Stuff Isn’t Enough

Introduction

Read with me beginning in Ecclesiastes chapter five and verse ten. Ecclesiastes five, verse ten through twenty. I want to begin that way this morning. It says, He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income, this also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes. Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. Riches were kept by their owner to his own hurt, and those riches were lost in bad business. And he and his father have a son, but he has nothing in his hand.

As he came from his mother’s womb, he shall go again naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. This also is a grievous evil. Just as he came, so shall he go, and what gain is there to him who toils for the wind. Moreover, all his days he eats in darkness and much vexation and sickness and anger. Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun, the few days of his life that God has given him. For this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil.

This is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with the joy in his heart. We’re in the middle of a series on the book of Ecclesiastes, working through various ideas related to the concept of the wise man’s thought that all of life is vanity. We’ve talked about the meaning of that word, heavel, it’s just that which is temporary, that which goes away. It’s not necessarily always futile or meaningless, but it is sometimes just the idea of what’s the point in all of this. And I want us to think this morning about the idea of toil. We’re going to talk a lot about that work or labor and how that relates to possessions, to money, to the things that we have.

Because sometimes our minds get very warped in terms of understanding how this works in our life and what truly matters. I’ve never felt this empty before, someone said. Just lacking joy, lacking joy in everything that I do. I just feel generally very alone and lonely. I don’t know. Just never felt that way before. I want you to think what kind of person would say something like this. Maybe it’s somebody that’s, you know, they’re in therapy, talking to their therapist. They’re depressed. Or they’re dealing with anxiety or addictions. You know, they’re coming to some kind of realization about their life. It’s not what they wanted it to be. And while often I think our minds would go that direction, if we saw a statement like this, we would think that would be the nature of the kind of person we’re talking to.

I want you to know this is one of the most successful people in the world who said this.

You’re not a tennis fan, you probably don’t know. This man is number three in the world. I just want you to stop and think about that for a second. Billions and billions of people in our world. And this guy is number three. I mean, we celebrate someone who comes in third in a local 5K. They get an award. You know, it’s kind of a big deal. This guy is third in the entire world. He’s made more money in his career than probably all of us will make in our lifetime. Many of us combined. In the last year, he’s made more than some of us will make in our entire life. And what I’m driving at here with this idea, and I want to use another example in just a minute, that’s very similar, is just the reality that success in a career or success in your education is not the source of joy.

It’s rather fitting. We’ve already some of our young people have already gone off to school. Many of our parents are still gone taking them. Some are about to go. We’re starting the elementary and middle and high school. Some of you have begun your first day already. We’re pushing our kids back into being motivated and seeking accomplishment and all of this desire to follow their heart and do things they love and to grow in their knowledge so they can one day get a good job. And while all those are very good things, and we should push our children to excel, I want us to keep some of these things in our minds as well, the front of our minds. No matter how successful you are in your career.

If the foundation of your life is not God, it will be empty. You will wake up one day, just like this man, Severev, and realize I don’t know why I’m doing this. What’s the point? And so that’s the central message essentially of the book of Ecclesiastes. Now I had to use a golfer because I love golf, and it’s just so apropos to everything we’re talking about. In the last few weeks, Scotty Scheffler, more of you might know him. Number one golfer in the world, just extremely dominant. Even more successful. He went pro in 2020. In the last five years, he has made over $90 million. That is just unbelievable. I can’t even fathom that amount of money. It’s just hard to understand. In fact, I didn’t even shorthand it.

I just put all the zeros there to try to help us understand the breadth of how much money that is. Just this year alone, he’s won over 20 million dollars. He’s won two majors, which is a big deal. He has 17 career wins in the last five years. I mean, this guy is just dominant in the sport. It’s him against the rest of the field. A few weeks ago, the British Open happened. He was asked about how much that meant to him. And his response shocked a lot of people. He said that I he says I wrestle with that on a daily basis. I’m just going to quote some of the things he said here. He said, it’s like showing up at the Masters every year.

