It's about saving souls. It's about building ministries. It's about building missions. All of that is our purpose. Now, what's interesting is I have friends all over the world on the mission field. I mean, some of the most God forsaken places where, I mean, they're just laying themselves on the line to be there to preach the gospel. They're risking everything. And they come home and I and I go and I have dinner with them. They're not depressed. They're never frustrated. Oh, they wish things were a little better. They wish they had seen more growth. They wish their leaders were more mature. But it's amazing. The only people that are frustrated and burned out and seem out of sync are people that have everything kind of sounds like Solomon. And here these people are serving in the most horrible conditions. And there's a piece about them. Why? Because they found their purpose. They found out that their work is not meaningless. Now, listen, I don't care what you do that pays the bills. When somebody said, what do you do? That shouldn't be your answer, because When somebody says, what do you what do you do? Well, I, I serve Christ. You may serve Christ as a Sunday school teacher. You may serve Christ as a public school teacher. You may serve Christ as a doctor or an air conditioned person, or I don't know what you do, but that's really the heart of it, because that's where your purpose is, because at the end of 40 years of life, are you going to say, wow, I'm so glad I gave myself to electricity? Probably not. But if you can say, you know what? I made a difference for the kingdom in the middle of what God was doing in my life. That's where you're going to find purpose. In fact, in Daniel chapter 12, verse three, God said to Daniel, he said, you know, he who wins souls is wise. That's where wisdom really is. That's where you'll find meaning and purpose in your life. And, you know, we're we're getting ready to go into this campaign to to relocate over onto Hand Avenue. And you know what? It's going to be a painful process. I know that, you know, it'd be easy for me as I look back over the last 14 years, what would be easy for me is if we had one service, if I could come in here at 1030 and preach to 200 people and go home right now, that would be very easy for me instead of speaking five or six times a week. But that's not what God wants. And what happens is if you're not careful, you'll look for the easy way. You say, well, I don't care if they build that building over on Hand Avenue. Why should I give my money? Why should I pray about that? You know, after all, aren't we big enough? Let me ask you this. What if the person that can't get in someday is your grandchild? You think about that. What is the soul of your grandchildren worth? I thought about that. I thought about that. Now, it may not be my grandchildren. It may be my next door neighbor's grandchild, or it may be your grandchild. I don't know who's it's going to be, but if we don't move to the next level where we can expand our kingdom influence, then somebody eventually is going to get left out. And you and I have got to decide what's our life. really bad. Solomon made some bad choices. Reality number two is that our world just rolls on. And this is kind of a situation where Solomon finds himself as well. You're born, you live, you suffer, and you die. I'd like to know where Solomon suffered other than by his own hand, by his own choices. I don't know where Solomon suffered physically in this life. The kid was born with a golden spoon and God having a conversation with him. I mean, that's a pretty good day. But he said, ah, life just kind of stinks. And a lot of people have that thought. Well, I'm just here. My life has always been terrible. My parents were terrible. Everything is always gone this way in my life. And you say, well, it'll just the cycle will just continue. It will unless you do something about it. But Hebrews 927 says that you're going to live once we're going to die once and then we're going to face the judgment of God. And you can either go in whining and griping and complaining about what wasn't right in your life, or you can go in rejoicing about what Jesus has done for you. Solomon said everything is just weariness. He's so tired. Why are you tired, Solomon? Probably because he had nothing to do. Because he got up in the morning and he had to side between the pheasant and the duck. You know, he couldn't decide which way to go. The guy's got everything. He's got no purpose. He's got no reason. He said, I'm just tired of living. He said, nothing satisfies me. He said, this is the one thing I've learned. He said, the eyes will never get enough. He's right. The ears will never hear enough. They never tire. There's always that desire for more. That's what he's saying. He said, I built the buildings. I built the parks. The guy built a zoo for goodness sakes. He's he's got everything. He said it doesn't make any difference, no matter what I have, I never have enough. So if you're here tonight and you're thinking, gosh, you