What's It Like Down Under? (Part 1)

This is a message from leading the way with Dr. Michael. You sat we pray that it will encourage you in your walk of faith.

If you would like to learn more about Dr. you Seth for leading the way, please visit LTW.or when King Solomon uses the term on Google sun in the book of Ecclesiastes is referring to a live without God, whatever you under the song he is talking about a life that is lived in this life without God.

In fact, the book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon's Beach social words under the sun so many times I didn't count them as basically saying this that there is nothing new under the sun.

Everything's a scientist discovered was always been there. There is a monopoly and there is boredom under the sun that is of life is really empty under the sun. He said life is meaningless when you live it under the sun because under the sun in the Bible as a euphemism. As I told you of our life that is lived without God, but a life that is lived with God than in fellowship with God and under the authority of God is alive that is lived above the sun so that everyone who has ever been born and ever will be born every human being can live either under the sun or above the sun. Every human being that was ever born, and will ever be born. They either experience meaninglessness in life and emptiness and the boredom because they live it without God under the sun. All they can experience it as fulfilling and joyful and exciting life because they live with above the sun with God. The book of Ecclesiastes is really a great book because it just puts things together. Think of the average person in the average home in this lab really landed and just think of that individual.

Waking up in the morning beating everybody into the shower so you can get ready for work and then get on the road and beat the traffic so they can get to work on time and then they got under work all day and work hard and then get in the car and beat the traffic on the way back to your homes and eat and sit down watch television or whatever they do so they can get to bed earlier so they can get up early in the morning so they can beat everyone to the shower so that he can beat the traffic and load factors goes on and on and on like that and Solomon said that his life under the sun that is exactly what life under the sun is all about as many of you know, before the church of the apostles are the privilege of being involved in another ministry that draws me to travel a great deal, but I never like travel travel too much.

My wife will probably say much too much but I'm just not a tourist on the side. See a been to India several times.

I've never seen the Taj Mahal of being two different parts of the world and I've just never seen the tourist sites things that people travel long distance to see in the. The truth is I have never even seen all the Egyptian stuff, you know people don't see it until a few years ago when I had to go some friends from Atlanta but I'm a people watcher and I not listen carefully now watch carefully on what I hear people saying in the lobbies of hotels and an airport lounges and then on planes and I would hear them talk how they are going from 1 Exotic Pl. to the next, looking for something that they can find.

I mean I listen to the language of emptiness. I listen to the language of ornament men meaninglessness. I listen to the language of how they think that they gonna get that to whatever it is on the next trip. They will get it in the next hotel experience that will get it in the next resort or the gonna get it in the next experience so they gonna get it but life saw D because they can never find it. Whatever it was in the search ends up with disappointment ends up with disappointment. Why, because they live the lives where does the ghost story of how there was a tour group that was touring Italy and there were two women who was standing there looking at the Mount Vesuvius and then looked at the hot red lover spewing now attend. One woman looked in the other and said look at this, look at this just looks like half the two Italian guys were standing by one looked at the other end said man alive.

He said these Americans. They've been everywhere. King Solomon describes himself as a searcher some translations this preacher other translation said teacher, but to be exactly accurate lien searcher is a person who goes out on a searcher. I guess that's what the teacher preacher does and then comes back and presents his findings at so he was a searcher. He's on when out on a search looking and then he gave us his findings and so he begins his book of Ecclesiastes with the conclusion that he had reached as a result of the search begins with a conclusion that some of your translations begin by saying vanity vanity all is vanity again that is not an accurate translation. It's a old English word and is not like your vanity mirror or like what you have experienced this morning looking at yourself for several hours in the mirror admiring yourself that's not the kind of vanity in the NIV did it better job in translating this saying emptiness is rather emptiness futility in his blissfulness. It's like a puff you know how to just rub bubbling in the bubble comes out and then gets bigger and then gone.

That's really literally what it means emptiness and this is what Solomon search has brought him to conclude about the life which is lived where he said that there was, not a thing.