Why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly? Why do I want to win the open championship so badly? I don’t know because if I win, it’s going to be awesome for two minutes. You win it, you celebrate, you get to hug your family. My sister’s there, it’s an amazing moment. Then it’s like, okay, what are we going to eat for dinner? Parents, we can feel that. Life goes on. You work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes. He went on to win the open that week. The very thing he was just talking about. He was criticized by a lot of other athletes about not being focused enough. Of course, he won, which is kind of amazing.

I think they have it completely wrong. Scheffler, I don’t know if I agree with him or not on his faith, but he is a perfect person of faith. He believes in God. And he said the foundation of his fulfillment in life and satisfaction is his family and his faith. I think he understands it. That golf, he said, is not a fulfilling life. They asked him, Are you trying to inspire the next generation of golfers? He said, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world. Because what’s the point? It sounds a lot like what the wise man in Ecclesiastes is saying. What’s the point in all of this? In fact, the book actually starts this way.

If you go back to chapter one in verse three, when he begins this whole thing about life being vanity, it’s all heavily, it’s just temporary, it’s a vapor, it goes away. The next thought he gives is in verse 3. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? The question he’s asking, and he’s going to ask it a few times actually in the first few chapters, is what’s the point? What’s the point of all this work? And actually, in fact, toil, that word toil is used about 32 times in the book of Ecclesiastes. There’s another word that’s related, the word business or work that’s used another handful of times. This word is just thoroughly throughout this entire book. Often, I think, overlooked in terms of a major theme within the book of Ecclesiastes, but he keeps coming back to this idea.

What is the point of my work? Why am I doing this? And of course, depending on your perspective, if you’re thinking about this from a purely earthly perspective, it is a meaningless, it doesn’t have any purpose. But if you come at this from a divine perspective, it changes everything about how you think about what you’re doing. Jesus himself, when someone came to him to try to settle some kind of physical, material, monetary dispute between a brutal between brothers, he responded in this way. One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And what Jesus understood, and what the writer of Ecclesiastes understands, is that all the stuff in the world just isn’t enough to make us happy. It is not going to truly satisfy us or give us joy.

And so the work that we’re doing, whatever it may be, it’s not that work itself or the education that we acquire, that is not going to be what truly brings us joy. And so I really want us to understand that this morning as we’re beginning this new year, going into our schools and getting educated and with thoughts about careers and jobs and all of that.

They’re only a tool for us to exercise the things that God has blessed us with to understand how great He is. They are not the end in of itself.

1. Self-Centered Toil Steals Joy

It should say self centered toil steals joy. That’s what we saw here in the reading. We’re gonna kind of go at this from two different angles, kind of the two faces of toil in the book of Ecclesiastes. There is the self-centered viewpoint and perspective on toil, and then there’s the God-centered perspective. So we’re gonna deal with that here in just a moment. Chapter 5 is a great text to illustrate some of those points, but also as chapter 2. Chapter 2 introduces a lot of these thoughts, and I’m not going to read the whole text, but I just want to draw your attention to a few sections of chapter 2 to kind of set up how this is going to work. How self-centered toil is really bringing the absence of contentment and joy in our life.

If we’re doing this for our own glory, if we’re doing this to build our own kingdom, to seek our own accolades and awards and praise, it is a feudal path. And we will wake up one day realizing how empty it all is. How it’s never going to give us what we thought it might give us, just like these two very successful people we just talked about. The joy is not found in all the money they’ve made and all the awards they’ve won. If that’s all there is, it’s pretty empty. The wise man, the philosopher, the teacher, whatever you want to call them in the book of Ecclesiastes says, I set out to do all this. He has the ability to do it, he has the money to do it, he’s building great works, he’s trying to acquire all sorts of accomplishments and possessions.

And so at verse 10, chapter 2 and verse 10, he says, 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. That sounds pretty good. You know, that’s like the successful person who’s won lots of tennis tournaments and golf tournaments and made all sorts of money, and they have all the possessions they want, but it doesn’t stop there. The next verse. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and striving after wind. And there was nothing to be gained under the sun. Drop down to verse 17.