know, if I just had this, if I could just get that, if I just had that, I know for me, that's going to do it. It won't. That's why Solomon wrote this. Solomon wrote it to say, no, guys, that won't do it because I had the whole world. And that didn't do it for me either. And then he goes on. He said, oh, there's nothing new. Show me something new. Everything's just like it's always been. The problem is it contradicts Scripture when he says that, because God said, I'm going to do something new in the book of Joel. He said at the end of time, he said, I'm going to do a new thing. I'm going to send my spirit upon all flesh is quoted in Acts two and Peter preached the first message of the gospel, the good news about Jesus. He said, here's the good news. God's going to send dreams and visions and he's going to send his spirit and people are going to tell their neighbors and people are going to be saved and there will be a whole new move of God. But Solomon missed all that because Solomon was only focused on one person. And that was himself. So how do we find purpose in this world? Well, number one, it's got to go back to the basics. You got to go back to the one who made you. If you're sitting out here and you're trying to find purpose without going back to the word, then there's no way you're ever going to find it now. Here's my challenge. Just read the book of Ecclesiastes. A lot of you didn't know there was a book until you walked in here tonight. And that's OK. That's all right. You're exactly the people that need to read it. Just dig in. I had people calling me saying, Joe, I've been reading the book of Joel every day back when I was going through the book of Joel. I didn't know there was a book of Joel, but this is great. Because the Word of God, Hebrews 4 says, is living. It's active. It works. You can read stuff that you don't even understand and God will go to work in your life. And then you'll read a phrase and you'll go, wow, there's the one I needed. And you just keep reading it. Just read it. Read through the book. Start again. Read it again. Next four or five weeks, I'm just going to do a chapter at a time. Just read that chapter if that's all you can handle. But read it and let God's word work in you. God put eternity inside of you. Only God can unlock it. Get into his word and let him speak to you. And then secondly, if you want to find purpose in this world, you got to quit thinking life's about you. That may sound harsh. But that's where Solomon was. And you read, I mean, it's so funny. Solomon said, I denied myself nothing and I'm still not happy. Because Jesus said, if you want to find happiness and purpose, try denying yourself. It works just the opposite of what Solomon did. Now, if my friend over here, my brother Jose, if he would have just been thinking about himself, He could have stayed in Brazil, probably had a condo at Rio right now. He could be sitting out on the beach. Instead, he's scrubbing toilets so that he can preach the gospel on Sunday morning. There's a man that's figured out that life is not about him. And it's people like him that we need to follow, and that's what Solomon's saying. I went the wrong way, guys. Find a better role model. Second Timothy chapter four, Paul said, I'm being poured out like a drink offering. He said, my end is coming there. They're about they're about to execute him. He's in a Roman prison. He's in modern day Rome. And he knows they're going to chop his head off. And he said, I fought the fought the fight. I finished the race. I've kept the faith. And now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness. How about that compared to Solomon who's got the whole world by the tail? And he said, life stinks. Paul gave it all away and said, life is good because he found that relationship with Jesus. The third reality is in verse 11, and that is that our wisdom will be forgotten. Now Solomon's depressed because in verse 11, he's sitting around again, thinking about himself. And he says, what a bummer. He said, nobody is going to remember me. He said, I don't remember the generations that went before me. Nobody's going to remember the generations after us. You know, You think about it, there's you know, there's some monuments in Egypt. There's a few things in Babylon. There's a couple of things left in Rome. There's a few things, but very few people are remembered. Either you had to be tremendously good or really wicked. Those were the two things. But, you know, there's probably five hundred thousand pastors in America. You might know the names of six. You see, if you're living for glory in this world, you're going to lose out. In Solomon's words, he literally says, there's nobody here to build a monument for me. There's nobody here that's going to remember how smart I was. And that depresses him because Solomon is not thinking about how he can do something great for God. He's thinking about why can't somebody do something great for me? And he wondered why he's bummed out. If you're living for the next plaque or the