|giv| Week 3
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
I am one of the pastors here. We are going to be in the book of Ecclesiastes today, specifically Ecclesiastes 5, as we are closing out week three of our Give Series. We pause every year for our Give Series because this is a season in America that gets quite overwhelming with materialism and consumerism. And we want to pause every year and be reminded of what biblical generosity looks like, what a biblical approach to money looks like with the backdrop of a culture and a time that is very much the opposite. So we're in week three of this.
We'll be in the book of Ecclesiastes, which is a book that speaks about the vanity of life. So vanity meaning vain, which is empty, conceited, worthless, pointless. It is a book that talks about how vain putting hope in this life is, and specifically Ecclesiastes 5 is the vanity of riches. How vain it is to put a hope and to get your life towards wealth and riches. And as I was preparing for this, there's a vivid picture from a novel that I read years ago that I just wanted to read that paints a very vivid picture of what it looks like to live your life for the sake of riches. It comes from The Testament by John Grisham in the very kind of opening scene of that book.
And it's a man who is very wealthy, has lots of money, and is on his deathbed. He is narrating what a life spent pursuing riches looks like. So I just want to read from this. So he says, on his deathbed, I'm an old man, lonely and unloved, sick and hurting and tired of living. I'm ready for the hereafter. It has to be better than this.
I own the tall glass building in which I sit, and 97% of the company housed in it, below me and land around half a mile in three directions, and 2,000 people who work here, and the 20,000 who do not. I own the pipeline under the land that brings gas to my building from my fields in Texas. And I own the utility lines that deliver electricity. And I lease the satellite unseen miles above my head from which I once barked my commands to my empire flung around the world. My assets exceed $11 billion. I own silver in Nevada and copper in Montana, coffee in Kenya, coal in Angola, rubber in Malaysia, natural gas in Texas, crude oil in Indonesia, and steel in China.
My company owns companies that produce electricity and make computers and build dams and print paperbacks and broadcast signals to my satellite. I have subsidiaries with divisions in more countries than anyone can find. I once owned all the appropriate toys, the yachts and jets and blondes, homes in Europe, farms in Argentina, an island in the Pacific, thoroughbreds, even a hockey team. But I've grown too old for toys. The money is the root of my misery. I had three families, three ex-wives who bore seven children, six of whom are still alive, doing all they can to torment me.
To my knowledge, I fathered all seven and buried one. I should say his mother buried him. I was out of the country. I'm estranged from all the wives and all the children. They're gathering here today because I'm dying and it's time to divide the money. And you hear that and you see a man that had everything that you could want in this life.
He had all. He had the hockey team. He had the thoroughbreds. He had the farm in Argentina. It's worth $11 billion. And at the end of his life, he's looking at everything that he's worked for in this life.
And he's showing how vain it is, how meaningless it is. Now, most of us are not going to own farms in Argentina. We ain't rolling like that. We're not going to own stuff like that. But I would argue that many of us have some financial goals, right?
Those financial goals involve building an amount of wealth so that one day you can have the security and the comfort, maybe the adoration that comes with that. There are reasons why we're building this wealth for our lives. And I want us to reckon with a picture like this this morning of someone who put all their hope in the riches of this life and realized it wasn't worth it. That we're in danger of falling into the same type of regret at the end of our lives if we spend it pursuing riches for riches' sake. So, we're going to look at Ecclesiastes and really sit in that picture of what it looks like to pursue riches and how vain that picture is.
And then I want to look at a better picture for us that paints a better life that does not worship the things of this world. So, let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would help us buy into the biblical vision, the biblical approach to money, that we might see you as better for our sake. I pray you'd help us as we're in the midst of listening to this and thinking through our budgets and all the things we're doing in this Give Project, that we would listen and receive the word and respond how you would desire. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Alright, so, we're going to look at two experts today. Two expert opinions. The first is Solomon's. So, Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. And Solomon, in this section, is talking about the vanity of riches. And if anyone, if there's any expert on riches to listen to, it is Solomon.
Solomon was one of the richest men, one of the richest people that ever lived. They have done some calculations up from looking at the scriptures and seeing what his net worth would be in today's dollars. And it's anywhere from one to two trillion dollars. Trillion. One to two, that's, the state GDP in South Carolina is around 230 billion dollars. Okay, so Solomon was worth upwards of ten times the state GDP.
