← Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
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- [00:04]
Tim Keller
Welcome to Gospel and Life when someone you know is contemplating life's deepest questions, who am I? What's wrong with the world? What can truly make me whole? Jesus doesn't just give us answers, he gives us Himself. In this month's podcast, Tim Keller looks at how we can share the hope we have in Christ as the answer to a person's search for meaning and purpose. As you may know, August is Go and Share Month at Gospel and Life, and we've curated a wide range of free resources to help you take simple steps to share the gospel with someone God has put in your life. You can access these resources@gospelandlife.com share we believe God uses small acts to do great things, and we're inviting you to do simple small acts to go and share the Gospel this month because the Gospel changes everything.
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Scripture Reader
Tonight's Scripture reading is from the Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 2, verses 9 through 26 I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Nothing was gained under the sun. Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom and also madness and folly. What more can the king's successor do than what has already been done? I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. The wise have eyes in their heads while the fool walks in the darkness. But I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Then I said to myself, the fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise? I said to myself, this too is meaningless, for the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered. The days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die. So I hated life because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun because I must leave them to the one who comes after me, and who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish. Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun all their days their work is grief and pain. Even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless. A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God. For without him who can eat or find enjoyment, to the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness. But to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless. A chasing after the wind, the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
- [03:48]
Tim Keller
Did you know that Herman Melville in Moby Dick, chapter 96, said that Ecclesiastes is the truest book in the world? You knew that, of course, and you knew a chapter, right? Actually, Ecclesiastes, which you just heard read, is really, at least it's one of the most confusing books in the world, certainly the first time through, because it depicts a very, very, very disillusioned man. In fact, the very beginning of the. Of Ecclesiastes in the very first verses, this is what the, the author says, meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. And then of course, those wonderfully inspiring words there in verse 17 that we read. And so I hated life because everything that was done under the sun was grievous to me and meaningless. Now, the reason it's confusing is you're looking at this and you're saying, is the Bible really saying that all human life is pointless? And to understand what's going on here, you need to keep two things in mind. The first is that the author is a person who. In verse one of chapter one, in the very beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes, verse 1, chapter 1, the author is named, is called the Koheleth. It's a Hebrew word that's actually pretty hard to translate, but many people would say it means the professor. And those of you who've been a good grad, been in good graduate seminars know that a professor at a graduate seminar doesn't preach and doesn't even lecture usually, but goads you with questions, tries to get you to think it out for yourself. The other thing that's important to recognize is this little term. In fact, you can see it in the Beginning of chapter in the very beginning of the reading here it says, I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. And all this my wisdom stayed with me. Over and over again the author says, so I lived for pleasure, but my wisdom stayed with me. And then I achieved more things in. In Jerusalem than anyone before me. And all this, my wisdom stayed with me. Which sounds a little strange, but it's actually an aside. And here's what he's doing. It's an ancient way of saying, this is a thought experiment. I am imagining I'm in this situation. You know, if I ask you to do a thought experiment, I'm usually saying, now imagine this, and imagine this, and this is the condition. Now put yourself in this situation. What would you think? That's what he's doing. And every so often he says, my wisdom stayed with me. Which is a way of saying, now look, I under. You know, I'm