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All that anticipation, all that preparation—and then it amounts to nothing. Do you ever feel like your life is like that? That’s exactly where Ecclesiastes begins, with a preacher who achieved everything a person could want and still found his toil was vanity, a striving after wind.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor uses examples like the Cardinals-Cubs game in London and the temporary baseball stadium to illustrate how much effort we invest in things that ultimately don’t last. What are some examples from your own life where you’ve poured significant time, effort, or resources into something that disappointed or faded away? How did that experience affect your sense of purpose or meaning?
Solomon achieved everything the world considers success—great wisdom, wealth, power, and pleasure—yet found it all meaningless. What do you think is the difference between worldly success and the kind of meaning that lasts? Can the two coexist, and if so, how?
The sermon suggests that even putting our value in seemingly spiritual things—like building up a particular church—can become misplaced if we lose sight of God Himself. How do you discern the difference between being deeply committed to good work versus placing your ultimate meaning in that work?
According to Ecclesiastes, increased wisdom often leads to increased sorrow, and wise people are frequently despised or forgotten. Why do you think that is, and what does it suggest about the limits of knowledge as a source of fulfillment?
The pastor uses the image of root beer left in the refrigerator to illustrate how wisdom or effort bottled up for personal or worldly gain loses its purpose. How does viewing your daily work, relationships, and accomplishments through the lens of God’s kingdom—as described in Ecclesiastes 12:13—change the way you approach them and find lasting meaning?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
So as I mentioned, we are turning to the book of Ecclesiastes tonight, and if you haven’t been in Ecclesiastes in a while, I think maybe we should spend more time in Ecclesiastes. And I don’t say that because it’s the most cheerful book, but I think sometimes it’s helpful to hear God speak into our less cheerful moments, to speak into those places where we struggle and we question.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the service, sometimes we’ll sit there and think, it seems like the things I value don’t really go anywhere. It seems like the things I put effort into don’t really stand. How do I make sense of that? Sometimes we do something and it didn’t seem like it meant much, and all of a sudden it means a whole lot. And other things we spend days or weeks or months planning, years even, and then it seems like it amounts to nothing.
I was thinking about that a little bit yesterday. Yesterday we had the first ever Cardinals-Cubs game in London. Yeah, I didn’t make a mistake. It was a St. Louis Cardinals home game in London, however that works. And so here we were exhibiting the best baseball team in the world, the St. Louis Cardinals. Let’s give a hand to our St. Louis Redbirds. Best baseball team in the entire world. World champions over and over again over the ages. The best baseball team forever and ever.
If God wore a baseball cap, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but you know it’d have to be a St. Louis Cardinals cap if he did, right? Because the St. Louis Cardinals, the Catholics were predicting this years before the Cardinals even came into existence. They had Cardinals, right? It’s been the St. Louis Cardinals. So to lead up to that, what do they do? They go over to London. London isn’t necessarily known as a baseball capital of anywhere. Certainly nothing compared to St. Louis in that regard, right? Because they don’t play a whole lot of baseball over there. So what did they do?
They took a soccer stadium and spent, I can’t even imagine how much money and how much time. There’s a fascinating time lapse you can watch online of them converting the soccer stadium into a baseball stadium, but tons and tons of money, tons and tons of time to turn a soccer stadium into a baseball stadium. What a great conversion, right? It’s going in the right direction there. But they spent all this time, all this money for two games. Game yesterday, game today. And I was amazed. I saw some of the footage and you look and you might as well be at one of the best major league stadiums currently available. Everything the dugouts look like, current major league stadiums. Everything looks just like it should in a baseball town with a great expensive stadium. It’s there for two days. And then you have yesterday.
St. Louis Cardinals fans here, did anyone take yesterday’s game and just think, wow, I am feeling upbeat. What happened yesterday? We lost. And did we lose by just a smidge? No. Somehow, somehow, somehow, the Cubs, the Cubs beat the Cardinals in London. All that effort, all that anticipation. One of the greatest pitchers in St. Louis Cardinals history, Adam Wainwright on the mound and it just turns into a Cubs victory. I feel like I need some soap or something. Talk about a disappointing result. And so all this anticipation, we’ve been talking about this for how long, disappointment isn’t a strong enough word.