So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me. For all is vanity and striving after the wind. I hated all my toil in which I toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool, yet he will be master of all for which I toiled, and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun. That sounds a whole lot like our first man in the illustration. Severib, how he feels about life. All the things he’s had, the successes he’s had, and yet he’s turning his heart to despair.

This is the pattern of how it works. When our path is set on the feudal way of self-glory, seeking fulfillment in the material world and what it offers. There are five different disappointments covered this morning in this first idea of the feudal path. The path that is self-centered. And the first of those is what the world offers is endless striving without satisfaction. We will just keep working and working and working and wanting and wanting and wanting and acquiring, but it will never be enough.

If this is the path we’re taking and the direction we want to go, we will never be satisfied with what we have. And he says that very clearly in chapter 5 and verse 10 He who loves money will not be satisfied with money. We worship it. It becomes an idol, and it will just keep wanting more and more and more from us. And we will try, keep trying to give more and more to it. Not only that, we’ll hoard it up. We’ll try to keep it and build it. Which he goes on to talk about. There’s a grievous evil, verse 13, that I have seen under the sun. Riches were kept by their owner to his hurt. And in his effort to build and to grow his riches and his wealth, he loses them in a bad business venture, it says in verse 14.

He’s got a son, but the son ends up with nothing. And all this work and effort and toil to try to build his own kingdom and to acquire his own wealth and to become great. Often he ends up with very little. How disappointing. But number two, even the temporary pleasures fade. That’s what we just read in chapter 2. He said, For my heart found pleasure in all my toil. For just a moment. Everything was really enjoyable. You know, it’s like that tournament you win, and for a few minutes it feels really good, and then you just got to get back to the monotony of life. What are we going to have for dinner? Making two million dollars by making a putt didn’t change the fact that you’ve got to figure out what your kid’s going to eat in the next 30 minutes.

That’s heavy. That’s vanity. That’s the vanity of life. It doesn’t change anything. It just goes on and on. And with the wrong perspective, that is monotony. It’s crazy. It seems meaningless. And that’s what he’s emphasizing here in the text. Until our minds are centered on the right things, all of this doesn’t make any sense. What gain is there in all my toil? Because it’s just endless striving without satisfaction. It’s temporary pleasures that fade. It is the anxiety number three of the meaningless. I hated life, he said. I hated all my toil. I’m going to do all of this work, and then at some point I’m going to get old enough, or we don’t know our own time, he says later on. Time and chance happen to everyone.

And so I do build my own kingdom and I acquire all this wealth, and then an instant I’m gone. And then who gets it?

Someone who will probably waste it because they didn’t work for it. This is what he talks about. Some fool’s going to get this. I did all this work and use my wisdom to acquire all these possessions, and it’s just going to go to somebody else anyway. And so there’s the anxiety of the futility of all of this and what’s going to happen. What am I going to do with all this wealth? I mean, just think about these men. $90 million in five years? How is he going to spend all that? It probably isn’t. I mean, some of these people who are, he’s probably pretty intelligent. He’s putting it into other investments, I’m sure. He’s probably going to make more money. And then what’s he going to do with that?

It’s just going to keep building and building and building. Maybe he’ll pass it to his kids. I don’t know. But at some point, what’s the point in all of that? What is it actually going to do? Now, there are some things we can talk about in that realm. We’ll do that here in a few minutes. But from an earthly material perspective, it is rather meaningless at some point. And then maybe even worse, number four is the anxious competition and envy that comes from a mind focused on the possessions and the wealth of this world. There’s so much in the book of Ecclesiastes about all this, we couldn’t read all the text. So we’re just going to kind of pick a few here and there from other sections.

And hopefully that reading from chapter two and five kind of sets the foundation of it. But I want to point you to chapter four for this one. In chapter four and verse four, he says, Then I saw that all toil and all skill and work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This is also vanity and a striving after wind. Keep in mind, as the teacher is working, some of the thoughts he’s giving are coming from an earthly standpoint, right? From the view from earth, a ground view. And then at times then he moves, and now he’s giving kind of the divine view, God’s perspective on things. So this is very much in the realm of the ground level view. From an earthly standpoint, he’s looking, he’s saying, hey, here’s what’s happening.