That's bonkers. That's a lot of money. And he had about anything you could possibly want in this life. So, we should heed the wisdom of his expert opinion. Because he had all the riches. And he's going to explain to us why it is so empty and worthless to bank your life on this.
He's going to give two overarching reasons for this. And the first is that wealth never satisfies. Wealth never satisfies. We're going to pick it up in verse 10. He says, He who loves money will not be satisfied with money. Nor he who loves wealth with his income.
This also is vanity. He comes out and says, Wealth is never going to satisfy. It's never going to satisfy. You'll come back to it over and over again. And it's never going to quench your thirst. It's like being on the open ocean.
Thirsting. And believing that the ocean water is below you. If you just drink of it, it will satisfy you. And it never will. It will leave you longing. And coming back for more and more as it dries you out.
Wealth never satisfies. But we believe that a little more might. If I just had a little bit more. I feel this, y'all. When my wife and I, we first got married. We moved to Louisville, Kentucky so I could start seminary.
And I think our first year's tax return was like $20,000. That's not a joke. It was like $20,000. I remember in that period thinking, man, if we could just, if we just made like $23,000. If we just brought in like $23,000 or $24,000, something like that. I just, you know, we're paying our way through seminary.
We might be able to do this. If we just made a little bit more, we'd be okay. And then the next year, we did make more. And the next year, we did make more. And the next year, we did make more. And what happens is every year you make more, you think, if I just had a little bit more.
Just, not a lot, but just a little bit more, I'd be okay. And that's never how it works. Because wealth never satisfies. You can want more and more and more. It's a bottomless pit. You will never get enough of it.
Some of the most miserable people that you'll ever meet are people that have lots of money. They've got it all. Everything that you think you could possibly want in this life, they've got it. And they are not happy. Wealth never satisfies. And he goes on further and unpack how it doesn't satisfy.
In verse 11, he says, When goods increase, they increase who eat them. And what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? He says, you know how unsatisfying it is? The NLT says, the paraphrase says, the more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. There's one commentator that says that wealth attracts human leeches. Which I really appreciate the bluntness of that commentary.
And that's true. If you read biographies or watch biopics or documentaries of athletes or musicians who make it big, their stories are all the same. As soon as I got money, the people came out the woodworks. And they came to take because they had the object that everyone wants in this life. And they're coming for it. That's why in the NFL when they train rookies, they put rookies through these classes now.
Some of the classes they put NFL rookies through is you're going to have uncles and cousins and friends and that guy from high school that come out that want to start a business, that want to start a restaurant, that want to start a record label. You need to understand they're coming for what you've got. And we might think, well, I don't think I'm ever going to be on that level. That anyone's going to want what I have. But the principle still applies, right?
Because what happens is, is even the middle class life, is that you level up. You level up to a bigger house. And what happens when you level up to a bigger house? Things come in to leech the raise that you got to buy that house, right? You got a bigger power bill. You got to fill that house with more things.
You're now in a neighborhood where your neighbor is really, really particular about his yard. And your yard looks like a scrub, so you got to put money in that yard so you can compete with the neighbors. Like, that's life. You buy the car, and then you got to buy the things that come with it. The more expensive tires that come with that truck. They're things that continue to siphon off little by little to where you're finally saying again, oh, if I just had more, I'd be satisfied.
At the end of that verse, he just says, what's the advantage of when you finally get those things? You'll just look at them. Think about all the things that you accumulate every time that you so loved on Amazon, which is why you hit buy an hour. You're so saved up for it again. You end up just looking at it as it wastes space in your home. It doesn't satisfy.
He goes on to say in verse 12, sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. That's a poetic way of saying that you can go to bed with a full stomach, with a comfortable life, and still be wanting sleep that you cannot get. It doesn't bring the peace and the rest that you so desire. And some of us who are having trouble, you know, making sure that we're trying to pay our bills and save up for the things that we want to, we're like, we're losing sleep over what? Over money, over paying bills, over this, over that. And I think if I just had, if I just had a little more, I would not be so worried at night.
I'd just be able to go to sleep. It's all I'm going to sing. Wrong. No. I was once at a lunch with two businessmen who were worth eight figures plus. So these guys had ten plus million dollars.
And I listened to them both for about five minutes talk about losing sleep. I mean, they were like, yeah, I know, I've tried this, and I've tried this product, and I've done this, and the other one's like, yeah, no, I think I've tried that too. I want to try. They went back and forth for five minutes talking about how they're losing sleep. Why? Because the more you have, the more you have to worry about.
The more that you're going to lose sleep over. It does not satisfy. It does not bring the rest and the peace that you so desire. And Solomon continues to share the vanity of it. He says, verse 13, there is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. Riches were kept by their owner to his hurt.
Or as the paraphrase in the NLT says, hoarding riches harms the saver. But there's this, what happens in life is there are objects and there are things that we so want. The things that we say, what are the things you've been saving up for? The things you've been wanting. It's the first couple things that come to mind. And once you get them, you grab hold of them.
Those become the most glorious objects in your life. The most beautiful, wonderful things that you've desired. You lay hold to them with a death grip. Not releasing your hands before the Lord saying, do what you want with it. But you just so badly want those things.
And it's to our own demise. There are people that catch monkeys for a living, which has a job. And one of the ways they catch monkeys is they find tree holes and they put shiny objects in those tree holes because monkeys love shiny objects. They put a little apparatus outside the hole. So when the monkey sticks his hand into the tree and grabs the shiny object, tries to pull it out and it can't because his hand and the object are too big.
But monkeys won't let the shiny object go. They won't release it. They'll let their hand out. The same works on children. They see them drop a toy behind the couch. They sit there for like a minute.
Just like, I can't get it out. And it's like, well, you've got to let it go. But that's us. Like to our own demise. We'll grab hold and lay hold to the object. Because we work so hard for this.
Do you know how hard I work? How many hours I put in? How much I sacrifice to finally get this life? And we cling to it thinking that's what's going to satisfy. But it's actually to our own demise.
Wealth never satisfies. Solomon drills that home. It never satisfies. And then he shifts into another major reason that we should not put our hope in riches. Why it is so vain. And the second reason is you're going to lose it all anyways.
Not only does it not satisfy. You're going to lose it all. In verse 14 he gives the first way. And those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is the father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. A lot of people make money and then they lose it.
That's life. It happens over and over and over again. There are a lot of young men across the world who this year has been a very bad year. Because they lost everything in the crypto markets. I mean they went hard. They put all their savings, their story after story.
And those markets crashed and crumbled. And they lost everything. That's life. Real estate. Businesses. Bad investments.
It's fleeting. You're going to lose it. And if you don't lose it in a bad business deal, you're going to lose it when you die. And that's the second point on that. It says in verse 15, As he came from his mother's womb, he shall go again naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. So if you don't lose it in bad business deals, you will lose it when you die.
Naked you came into this world with nothing. And naked you will leave this world with nothing. The old adage about a U-Haul. You don't see a U-Haul behind a hearse. Right? It's played out.
You hear it a lot. But it's true. We live our lives like that's not true. We live our lives for the things that we can accumulate on this earth. You cannot take it with you. And we're in danger of being just like that man in John Grisham's The Testament.
Working so hard for everything in this life and realizing what was it for. It's vanity. And Solomon closes out the section. And this, also verse 16, is a grievous evil. Just as he came, so shall he go. And what gain is there to him who toils for the wind?
Like a person outside is just trying to grasp the wind. And it's like, what are you doing? It's like, I'm trying to, I'm toiling for the wind. I'm going to harness it. And I get it. And it's like, you look like a fool.
Trying to grasp what will never actually satisfy him. And what you cannot take with you. That's Solomon, our first expert, giving us advice. And we need to heed his advice, y'all. We need to heed his wisdom. I mean, listen.
We will find expert opinions everywhere else, right? You will find mom blogs and Instagram pages, things. Where people, like my wife's Instagram, she's just going through it sometimes. It's just like the next one. Here's the next way to change your life and do this. And here's the next thing.
You want to build this. Next thing you want to, it's just like, or bro podcast or bro YouTube pages. Or it's just, I mean, there's advice and advice and advice and expert opinions and expert opinions. And we'll go everywhere else to find expert opinions. But the scriptures, when Solomon, who lived the life of having everything, and it's telling us it's not worth it.
It's vanity. It is striving after the wind. And it will not ever satisfy. And you won't take it with you when you die. So, that's the first expert opinion. Then we get to the New Testament.
We get the second expert opinion for today. And it's Jesus. And he builds on that vanity argument to give us some really good news. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, verses 19 to 21, he says this. Jesus says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. So, very reminiscent of Ecclesiastes.