Do you ever feel like your life is sort of like one of those, a baseball game like that? All that anticipation, all that preparation, and then the Cubs win. Here’s the thing though. Felt a little better today, right? We won today. But then they’re going to tear that stadium down. Not the whole stadium, but the baseball portion of it, and it’ll go back to being a soccer stadium. All that work, gone. And that’s our lives, friends. Put all that effort in, all that work, and you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to die.
It is cheery, isn’t it, yeah? Welcome to Ecclesiastes. Let’s come before our God in prayer.
Father, thank you for your word, all of your word. And while this can seem quite dismal, it’s dismal to think that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, that it always comes out that the things that we put effort into will disappoint, will deteriorate, will go away. Thank you, Lord, for as we wrestle with that, as we encounter that in our lives, you don’t leave us to think that something’s strange in us or something hopeless, but rather you give a book like Ecclesiastes to us that gives us your wisdom, that helps us to understand how to make sense of what we do, that we don’t lose hope. Would you direct us towards the hope that we find in you, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
But you have to start at the bottom with Ecclesiastes, because that’s exactly where it takes us from the get-go. The point of the book of Ecclesiastes is to hear from the preacher, someone who has achieved everything a person could want to achieve and yet realizes that it disappoints. Whatever you hope for, whatever you want to do, it’s going to disappoint, but it doesn’t leave us there.
Let’s bear with this book, bear with me a bit as we dig down a little deeper for a moment, but know that God is going there with us because he knows we’re going to find ourselves in those moments. All of us are going to find ourselves in Ecclesiastes moments, and it’s important when we do that we know that God understands and he doesn’t leave us there.
Let’s go ahead and turn to chapter two for a moment. Listen to what the preacher says. He says, “So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem, and my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. 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. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity, a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
There’s some debate on who the preacher is. Many have said Solomon over the years. It fits quite well, a very, very wise man, a very, very successful king by worldly measure, incredibly rich, incredibly powerful. This person says, I have achieved everything that I could want to achieve. I have had the opportunities everyone would dream of.
Let’s go back for a second. Notice something here. It doesn’t sound so bad at first, but think about what he says here. “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.” What was his reward? The pleasure he found in anticipating it, the pleasure he found in doing it, but once he did it, it was gone.
I think we find that a lot. I imagine some of those people crafting that stadium, you had maybe, there had to be some people on there that are English and yet watch from afar baseball, and were thinking, wow, I get to work on a baseball stadium, and I bet they took some pleasure in it, and they see it torn back down. Not so much pleasure, right? Maybe I’d like to imagine one of those workers putting on the foam around all the structure and putting up the foul posts and laying out the astroturf and doing all this, was thinking, I can’t wait to see Adam Wainwright pitch.
Not a good day yesterday for Adam, and I mean, I don’t want to pick on him, because what an incredible gift he has been to this city. What an incredible gift he is, as God uses him as he testifies to God’s glory over and over again. Amazing man, but look at his achievement. By worldly standards, he’s achieved so much successful career as a baseball pitcher, teetering on the edge of 200 wins, likely, if he can, at least if he can pass that, a lot of people think he’ll make it into the Hall of Fame.
All those achievements, but I bet in that moment, as he was pulled out of the game yesterday, he wasn’t thinking, wow, look at what I’ve achieved, he was thinking, oh, boy. When you think about it, no matter how successful an athlete is, no matter how successful, they’re going to spend an awful lot of their lives, if they’re blessed to live a long life, looking back at the time when they were successful.
