God Who Gives Pleasure

My heart had a great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

Notice the me and the mind, the I, lacking a fear of the Lord, continues,

and I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.

Two different things, wisdom and folly.

I perceive that this also is but striving after the wind.

We have to keep remembering this is a post-Genesis 3 wisdom here. after the fall, after we refused to obey God, after we brought death with our sin as God said it would happen, after we introduced the curse and God rightfully gave us consequences for rebelling against him, now we're trying to wrestle with what is the best life in this Genesis 3 world. And at some level, I think what he's getting at is we can try our hardest to reverse everything we brought about with our sin and try to get back to Genesis 2. He can't. It's all vanity, striving after the wind. He's missing a key element, the fear of the Lord. There's a wisdom, but we understand, verse 18, it's a proverb, and remember his last summary ended with a proverb. There's a parallelism. He's saying the same thing twice in a different way.

For in much wisdom is much vexation. And he increases knowledge, increases sorrow.

I thought about being cute. Sometimes I think about trying to be cute in sermons. I thought, what if I found a music, a song title for each one? And this one, of course, is gonna be, We Don't Need No Education. Right there, that kind of a, we just need to love ignorance. You know, ignorance is a word of bliss. That's not true. There's a truth here. The more we understand of this world, And the closed system we can experience here that you begin life and life ends, and it's full of trouble and difficulty, the more vexing it is, the more sorrow there is. We can even think about the world today versus the world when I was a child. It's incredible that the news in the evening would show you things are happening in the world, but you didn't have to see it all the time. But I mean, everybody has everything happening in the world on a device in your pocket right now. And is that comforting at all? What you see and hear constantly, there's a way in which more knowledge and more understanding of what's going on, it is more vexing. It does bring great sorrow because it's amazing to know of the evils constantly around us. One of the ways we're gonna have to interpret what's going on here is I believe Scripture is inerrant and good, and every word is profitable, but sometimes we can look at David. And David, when he shows steadfast love to Mephibosheth, David is a little drop of steadfast love in that moment, to be fulfilled by the overflowing cup of Christ in his steadfast love. Does that make sense? Like a little foreshadow of what it looks like. And then David can be the knucklehead. who uses authority to murder, commit adultery. And that's where we see a juxtaposition, a contrast, because Jesus has even greater authority and only uses it for what's good. I believe what we're gonna be doing here with this section of Ecclesiastes, and throughout Ecclesiastes, we're gonna be putting what Ecclesiastes says, and we're gonna wrestle with how it is true, but not all the truth, and not fully true, and then we're gonna look at what Jesus says. Because reality is, we can't get back to the garden. Can't. We lost it. And really, we keep moving further and further away from the garden. If you're reading Genesis 1-11, that is what's happening. The Tower of the Babel is the height, I'm being cute again, get the funny thing there, huh? Not funny, great. Genesis 3-11 is our rebellion. And the Tower of the Babel is the end result of our rebellion against God. No, this morning, we're gonna hear his wisdom and then we're gonna say, please, Lord, give us a better voice. And I hope we're ready to hear it. Second point, reward for pleasure. The reward for pleasure. And again, what happens here, he says, this is what I did with my wisdom and I found this was unsatisfying and then I saw this was so depressing and then it gets worse and it gets worse and then it's gonna get nothing better. The way begins,

I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself. And behold, this also was vanity.

Pretty important opening line there. He's talking to himself. You can kind of picture him looking in the mirror, engaging. We do realize that we are the most important conversation partner we have. the kinds of things we will say to ourselves or let play on the record player internal of the things that people will say and will repeat. It's very important as we contemplate and think with ourselves. He says, enjoy yourself. I'm gonna test this wisdom with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. Take a deep dive into what we would call hedonism. Whatever your pleasure is, whatever your desire is, you should go pursue it and see what pleasure does. Now, this is close to the rule of our age. The rule of our age is you should always listen to your desire and you should forsake all duty. Our culture despises duty. but tells you everything about you is really your desires. And I want us to make sure we're not reading what we're doing in our culture back because he hasn't gone quite so far wrong as we have because we actually want to identify ourselves with our desires. He's just saying he wants to find pleasure in them. We've gone beyond what he's talking about, but we need to have a little constraint there. He pursued pleasure. He said, enjoy yourself. And he goes ahead, and this is helpful. He tells us from the beginning. But behold, capture attention, it's vanity. It's empty, it's fleeting, it's soap bubbles. Now he's gonna explain how he got there.