Don't spend your life building treasures that will fade, that will rust, that can be stolen. But then he inserts the good news. But, verse 20, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. That we would be a people that don't work and strive to build wealth and treasures in this life. But we would look into the next life, into eternity.
And we'd send all of our treasures there. That all of our life is spent aimed towards eternity. Saying, that's what we're living for. I'm going to store up treasures and riches there. I'm sending it all forward. That's what Jesus is trying to paint for us.
Don't live looking down in this life. Look forward to the next and live your entire life in light of that. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. Those treasures do not fade. They do not rust. They are timeless.
They are kept for you, guarded. They will not be stolen. And then he ends with, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. That if your treasure is there. If your heart is, if your treasure is there, your heart will live in light of eternity. Because that's where your heart is.
It's not in the things of this world. It is with Christ in eternity. So the way that you live your life in light of that looks different. Noticeably different. There are two different lives. There is a life that thinks that the here and now and the material that we have in front of us is it.
So you buy an American dream. You get stacks and stacks. You build it up. You maximize to live your best life out of this. And then there's a different life that lives with the light of eternity. It looks radically different.
It seeks to grow in generosity and obedience to God and what he calls us to. Those are two different lives. Now, if you've been here a few years, that doesn't sound unfamiliar. We say some version of that every year at Give. Some of you have been here one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight years. Which means you've sat through one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different Give series.
Matthew 6 has shown up probably every other year. And some... None of this is new. We hear this over and over and over again. But there is a difference between hearing this and doing this.
James 1 will be hearers of the word, but doers of the word. And I feel this, y'all. I feel this as we prep every year to preach these sermons. That I just... I just... Okay, yep, we're doing Give.
Which means I've got to reorient my soul. Okay, I've got to look at my budget. Ugh. What can I do? Can I do just enough to get the Holy Spirit off my back? It's one of the things that Chet was hitting on last week.
Is that we... We hear this... But if it doesn't radically actually change our lives... If you've been through one, two, three, four, five, six different Give series. If you've heard sermon after sermon... That talks about the approach to money.
And your life has not grown in generosity. Your life has not changed. That's a problem. It's possible you're hearing this and you're not actually believing this. That it might live that out. But I feel this, y'all.
I feel this in the prep. Every year we do give... There's a part of me that's like, I don't want... I've got to do the tough soul work of looking in... And figuring out how I've got to repent. How I've got to grow in this.
And I also personally... I know the American church is known for talking a lot about money. So I don't want to fall. And it's like, no. Jesus cares immensely about this. It is so unbelievably important because our hearts are so tied to this.
And so captured by riches. That we need to actually release our hands before Him and say, what do you want to do with this? Because those are two different lives. Randy Alcorn in his book, The Treasure Principle, talks about how he visited two graves in Egypt. He went to King Tut's tomb. To that display.
And then pharaohs back then, they were buried with all of their riches. So they buried them underneath the ground and stored the riches with them. And there must be some part of Egyptian belief that you could take those with you into the afterlife. But King Tut's tomb has all his riches. And you can see the faded riches that over time that he had. But then he also visited a different grave.
He went to the grave of a man named William Borden. William Borden was the heir to a large family fortune and family business in the Midwest in the early 1900s. So he was set to be able to take over millions and millions of dollars. And he heard the gospel and he believed. And he said, no. Much to his family's dismay, he said, no.
I'm actually, I want to go on the mission field. Specifically, he wanted to go and reach Uyghur Muslims in China. Which if you've followed international news the last few years, you've heard a lot about the Uyghur Muslims because they're some of the most oppressed people in China at the moment. But 100 years ago, he said, I want to reach those people. I want to reach the Uyghur Muslims. And much to his family's dismay, he left that family fortune and business behind.
And he moved to Cairo, Egypt to learn Arabic so that he could take the gospel to China. And after a few months of learning Arabic, he contracted cerebral meningitis. And he died at the young age of 25. And he left. He didn't have his whole family's fortune, but he had $800,000, which is still a lot of money back then in today's dollars. And he left that all to Chinese missions.
And when you look at that life, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It doesn't make a lot of sense unless you know who he did it for. And that's why one of the things that's written on his tomb is this. Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation of such a life. What a powerful message to Mark your life. That apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for that type of life.