Everybody, they’re working and they’re gaining these skills because they want to be better than their neighbor. You know, they want to have a bigger house and a nicer car and nicer clothes and a more expensive watch. And so they’re looking at each other and they just want to be better than the person next to them. And that’s what I see around me in the world. That’s what he’s saying here. And from a very general perspective, I think when you look at the world, that’s the sort of thing we see. That’s why over the years, houses just keep getting bigger and bigger, and cars more fancier and more expensive, and everybody’s got to have the next new thing. This is the way the world works. And it worked that way back then.

It hasn’t changed a whole lot. And now it’s still working that way today. We have a phrase for it, don’t we? Keeping up with the Joneses. That’s our idiomatic way of this very point right here that he’s making. That is an evil within man’s heart. It’s something that’s bad. It’s not a good thing. The idea of toil in Ecclesiastes kind of has a positive context sometimes and a negative context in others. And the motivation here in chapter 4, he’s saying it’s not good. It’s that I need to be better than my neighbor. I want to have a higher status, more prestigious, I want to have more power. There’s anxiety that comes with that. I got to get the next promotion rather than the other guy. And so the result is we sacrifice peace, and healthy relationships to feed the idol of achievement.

All for very little in the end. Which then leads to number five, isolation and emptiness, loneliness. I saw vanity under the sun, the preacher says. One person who has no other. And yet there is no end to all this toil. And his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks.

This also is vanity and an unhappy business. There’s plenty of sacrificing relationships for career in our culture, and it is a terrible trade-off. Missing family meals all the time or children’s events. Maybe it loads up our 401k and our bank account. But it is a very poor trade-off for what actually matters in life. I’m going to say something here that won’t be real fun to hear, but it’s just the way our culture is. There’s plenty of studies nowadays leading to the idea that people are just opting for singleness. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. There have always been some who do this with good motivations. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 7. Sometimes it is the motivation to serve the Lord. And you can actually do that a little bit easier when you’re single in certain ways.

And there’s joy and fulfillment in Christ, and you can have deep friendships as a person who’s single. And we have examples of that with people like Paul and Jesus who use singleness for God’s glory, but the cultural shift isn’t this mindset. It is our focus on individualism in our culture, personal fulfillment, acquiring possession and power and prestige, rejecting the value of traditional marriage and family, rejecting traditional gender roles. All of this has led to both men and women marrying less, many times, even against their own true desires to do so. They’re the victim of what happens in our culture. And it makes it difficult for them to do even what they would like to do in finding companionship. And I’m speaking in a very broad spectrum here in the way our culture works sociologically, that the decisions that have been made and the movements that have been pushed in our culture have led down this road, rejecting the things of God, mocking them even, elevating pride and self-accomplishment and self-glory.

To the point where some put all their eggs in that basket and then wake up one day very empty. I think the wise man wants us to see the value and thinking carefully about what God has told us the world should look like. And so much of this is embedded in our culture in such a way that we don’t even see it. Did you notice that in the text I just read from Ecclesiastes 4, verses 7 and 8? This person is just working and working and working, and he doesn’t even stop and think to ask, why am I toiling for this? I don’t even have anybody to share it with. What’s the point? Now there’s another side of this, as we switch gears here in just a moment, that explains how this should work and the benefit of that and how we can properly use our toil and our wealth that God has blessed us with.

2. God-Centered Toil Brings Joy and Contentment

But from a very purely worldly standpoint, in material perspective, it is just also empty and vain. And so I want us to understand as we go from the feudal path to the path of joy that God-centered toil does bring joy and contentment. And there are a few ways that we have to think through this in the text. Actually, the wise man in Ecclesiastes continually comes back to this. He’s talking about the world’s perspective, and then he’ll shift gears and talk about how we ought to see this. And he does it like six times throughout the text. And the first few of those relate very heavily to the idea of why we work and what happens with our work, the product of our work, the consequences, the rewards of our work.

This is where he’s focusing in chapter two and three and five. This is all really important. That God-centered toil really does bring contentment. It’s not that toil is bad. It’s not that seeking achievement in your career is bad. Those are not bad things. It’s the way in which we use that and the way we think about it. And so we should view toil and its results as God’s gift to enjoy. This is the gift of God. And I should be using it for the things of God. Repeatedly, he says this in chapter 2 and chapter 3 and chapter 5. The end of chapter 2, it says it this way: there is nothing better for a person, this is verse 24 of chapter 2, that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

That phrase, find enjoyment in his toil, is echoed either exactly or very similarly in some of these other texts. For example, the end of chapter 3. I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Well, I thought work was meaningless and didn’t have any purpose. No, that’s not the idea here. It’s temporary. It’s not where we find our true joy and satisfaction, but we find our joy and satisfaction in the God who has blessed us with the work that we’re doing. And so the toil, the work, the labor, the money, the possessions, all of this is the result of God’s gift that we should be enjoying. Everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his toil.

Enjoy the things that God has made, enjoy his creation. This is why he did this. And so let me sort of break this down into what I’m getting at here. It’s it’s like the teacher who teaches to make money. Is that very rewarding? I mean, do teachers make a ton of money? They’re really wealthy. I mean, maybe some who use their money well and know what they’re doing and put that aside. I don’t know. That can, I guess, be possible. Most teachers are not doing this work because they’re trying to get rich. But what about that 25-year-old who comes to you 10 years after they were in your class and tells you how much you helped them in life? That is true wealth. This is the sort of thing that the wise man wants us to see.

The money you needed to make the money to eat, right? He talks about that in chapter 6 and verse 7. Right? You work, so you can put food in your mouth, but then you’re still hungry. I mean, every day you’re still hungry. Seems like we’re talking about a lot of that today. You’re just, you just work and you eat, and then you gotta make more money and get more food, and that never ends. That’s the heaven, right? That’s the vanity. But where the real substance is, where true joy and satisfaction comes from, is the relationships that are built and the meaning that exists there. And that person that comes to you and says, I really am thankful for what you’ve done for me, whether it’s teaching or mentoring or you bless them financially, or whatever it might have been, that’s where the true substance is.

That’s where joy and contentment are actually found because we are living and we are acting in a way that is in alignment with the reality that God has blessed us, and we can appreciate that in our life. And so the second part of this is present-focused gratitude. I know I’ve mentioned this already in previous sermons. That is not getting so caught up in the future or not looking so much to the past, but just enjoying the moment that we’re in right now. And that’s the whole point of these phrases. Eat, drink, be merry. There can be a negative connotation to that too. Just not taking thought for the world at all, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we may die. That’s just, you know, frivolous type of living.

But also it can be a present-focused gratitude. We’re in the moment, the things that I have now, despite whatever struggles or stresses I may have in my life, I can stay right now in this moment and appreciate what God has given me. This is what the teacher tells us to do. Life is never going to be perfect. In fact, he is honest with us. The teacher is honest. He says, your dark days are probably going to be more than your good days. And that’s why it’s so important to develop this mindset to appreciate the present moment. That’s actually what he’s saying at the end of our reading in chapter 5. When he says in verse 20, for he will not much remember the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

What he’s saying here is not that you’ll have a bad memory. It’s not that you’re going to look back and be like, I don’t remember what happened in my life. That’s not the point he’s making at all. What he’s saying is there’s going to be a lot of dark days in your life, but if you live this way and you focus in present gratitude and you occupy yourself with joy in your heart because God has blessed you won’t remember those dark days quite so much. It changes our perspective. And this is what the philosopher wants us to understand. He wants us to grasp that true meaning is found and understanding that God has blessed us and having balance in the way that we view the wealth we have.

Yes, we need money and resources. We need those things to live in some form, in some fashion. Whether it’s through bartering like people used to do, or whether it’s through, you know, pieces of paper that have certain kind of value, whatever it might be, we need something like that to be able to subsist, right? But that’s not where the true meaning is found. Money is just a tool to be stewarded, not a goal to be achieved or an idol to worship. In the midst of all of that, to correctly use what God has blessed us, we need to be people who are focused on generosity, just as God himself is, just as he has blessed us, and these things are all the gift of God.

We should be a gift to others who are around us. And we use the things that God has given us in that way, and we have gratitude in the moment, in the present moment, and we’re not hoarding money, and we’re not thinking about how to protect ourselves with that, and the next venture we can have to stockpile and to gain and to seek earthly and material accolades and praise and status. If that’s not our focus, but we are getting the things that we need and we’re using our money to bless others, much like the first century Christians did in Acts 2 and Acts 4, then we can live a blessed life full of joy and contentment, joy and community, especially one filled with generosity. And I can just say personally, I’ve experienced that in such a big way in this group.

People who are so giving and generous, who care about others, and so I appreciate how that has blessed my family. But that is going to be the source of true contentment in life. That’s where our joy and our identity are truly going to matter. And so it’s something like the business owner, we have some of those here, the business owner who prioritizes employee well-being over the bottom line. Maybe growing their business so they can help others in the church. Ever seen anything like that? That’s where real joy is found. Not just to make more money, to be more successful, but to use what God has blessed you with to bless others in the process. Two are better than one, the wise man says, because they have a good reward for their toil.

So joining together in our efforts to value the things God has given us, to bless each other, to be people focused on the path of joy rather than the path of futility. And what I’ve been centering on this whole time with all of this is that we learn to think and to grow in our spiritual walk in such a way that we’re finding joy in the God who blesses, not in the blessings themselves. It’s not the cash someone hands you when you’re in a time of need. I mean, that’s that’s necessary for expenses or things like that, but it is the true love and generosity and compassion and care and empathy and concern that person had for you that truly matters in that moment. Have you ever felt that?

I hope you have.

Conclusion

Our relationship with God and our relationship with each other and how we build those through the things that God has blessed us with. And so work and money and possessions are not an end in themselves. They have a purpose that are tied up in the reality that life is the gift of God. And so let me emphasize again as we begin this process of sending our kids to school, beginning again to think about their education, to realize that there is no success apart from God. I don’t care what degree you have, how much money you make in your career, what your job is. If your life is not focused on the things of God, in the end, it’s all worthless. It doesn’t mean anything. That’s what the wise man’s saying here.

Those things are great. Pursue them. Follow the desires of your heart, he’ll say in chapter 11. But remember, for all these things, you will be brought into judgment before God. Don’t lose sight of the spiritual. That’s what he’s saying. Enjoy the creation God has made for you, enjoy the things God has blessed you with, but don’t lose sight of the eternal. In chapter 6 of John, Jesus says it this way. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that brings eternal life. Don’t store up treasures on earth. Luke chapter 12, but be rich toward God. Right? This teaching is all over the place. It’s not just Ecclesiastes. It’s in the words of our Savior Himself, Jesus, as He’s continually saying, focus on the things that truly matter.

Yes, these other things are here. They’re part of life, but what actually matters in this is that we are rich toward God. That’s what is most important. And so the stuff of life just isn’t enough. It’s not going to bring contentment or joy or satisfaction. It’s not going to prepare us for eternity. It’s not the thing that actually matters the most. We don’t have a day or a week where we start our spiritual education again each year. But let us not lose sight of how much more valuable and how much more important that is than the things we’re doing for this very short time here on earth. We’re preparing for eternity. Maybe this morning that you want to make a step in that direction. Give your life to Jesus Christ.

The end of the book says that the whole duty of man is to fear God, right? To follow Him. And what we’re asked to do as part of this new covenant in Jesus Christ, inaugurated in His blood, is to give our life to Him, to die to self, right? We give up self and we put on Jesus Christ. We become a new person, focused on the things of God. And we begin that process at the very beginning is being baptized into Jesus Christ and being resurrected to new life. And then that begins this new walk where we follow Him and we lay our burdens on Him and we allow Him to guide us. Are you ready to do that? Are you ready to give up the meaninglessness of this life and live a life of purpose in our Savior?

Can we help you this morning? Why don’t you come as we stand and we sing?