Adam Wainwright, an old baseball player, quote unquote, 42 years old. You’d like to think there’s a whole lot of life left there, right? And yet, by baseball standards, old. Solomon, kings, you know, thankfully for a king, if you’re a king, you don’t have a life, a career path that necessarily is so short, as long as there isn’t a rebellion. If everything goes well, you get to be king until you’re old and you die. And everyone attends to your needs and your wishes and your desires for all that time, and yet, yet somewhere in the life of the preacher is he thinks back on everything he’s been able to achieve. He realizes it’s all passing.
The grand scheme of history, even if what you choose as a purpose in your life isn’t the sort of thing that ends when you’re 30 or 35 or 40 like many athletes, even if it’s something like you actually, as far as I know, no one here is a king, but if somehow you become a king or a queen and you get to spend the rest of your life doing it in the course of history, it’s just a minuscule little bit of time. How many people here can name off every king or queen of just the United Kingdom? Yeah, no one’s raising a hand for that one.
And that’s just one kingdom and a relatively significant one in the history of the world. Imagine how many kings, the pinnacle of success by so many measures, none of us can even remember. And they’re certainly not enjoying their wealth, their worldly wealth any longer. All passes.
Back to Ecclesiastes chapter one, Solomon said, “I said in my heart, I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceive that this also is but a striving after the wind, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”
You have to imagine a younger man as he encounters God and is asked what he wants, and he says, I’d like to be wise. A young Solomon, very wise request, and God grants that request. And yet, even as God grants that request for earthly wisdom, in as much as he put his mind to earthly things, in as much as he put his mind to being a successful earthly king, where did that wisdom lead him? Vexation.
Commentators have debated exactly where this lands in his life. How corrupt had he become by this point? Solomon’s life is not necessarily an encouraging path. He makes a lot of mistakes. His power goes to his head. Where is it in there that he writes this? It seems like maybe a little later on, reflecting on some of those mistakes, reflecting on how he’s used the wisdom to bring about great power and wealth, and yet he’s not satisfied.
Solomon’s kingdom was an amazing kingdom, a kingdom that was hailed by many far, far off. What power does his dynasty have today? Well, let’s not get too theological for a moment there. We’ll get there in a moment. By earthly standards, what power does this dynasty have today? None.
There isn’t a son of Solomon on the throne in Israel today, ruling in Jerusalem, ruling with earthly power. It hasn’t been for thousands of years. So everything he built up, the beautiful temple, the beautiful palaces, the great works, even the times when he was testifying to God, what seems to have happened to it? It seems to have passed.
For this week at Little Hills this week, I did the devotional at a bridge I love on Route 66. And Route 66 is a fascinating story in so many ways, I think. You think about it. It feels like this embedded sort of part of our history. It’s just there, right? Route 66, this road that stretched across and connected the United States from, well, not end to end, but from Chicago all the way out to California. What an incredible thing. It showed the open road and how people could go wherever they wanted. And yet you’re talking about a road that goes from the 1920s and is decommissioned by the 1980s. 60 years.
I love following Route 66 in Missouri and seeing the old buildings, but many of them are decaying. And you can’t even easily follow Route 66 in Missouri even though the roads are still there, and you can definitely do it. You don’t have normal road signs to follow it like you would if you’re going on many of the highways around, even ones that were far less significant in the past than Route 66 because they’ve taken the signs down. There are plenty of times where you need to turn to stay on Route 66 and not go on some other road, and there’s not even a sign there to tell you to do it.
This road that characterized so much of the 20th century of America and set so much of the way we do things even today, people don’t even bother to keep the signs up. And that’s what’s so striking to me on this bridge. If you look at this bridge here, this bridge, this was just a week and a half or so ago, that beautiful old metal bridge that will take you across the Gasconade River. That’s where I was filming the other day for This Week at Little Hills, and it’s significant because it’s been in operation for decades and decades going back to the glory days of Route 66, and yet you can see it’s resting. And it feels like it should be this monument to Route 66 and the people in the county have rallied to try to save it, and yet there’s a huge push in the state of Missouri to tear it down because they say it’s too much to maintain it.