I said of laughter, it is mad.

All right, Proverbs says sometimes laughter is mad. It really depends on what you're laughing at and why and what the situation is. Instead of pleasure, what use is it? That kind of sounds jaded in a way that isn't probably looking at pleasure the right way. Verse three, notice

I search with my heart how to cheer my body with wine, and how to lay hold of folly, my heart still guiding me with wisdom.

You see here, he's gonna start giving himself over to the things that are enjoyable. All pleasing according to God's design at some level, but the way we pursue pleasure outside of God's will is always gonna be vanity. Here, the first thing he starts with is wine. Well, the self-medicating kind of coping we do. The easy one, the first step. Now, I wanna pause here, and I really wanna wrestle. In verse three, I think we get an important insight. my heart still guiding me with wisdom on how to lay hold of folly. Proverbs always puts those things together. Here, our preachers put them on top of each other. It already gives us the notion that something's wrong here. Something's amiss. Godly wisdom doesn't pursue folly. Godly wisdom stays away from folly. But here, whatever wisdom he has, He's saying he's guided with this wisdom to truly know the meaning of life here under the sun, and he did it laying hold of falling. Now, last week I mentioned I'm a little surprised by how many people have told me Ecclesiastes is their favorite book. I warned you that if Ecclesiastes doesn't have the primary fruit, if the reason you love it and you read it is that it doesn't promote fear of God, then you're probably not reading it right. Well, this is why I think too many people actually like the book. They think it legitimizes their pretending that somehow they're wisely pursuing folly. I fear, we like the nuances of Ecclesiastes, that makes you think somehow I'm gonna wisely be in folly. It's impossible to wisely, in God's wisdom, pursue folly. They're two opposite directions. If we're gonna listen to this preacher, we're going to fear God, we're going to not want to follow his example, we're going to want to deny ourselves, carry a cross, and follow Jesus. Notice what he says next. Verse four,

I made great works.

And the whole next section is him explaining all the things he did and got. Our day and age, this is kind of Magnolia-like, right? He built great things. Everybody wanted to come see. He's a homesteader on a TV channel. He's not denying himself anything. He's getting everything he can, and even there's a grossness to it, because in verse 8,

I gather for myself silver and gold and treasure, the kings of provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines.

And that word concubine isn't the normal word for concubine. It clearly states he's using women only for their physical bodies for physical pleasure. It's ungodly, folly. There's no godly wisdom here in that pursuit. Remember, Ecclesiastes is helpful as we think about the post-Genesis three world. God created this world good. He created a garden, breathed life into us, placed us in that garden, gave us a work to do, gave us one thing not to do. gave us dignity, value, purpose. And then we decided to eat of the one tree he said not to. I wonder if verse five, that he was able to build gardens with trees full of fruit is a little indication where he's trying to get back to Genesis two, maybe. It's important for us as we look to verse nine,

I became great. and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem.

My wisdom remained with me,

he says. This guy, he's got more wisdom than most wisdom, the best wisdom. And here, he says the wisdom he has, it remained with him. He built great stuff, and whatever my eyes, verse 10,

whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them.

That's most certainly an allusion back to Genesis 3, isn't it? When Satan tempted it, your eyes will be open, he said. She saw the fruit, and it looked good. She didn't resist. She did not keep anything from her eyes that she decided was good, even when God said it wasn't good. This man, he enjoyed himself. He tested himself and his wisdom with pleasure. God has given us this good world and it is meant to be enjoyed in his way. Verse 10, continuing after that.

I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.

For a moment here, it's like, all right, he's gonna get us up out of this downward spiral he's put us in from last week. Right, one of the questions was, what does man gain by all his toil? Well, he just told us, pleasure. Well, that sounds good. Right, we almost, it's kind of a little bit of a foil. I feel like he's tricking us. We almost come to a good solution. I found pleasure. With my toil, I received reward. And then verse 11.