It doesn't make sense at all that you would leave the comforts of an American family fortune. All the comforts and things that went with that. To go to another country and die at 25. It doesn't make any sense. It's inexplicable. Unless you know who he did it for.
Unless you know his Savior. Unless you know Christ. Because with Christ, that absolutely makes sense. That's the most reasonable thing you could do. If you understand the gospel and what Jesus sets us apart for. And you understand this message that he teaches in Matthew 6.
And the message that Paul in Philippians 4 teaches. Paul in Philippians 4 is at the end of his letter in Philippians is raising support. He's raising support for the mission. And this is what he says in 417. He says, Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. Not that I seek the gift.
That's not the main point. I want to seek the fruit that is credited, as the NIV says, to your account. And when you put that up aside, Matthew 6. This idea of storing up treasures in heaven. And storing them to a future credit. When you understand those side by side.
It absolutely makes sense. With Christ, that's 100% understandable. We are called to live our lives with a future mindset. To believe that there are riches that we can store up for us in eternity. And I know when I say that, that some of us are like, oh man, I don't. Aren't we supposed to just want Christ?
Like, isn't it just enough that we want Christ in eternity? That we should live in light of that? And Jesus says no, actually. Which pushes back on something that for me is hard. No. There's a reason why he says, Store up for yourselves.
Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. There's a reason why Paul says, To store up these things to be credited to your account. There is this mysterious future reward. We don't really know what that is. We don't. We know what it's not.
That these extra riches in heaven, It's not the vain riches of this life. It's not gold. It's not jewels. It's not material things like that. The new heavens and the new earth, The picture that you get in the book of Revelation, The streets lined with gold. It's not that.
So I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's extra face time with Jesus or what. I don't know what that is. But that's held out in front of us. And it's certainly seen as unbelievably good. Jesus calls it treasure.
Whatever that is with Christ that we gain with Him, It is wonderful. And it comes to first believing the gospel through faith. Believing that Jesus died for our sins and our rebellion. And that He rose to new life. And gained us a new life in Him. And that it is every step of the way believing what Jesus says.
It is trusting Him at His word. When He says, Live your life in light of eternity. And store up riches there. It's believing that. And actually doing that. And it is the reason why, In this gift series, It's the reason why we're doing a gift project that we're doing.
It's the reason why we're getting behind Jamie Kerm. One of our church members who decided to leave the comforts of America. To go to Lebanon. A country that is falling apart right now. That has the highest inflation rate in the world. And is falling apart.
To go and take the gospel to the Kurdish people. To be a help. And to be a missionary. To learn the language. There's a, Y'all, She, One of the things, We talk about once a week. And it was just, About a month or so ago, She was talking about, How she, She left, When you're over there, You leave, Because you don't have long term permanent residency there.
So you gotta leave. She went to Cyprus, Which is an island nation right next to it. Went to Cyprus for a couple days. She'll have to do that in the future. To keep her visa renewed and what not. She went there.
And we talked about it. She's like, It just was wonderful. To go to Cyprus and to like, Take a hot shower. And to like, Have electricity that doesn't turn off in the middle of the night. And to not feel like I'm on edge all the time. Because Lebanon and Beirut right now, It's really intense.
And it's, It's not the safest. And, She was just good for a couple days, Just not experienced that. And she's saying, I want to go back to that. I want to be there. I want to help the church. I want to help make disciples.
I want to help disciple women. I want that. That's unexplainable without Christ. Now, She's believing in something that's more eternal, That's more valuable, That's more valuable than anything this world has to offer. And we're saying, Yes, Amen. And we're going to get behind that.
And as Chet opened up this morning, She got to raise about $2,500 a month to stay on the field. She's at $100 now. So we get to come behind that, And partner with her for something that is bigger than ourselves. Because this life, And the things in this life, And the things that you would give up in your budget, To get behind something like that, It's not worth it. It's two different pictures of what your deathbed could look like. You'd be on your deathbed, Thinking about all the things that you've worked so hard for.
The life that you put blood, sweat, and tears into, That you're getting ready to leave behind. Or, You could be on your deathbed, A few breaths away, Giddy, Excited. Because everything that you've worked for, Is just a few breaths away. Those are two different lives. And I so badly, As a Christian, I want to press into that second life. And I so badly for our church, Want us to press into that second life.
Because that life is truly better.