Living a Good Life Designed for God, Part 1

Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. In his book, Living Life Backward, David Gibson says that keeping the end in view can change us from people who want to control life for gain into people who find deep joy in receiving life as a gift.

We were designed for God. If we try to find our identity and satisfaction in God's stuff instead of in God himself, we will always be left unsatisfied. Thank you for joining us in this series on Ecclesiastes titled Living a Good Life, Making Sense of the Journey. This message unpacks chapter 1, verses 12 through 18.

Let's listen in. So the message today is actually the conclusion of last Sunday's message. The title of this series, as we go through Ecclesiastes, is Live a Good Life, Making Sense of the Journey. Now, how do you make sense of the journey? You cannot make sense of the journey unless you know the destination.

Many, many people today do not even believe that there is a destination, or if they somehow in the back of their minds believe that there is a destination, they choose not to think about it. But there is one certainty that is coming for each of us. There is one certainty that is coming, and that is our death. Are we prepared for that? I was this last Wednesday at a funeral up in Virginia for a young woman, 38 years old, died instantly of a massive heart attack.

She left three children, two 10-year-olds, and a two-year-old, and her husband. Is there a destination? Can we make sense of the journey? Are we prepared for this inevitable event in every one of our lives? The pastor at that funeral, the pastor that I used to work for back in the 90s, I was an associate pastor of his, he says, you know, we all know that we're going to die, we just don't believe it's going to happen in our lifetime. And that's the kind of bubble, that's the kind of pretend reality that we live in, isn't it? And this is what Ecclesiastes, Solomon, is challenging this thinking.

Come out of your dream bubble and recognize that this life is short, it is fleeting, it is vaporous. You're not going to find your meaning and your purpose in the stuff of this earth. Which is why he says at the beginning of the chapter, the vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? So the word vanity is directly connected to the idea of being under the sun. You can't find meaning in stuff, the stuff under the sun. That phrase under the sun is a very key phrase.

Now, I want to make a correction here because if we proceed through all of Ecclesiastes, believing that the word vanity simply means meaninglessness, that is not accurate. It's not accurate at all, as we're going to see that point out today. The key phrase here is under the sun. If there is under the sun, then the inference there is that there is something beyond the sun. And here's the truth of the matter. Because Solomon writes all of this from a perspective of simply under the sun. And what he's saying is if that's where your perspective stays, then you're not going to find meaning.

Here's what becomes true from that. You and I were designed and intended for God. All things were created by him and for him. It is God's desire that we love him. You and I were designed, the purpose of our design and our function is to know God and enjoy him.

And if you or I, if we are looking for identity and satisfaction in his stuff under the sun, then that will leave you unsatisfied. That is what Solomon says is called striving after the wind. You can't capture the wind.

You can't catch it. But we would strive after the wind. It says in verse 14, it says it again in verse 17, striving after the wind. So, if you're looking for your identity and satisfaction in his stuff, and all of it is a gift from God, all of it is a trust from God. If you're looking for your identity and satisfaction in his stuff that is under the sun, you will be left unsatisfied.

Get this, okay? You cannot replace God with his stuff. And that's what we tend to do. Because in view, in our view and in our proximity and in our experience, in our sensory experience is all his stuff, right? But you cannot replace God with his stuff because you are not made for his stuff, you are made for him.

You are made for him. This is the perspective that Solomon is giving us. So, let's understand what he speaks of when he uses the word vanity. But he also says, look at verse 17 with me, and I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. Madness and folly. Why is he doing wisdom and madness and folly? That madness and folly is that pursuit of stuff under the sun to find in it your meaning and your satisfaction. When he speaks of madness and folly, he's speaking of irrational behavior.

It is the antonym of wisdom. And what that is, is just simply following only feeling and impulse. That's living at the level of an animal. That's what an animal does. Living only at the level of feeling and impulse.

That's all they can do. And so, a fool to act with folly is to think or act without thought. You can do that. You can think without thought of impact or consequence. And we do that all the time. When we're going to engage in some impulsive act and we look to justify ourselves in doing that, and we've become masters at justifying whatever we want to do.

That's madness and folly. Because we are in pursuit of some sort of pleasure. We want the novelty, and yet at the same time, we want the permanence.

So when Solomon says this in verse 17, I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly, he's talking about the whole scope of experience. The whole scope of pursuit of pleasure, pursuit for satisfaction. I'm not going to leave any stone unturned. I'm going to cover the whole gamut. I want to experience everything there is to experience, even irrational behavior.

See if I can find satisfaction in that. The opposite then of wisdom of madness and folly, the opposite of that is wisdom. Now, even in that word, we need to understand that there are at least two kinds of wisdom. There is wisdom that is under the sun. There is wisdom that is from beyond the sun. And so as he talks about wisdom here, those who practice wisdom and those who practice irrational madness and folly, they all end up where? In the grave.

Everyone dies. So the two kinds of wisdom, look at this from 1 Corinthians 1. This is the apostle Paul speaking. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.

It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. He's making a contrast here between two kinds of wisdom. There is the wisdom of this world, the wisdom of this world, and that is just simply man's reason alone.

That is under the sun. When we count on, when we bank on man's wisdom alone, it is the belief that there is no information outside of what he can discover on his own. Many in the world hold to this view.

There is no information outside of what man can discover on his own. In other words, truth comes from within. Materialistic scientism teaches that only that which can be scientifically discovered is true. Here's the problem with that statement. It's self-defeating.

You know why? Because that statement was not discovered scientifically. But man's wisdom will insist that the only thing that is true is that which I can empirically experience or observe. That's the wisdom of this world.

And the idea of God is not even a possible answer, so we will not consider anything that points in that direction. The wisdom of this world. But in contrast to that is the wisdom of God.

The wisdom of God. And that means that there is revelation that God has disclosed himself. It's his self-disclosure.

He is from beyond the sun. In other words, revelation means to communicate that which man could otherwise not know. There is information. There is truth. In other words, meaning and purpose.

Origin, meaning, purpose. All of that you cannot determine. We cannot determine that simply through our temporal material experience.

We cannot. It would be tantamount to you walking into the kitchen of a home you've never been into before and there sits a chocolate cake on the table. You can observe. You can break it apart.

You can tell everything that is in that cake. You can scientifically break it apart and observe it. You can understand what puts it together.

But you cannot determine who made it or why. That requires revelation. And that's the difference between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God.

Because the wisdom of God comes through revelation. God has spoken. He has spoken.

He has spoken in word and he has spoken in person. We're so glad you've joined us for Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. You can hear this message and others anytime by visiting our website, www.delightingrace.com. You can also check out Pastor Rich's book, 7 Words That Can Change Your Life, where he unpacks from God's Word the very purpose for which you were designed. 7 Words That Can Change Your Life is available wherever books are sold. As always, tune in to Delight in Grace, weekdays at 10 a.m.