looking at this and I'm trying to figure out what it teaches us. It's a little bit like an actor who comes up on stage and begins to act a role, and then every so often comes over on the side and says to the. Speaks to the audience and says, now here's what we can learn about this, and here's what we can learn about this. And actually, that's the secret to understanding the book of Ecclesiastes. It's a set of thought experiments in which the professor is saying, so let's imagine living like this, and let's imagine living like this, and. And what do we see? And what does that mean? And does that work? And all the time my wisdom stays with me is a way of saying, well, yeah, I mean, obviously I'm doing this as a thought experiment. I'm still myself. So I started to live for this, but I was looking at myself. Got it. And therefore, if you want to understand what Ecclesiastes is after, we need to look at these thought experiments. And let me show you a long thought experiment and the main lesson. And then in here, the passage we've read, there's a short thought experiment and an arrow, okay? A main thought. There's a major thought, a major thought experiment with a lesson, and there's a small thought experiment at the very end. And then an arrow or a pointer with me. Let's go. First of all, the main one, the big one, the big thought experiment is how to look at life under the sun. Do you see how there's 30 times in the book of Ecclesiastes, it uses the term under the sun. And you'll notice that what he says is not that life is meaningless. He says, life is meaningless under the sun. So it says in verse, you know, it says in verse 11, nothing was gained under the sun. Everything was meaningless under the sun. And you see this, that's verse 11. It's also verse 17, 20, 22, and it actually happens 30 times in the book. Now, what does that mean? Commentators and scholars will say that when he says, I looked at life under the sun, what he meant is, I considered life here on earth without regard to eternity or God. Let's make believe for a moment that this life is all there is. That's what he's doing now. This is what's called a secular mindset. And you have to be careful here. To be a secular person doesn't mean to be an atheist. Certainly Ecclesiastes, the author here wouldn't have known any atheists. They didn't exist back then. And even today, even though we live in a largely, basically a secular culture, there's not that many, there's not a very large percentage of people who are actually atheists. But Charles Taylor, Canadian philosopher, who wrote a book recently, a big book that everyone thinks is important on secularism, on a secular age, he says, to be secular is not that you don't believe in God or an afterlife. It's to say, but nobody can know if there's a God, nobody can know if there's an afterlife. And therefore this world. By the way, the word secular comes from the Latin word secular, which means the present. Basically, what he's, what what a secular mindset is, says, well, there may be God, maybe not, there may be an afterlife, maybe not. But all we can know is this world and this life, time and space. And therefore a secular person says, well, there may be a God or not, but we have to find our comfort here. We have to find our happiness here. We have to find our meaning right here in this life. This is life under the sun. So basically, this major thought experiment, which is a big part of what the book of Ecclesiastes is about, is essentially saying this. The author is saying, okay, deal. I am going to look at life as if this life is all that we can know. And then I'm going to base my life only on things that can be had here and now. And then I'm going to ask on its own terms, is such a life meaningful on its own terms, is it satisfying? And that's what he does. And he does this experiment looking at three, looking at life under the sun in three ways. What does it mean to live as if this life is all there is? Well, one way to do it is what we can call here the pleasure project. And in verses 1 to 11, it comes down to 1 to 11. He imagines that he is living with all the sensual pleasure you want. Sensual pleasure. By that I mean the pleasure of the senses. And so in verses one to eleven, even though they're not printed here in chapter two, he talks about he has a harem, there's sex, he's got food, he's got houses, he's got servants. He has every sensual pleasure, every pleasure of the senses. And he summarizes it in verse 10, here at the top, where he says, I denied myself nothing my eyes desired, I refused my heart no pleasure. So he lived for pleasure. Okay, what happened? He tells you verse 11. But when I surveyed everything, everything was meaningless. Chasing after the wind. Nothing was gained under the sun. By the way, that term, chasing after the wind is so perfect to talk about what it means to live a life of pleasure. When you live for pleasure, it's like chasing after the wind. How so? Well, the wind is