Then I considered all my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after the wind, and there was nothing to be gained of the sum.

Why's he always gotta be so discouraging? We almost came up out of the downward spiral we've been in, and here we go. The preacher. He worked hard. He did not deny himself. He had the power to pursue all the things he wanted to pursue. He was living life. And as a result, was even the pleasure he found was vanity. It was fleeting, it was empty. This is where we've got to wrestle it. Who are we and how did God design us? There's a significant truth that's hard to embrace. We're designed to rule over this earth. We're not designed to be ultimately satisfied by this earth. That's a very important distinction. Being made in God's image, we're not designed to be ultimately satisfied in this earth, in this world. You were built, designed, to be satisfied in God alone. Now, let's wrestle with this, because we're thinking about what is ultimate pleasure, what is ultimate enjoyment. What if God designed you to only be satisfied in Him? What if God decided that the only way you could be truly happy with no vanity, to be truly satisfied with what was knowing Him and obeying Him, would that be wrong of God? Would you think, why would God make it all about him? Would that be surprising? And the rest of that, let's just think about who God is. God is the greatest being. God, that's what the word means. He's holy, holy, holy. He's glory. He is his own glory. If we think anything is glorious, it's only because it reflects something of His goodness and power and greatness. Things that are glorious only reflect the glory that is God. He's great. He's the best. He's God. Instead of thinking, why would God only make it where I could be satisfied in Him, what if we actually ask the question, wow, why would God? Allow me to know him like that. How is it I could know the greatest being, my creator, the perfect one like that? The clear truth, he made us for himself. To know him and be known by him, to love him, our hearts will be restless until we find rest in him. And He created us that way in Genesis 2, and we rebelled against Him in Genesis 3, and He's been at work to restore what we refused since then. To be clear, what other great purpose would God design for you other than to know Him? What a high calling. I fear that if we always got what we wanted, We reject the truth that God created us in His image to be loved by Him, to know Him, to have dignity. Really, to be honest, about the way we actually treat ourselves and the way we would want to make ourselves in some image, it'd be that of the dung beetle. The treasure you have, you live in it, you eat it, you love it. Your whole life's built around that. And it's worthless. It's empty, fleeting. And if we're honest with ourselves, it's pretty gross. God made you for himself. Here today, listen today, God made you to know him and be known by him. He is making himself known today with great clarity. Jesus Christ came as God in the flesh to die for our sins, to forgive us so we could go back in the garden, to go back into his presence. He rose again to give us new life. He's not the right hand of the Father, and you can know God by believing in Jesus, and only by believing in Jesus. Christian, God invites you on a holiday. It's time to put down the mud pie. It's time to quit trying to fasten ourselves to the pleasures we think we can gain in this world and to truly hear God and the invitation he has for us, what pleasure is supposed to be. So he's acquired great wisdom. He's pursued pleasure in this life of great wisdom. He was rewarded with it, and then he declares it is vanity striving after the win. And so we go to the next stage, the next stanza. Death for us all.

So I turn to consider wisdom and madness and folly.

Again, wisdom and madness and folly are two different things. He lumps them together at some level, but they're two different things.

For what can the man do comes after the king, only what has already been done.

And there's a way in which he's getting back to what he said, I've surpassed everybody in wisdom. He's saying that he, the king, has all wisdom. There's nothing better that can be said than what he said. At this point in time, maybe. But let me just hold out some hope for you. Oh, a king is gonna come after this preacher, who's the power and wisdom of God, who's going to say something much better. Stay with me, and Lord willing, we'll hear him. 13,

then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly.

That's good, right? That's good, that's right.

As there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness, and yet I perceive the same event happens to all of them.

Now, he's contrasting wisdom and darkness, because with the wise person, his eyes are in his head, and the picture there is, we can actually have citizen proverbs in a few places, that if you're walking around in the blindness of folly, you're like walking around in a room full of sharp objects. You're just trying to grasp, and you're cutting yourself, trying to figure out where you are, and who you are, and what you're supposed to do. So he's saying at least a wise person is able to see and avoid danger. And then that end declaration.

And yet still, I perceived the same event happens to them all. I said in my heart, what happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart, this also is vanity. For the wise, as of the fool, there is no remembrance. There is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come, all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dives just like the fool. So I hated life.