next trophy or the next check, then you really don't have a very good reason to live. I have to tell you, we, my kids get, you know, all kinds of trophies from sports and all that. And, and, uh, they used to be in their bedrooms. And then when they got sick of them, they moved them out to our family room. And then when we got sick of them, I put them out in the garage and now they're on a ledge out in the garage. And I was out there the other night and, uh, just they're covered in cobwebs. And I thought, isn't that how most of the trophies in life go? Because all those trophies, as neat as they are, they all represent the past. They don't do anything for today. They don't do anything for the present. And if you're living, if your purpose in life is to say, you know, I've got to leave some kind of a monument to myself, then you've really missed the whole reason for following Christ. We're supposed to be leaving a monument from him. Well, the great stories from history that I love is a couple of veteran missionaries were coming home back in the old days. You didn't come home on furlough every three or four years like we're able to do now with jets. They would go over on a boat and most of them would die in the country that they went to serve. But this couple had been on the mission field for 50 years and they were coming home and there were some notable politician on the same ship that they were on coming into New York Harbor. And when they got to the harbor, there was a band there and there were all kinds of celebrities there to greet the politician. And the veteran missionary was so frustrated. He said, I don't understand. He said, all this celebration for this guy who's not even a good man and there's nobody here for us. And he was really depressed. And as everybody left, they stood there all alone. And his wife spoke words of wisdom to him. She turned to her husband and she said, honey, That politician came home. You and I are not home yet. Our celebration will happen when we go home. And that's what Solomon hadn't figured out. Solomon was still looking for it all here in this world. And if that's where your life is, you're going to someday proclaim what Solomon said. Everything is unsatisfactory. Everything is worthless. So. What can we do that will last? Well, let's start with this. Invest yourself in God. Now, I'll let you define that, but I'll give you some help. It involves worship. It involves prayer. It involves being connected in the body of Christ, be in a small group, be in one of our life groups, be in a ministry group, be on a mission trip group. You've got to invest yourself in your relationship with God or you won't have a relationship with God. It's like anything else. The more you invest in it, the more you're going to get back. Number two, invest yourself in the word of God and in the church. The church is the living body of Christ. So when you invest yourself, whether it's time, finances, energy, prayer, when you invest yourself in the church, you're going to find purpose, you're going to find meaning. And then maybe the biggest is the third one, and that is to invest yourself in people. Now, that would seem like such a natural, wouldn't it? And yet I know what your schedules are like. They're crazy. All of our schedules are nuts. And just to find time to go talk to my neighbor, just to have time to go and say hi or or offer any kind of ministry, where do I find time in my life to do that? You know what's interesting? The son of God had time for prostitutes. He had time for children. He had time for tax collectors that everybody else hated. Jesus had time. Now, the Pharisees of the day, they were too busy. They were on their way to church. They were on their way to do something great for God. But Jesus had time for people. And I think that's the heart of where God wants us to be. But Solomon really has the same problem that many of us have today. And that is that he thought his life was about him. And in his own words, God helped him write that down when he said, Solomon, I put eternity inside of you. If you keep focusing on the temporary, you're always going to miss what I'm trying to do in your life. And it's not till the very end of the book, the last two, two verses that are there. And we'll get to those eight weeks from now. But Solomon finally comes to this conclusion. He said, after everything has been heard, he said, I got two things to tell you. Fear God. and keep his commandments. Father, I pray that. Tonight, if there are people here that don't know Jesus, this would be the night they would find you. If there are those here, they're living lives of desperation. Because they've tried everything this world has to offer, they've always been looking for that next high. They've made up reasons to live. That tonight they would find real life. God, maybe some who have been in church forever They've been religious as hardcore as you can be, but they've never accepted Jesus. God, I pray tonight that You would do that, that You would speak. In Jesus' name, Amen.