something you can feel, can't you? Certainly can feel the wind. But try to grab it, try to actually try to get ahead of it or try to get ahold of it, you can't. And so pleasure's like that. Actually, all pleasure is like that. When you live for pleasure, you find that, yes, it feels good, and yet it fades even as you're grasping hold of it. Years ago, I think I'll probably read you this. Years ago, there was a woman who lived in New York, and she wrote for the Village Voice. Her name was Cynthia Heimel. H E I M E L and later she moved out to la and she wrote not for the Village Voice, but for Playboy. She's a very acerbic writer, and she wrote a column in the village voice in 1989, the year I moved here. And in it she talked about again, she was very acerbic, but she was right on. She had known at that point a number of people who had been working as bouncers and in nightclubs and, you know, hat check girls and things like that, and had become famous. She actually named two or three people that she knew that had become big movie stars. She named them. And she knew her this big movie star when she worked behind the cosmetic counter at Macy's. And she knew him. It was another big movie star when he, you know, worked at a movie theater, just, you know, punching tickets and things like that. And now they were famous. And here's what she said. In every case, she either still knew them or she knew people who knew them. In every case, they were more unhappy than they'd been before. They were successful, they were more angry, they were more anxious. And actually, kind of cynically, she wrote this. This is from the clipping. She says that giant thing that they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to fill them with happiness, had happened and they were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable. And so that's exactly the same thing that the Koheleth is saying. He says, you know, when you live for pleasure, it just doesn't work. It just simply doesn't. It's like a chasing after the wind on its own terms. Pleasure. Living for pleasure isn't pleasurable. And everybody who lives for it says so, okay, what else could you do in order to live for? As if this world is all there is. The other thing you could do is live for. Then, see, he turns, notice, and he says in verse 12, then I turn my thoughts to consider wisdom. So he turns away from the pleasure and he tries wisdom. I turn my thoughts to wisdom and madness and folly. What more can the king's successor do? What has been done? I saw that wisdom is better than folly as light is better than darkness. The wise have eyes in their head while the fools walk in darkness. Now, what is he talking about? What does it mean to live for wisdom? Well, probably, since it's part of this thought experiment of life under the sun, by wisdom here he's really thinking of philosophy. Philosophy, by definition, ever since the Greeks, in a sense, invented philosophy, philosophy is trying to use human reason to figure out the meaning of life and how you should live without recourse to religion. Not that there aren't religious philosophers, but by and large, the whole idea of philosophy is you use reason and you with reason. You are seeking the meaning of life and how human beings should live without recourse to religion and God and things like that. The Greeks, of course, were the first and maybe the best, and they had all sorts of ways of trying to figure out the meaning of life and what was behind the universe and what were the moral assholes behind the universe. So that if we conformed to them, then we would be living along the grain of the universe and we would be living full lives and wise lives. And they spent the philosopher's Whole job was to say what is the right way to live and what is the wise way to live? And what is a way of living that fits in with. With the. With the reality of things and the grain of things? So he said he got into that. He started to live for learning and scholarship and. And wisdom. But look what happened. Oh, this is amazing. I think this is part of one of the great things about this book. He says. But I came to realize this is verse 14. That the same fate overtakes them both. Who? The wise and the fool. You know, the person who's working like crazy to be wise, the philosopher who's trying to think it out. What is the meaning of life? How should people live? What is right and wrong? What is the meaning of justice? How do we define justice? You're thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and trying to make this world a better place. And he said, what does it say? And then I said to myself, the fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise? This too is meaningless. For the wise, like the fool, have both been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise will die. Now, this is extremely interesting. And in the history of philosophy, actually, if you get down to Jean Paul Sartre and Kierkegaard and Albert Camus and people like that, this is really what they said. And that is if this life is all there is, and when you die, you rot. And when the sun goes out, the whole civilization dies, and there's no one even around to remember anything that you've ever done. Do you know what that means? That means it doesn't matter how you live. It doesn't matter whether you're a nice person or a nasty person. It doesn't matter whether you're a philanthropist or a serial killer. The product's the same. Think about this. If this life is all there is, then human civilization. What if a human civilization lasted a million years? I don't think it will. Or 2 million years or a billion years. Okay. Nevertheless, in comparison to the oceans of dead time that happened before the universe kind of came together and the Earth came together and life began to grow up on the planet and. And the oceans of dead time after the sun burns out and all civilization goes away, even if human civilization lasts a billion years in comparison to the oceans of dead time before and afterwards, that's just like a flick. It's just like a second. It's just like a blip. And everything that's ever been done, nobody will be around to remember it. Everybody will Be forgotten. And what that means is, nothing you do matters. Nothing you do makes any difference. Nothing you do has any significance final at all. You say, well, but it does because it makes the world a better place. For how long? See, if this life is all there is, everything you do is insignificant. All philosophy is insignificant. There's no difference between living a wise or a good life or a foolish or a bad life. And that's not all. Finally, he applies. He thinks about, okay, what about work? The Koheleth says, well, what if I was living for achievement? What if I was living for not pleasure and not wisdom and brilliance and insight, but achievement, just hard work. Well, of course, the same thing happens, and you can see it in verse 17. So I hated life because all the work that is done under the sun, if this life is all there is under the sun, all the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. It's all meaningless, the chasing after the wind. Why? Well, he gives two reasons. And there's something he says, first of all, he says, I hated all things I had toiled for under the sun because I must leave them to one who comes after me and who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish. Now, by the way, I want you to take that seriously. In fact, let me push you on this. He's absolutely right. You know, all the people. This is an absolute fact. There's no doubt about this. All the people that worked very hard to establish Harvard, Yale and Princeton and who gave their money to establish Harvard, Yale and Princeton 200 years ago. And back further, you know, that if they were suddenly brought back to life and saw what was taught at Harvard, Yale and Princeton today, they would be absolutely appalled, right? They'd be totally appalled. They'd say, I want my money back. And you say, well. And you know, everybody says, yes, of course. But you see, they were back then, and we're enlightened now. You see, of course, we couldn't teach what they taught, you know, we're enlightened now. But you realize, don't you, that 100 years from now, your great grandchildren, if you have great grandchildren, are gonna think you're just as unenlightened, just as stupid. The beliefs you got right now that you think are so progressive and so right on, and they're so different than those poor, benighted, unenlightened people from 100 years ago. You know, people are gonna look at you that way in 100 years. And everything you do, even if you do anything worth keeping and anything that's lasting will be used by people who you consider fools and therefore nothing you do will accomplish anything. You're not going to accomplish anything at all. It's meaningless if this life is all there is.
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We always say the gospel changes everything and we believe it really does. That's why here at Gospel and Life, August is Go and Share month. Throughout August, we're inviting thousands of our listeners to take a small step in sharing the gospel with someone God has placed in your life. For those of you who make a gift to Gospel and Life this month we'll send you two copies of Making Sense of God by Tim Keller. It's a powerful resource that explores how Christianity makes emotional, cultural and rational sense in today's world. It's our thanks for your gift and provides a way you can do a small act to share the gospel by reading the book with a friend, giving one to a co worker, or passing on both copies to people who are exploring the Christian faith. It's a simple way to start a gospel conversation or continue it. To request your two copies of Making Sense of God, simply go to gospelandlife.com give again. That's gospelandlife.com give now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.
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And here's what you get for it. Verse 23 all their days, their work is grief and pain. Even at night their minds do not rest. You spend all of your life anxious, all of your life restless, all of your life working like crazy, and in the end it goes nowhere. That's the end of the thought experiment. What is the lesson? Well, the lesson is actually clear. The way to get an understanding of Ecclesiastes is to look at the repetition, the repetitious, the repeated phrases. And so the phrase under the sun is a key to the first thought experiment. And the phrase meaningless. Meaningless, this is meaningless. That's meaningless is the lesson. It's saying that if this life is all we can know, and if you base your meaning in life on just things that are here, you have no meaning, no lasting meaning, and no sustainably enduring, satisfying life. Now you know the new atheists, people who in the last few years have been writing very aggressive atheist books say that that's wrong. They don't like what I just said. See here I'm saying, and what the Koheleth the professor is saying is if there is no life beyond the sun, if this world is all we have and we only have to live for what's here, well, there is no meaning in life, no solid meaning in life. And of course they said that's not true. Stephen Jay Gould, who used to. Who's passed away, but he used to teach at NYU and at Harvard. One time he was asked, why are we here? What's our purpose? And he says, well, we're here because one group of fish had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures. And then he said, we may yearn for a higher answer, but none exists. In other words, we're here by accident. There's nobody put us here. But he says this explanation, superficially troubling, maybe even terrifying, is ultimately liberating. Why? Because we can't get meaning in life by looking at nature. We must construct these answers for ourselves. And Richard Dawkins does the same thing. He says, the truly adult view is our life is as meaningful and as wonderful as we choose to make it. Now, here's what they mean. They said, yes, of course, you can't. When Stephen Jay Gould says you can't read meaning out of the facts of nature, what he means is you can't say, why were we put here? What is our purpose? What is our meaning? Why are we put here? We weren't put here. We just came. You know, we're here by accident and when we die, darkness. But they say you can decide what you want your meaning in life to be. You can decide, I'm going to live to deal with hunger in Africa. You can decide I'm going to live for this cause or I'm going to live to be a good artist. I'm going to. You decide what you want to live for and you can have a perfectly meaningful life. You decide what you want to live for. That doesn't work. Not only has the quohelet, the professor shown how that doesn't work, it only works if you don't think. But it doesn't work even if you don't think. Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychologist that was put into the death camps during World War II. But he survived and he came out and he wrote a lot of books. And much of what he says I've always found fascinating and applicable to a variety of things. But I'll tell you what I think they are now. Let me apply it to this. Frankl noted that during when in the death camp, some prisoners lost everything. Some prisoners became bad. They started to steal from other prisoners. They started to collaborate with the enemy. Other prisoners just became like zombies. They just became lost. And some of them literally curled up and died. In other words, they lost themselves. But there were other Prisoners that stayed strong, stayed courageous, stayed brave, stayed caring for people. Now, here's the question. Why? Why was it that some people went into the death camps and just basically just went away? I mean, they lost themselves and other people remained themselves. What was the difference? And here's what Frankl said, it depended on what they made, their meaning in life. Because if you make your meaning in life something the death camp can take away, then you've got no self left. Now, what sort of things can death camp take away? Anything under the sun. If you live for family, you may think you're pretty noble, oh, I live for my family. Death camp takes it away. It's gone. They may be dead. You don't know where they are. They're taken away from you. Maybe they're all dead. So what if you live for some political cause? What if you live for status? What if you live for career? What if you live for making money? What if you live for sex and romance? What if you live whatever you live for? The death camp takes away from you. If it's something here, something under the sun, something got it, and you don't have a self left. The only people that stayed strong, stayed themselves were people who lived for something that death camps couldn't take away, something that wasn't under the sun, something like God, something like faith, something like, See, and therefore, here's the lesson. You actually can't create meaning for yourself. You have to discover meaning in something, some reality higher than yourself. Let me say that again. You actually can't do what Dawkins says you can. You can't create meaning for yourself. You have to discover meaning by discovering some reality more important than you. See, if you say, well, I decide I'm going to have meaning in life by living for that, No, I think I'll do that. No, I think I'll do that. You're not. You don't really have any higher thing that gives you meaning. You. You're just living for yourself. You're just serving yourself. You're doing that because it makes you feel good about yourself. You're doing that because it's satisfying. You do that. You're just living for yourself. You don't really have meaning. There's nothing that is more higher than you. There's no higher meaning. You just. And you don't have a meaning that will last. Not just death camps, but all sorts of things can take it away from you. You know that. And you won't have a self left. But if you live for God, if you live for Him. If you base your meaning on something beyond the sun, above the sun, nothing can take that away, you understand? And therefore, see, Sartre was right, not Dawkins. And the existentialists were right when they said this. If your origin is meaningless, you're here by accident and your destiny is meaningless. You're going to nothing. See, Dawkins says, okay, we're here by accident. Nobody put us here. When we die, we rot. But meanwhile we can have a meaningful life. You can decide what to live for. Sartre basically said, if your origin is meaningless and your destiny is meaningless, have the guts to admit your life is meaningless. Everything in the middle is meaningless. And see, Kierkegaard, Sren Kierkegaard wrote a book, 1849, little book called the Sickness unto Death. And you know what it is? It's the spiritual nausea of trying to build your meaning in life on things here and always being afraid, always being restless, always afraid. You know, it's like a chasing after the wind. You never can quite do it. You're always anxious. You never can seem to quite grab. It's a spiritual nausea, a sense of meaninglessness, a sense of futility underneath everything. I think that's probably where Sartre got his idea for his great work, nausea. If your origin is meaningless and your destiny is meaningless, have the guts to admit your life is meaningless. Now, that's the big experiment and that's the lesson. What's the small experiment? There's a little thought experiment which, fortunately for you, if you're looking at your clock, is not going to take as long to get through as the first. And it's only here in verse 24, 25 and 26. Suddenly, see, if you're reading the book of Ecclesiastes, the word God is nowhere to be seen except just one little place in the beginning of chapter one. So all through chapter one and two. No, the word God isn't here. Why? Because it's a thought experiment. We're looking at life under the sun. Suddenly, verse 24 to 26, God comes up, in fact, all the way into chapter three, the word God has used 10 times. And he says, a person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too I see from the hand of God. For without him who can eat or find enjoyment, to the person who pleases God, Him God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness. Now, suddenly, everything has changed. God is back in the picture. And so we have a new thought experiment. Now let's look at life with God in the Center. And suddenly all the things that before were chasing after the wind were never quite in our grasp, were always sort of burdens or emptiness. Suddenly these things are gifts. Because, see, if you look in 24, work now is a gift. Satisfaction in our own toil. God. God's hand gives us satisfaction in our work. That's verse 24. And God gives us pleasure in even our daily food. Verse 25. You don't need harems and feasts if God's in the picture. Even your daily food is a gift. You can get satisfaction in your toil. And then it says to the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom. So all the things that before were burdens, wisdom, work, pleasure, are now gifts. Why? Well, you say. I guess it's just saying now you have to base your life on God. Yes, but how? What if you make it? Your meaning in life will change things such that now the things that were burdens suddenly become gifts. What is, what does your meaning, what will give you meaning in life that will last? They'll give you solid satisfaction and a solid identity. What is it? It's not just obeying God, it's pleasing him twice. It says to the one who pleases God. Now I want you to think about that for a second. What does it mean to live for somebody's pleasure? See, there's many people who say, oh, I have lived for God. And when I say, what do you mean? Well, I went to church and I obeyed the ten Commandments and I read my Bible every day. Well, are you? But I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not religious anymore. Why not? Well, I prayed and God never gave me anything that I asked for. I tried very hard. I lived a good life. And yet he wasn't coming forth. You know, I didn't have good health, I didn't get into the school. I wanted to get into this and that bad happened. So you know what? It's possible to obey God. Not for God's sake, but for your sake. You're praying. You think you're very religious, but you're obeying God to get the things here in this world under the sun and they're the real reason you're living. And then you have a meaning in life that is actually just as unstable. You've got an identity that's just as unstable as the so called secular person. You may think of yourself very religious, but if you're living for God, you think in order to get things, to get blessings, to get health, to get success, you're just as Unstable as everybody else is. And you'll have that spiritual nausea, too. Well, then, what should you be? You should be someone who serves God. Yes. And obeys God. Yes. Just to give him pleasure. Let me tell you what real love is. It's not just emotional. It's not just saying, I want a relationship with you because I desire you and I'm attracted to you. And being with you makes me happy. That's part of it, but that's certainly not the heart of it. And also, love is not mainly volitional. It's not just, well, I have to do my duty and I have to serve you. Let me tell you what real love is. You know you love somebody when you put your happiness into their happiness, so that your greatest happiness is just to see them happy. You've inserted your happiness in their happiness so that you don't make them happy to feel good about yourself. And you don't just seek them just because it makes you. You put your happiness into their happiness. So when they're happy, you're happy. Their joy is your joy. Their delight is your delight. There's nothing beyond it. Then you know you love somebody. Then you know you love somebody. And the only way to get a meaningful life is not just to obey God in some dutiful way, in which case you're still essentially building your life on things here that death camps can take away from you. And a lot of other things can, too. You need to obey God because you just want to delight him, because you adore him that much, because you love him that much. Well, how does that happen? You say arrow. This little thought experiment kind of ends, but there's a pointer in it to something else. You know what the pointer is? Commentators point out, point out that God, in these four verses, these three verses, are constantly giving gifts. God gives the gift of satisfaction. God gives the gift of finding enjoyment. God gives the gift of wisdom and knowledge. And then, guess what? He gives one more gift. Do you see what it is? He gives the sinner the gift of gathering and storing up wealth, to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This, too, is meaningless, of chasing after the wind. The last thing he gives, the last gift he gives is he gives people the gift of futility and meaninglessness. Now you say, how in the world is that a gift? Isn't that a punishment? Isn't that a curse? It depends on what you do with it. Because in Romans 8:18, it says, God subjected this world to futility, meaninglessness in hope. See, if God gives you an Enhanced. Right now, if God is giving you an enhanced feeling of meaninglessness and futility in life, hey, and this is New York. So I bet you that's true of quite a number of you. It could be a gift if you let it drive you to where you should go. It could be a gift if it points you, if it gets you somewhere. You say, well, where? What? Here's what you should be looking at. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, he cried out, my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Do you know what he was experiencing when he said that? He was experiencing life without God? He was praying to God and God wasn't there. He looked to the heavens and the heavens were brass. He was stuck here. He was experiencing life without God. He was stuck under the sun and he was experiencing spiritual nausea, profound nausea, spiritual futility, meaninglessness because God wasn't there for him. Why was he doing that? He was getting what we deserved. We've tried to get away from God and we deserve life without God and the nausea and the meaninglessness. But Jesus Christ came, went to the cross to take the punishment we deserve so that God can forgive us and he can love us and we can connect to Him. So Jesus Christ got life without God on, on the cross so that we can have life with God. Or put it this way, on the cross. Jesus was putting Himself in our lives. He was inserting Himself. He was putting Himself in our misery, he was putting Himself in our mortality. He was going to the depths for us. That's love. He couldn't be happy unless we were happy. And so he put Himself in our misery. And when you see him doing that, that will get you to want to just delight in Him. When you see him sacrificing for you, when you see him putting his love into you, his happiness into your happiness, that makes you want to put your happiness into His. It makes you delight in Him. And that is what you need. You can't just say, well, I need to delight in God. I need to be a God pleaser. I need to be someone who loves God and obeys God just in order to please Him. You've got to see him do this to attract you so that his pleasure is your pleasure, that there's nothing that delights you more than to delight the One who did this for you. And then if you can do that to the degree you can do that, you'll have a meaning in life. That is bomb proof. That is death camp proof. And everything in life will become a gift. Wow, that's quite a lesson, Professor. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank youk for helping us to see that Jesus Christ took the meaninglessness of our lives. He took life without God so we could have life with youh. And when we see him doing that, that makes us want to please him now. Lord, as we partake of the Lord's Supper, as we see in a sense you pouring yourself out for us, oh Lord Jesus Christ, move us so that we can delight in you more deeply and have the life of meaning that sees everything as a gift. We thank you for this. We pray you'd apply to our hearts. By the Holy Spirit, in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the Gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com There you can subscribe to the Gospel and Life Quarterly Journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals and other great gospel centered resources. Again, it's all@gospelandlife.com you can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. Today's sermon was recorded in 2013. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.