There was, not a pleasure not a relationship. Nothing has an enduring value.

He found nothing to bring about true contentment and satisfaction in life. Nothing. The great novelist Leon Tolstoy when he was in his 40s. He was rich and he was healthy and he was famous and he was happily married, and he testified that these pleasures in life gave him no reason to either praise God or lasting fulfillment. In fact that's what he had written. He said a strange condition of mental talk for began to grow upon me the same questions continuously presented themselves to me why what afterward my life has come to a single stop I could breathe. I could eat I could drink I could sleep. Indeed, I could not help but do so, but there is no real life in me.

Life had no meaning for me. Why, because he lived his life where another are some people who think that Solomon brought this book of Ecclesiastes when he was an old and bitter, but I am convinced that is not the case. I'm convinced that he wrote this book when he was going through his midlife crisis and I tell you 700 wives no doubt in my mind that he experience midlife crisis. Now I hear people talk about midlife crisis, both among men and women. Apparently what happened that somewhere in the 40s and the 50s, people begin to question and wonder about whether missing out on and the endless activities of life from his nose like the man who was going through his midlife crisis and he was wearing this T-shirt says I am getting revenge. I am going to live long enough to be a problem for my kids, but there is no doubt from my experience of lease that there is a time when men begin to wonder about lives endless activities to and they wonder why this endless activities and trying to make things happen and I'm sure also. Women feel the same way as they live under the sun.

They begin to think man I'm covered up with washing and cleaning and cooking and and driving carpool and they wonder about these seemingly endless activities in the life, and Solomon stops in the middle of life and he begins to say to us as he looks at these endless monotonous activities and live and says let me warn you about life where I think Nico goes on the site and after all this endless monotonous activities and on and on and on and send them. He said to us, people get born and they live and then they die one generation comes another generation goes and then he looks at creation. He looks at the sun, the moon and the stars at any looks of the mountains and the rivers and oceans and they seem to be constant and he says to himself, those things keep on keeping on, but people come and go. They are constant, but people are not, in fact, you can sense that he's becoming irritated. If you read it carefully. He's irritated with this fact committee says it should be that a virus things in nature should come and go, but people should go on forever.

Why, because at this time in his life. Solomon was living where his father David warned him about that. In fact, in first Chronicles chapter 28 verse nine. His father David had warned him, he said, my son, do not forsake the Lord, the God of your father. And for a season in his life.

At least Solomon did not take heed of his father's advice of his father's counsel and he forsook the Lord, the God of his father and he married many unbelieving wives who have turned his heart from the living God the father and God's, and as he tries to come back to live above the sun or God is as he begins to rethink of what he the mess that he made out of his life. Almost pleads with us to learn from his miserable experience to heed the warning.

Then he saying please do not live your life under the sun where God is not live above the sun where God is and he said these parachutes could ever bring you happiness. It did not bring him pleasure. It did not bring them lasting satisfaction and here we are 3000 years later and relearning the same lesson over and over and over again and that amazing because throughout the book of Ecclesiastes is were going to see as we go through the series of messages. Solomon is crying out this morning to us. Jesus please do not go where I went. Please be forewarned about a living your life under the sun. Please learn from my failing experiments do not make the same mistakes that I have made live above the sun live in fellowship with God, live above the sun where you can live under the authority of God. This is all of these temptations that you face under the sun on the were sent.

Do not fall in these temptations because they are not worth it at the end all of what you will push you under the sun will bring you nothing but emptiness and monotony and disappointment in life about life lived above the sun where God is a life that is lived in fellowship with God. A life that is lived under the authority of the word of God life that is lived by the principles that are in the word of God is advised. Life will be meaningful. That life is purposeful, that life is fulfilling that life is joyful that life is full of contentment that life will be a blessing to you that life will be a blessing to others that life will be a blessing to God. So what's down under the sun.

He said emptiness, monotony, meaninglessness, and lack of fulfillment how and why I said because the fact is that I can never be satisfied onto more and more and more and more and more. You see, the more you want to see and then there's no end to what you want to hear, and you hear again and again and you want to hear some more.

Don't you think that the marketing community have read the book of Ecclesiastes. I'm convinced that they have. Why do you think you have these tabloids in the checkout counters with the sensational headlines because you know that I wanted to say and know what it was a homeland and it was aggressive. What's the next thing is not because inquiring minds want to know is because I want to see and wants to hear.

And so what they do. They jump you from one thing to the other from Halloween pumpkins the Thanksgiving turkey leather skipping Thanksgiving after the Christmas shopping to Valentine flowers to Easter eggs to Memorial day sales Fourth of July sells the back-to-school sales and on and on.

The next you do the same thing again they bring your spring fascia and then some affection and then fall fashion.

Then went to fashion and of course we keep changing the fighting so you can wear what you were last year and they keep changing year after year after you because they know that the I cannot get enough in the air cannot get enough. Solomon says so more and more and more and more, and then go through the whole thing with meticulous precision.

The next year, the beloved real honest with ourselves and I'm ahead of the pack. We have to admit we have to confess all of us. I note from first-hand experience how easy it is how easy it is to get wrapped up in material things. How easy it is to find ourselves going from something we want, and once regarded the next thing becomes a need to go from one to need in a very short period of time. We can't live without it and all of the process and in all of this being wrapped up in the material things is so easy for us to forget why and the reason why we have been placed on this planet and the purpose for living. I wanted to look at verse 18.

You know when I was a boy I memorize verse 18. I memorize it for a reason, because especially I use this text. Every time my folks wanted me to do my homework.

They say to have you finish your homework.

Also, the Bible says I was a budding preacher, but I did not know it because of the Bible says without increasing dollars.

There is an increase in sorrow and you know what comes next is the only increase in sorrow you going to get is by not finishing your homomorphic but it is absolutely true. The more we know, the more we know how little we know, Sir Isaac Newton a great scientist and a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ at the close of his life said the following is that I have been paddling in the shallows of a great ocean of knowledge.

Now, the cry of every honest scientist now.

The operative word here is honest, the cry of every honest scientists is the we merely learning tiny little bit of the vastness of God's creation.

It's all there for us to look in the more we learn, the more we realize how fast it is. It will be something like a four-year-old kiddos got her father was a mathematics professor and when he comes home and the boys is that a did you know that 2+2 = 4 in the data better when they have enlisted people and keep learning good boy is how God feels about us rediscovering all these great discoveries, but an honest business man.

This is barely scratching the surface of the vastness of God and Goddess of patios in the bags and keep learning, keep learning, you learn some more, but is a good news is a good news for those who are living above the sun.

Those who are living in a personal relationship with the son of God. They not only experience contentment in this life, but they know most assuredly that the day is coming when they will have perfect knowledge when they have perfect bodies when they have perfect minds. We don't have perfect memories will have perfect stamina and the reason they can live above the sun in this life is because they know who they are and whose they are. They know their purpose for living. They know their ultimate destination and so let me ask you this. Are you living your life under the sun where you've experiencing emptiness drudgery monotony today.

You can change directions today, you can begin to live above the sun and not under the sun today, you can begin to live a life of meaning alive of purpose a life of absolute assurance of your ultimate and eternal destination. If that's your desire as we pray. You can say to the Lord, Lord, I am tired of living under the sun. I want to live above the son, and God will answer the prayer father you are a great God and you keep forewarning us and you keep warning us, and you've given us your word and the experience of others. We think that they did not experience what we want to experience a net than reality. This man, Solomon probably experience with no human being ever experience. And yet he came up empty because he said life under the sun is meaningless.

Father I've Troy that it is a single person here today who has been living under the sun without a relationship with the son of God, the today be the day which he or she will commit the life you and come and live above the sun where there have meaning and purpose in life and we thank you father that you hear our prayer because we praise him in the mighty name of Jesus a man