Death is a great equalizer. You can live the wisest here life, and you're going to die. You can live the most foolish life, and you're going to die. What our preacher sees is merely what's under the sun, and he's not seeing it all yet, and we'll get there, but there's life, there's pleasure, and even if you live the wise life, it ends. It's vanity, it's fleeting. Those declarations, how the wise dies just like the fool, so I hated life. That stands out. Actually, the time to see if I could find if anyone had made a coffee mug with this verse on it. Didn't find it, so I made one. Haven't ordered it yet. Haven't decided how many I should order. If you're interested, talk to me after. $20 are three easy payments of however that divides. No one's life verse, right? So, I hated life. I decided, all right, I'll just Google that phrase and see what comes up. And very quickly, an article came up from opradaily.com. The title of the article is this.

What to do if you hate your life according to the experts.

Okay, so we're gonna hear from the experts on what to do if you hate life. It's a clear message. It's full of action. Improve your life, feel better. If you're unhappy at work, find a new job. Difficult in a relationship, avoid toxic people. You might need more sleep. You should step back and get perspective on things from time to time to make sure you're not missing something that's making you unhappy. Change your speech. Avoid negative talk when you're talking to yourself. Don't compare yourself to others. Explore your passions, practice gratitude. Develop a plan and execute it. Now, I have no idea who these experts are, but I'm pretty sure this is the same helpful advice you could find in any salon or barbershop. Maybe that's the experts. I share this with you to see Solomon, the preacher here, he's giving us some helpful advice for this world, but it has significant limitations. It's true, but not all true. It's Oprah-esque-like wisdom. The hard part is when we come to this most hard reality, facing death, there's no amount of self-help that's gonna help you. There's no self-help for death. You can learn how to live a wiser, better life. There's ways in which you can constantly be improving yourself. But none of that's gonna help you with death. Let's take the advice of the experts. Let's step back for a second and ponder something. Our culture has a really weird relationship with death. At one level, we entertain ourselves with death. We become completely desensitized to it because we see people dying all the time in different media or entertainment. And then on the flip side, we avoid anything that really points to death, like a long, good funeral that allows us to grieve. or walking past or through a graveyard. We're talking about building plans. This isn't a building plan, but man, I grew up in a church where there was a graveyard that you had to walk past to get to the front door of the church. I would not be dissatisfied if there was a graveyard out here, because what's better? To have to think about the grass withers, the flower fades, just like us, we're gonna die as we're coming in to hear about Jesus who rose again to life. We have to think about death in order to appreciate the life. There's no plan of action for death. There's no more sleep that's gonna avoid death. There's no chicken soup for your soul when you think about death. Now, I want to be clear, he has a right but limited view of death. In what he's saying, it appears that he only stands, you live and you will die, and that's the end. And so we hated life. God created us to live. He breathed his own life into us. As we ponder this, We shouldn't hate life. One of the college students asked at the lunch, how do you know when to agree or disagree with the preacher in Ecclesiastes? Oh man, what a great question. We're gonna keep wrestling with that, but here it's pretty obvious. A Christian who understands God breathed his life into you. God made promises to renew you, to give you eternal life, to give you his own life. You can't hate life. You can hate death. You can hate sin that causes death. You gotta be thankful for life. The thing about Genesis 1 through 3, death is not the way it's supposed to be. Now we do all face death because of our sin, and this is what the preacher doesn't quite get yet, that death actually isn't the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is we're gonna face a judge. The author of Ecclesiastes, in Ecclesiastes 12, 13, 14, he tells us this.

The end of the matter, fear God, keep his commandments. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

There will be a judgment. We all will die. Death is a cruel master and death demands our death. There's no solution here that we can bring. There is a solution. The solution to the problem of death is a death. It's Christ. The God of life who came down to become like us. to die in our place, to give his life for ours as a substitute, a grand declaration we should all memorize. Death is defeated in the death of Christ. He came to suffer what we deserve, so we now know there's hope of eternal life. The preacher of Ecclesiastes gives us a hard reality. The Son of God has come down to save us from that hard reality. He came to die so we no longer fear death. He came to forgive us so that death no longer has sting. Our first point, as we continue to go through the procession, the regression maybe, toil for another. I got wisdom, I pursued pleasure, we're all gonna die. Verse 18.

