What would you choose if you trade your current income for wealth beyond measure with one catch.... You're physically incapable of enjoying it? What would be the point? In Ecclesiastes 5:8 through the end of chapter 6 we walk through a look at contentment that is little unconventional. The Lord is able to give the ability to enjoy wealth or to withhold it! This is hard for us to accept. Really hard! Life passes like shadow. Who are you living for? Your self or the one who gives the ability to have joy in poverty or wealth?

Ecclesiastes 5 gives a warning: don’t stroll into worship on autopilot. The writer visits the temple hoping to find something different from the world outside, but discovers the same pride, image management, empty talk, and hunger for success inside. People are worshiping God, yet they are using him to get attention, comfort, money, or the life they want. It's an age-old problem: humanity will always struggle with making itself the center of its own worship. The passage tells us to “guard our steps” when approaching God. That means showing up ready to listen, taking our words and promises seriously, and making sure our worship connects with how we treat people all week. We should also ask what we are really guarding when we come to church—our reputation, schedule, energy, ambitions, or grudge? Worship becomes hollow when God is merely an accessory to the life we want. The good news is that we are told to guard our steps because God invites us to draw near. Jesus in his tremendous love shows us how to approach God by the way he approached us. He came to his people, listened to their cries, used his words to heal, and kept his promise by giving himself on the cross. We approach God each week, by humbling ourselves before the one who humbled himself before us.

Ecclesiastes 4 reads like a really hard day. The writer sees people crushed by injustice, coworkers driven by envy, wealth that leaves a person lonely, and leaders who promise change but cannot solve our deepest problems. These ordinary sources of despair reveal how easily life can feel meaningless when we forget to live with God and listen to his voice. Jesus entered this same troubled world and showed another way. He comforted people who suffered instead of looking away. He worked ordinary days without envy. He offered friendship rather than using people for his own gain. And though public opinion turned against him, he became the King who will make all things new. The sermon invites us to bring Jesus into the moments that weigh us down. We can respond to injustice with compassionate action and hope, work with contentment, offer friendship and forgiveness, and trust Christ above changing political leaders. The question is not whether hard days will come, but whether every troubling thought will carry us into cynicism. Remembering who Jesus is and following his example helps us meet each day with purpose and hope instead of despair, even when the world feels unbearably heavy.

In Ecclesiastes 3 God calls us to slow down and think about the life we live in this world. In the beginning God made us to live with Him eternally, never having to wonder or worry about what comes next. So what happens when we find ourselves outside the walls of Eden, amid a world of change, uncertainty, doubt, and death? To be sure, ours is a world of balance: of being born and of dying. While we live we may eat, drink, and rejoice in our day. But what then? What comes after this life, and how does that day affect the life we live here and now? We need to know before it’s too late … Who will come to us and show us what’s next?

The more you seek pleasure, the more of it you have to have to feel satisfied. This "Pleasure Paradox" will not lead you to satisfaction, but rather to slavery. But this pleasure seeking is the worldly wisdom referred to in Ecclesiastes 2. Godly wisdom shows us that we will only be satisfied when we submit our desires to God instead of trying to satisfy them ourselves.

In Ecclesiastes, the author is searching for the meaning of life. The book takes us on a journey through the author's search for meaning and all the things he tried and all the places he looked to satisfy the deepest longings of his existence. It opens with his great question: "For what does a man gain for all his toil under the sun?"

There is an unavoidable despair you can feel as you read it, but that's good. You're actually supposed to feel that way, that's why the Lord gave us this book. Because Ecclesiastes is part of the wisdom literature of the Bible, and true wisdom begins when our hope in the things of this world ends. 

That's a hard lesson to learn, but Ecclesiastes is a wake up call to not have to learn that lesson the hard way. 

While the author invites into the depths of life's heaviness and hopelessness, Christ meets us in those depths. In each chapter, Ecclesiastes will help us see Jesus in a new light and come to him in a new way. For while there is nothing new under the sun, the incarnation is God introducing something new. Meaning itself took on flesh and blood, and it's in him the search comes to an end.