I was thinking, here’s this road. Imagine being a construction worker, building out the improvements on Route 66 like that bridge decades ago, thinking, I am building on this road that defines the characteristic of the spirit of America. I’m building this grand bridge over this beautiful river. People will enjoy this forever more.
And you tell that person as he came home from work, putting up that steel framework, a few decades from now, just a few decades, people are going to be debating about how to demolish the bridge that you’re building. How would he have felt? I’d imagine those bridge builders were really satisfied in the moment as they saw it go up and saw cars going over it. I’d imagine them taking their families and driving over the bridge. Yes, this is the bridge that I’ve been building.
It’s going to be torn down quite likely. And let’s say the preservation effort is successful. I hope it is. I really do. It’s such a beautiful spot. And as I was talking about in the devotional, people now will go on the bridge and just sit there and gaze at the river. It’s shut down from road traffic, so people will actually go there and just enjoy it as a pedestrian bridge. It’s wonderful. It’s still only going to last a minuscule portion of history.
If Jesus doesn’t come before it falls down, it will fall down someday, and it won’t be millennia from now. Things we build don’t last that long. We hold on to stuff. We hold on to the achievements that we make because we think somehow I’m going to hold on to this and it’s going to have significance.
And I think about the things I do and the things that I want to purchase or to be given, and I’m given it and it means something to me and I’m holding on to it. And you think about, but what happens in just a few decades? Will it matter to me? Will it matter to anyone else?
I remember I was in seminary and we were assigned a project to teach a one-hour lesson on Ecclesiastes. And most of us in the group were in our 20s and just excited about everything that was ahead in seminary and what we were going to achieve when we went into ministry and how it was going to be lasting.
And then there was this one nontraditional student who was coming back for a second career and he just had the opportunity to just turn 50 and just gotten to adopt two kids. And so he was really reflecting on life and all this as he was going through seminary, turned 50, and had these two kids now that he was raising, and he was thinking about long-term meaning.
And we were about a year out from graduating seminary and he said, you know what? I’m going to get a diploma in about a year. I’m going to have that diploma and I’ve been working so hard. I’ve spent years preparing to go to seminary. I’ve spent years now in seminary. My kids, they’re just starting to get an idea of what’s going on here, but I’m going to be so excited. I’m going to share this celebration with them and I’m going to have this diploma. I’m going to hang it up in my office and then someday I’ll retire and I’ll bring it home and hang it up in my home. And then one day I’m going to die and it’s going to go up in one of my kids’ attics and one day they’re going to be cleaning out their attics and they’re going to throw it away.
So I’m like, oh, Wade, you know, don’t… But you think about it. How many things do we put effort into and they really do pass just like he described? And as he described that, he was really not just trying to make us depressed. It might seem like we’re talking about this tonight and you’re thinking, why did I come here? I didn’t need to be depressed. I could just turn on cable news if I wanted to be depressed. But he wasn’t trying to make us depressed. He was trying to remind us of exactly the thing that Ecclesiastes also takes us to.
If we put all of our meaning into what we achieve, if we put all our meaning into what we have, it’s not going to satisfy. If we put our meaning into building a bridge like that one I showed up here a moment ago and how grand it is, but then it starts to rust and then it starts to decay and then people start to talk about demolishing it, we’re going to demolish what’s worth value to us as well.
There might be satisfaction but you know what? You achieve something. When we finish seminary, those of us that were in that group and it’s very satisfying and then you show up and you have your first day in the church office and you think, whoa. I remember my first day at the church office. I had to meet with a friend who was angry and planning to leave the church. That’s why people started leaving the church. Staff were resigning all around me. It felt like a sinking ship.
What do we put our value in? There’s a satisfaction in the moment in what we’re achieving, whether it’s in school or at work or at home. Satisfaction in the moment, building up towards something and then you get to that point and it seems to come apart. We think, maybe things, maybe accomplishments, I can’t do that but what about wisdom? People can’t take that away and I will just achieve great wisdom like Solomon.
What does he say in chapter 8? He says, “When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one’s eyes see sleep, then I saw the work of God that man cannot find out that work, find out the work that is done under the sun, however much man may toil in seeking he will not find it out even though a wise man claims to know he cannot find it out.”
Think about the most brilliant men and women that have ever lived and all they’ve studied, all their great achievements, they’ll never understand everything. And if you think, well I’ll know one subject better than anyone else maybe you can do that, you still won’t know everything in that subject. No matter what we accomplish to fulfill the fullness of wisdom.
So Solomon says, even if you decide to say I want to be wise and that will be my thing, what did he find? He was never satisfied because he could never be wise enough. There was always something unknown no matter how much effort he put into it.
I think the more we know about the world, the more we realize we can never know everything. And even when we know, then there’s the pain of knowing and no one wanting to listen.
Ecclesiastes 9:13 says, “I’ve also seen this example of wisdom under the sun and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it and a great king came against it and besieged it building great siege works against it, but there was found in it a poor wise man and he by his wisdom delivered the city yet no one remembered that poor man but I say that wisdom though the poor man’s wisdom is despised and his words are not heard.”
There’s a recruitment poster for becoming wise, isn’t it? Picture this for a moment. You have an overwhelming force of an army coming against it. They’re going to fall and there’s this man who has very little in earthly status and wealth but he has wisdom and he knows how to defeat the enemy.
He doesn’t exactly—how to take that phrasing there—that no one remembers it; is it that he knew how to defeat the enemy and no one listened to him and so the enemy wasn’t defeated? Or did they listen to him and then they forgot him afterwards? But the basic point comes out the same. Either way, here’s someone who had the knowledge to make things right, who had great wisdom. He doesn’t become rich. He doesn’t become honored. He becomes despised, forgotten.
No matter how wise we become, actually the more wise we become.
How often is it today? I think we glory in this sometimes today rejecting wisdom saying I don’t need to know that. I don’t need to be that wise. I know what’s right, I just feel it. Our society loves to just focus on whatever feels amazing to me in this moment.
And you think about that, what’s that doing? It’s saying wisdom takes a long time to get to, and I already know what happens when I become wise anyway. People are just going to ignore me. They’re going to hate me for knowing something. And at best even if they listen, even if it actually works out well in the moment, everything’s going to fade anyway. I might as well hang on to whatever I can make meaningful in the moment because it’s all passing anyway.
You think about a church. We’re in the new birth phase of a church. Here we are at Little Hills this church being planted. And it’s so exciting. I love watching what God’s doing here and I pray that God will continue to do what he’s doing here and more for years and years and years to come. I hope it’d be great if it were centuries from now.
But here’s something we’ve seen. But here’s something we’ve seen over the course of history in this world that no matter how great a church is, no matter how healthy it is, no matter how on fire for God it is, at some point people will move on. Maybe it’ll be God’s working someplace else down the road. Maybe it’ll be an area that turns their back on God a generation or two or three from now.
But you think about it. If we even put our value, and it seems like a worthwhile place to put our value. If we put our value in, we’re pouring our hearts and our energy into this church, Little Hills Church, and seeing God work here and we can’t wait to see it grow and to reach more people and we say my value is, I’m not pinning it to the things of the world, I’m pinning it to this church that’s representing God. It too will pass.
Problem is, what are we actually pinning it to? What are we pinning it to? God? Where’s the value? Because churches are in constant cycles of decline and revival. Thankfully God doesn’t let his church fall. He might let an individual church fall. An individual church close. An individual church reach the end of its life just like we do it. But God will continue to raise up his body, his church around the world until the day that Jesus returns. He will do that.
That’s why our hope can’t be an even something that seems somehow spiritual like saying building up this particular church. We should pour our energy into it but we don’t pour our energy into it for the glory of being a part of Little Hills Church. We pour our energy into it because of the glory of being in God’s kingdom and wanting more people to have the knowledge of the only thing that doesn’t deteriorate and go away.
Think about our lives. Master a subject. Go into a particular field of work and you’re the best in it. And then the knowledge becomes outdated. Someone who knows something better. You go and you build a house and you’ve somehow set aside enough money or earned enough money that you can put every latest trend, every latest gadget, every latest style into it. It’s beautiful, it’s a showcase home, it’s amazing. Ten years later it’s outdated. The appliances are worn out, the roof leaks, the tree falls over and knocks a hole in the roof. It passes.
But there’s a solution and Solomon doesn’t leave us there. He does do exactly what we’re saying. He turns us to the Lord and we start to see that we don’t stay with this problem. It’s meaningless. He wants to take us there so we really face what it is that all of us put our stock in, all of us put our value in the things of this world.
Chapter 12 verse 11, “The words of the wise are like goads, like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings. They are given by one shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Many books, there is no end. And much study is weariness of the flesh.”
Now I can see those of you who are still students, you’re thinking okay now here’s a verse I want to memorize. “Of much studying there is much weariness.” I’m going to make sure to tell that to my parents. I’m going to make sure to tell that to my teachers. I’m not trying to be a bad student by not doing my homework. I just know that the Bible says of much studying there is weariness.
That’s not his point, sorry. He’s not arguing against study. He’s arguing about having the right perspective on what it does. He’s arguing about knowing where we root even our purpose in seeking wisdom. Because when we’re going after wisdom for wisdom’s sake, when we’re going after wisdom so that the world will be impressed, that we can get certifications, that we can achieve success in the world with wisdom, that wisdom doesn’t necessarily build us up.
Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6: “Oh Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. For by professing it some have swerved from the faith. Grace be with you.”
Here’s the thing that I believe that Solomon wants us to hold on to here. The preacher is saying hold on to God’s wisdom. Notice here he says that the goads, the things that prod us forward, the nails that hold us down firmly, are a form of wisdom. They’re the wisdom from one shepherd. Who’s that shepherd? That shepherd’s God.
Now all of us are called to different areas of work and study and life and there will be useful things we need to know to do those things well. And that is a good and pleasing thing to God. I guess that’s not what we attach our purpose to. Should we go to school and should we study stuff? Yes. Should we continue to learn things? Yes. But we do that with a focus on only one kind of wisdom that takes that stuff that we learn, that sometimes even wearies us and turns it into something lasting.
Verse 13 goes on: “The end of the matter, for this is the whole duty of man, for God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
What do we need to keep in mind? We need to keep in mind that the foundation that we put everything else on so it doesn’t become wearying and meaningless is God.
There was the problem in King Solomon’s reign. He had great wisdom, he had great power. What did he let go of? He let go of God. He let go of his faithfulness. He allowed his heart to be pulled in different directions towards other gods, towards other things.
And so, what seemed like success by every earthly measure failed. And yet what are we pointed to here? Something that won’t let us down.
Why do we gather as a church? I just said, you know, a church isn’t going to last forever. That sounds like a depressing thing. I’m sure that’s the thing that you should say when you’re planting a church.
Hi, I’m a church planter. I am planting a church that’s not going to last. Want to be a part of it? Come on a sinking ship. It’ll be great.
But it’s not about building this church, it’s about building God’s kingdom. Too often we get partway there. I got partway to something I was working on last week, last Sunday. I’d been thinking for months, you know, this is the pressure that churches and church staffs put on themselves.
We have these two great American holidays that shall not be forgotten, Mother’s Day especially, the first greatest holiday, and then the lesser holiday of Father’s Day. You can’t forget those two holidays and especially Mother’s Day. As one of my seminary professors likes to say, how you become an unintentional interim pastor. You forget Mother’s Day. Think about that for a second there. It will not go well.
But I was thinking, so last year we had something to hand out on Father’s Day and we had something on Mother’s Day. That’s very common in churches. And so I thought, well okay, for Mother’s Day this year we can do a flower again. There’s lots of different flowers. There’s opportunities.
Last year on Father’s Day, each man received a multi-tool. Those are really neat things. You know, you pull them out, they can do all kinds of things. But I’m not going to give out a different color multi-tool every year, right? Little Hills doesn’t need to be buying a whole palette of different colors of multi-tools for people.
So what is going to be Father’s Day 2023? Maybe you just previewed 2024. But anyway, what is it going to be? I’ve been stressing out on this for months. What is it going to be for Father’s Day this year? I was sort of at my wit’s end a couple weeks ago and I said to my mom, I’m just not sure, you know, on Mother’s Day flowers work pretty well but I, what on earth should I do for Father’s Day? And she said, remember there used to be a company called Dad’s Root Beer. You should get Dad’s Root Beer and hand out each man can have a bottle of Dad’s Root Beer because you know whether you’re actually an earthly dad or you’re just being a father figure to other people, showing maturity to other people, you can be reminded that you are bringing life to them. You know, just like the fizz in the soda, it’s so great, isn’t it such a great image.
The thing I discovered is really they are still around. It’s really hard to find Dad’s Root Beer. I finally found a place that would ship Dad’s Root Beer. Okay, this is great. It’s going to arrive last Saturday. This is going to be wonderful.
Well, they were out of Dad’s Root Beer and they decided instead to send this root beer from a microbrewery. I’m still not sure whether it’s really non-alcoholic or not. It looks like it should be alcoholic. And I thought, well I can’t give that out at a church. So we’re not going to give out Dad’s Root Beer. We’re going to just give out another very pleasant root beer.
So I had that all planned. Frosty root beer. We’re going to have this root beer to give out. And then you know the problem is just like what we do with wisdom. We acquire great wisdom just like Solomon did. We acquire and acquire and acquire and we forget to actually tie it to God.
Well, I forgot to hand out the root beer. And so it is great root beer, nice and refrigerated in the refrigerator doing absolutely no one any good. And I was getting refreshment because I didn’t actually pass it out.
So for the men who are here tonight, guess what, we’re going to fix that. You’re going to get refreshed. Yes, yes, there is root beer coming. And for our faithful men here that missed today, come next week there will be one still waiting for you here.
But see, root beer in a refrigerator doesn’t do any good, does it? You’re just keeping it all bottled up. And when we’re taking the wisdom of the world, even good wisdom, when we’re taking even God’s wisdom and we’re tying it to earthly success, we’re still just bottling it up and that fizz is held inside, it’s not refreshing anyone.
Everything proves meaningless in the end, that root beer left in the refrigerator is meaningless. It will eventually lose its fizz and be useless.
What does God call us to do? He calls us to come to Him. He opens us up. He pops off the cap and allows us to refresh other people, to see what actually is meant to be. And He adds meaning where otherwise everything is just deteriorating. Everything is meaningless except when we bring God into the picture.
And whether it’s building a bridge that serves people faithfully for a few generations and is torn down, whether it’s making root beer or looking at this particular church, knowing it’s not about this institution but what God and His kingdom are doing from now until all eternity, when we turn to Him, He brings meaning and He brings hope and all of us can rest in that.
Ooh, thank you. Nice refreshing root beer, perfect. He brings refreshment in the weariness of life, in the painful, painful hurting moments near that cold fizzy refreshment of God’s grace.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for understanding us, understanding that too often we feel like we’re acquiring the fizz of life and it’s just bottled up until it finally goes away and someday it will just be a flat soda that no one wants. Yet we’re reminded that Your grace doesn’t ever lose its fizz, that whatever we apply ourselves to, if we apply it to for Your glory, for pointing people to You, for valuing people as You value them, it is lasting.
Whatever we might learn, if we use it to Your glory, that glory is lasting. However we might serve in the church, if we’re doing it that more might know You and grow in their knowledge of You, it is lasting. You bring meaning to everything that seems meaningless in our lives. Lord, will You help us to rest in that tonight, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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