I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me.

Drop down to verse 21.

Everything I've done will be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it.

All right, he toiled for all the things to enjoy. That was the first section, or the second section, chapter two, verses one through 11. He toiled, and he got the reward, and that was empty, and then he realized he's gonna die, and now he brings it all together. I toiled, I'm dying, and somebody else gets my toys. This is hard. He keeps taking us down this downward spiral of reality. Even when you toil, the reward isn't worth it, and what you toil for, that's gonna go to somebody else who's not gonna appreciate it. Tolstoy had a short story called, How Much Land Does a Man Need? A man named Pahom, he was tempted by, the author tells us, the devil, and he's told, you can have as much as land as you can walk around. And so he woke up early that morning and he marched. And the whole rule is, if you leave from this point, the land you walk around is yours, but only if you come back to the point. So he kept walking and walking, and you can imagine, right? You feel, I don't wanna turn back too soon. I don't wanna lose money on this deal, right? I don't wanna miss out on some land. So he kept pushing himself and pushing himself, and he gets to the point where he realizes, oh no, I gotta get back to that point. And so he starts racing back. He runs back, and he gets back right in time. And he falls dead. And his servant digs his grave, six feet. That's how much land a man needs. And then a servant got the land. That's wisdom for us. How much we're toiling for something we're not going to take with us. You can get this wisdom from the Nature Channel. The squirrel gathers all those nuts, and then some bear comes and eats it right before winter, and the squirrel's going to die. This is what we know happens. It's all vanity. It should make us ask, what are we laboring for? What am I striving to hold on to and to gain that I cannot take with me? In Luke 12, Jesus is teaching and a guy comes up and just decides to interrupt him and says, I need you to decide between my brother and I's inheritance. It's kind of a weird thing to interrupt Jesus for, but all right. Jesus tells the parable, there's another man, he had great crops, and he said, I need bigger barns. So he built bigger barns. And he said, oh, look, all my barns are filled. I can just sit down. I can eat, drink, relax, and be merry. And Jesus said, God said of him that night, fool, I require your soul tonight. When you hear that warning, how dangerous it is to pretend We're storing up some kind of treasure in heaven. Some kind of treasure on earth. To pretend we can get to this place where we can finally eat, drink, and relax, and be merry. And the greater warning is, Jesus says, he wasn't rich towards God. The exhortation this morning, Christian, be rich towards God. Jesus explains it further in Luke 12. Go and read that today. Jesus' words are the only balm here for this. I pursued pleasure, it was vanity. I'm gonna die, it's all vanity. I hate life. And when I die, I can't take anything I tore for with me. This is despair. This is why what Jesus tells us is so much better. You can pursue and gain treasure that cannot be lost. It's heavenly treasure. It's done with our good deeds. We're saved by faith alone, but we're called to good works. There's heavenly treasure where we can store up with our obedience that comes from trust. We can be rich in God for his glory and his treasure that the moth cannot destroy and rust doesn't hinder. I know there's a silly saying, You want to be careful not to be so heavily minded that you're no earthly good. Still haven't met that person. Have no idea what they're talking about. But I do know too many Christians who are so earthly minded they're not producing heavenly good. It's an investment strategy. You can labor for all the pleasure and experience and desires of this world and it will be vanity and you cannot take it with you. What Jesus invites you to is a different investment strategy. You can obey Him, love Him, know Him, do His will, and it is a treasure that lasts forever. Christ offers a better way that's liberating. Final section, and nothing better. Verse 24,

there is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also I saw is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment. For to the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God.

