We are in the middle of a study on work. We're going to spend six weeks at the first of the year here to study work and how the Lord has called us to work and what he's blessing us to do in that work. But before we jump into that, let's go to the Lord and take a moment for prayer. Please pray with me. Our Father in Heaven, we do worship you because you are the only one who can take darkness and bring light. You are the one who can take messes and tangles and make something that is beautiful. And we bring to you our tangled up lives. And we ask that you would do something beautiful in them. Father, I pray that you would come and sit with everyone who is here and you would speak to us. I pray, Father, for the parents who feel overwhelmed and discouraged because they think they should be better than they are. I pray that you tell them how proud you are of them and how much you love them for their work. Father, I pray for the students who are struggling and feel like failures. I pray for the people who go to work day in and day out and feel unappreciated and feel like their work is just a drudgery that accomplishes nothing. Father, I pray for those who are lonely and wonder if you still remember them. Father, I pray that you would be with us and you would speak words of comfort to us. And we would know your love. I pray in Jesus' name. So we spent the last two weeks looking at the role of work, we could say working the ideal. And I know we talked about God being a working God who created us in His image so that when we work, we restore our dignity and we are really getting back in touch with what we were created to be. And we talked about how God, last week, we talked about how God created the world, filled with potential, filled with beauty. And it's our job to uncover that beauty and bring the beauty out, to bring the potential out. And wherever you see order, whenever you see something working, whenever you see something beautiful, you know God's image has been there, God's image has been at work and He has glorified by that. And I know I can hear your thoughts are very, very loud sometimes, deafening when you're up here. And I know that many of you have been thinking to yourselves, I don't know where He works, but where I work is just not that beautiful. My work is hard and it is frustrating and it is unappreciated and I'm underpaid and I don't like it, it's just hard. And I do want you to know that I understand you, I get that. I get that not just in a theoretical level from reading the Bible. It's hard that maybe to believe my work is hard too. There's often been days when I've come home and just wondered, is anything getting accomplished? