Exploring My Strange Bible - Ecclesiastes Part 3 - The Limits of Labor

Episode Date: August 28, 2017

In this message, I explore the concept of work and labor in the book of Ecclesiastes. The teacher wants to show us that it's impossible to create meaning in your life from one's vocation or career. But, this doesn’t mean that we should quit working. Rather, we must learn how to see our life's work in a larger context, helping us navigate through both success and failure. The teacher offers practical wisdom and guidance about having a job, and how to enjoy both the mundane and the beautiful parts of having a job.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. In this week's episode, we're going to be closing down the three-part series. This is part three of three on the book of Ecclesiastes.

And in this message, I explore the theme of work and labor in the book of Ecclesiastes. It's a repeated theme that comes up in all the main sections of the book. of Ecclesiastes wants to show you how it's actually impossible to create meaning in your life from your vocation, your career, your day-to-day efforts. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't keep working. It just means you should put all of your life's work in some kind of greater context that can account and help you work through both your successes and your failures, because you're likely to have a lot of both in life. There's a lot of practical wisdom and guidance about having a job and wrestling through both the mundane and the beautiful parts of going through your career life. It's very practical, a lot of great wisdom.

This message is called The Limits of practical, a lot of great wisdom. This message is called The Limits of Labor, and let's dive in. Ecclesiastes doesn't play a very positive role in the Bible, does it? It plays the negative role. Remember, Ecclesiastes plays the role of a wise gardener who knows that before you can grow healthy fruits and vegetables, you need to plow up the ground. You need to dig out the weeds and hack away the brambles, right? Which can be a painful, difficult process. You need to get rid of distorted views of work and vocation before we can truly hear the good news about the Christian redemptive view of work and vocation. And so tonight's the bad news, sorry. But depending on how you feel about your job right now, you might actually hear this good news. I'm not sure. Turn to Ecclesiastes chapter

one with me. We're just going to kind of dive in. The first words of the book really get us into the core ideas, and we'll just kind of reacquaint ourselves and then dive into this theme of work, which we'll actually see in the first words. Ecclesiastes 1, verse 1. The words of the teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. So it's this Solomon-like figure whose voice we're hearing in the book. And pronouncement of this teacher is meaningless, says the teacher. Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. Now, I've said this many weeks, but the point is repetition leads to memory and so on. So what's the Hebrew word the author uses here, the teacher? Hevel. Does it mean the same thing as meaningless does in English for us? No. Okay. Remember it doesn't. So remember literally, we'll throw this up here again on the slides, the word hevel, which means smoke or vapor.

I said that was an accent that I've never had, but smoke. Why did I say that? It just kind of came out. Sorry. So smoke, that's what I mean. And as a metaphor that the teacher uses in two different ways, right? To mean fleeting or temporary, or I hear one moment, got the next. But also something more concrete than that. As if smoke, when you look at it, it seems like it's there and that you can touch it. It seems like a thing, but then the moment I try and grasp it or make sense of it, it eludes me. And that's how life is under the sun here. It seems like it makes sense, but then when we try and make it make sense half the time or most of the time, life falls apart on us

or it doesn't go the way we thought it would. We can't make it work the way we want it to. It's like Hevel. It's like Hevel. Okay, so everything's Hevel. What do people gain from all of their labors at which they toil under the sun? Okay, we're already talking about work. No, this is the first sentence of the book. We're talking about work. No, this is the first sentence of the book.

We're talking about work. The other key word in the book of Ecclesiastes, under the sun, refers to life in this world as we presently experience it. A world of enigma and paradox. A world that has been compromised by human sin and folly and selfishness. And because of that, because of the fallenness of humanity, it's wreaked havoc in God's good world. The way we experience life isn't fully as God intended us to experience life. But somehow, we all know that, and we all experience how screwed up the world is all of the time,

right? But somehow, what the teacher is concerned with is that we continue to work and live and operate as if ultimate happiness and ultimate lasting fulfillment really is possible here under the sun. We say we don't think it is, but we live and work as if we think it is. And the way that we know that is because when we don't find ultimate happiness and significance and fulfillment under the sun here, we get, we utter despair. We get ticked off at God and blame it on him as if it's God's fault. And the whole

point of the story of the Bible is just that God's fault. It's our fault for the reason why the world is the way that it is. And so he's going to take us down every possible dead end of where humans look for meaning and significance and fulfillment and so on and show us that it's a dead end. And that apart from God, it's a dead end. And so tonight he's going to take us down the dead end of work, which might seem quite depressing, because this is like what we do with most of our waking hours.

You know what I'm saying? Sleeping and working. That's like what we do with most of our waking hours, you know what I'm saying? Sleeping and working. That's like what we do with most of our lives, right? And so, but we have to go here. This is a major theme in the teacher's words. And so here's his question, verse three. Why don't you look down at it again? He's gonna ask here, he's gonna ask,

what do people gain from all of their labors at which they toil here under the sun? What do we gain from all of this work that we spend most of our waking hours doing? Or maybe you're not spending most of your waking hours working, and there might be many reasons behind that. You might be trying to find work, and you're frustrated because you can't. Or maybe you're intentionally trying not to find work,

and that's the joke about young people in Portland or whatever. But it's more of a stereotype than reality, maybe. Maybe I just don't know the right people. Anyhow, so we're aware of the fact that we aren't working if we aren't. And he's asking, what do we gain? What do we get from all of this work that we do, this pursuit of work? And some of us might think, okay, already this is too abstract and philosophical because what do we work? We work to get a paycheck to survive. You know what I mean? That's what we're doing. That's what we gain.

I get a paycheck. I survive. I provide for myself and for those who depend on me. If I have people depending on me. That's what we work for. And the teacher says, yes, of course. That's a given. But that's not what he's asking here.

He's not asking, that's compensation.? That's a given. But that's not what he's asking here. He's not asking, that's compensation. You work to receive compensation. What he is asking is, what over and above mere survival do we get for all of the work? He's asking, what's the gain? Not the compensation, what's the gain? And he's working with this idea that we know kind of in the modern world through this famous little pyramid. There was an educator, psychologist, and he was Abraham Maslow. Yeah, he made this kind of famous called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And his basic point is that human beings aren't just like ants, but things that make ants happy do also make us happy.

But we need also much more to make us happy, right? So we need food, shelter, clothing, get our physiological needs taken care of, but humans above and beyond ants, we need also safety and security. We need also community and loving relationships, and also we just have this nagging sense to become more of a fully healthy human, we need to find significance. I need to do something that seems to have meaning and fits into some larger story or some larger significance or something like that.

And so that's what he's getting at here. We work, yes, to provide for your needs and to survive, but what he's asking is, but do we actually get to the for your needs and to survive but what he's asking is but do we actually get to the upper parts of the pyramid of self-actualization or significance or fulfillment from all of the labor that we do and he's essentially going to come to the conclusion that kind of a little bit not really so no that's that's where he's going to lead us that's where he's going to lead us and and to do that's going to lead us. And to do that,

I want to kind of paint, get a mental image in our heads, I think that'll help us as we kind of sort through in chapters two and four to see where he talks about work more. So yesterday, was yesterday a glorious day or what? You know what I'm saying? I forgot that these days happen. This is my first winter back in Portland after many, many years. Yesterday was amazing. So Jessica and I, we did the only sensible thing you do on a sunny, warm February day in Portland. We went to the beach. And I just said I could wear a t-shirt and it was sunny. And I was actually sweating in the sun in February on the beach. It was wonderful. So anyhow, so we went on a hike, one of our favorite hikes and so on, and we ended the day with sunset at Cannon Beach because it's a convenient place and it's wonderful,

nice beach and so on, lots of people. So we were kind of walking and talking as the sun was setting, it was beautiful, stunning, and all of a sudden I had all these memories of Cannon Beach as a kid. So one day a year, usually in the first week or so of June, every year at Cannon Beach, what awesome event happens? Sandcastle Day. And hundreds and hundreds of sculptors come from the region,

from the world, to Sandcastle Day. And Cannon Beach is not big. And it fills up with about 10,000 extra people for the weekend of Sandcastle Day. And world-class sculptors. And so 8 a.m., people register, and you go out. The tide has gone out, and people go to the wet sand. They all have kind of marked out where the different lots are and so on that people register for. And you got seven hours, because you start at 8 a.m., you got till 3 p.m. to finish your

project. And it is epic what these people accomplished. And then they line the beach, hundreds of world-class sculptors. It's epic. And I actually can't remember how many times I went as a kid. Jessica and I were having this conversation. Did I go four different summers growing up? Did I go two? But it's so awesome, it felt like four.

In my memory, I'm not sure. But so by 3 p.m., everybody has to stop because then the judges come, and they take pictures, and they begin to evaluate, and so on. Because what happens about 5 o'clock? What's going to happen? What makes the sand wet? Because the tide went out,

and it's all the wet sand. What's going to happen at 5? And it's the most utterly tragic. It's totally tragic to watch because the tide begins to come in, and it kind of slowly, slowly erodes, right? And those first waves begin to take over the sculptures.

And then 8 a.m. the next morning, you would never even know that Sandcastle Day took place. It's the ultimate tragedy. It was all this planning going up to Sandcastle Day, the actual event itself, the judging, the awards, and then the next morning, it's gone. This is the teacher's view of human work and accomplishment. Remember I said the first week, Ecclesiastes is like a wet blanket thrown over your life, right? And not to needlessly depress us,

but to wake us up to the reality of life here in a fallen world under the sun. Go to chapter two with me and keep this mental image of building sandcastles. Chapter two, verse 17. He says, so I hated life. Great start, a new paragraph, right? So I hated life because all the work that's done here under the sun, it's like it was grievous to me. I mean, all of it is heavil. It's here and it's gone. It's over. It's like chasing the wind. It's a lot of activity, but it never seems to actually amount to anything. but it never seems to actually amount to anything. And so I hated all of the things that I was toiling for here under the sun because here's the reality, I'm going to have to leave them to someone who comes after me.

And who knows whether that person is wise or going to be foolish. But yet they're going to have control over all of the fruit of my toil into which I poured all of this effort and skill here under the sun. This is helpful. So my heart began to despair over all of this toilsome labor here under the sun because, listen, you can labor with wisdom and knowledge and skill. You might like rock making your sandcastle. Make it the best sandcastle ever. Or maybe you'll make creepy sandcastles. You know, whatever. Right? But you're going to have to leave it. You're going to have to leave it to somebody or something at some point. You will have to stop whatever it is that you're doing at some point. It's guaranteed. It's the

uncertain certainty. You're going to have to stop whatever it is you put your hand to in life and leave it to another who hasn't put in what you have put in, who hasn't worked for it. This is Hebel. He says it's a great misfortune. So in other words, what he's getting at is he says we, on this hierarchy of needs, Yes, we work to survive and get a paycheck, but there is something inside all of us that is hoping that we can do more than merely survive. And many human beings, not all, but many human beings actually get to climb a little higher on the pyramid with their work

and with their accomplishment. And one of the major motivators, he believes, is this desire to leave a legacy, to make an impact, to leave behind something of significance in the world. Is this a good desire? Yeah, we're going to take four weeks to explore that desire and how good it is and how God-given.

That's part of the image of God inside of us is to do something and contribute something of value and beauty and goodness to the world. That's a good thing. But here under the sun in a fallen world, am I guaranteed that what I put my hand to will have that kind of contribution, that lasting contribution to the world? Do I have any guarantee? And his answer is, no, you have no guarantee. Because it might not be the ruthless tide that comes away and take your sandcastle. It might actually be like your kids who squander like what you give them after you retire or something, you know?

You build a business or you build a corpus of work or something, of art or creative work or something, whatever it is, and you hand that off to the world, to someone, you have no guarantee. You have no guarantee. And for the teacher, he says, that's Hevel. You're saying that's what's going to make all of those years of work meaningful to you, but yet they will become Hevel. They will at some point. The tide will come and wash it away. No guarantee whatsoever. That's a happy notion. That's a happy notion notion and so some of us may have recognized that

we may have come to a healthy recognition like okay yeah i recognize there is a degree to which i'm making castles in the sand and my goal is not to leave my mark on the world and and to gain significance by that means but at least i want to enjoy what I'm doing while I have to do it. I get some satisfaction. If I can't get this long-lasting payoff of leaving a mark on the world, maybe I can get some psychological payoff, you know what I'm saying, of just satisfaction or enjoyment of our work, which he also deconstructed. Verse 22, what is it that people get for all of this toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All of their days, their work is grief and pain. And even at night, their minds don't rest. This too is Hevel. So he's saying, not only do we not get what we are looking for out of a life of work

and accomplishment, because it doesn't make a lasting impact, but what we do get is something that we don't want, which is stress and anxiety and like physical pain and grief. Some of you had this experience. If you've ever tried like starting your own business or something like that, or let's say you say, I'm going to try and move in the direction of my passions or my strengths and gift and my skill set. Okay. So then you start into a career or a job where it's not just like mindless work, whatever you just check the hours or something like that, but really I'm going to give myself to work that is meaningful, that's tied to my passions and giftings and so on. Is that a recipe for a stress free life, that kind of job? No, it's actually a recipe for a much more stressful life because you

carry work everywhere you go because it's tied to who you are and your passions, you know what I'm saying? So people you know who like start small businesses out of their passions and dreams, are these like relaxed people who have long weekends at the beach every week? You know what I'm saying? But these are the hardest working people you've ever met. And they're totally stressed because are we going to make overhead this week? You know, are we going to make it this month? Things can meet and we don't. It's stressful. It's hard. And while there's joy in it because it's connected to my passions, the teacher is going to force you to ask. You can say, listen, put it in the scales of a balance. Yes, you're finally getting to do something that you enjoy, but you're also

constantly losing sleep. Not only is it stressful when you're awake, he says you can't even sleep. You can't even sleep because at night you're sitting there staring at the ceiling wondering what's tomorrow going to bring? Grief? Anxiety? Pain? I don't know. So he says it's not worth it. it's tomorrow going to bring? Grief, anxiety, pain, I don't know. So he says it's not worth it. Is it really worth it? This is really depressing. But it's also brutally honest at the same time, right? We get this sense as we go about our work. Maybe you can't find work and it's really frustrating to you. And it's true because humans go cuckoo when we don't have anything to do. We're meant to do this, the image of God stuff in us. But yet at the same time here under the sun, when we pursue it with all of our

might and our passions and dreams, it ends up like ruling us and making us stressed out all the time. Or it ends up totally just making us disillusioned because we realize I'm building castles in the sand for someone else who I don't even know. I've just seen like their name in a magazine or something like that. This is in terms of like corporate culture and the alienation that many of us feel from our work because we fit one piece or one part of a larger business or corporation and I don't know the people I've actually working for and maybe you don't even see the people that the thing that you're working for benefits or serves. It's just weird.

It's weird. It's weird. It's castles in the sand that stress us out. So what's the point? Turn to chapter four with me. He has one more dead end to explore. And you're like, two's enough. Dead end is enough. But actually, this is the most

insidious and I think the deepest dead end of all. Because I could come to convince myself that what I'm working for won't last. And what I'm looking for won't be able to provide for me a sense of significance or leaving a legacy or an impact in the world, okay, I've dealt with that. I've dealt with it. And I can get myself to a place of just dealing with the pain and the grief. There was a Pulitzer Prize winning book wrote in the early 1970s by a guy named Studs Terkel. And he won a Pulitzer. And what he did was he was a journalist and he went around the country conducting hundreds and hundreds of interviews

with mostly blue-collar America. And he called the book, the book was excerpts of the interviews and quotes and so on, drawing together themes. The book is called Work, People Talking About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. That's the name of the book. And here's the first paragraph of the book.

It says, it's a book about work. And therefore, by its very nature, is about violence. Violence to the spirit as well as to the body. It's about ulcers as well as accidents. It's about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It's above all about the daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the willing, walking, working wounded among the great many of us.

working wounded among the great many of us. That apparently is the expression of what work does to us 40 years ago. Are we doing any better today? I'll leave that to your judgment. And so some of us might say, okay, I can't necessarily make a world lasting impact. I may not be able to find a life free of stress, but maybe somehow, maybe what work can help me do is find myself. Maybe I can find a career or a job that will give me a sense of who I am and an identity to figure out what I'm about in the world. And the teacher says that's the deepest delusion of all, that work can give you an idea of who you are. Look at chapter four, verse four. He says, and I saw that all toil and all achievement.

Now stop there. He's using two words for work here and they're significant. So the first one is just the general word, work or labor, right? All work. But the second word he uses is, some of you might have in your translations,

like skillful work or skillful labor. He's saying, let's say you really rock at making sandcastles. You're like the best. You win Sandcastle Day every single year, right? So you might just work, whatever, or you might have great achievement and success at what you do. He's going to say it's all, all of this springs from or comes from one person's envy of another person. This is Hevel. It's like chasing,

chasing after the wind. Envy. So we think of envy and we think, okay, so all toil and all achievement comes from me wanting what you have. I'm envious. Like you have the awesome vintage bike or something. You have the cool car. And so I want that. So I'm going to work harder to get that. And that's a part of what he's saying,

but that's not the deepest part of what he's saying. It's not envy of your stuff. It's not envy of what you're working for. This is about the core motivation for why we work. He's talking about this deep sense of jealousy rooted in insecurity as a motivation for why we work. That's what he's getting at here. This envy that's a result of comparing myself to you. So for example, we have a great many baristas here at Dora Hope. Did you know that the Northwest Regional Barista Championships took place today? Did you know this? February 3rd, up in Seattle? Maybe you didn't know this, but you may have friends up there. And I know for a fact there's

Dora Hope people up at the Northwest Regional Barista Championships. So let's say it's that feeling you're a barista and you get up to the championships and you're good. I mean, you can make the cool heart shapes or whatever on the top of your lattes or whatever. And you're good, you're good. But you get up to the championships and you realize all these other baristas

and you have to face the facts like these people are way better than me gunman i'm maybe a big fish in a small pond but you get to the regional championships i'm outgunned you know what i'm saying so it's that feeling right where you get around people who do what you do or do what you want to do they do the same thing and you just realize holy cow like they're better than me and i can't do a darn thing about it you know realize, holy cow, like they're better than me, and I can't do a darn thing about it. You know what I'm saying? Have you been in this position before? You're a musician, you're a parent, you're a mom, and like that other mom's kids never like slobber and drool or whatever, and Johnny was potty trained at two and a half or something, you know? And you're just all, you just

realize, oh my gosh, they're better than me. And I can't do a thing about it. And there's a whole bunch of us, there's a whole bunch of us for whom that is such a great threat that we may not even realize it, but we internalize that so deep that the symptom of that insecurity results itself in competition, in excelling, in working even harder, maybe working to a degree that isn't healthy for us, or working in ways that we treat the people around us in ways that we wouldn't normally ever treat people because we've got our eye on the prize, eye of the tiger, or whatever, you know, because I'm going to succeed, I'm going to, you can't be better than me, you know, this is

what he's getting at here, envy of another. And so what he's convinced of is that even though we might say that I'm working to provide a service, what he really believes is that we're working to provide ourselves with an identity and a sense of worth and value. So we might say, I'm working to get a paycheck. I'm working to get compensation. And he's saying, actually, what you're working for is to get a life. You're trying to prove that you're someone and

justify your existence in the universe and justify that you're worth taking up space in the universe. I'm just trying to say what he's saying in different words. That's what he's getting at. He believes this is one of the heart core motivations for human work. And he says it's Hevel. Why is it Hevel? He says because work cannot provide you with the sense of who you are. A sense of your self-worth and your identity and value isn't something that you can create. You can't make or manufacture that. It has to be something given to you. It's something you receive. And that truth is contained in this little riddle that he tells in verses five. And do you guys like riddles? So what's great is that the punchline of this whole thing comes in a riddle. It's a lot

like Jesus' teaching, right? Verses five and six. He tells this little riddle. The three dead ends. Work can make an impact. Well, actually, it can't, really. Work can bring me joy and satisfaction. Well, really, put that into scales. Actually, not really. It might be a little bit in the scales. Work gives me an identity and a sense of who I am. Actually, it's Hevel, because it's rooted in insecurity.

And so he tells this little riddle in verses five and six. Brilliant, brilliant. He says, fools fold their hands and they ruin themselves. Better is one handful with tranquility, or some of your translations have rest. Better is one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind. Hmm. It's a riddle. Hmm.

You're supposed to have a cup of tea and think about it. That's what you do with riddles, right? You pause. You ponder. Do you get it? Do you get what he's saying? A little riddle. You can get the basic idea, right?

So there might be a whole bunch of us who are ready to go quit our jobs right now. You know, like, what's the point? You know, what's the point? And he would say that's foolish. It's foolish. Because he says, fools fold their hands. And also, look, in English, we have three words for hands.

Here we have hands, handful, handfuls. Because in English, we basically have one word to refer to this thing. It's hand. In the riddle in Hebrew, he uses three different words. Hebrew has three different words for hand, all with different nuances of meaning. Do you want to learn the three words for hands right now? Okay, you need to to understand the riddle, I think. So he says, fools hold their yad.

The yad is from your fingertips to your elbow. So we call this like your hand. And then what do we call this? Like your forearm. So in Hebrew, yad is a way to referring to the whole thing. So even the way they divide up physiologies. So what does it mean to fold your yad? This is an image, it's a metaphor of what's he getting at with this image. Nap time, laziness. So in other words, whether it's intentionally or to intentionally give up, to neglect the abilities or the skills or the opportunities that I could have

if I were to put myself to it, to neglect that, to reject it, is foolish. He says, laziness is foolish. And we might think, well, wait a minute, like you're totally like motivating me to become lazy because what is the point of work? And he's like, laziness is foolish. And we might think, well, wait a minute, like you're totally like motivating me to become lazy because what is the point of work? And he's like, we're not there yet. You've got to get to the bottom of the riddle, right? So, but laziness, the folding of my yacht intentionally, to fold your yacht is foolish. You're squandering what God has put in

you. You're squandering the fact that you've been given life and breath and a chance to do something in the world and discover what that is. It's foolish and it's a way to ruin yourself. Humans go cuckoo when we don't have anything to do. You realize this. Or we like turn to PlayStation 3 or Xbox or something and that really makes you cuckoo in a whole other way though because you think you're fine but actually you're being programmed to live in some other world, you cuckoo. In a whole other way, though, because you think you're fine, but actually you're being programmed to live in some other world, right? So you fold your yad, right? That's foolish. You ruin yourself. You ruin your humanity by not having anything to do. So that's some people's response to Hevel under the sun. They fold their yad. That's one extreme. The other extreme is the last one that

he mentions, which is two handfuls of toil and chasing after the wind. Chofen. Chofen. Would you say it with me? Chofen. Chofen. So he says, fools fold their yachts.

That's just not wise. But equally, on the other extreme of not being wise is to live life with two chofen, which is these grabbing fistfuls like this. This is an equally unhealthy, Hevel-like way to live. And do you get what he means just by the metaphor? This right here. What is this?

This is an approach to life where I'm trying to milk out of this job or this career or this life goal. I'm trying to get out of it all kinds of things that the teacher thinks you will never get out of it. You work tirelessly because it's this grabbing posture to life. You're trying to get something out of these

things that can never actually give you what you're looking for, which is this deep sense of worth or value of joy or satisfaction that you're contributing to something meaningful. I mean, we have a word for this in English. It's one of the addictive behaviors that we actually praise in modern America. Call it workaholism. And of course, because this person is so successful, look how hard they're making sacrifices and they're working and so on. In the New York Times, there's a survey done not long ago about what if, it's one of these kind of fun questions to figure out people's personalities. If there was an extra hour to the day, a 25-hour day, what would you do with that extra hour? I'm hearing two people say sleep, right? That's the majority answer. Why is that?

Because we're exhausted. We're exhausted. We're the most overworked culture, at least for upper-class jobs in America, most overworked people in the world. What's going on here? Somehow this is like an admirable trait to live life grasping with two chalfen. In Portland, I'm not sure, right? Which I kind of appreciate about the culture, at least of the city,

but for some people, you know what I'm saying here. And he says it's foolish, it's hevel, because it won't give you what you're looking for because it's rooted in insecurity and envy, he says. And sometimes some of us are honest about it, that that's where this is all rooted in, is in my deep insecurity. And that's why I'm grabbing at life, right? Some of us are honest sometimes. People like Madonna are sometimes honest. And just listen to her words. This is very powerful. She says, I have an iron will and all of my will has always

been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I push past one spell of it and then discover myself as a special human being. And then I get to another stage and think that I'm mediocre and uninteresting again and again. My drive in life, it's from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that's always pushing me. Because even though I've become somebody, I still have to prove that I am somebody. My struggle has never ended, and it probably never will. So that sounds like a great career. That sounds like success and living

with two kofans has really pushed her to a healthy place. At least she's honest about it. And what's funny is that this is the kind of honesty that you wonder if it's really honest, because clearly she hasn't changed career trajectory. You know what I'm saying? She's still at it. She's still at it. And so are many of us. And so the teacher with his little riddle, he says, listen, it's foolish to fold your yard and to just check out of the game because you're going to ruin yourself. But at the same time, it's futile to live life with this kind of grabbing posture. He commends this middle hand here, the second hand.

He says, best is one handful with rest or with tranquility. And the word that he uses here is the word kaf, that just simply refers to the inside of your hand, the open palm right here. This is what he has in mind right here, an open palm. Because the moment you do this, it's chofen. But this is kaf. It's kaf. So he says one hand.

So it's not folding your hand. It's one hand. You're working. You're committed to something, to being productive. It's important for humans. And we'll explore this in the next teaching series for four weeks. It's vitally important for identity and worth and for community to contribute and to be working in some way. But he says this is the posture. One

hand, the other hand's down because you're resting. You're working and you're in the game and you're engaged, but somehow it's with an open hand. This is such a beautiful image. You're working from a place of rest. Is this a paradox? You're in a place of rest that that's what allows you to work. This is beautiful. So somehow he thinks it's possible to have a posture in life where I'm working, I'm committed to something, and it's something more than just survival, that I'm actually looking to become the kind of human being God wants me to be, but I begin from a place of rest, and that's what allows me to commit myself, but with an open-handed approach, right? Because the moment you do this, then I'm trying to control the outcomes.

We did a whole message about that a couple weeks ago, right? And he says that's Hebel. It's an open-handed approach. This is the riddle that he tells. It's a little Hebrew riddle. This is what he commends. And it leaves us just on the brink because we're just like, okay, and? How do you get here? This is it. Apparently this is the way to live, right?

So I'm resting from a place of deep rest, a hand in the game, but it's an open hand. How do you get there? And you read the book of Ecclesiastes and, right? Because what's the role of this book in the Bible, positive or negative? It's negative. He's exposing the brokenness of the human heart. He's exposing the reality of life here under the sun. He doesn't provide any ultimate solutions. That's not the point of the book. Not the point of the book. It's one book in the Bible that's hacking away at the brambles and digging up the weeds to prepare us for something that can bring us rest. And it's here, I think,

that some words of Jesus that may be familiar to you, but familiarity breeds contempt, or at least boredom. And so hear these words in light of the incisive critique and the hacking of the teacher. Hear these words of Jesus again for the first time. Matthew 11, Jesus says, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you what? I'll give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy. My burden is light. There's a paradox at the heart of what he's saying here. Do you see it?

Somehow, following Jesus is a burden. It's hard. It's difficult. Life is hard and life is difficult. Can I get an amen? But somehow, coming under the burden, the teacher says, if you want, shoulder the heavy burden of work and toil on your own,

you're welcome to it. It's going to destroy you or at least give you ulcers or at least make you really depressed. But go for it if you want. Or I can take on myself the burden of what Jesus has to give me. And somehow it's a burden that brings rest. It's work that brings rest.

It's a yoke. So he uses this image of like what oxen or cows or donkeys would wear, this heavy wooden U-shaped or O-shaped thing that gets connected to like a cart that I pull along or something like that. So it's an image of something heavy over me, but this heavy thing that Jesus wants to put on us is actually going to bring us rest and freedom in life.

So it's kind of another riddle, isn't it? So what's he getting at? And what Jesus is always getting at is the heart of the human condition. And it's the heart of what he came to address. Ecclesiastes exposes the problem. Jesus comes to give the remedy and the answer. And the answer is ultimately this.

You can shoulder this burden of finding meaning and significance and making an impact and finding joy. You can shoulder that on your own. The teacher says it's not going to go well. But you allow Jesus' burden to fall on you. It's the word of his teaching. It's the word of the gospel. And the good news about Jesus

and what he did for us on the cross and in the resurrection, it's this paradox because it's the cross and the gospel says the worst possible thing about you and me that we could possibly imagine. And that's a heavy burden to bear. At the same moment, it says the best possible thing about us that you could ever hope for or imagine. Which is what gives freedom. And so the teacher's convinced that there's something broken inside you and me that's so deep, right? We're the walking wounded as Studs Terkel. I can't even say his name, right? Don't name your kids Studs, whatever you do, right? So Studs Terkel, right? The working, walking wounded.

He says it comes from this place of deep self-centeredness, of insecurity, of wanting to make for myself a life for myself. Don't tell me what to do. That's the form it takes for some of us. For others of us, it addresses us in the gospel. And what the teacher points out is our deep insecurity and selfishness. And when that issues itself in a life of work, it creates 7 billion human beings who make the world exactly what it is today. That's the bad news of the gospel. It's the burden that we need to take upon ourselves, this word of Jesus that says, you and I are so deeply screwed up, we don't even realize how screwed up we are. And it results in these lives of work that make the world what it is today,

under the sun, fallen and broken. But at the same moment that the teacher and Jesus exposes this deep brokenness inside of us, it's also taking the burden of the gospel upon myself that gives me rest and freedom because the gospel says that here we are, a bunch of broken people, like just royally screwing up the world out of our deep insecurity and envy. And what is God's response to us? And we think, oh yeah, exactly. He's ticked at us and he's going to destroy us all. And so you can have that view of God if you want, but please don't associate that God with Jesus. Please don't. Please don't. That's not the gospel. The good news of the gospel is that here we are doing this to

God's world and to other people made in God's image and doing all of this to ourselves. And what is God's response? His response is to come be with us in Jesus, to shoulder our burden upon himself. And in his life on the cross, this becomes this symbolic moment. It's like a magnifying glass where the hevel of our world that we create because of our envy and insecurity and our ego, it's like it all gets magnified onto Jesus. And he lives this kind of loving life of rest and self-giving that you and I could only dream of living, right? We could only dream. I cannot live like Jesus. And to be honest with you, most of the time I don't want to. Let's just be real. You know what I'm saying? That's the heavy burden,

is being honest with myself about that. But right at that moment that I recognize that, and I take that burden of Jesus upon myself, he meets me right there. And he says, I have lived this life for you. Somehow the son, as Paul said, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me so that somehow I am actually dying with all of this envy, all of this insecurity. It's being put to death with Jesus on the cross. And the life that I now live and the life that I now go into my work and career and accomplishment, it's not me, it's Jesus living in me. It's what Paul says in Galatians chapter 2.

It's Jesus living in me. Somehow through Jesus, I can become the kind of person that I could never become for myself because it's Jesus doing. This is the remedy that the teacher didn't have on hand. He exposes the problem. He tills the ground.

And Jesus provides this great saving remedy for the working wounded here in the world. And the moment I can internalize that truth, that God's love for me is so deep that he would do what Jesus did for me in his life, his death, his resurrection. He gives me his life. If you internalize that truth, it will completely transform your view of what you do eight to ten hours a day. Jimmy can be the best barista in the world. I don't care. I'll be 14th

in the regional championships. You know what I mean? Whatever. Jesus died for me. I'm freed from now from a place of rest because my identity is not something I'm getting. My identity is something I receive from Jesus and his love for me. I'm freed to enter my work and to honor God and do the best of my God-given abilities that I can with the opportunities that I have in front of me. And when I shoulder the bad thing the gospel says about me, I find the freedom into God's love for me and I'm freed. I'm freed from the tyranny of work. That's the answer to the riddle that Jesus gives. You're doing something with your life,

whether you're folding your yod or whether you're grabbing with your chofen. We're looking for something. And Jesus says it's only when you take my burden on you that you will find rest, to work from a place of rest. And so some of us, we need to do that in a new way tonight because Monday is like this dark cloud over your life. And what we're doing with our eight to 10 hours a day,

it may be extremely difficult. It may be very difficult. But even the most difficult thing can be transformed when you know that the most important person in the universe is just head over heels about you and gave his life for you and is present with you in that frustrating situation. It completely transforms your view of what you do with your days. And so some of us, we need to come to the cross tonight and we need to hear this critique and this hacking of the teacher

and let him expose what's inside of us. And then we need to take that and lay it at the cross and receive with an open hand the love of Jesus for you and for me. That's what our gatherings are for. That's what we're here to do tonight. Amen. Thanks for listening to the series on Ecclesiastes. I hope it was helpful for you.

And like it did for me, I trust that it expanded your sense, both of your own humanity, your sense, both of your own humanity, your own mortality, your own finiteness, but also inspires all of us to live in a way that's much more present in the moment, to live in a way that's honest with our limited capabilities as human beings, but also that can still embrace the wonder and the beauty of existence in God's good world, even when we don't understand it. Such a profound book. I look forward to coming back to it and studying it all over again in the future. But at least I hope it's kind of opened up some new horizons for you to go reread this book of the Old Testament with fresh eyes and new understanding. So thanks again for listening to the Strange Bible podcast, you guys.

If you like this podcast, if you find it helpful for you, leave a review and tell other people about it and how it's helped you. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk again next time. See ya. Thank you.