Now, this is helpful. Our preacher, the king, he's telling us what he has concluded is the best thing for you. There's nothing better. We can appreciate this. We're concluding there's nothing better than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in your toil. And again, he's already said he's done that. He's already declared it's vanity. And I do have to point out, and I don't like to do this, because I always want you to trust your English translation, but that word joy in verse 26 is the same Hebrew word for pleasure in verse one. Translators, get your interpretation out of my Bible, is what I want to say. But there is two different concepts there where I'm going to pursue my pleasure, if that's the same word, and understand God's joy. But the same word. The one who pleases God, God gives him from his hand. We're gonna see this a little bit later. In chapter six, he says, God is the one who gives all the things we would want to enjoy, food and drink. And then he even says, God himself gives you the ability to enjoy it. Now, that's a challenging concept. You can have all the riches and treasures of this world, and you might not actually be given by God the opportunity to enjoy it, or the ability to enjoy it. There's nothing better. Is that good news this morning? That's as good as our preacher has for us at this point. You can pursue pleasure, you're gonna die, can't take anything with you, so there's nothing better. And I appreciate there's a move upward a little bit. We even have a reference to God. He recognizes it's all from the hand of God. This is good, but it's end result.

This also is vanity, striving after the win.

The best he can come up with, the best, there's nothing better he has, he's even gonna say, is vanity, and I concur. The preacher says, be just a good steward, be grateful, eat, drink, enjoy. There is a good way in which we think about that. Well, this morning we're gonna go back to a text we looked at last week from 1 Corinthians 15. Paul tells us something different. Paul reasons, if Jesus is not risen, let us eat and drink and be merry for the more we die. Seems like Paul agrees with the half-truth the preacher of Ecclesiastes has given us. If we're thinking this side of the sun, this earthly, eat, drink, be merry, for the more you die. It's vanity and it's fleeting, but it's all you got. But if Jesus rose from the dead, that's not all you have. If Jesus is resurrected and ascended to the right hand of the Father, That's not all you have. This is why we remind each other every Lord's Day, every Sunday, that he's risen. He's risen. We can repeat it, but we gotta believe it and cling to it. Or else you're gonna fall into a trap of living as if he's not. He came to rise. so that you can be a new creation. You can be a new man. You can put on a new self. You can have a new life. You can have better than just eating, drinking, and being married. You can overcome sin. You can be born again. You have new life, new desires, new expectations. You can't go back to the garden and try to figure it all out. We've gone away too far. We can't destroy death. We can't cure our own twisted hearts. This is why we must believe Jesus rose again. Let's keep reasoning, because Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says, if Christ is risen, then all you have is to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. But he says this in 1 Corinthians 10, chapter 10, verse 31.

Whether you eat, or drink, whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.

I wanted to share that if anyone was feeling really guilty about all those donuts earlier. Because he could conclude from that first passage in 1 Corinthians 15 that, well, since Jesus is risen, I shouldn't eat or drink. No, no, he's teaching us how to enjoy the things he's given us in the right way. by being grateful, but also doing it for the glory of God. Do we realize that what we think is every mundane moment is a moment to come into the glory of God and glorify Him who's most glorious? The eating and drinking. There's a matter of pursuing whose glory? Mine or this earth because what I think is nothing better than just to appease myself and my pleasures or to glorify God? What good news? He's given us something better? There's nothing better for men to enjoy. A good meal with the right company. I think that's actually universally true. Because if you turn over with me to Revelation 19. Beginning of verse six.

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, that the roar of many waters and the sound of mighty peals of thunder crying out, hallelujah. For the Lord, our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult. and give him the glory. For the marriage of the lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, and bright and pure. For the linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel of the Lord said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God.

There's nothing better than to eat and drink and enjoy God with God. The end result, the end great enjoyment is a feast. And it's who you're with. The king who came down to be slain as a lamb. to invite you into His love, at His table, to eat with Him always. Get what's happening here. It's not vanity. Oh, it's satisfying. It's not vanity. It's eternal. It's not vanity. It's what God has given us. He's given us Himself. If we go back to how we would finish that sentence, what is your nothing better? I say with absolute confidence that if you didn't write Marriage Supper of the Lamb, whatever you wrote pales in comparison to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. To be invited by God, to sit at his table with him always. Will you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for this hard and difficult look at what we do with the life you've given to us. Forgive us for hating the life you've given us. Forgive us for trying to pursue what we think is wisdom in our folly. Forgive us for not hearing the words of Christ who's risen and at the right hand of the Father. You call us up to know you and your glory. Help us to know what it means to live the life that enjoys and delights in the glory of Christ and builds up the treasure to the glory of Christ. In his name we pray, amen.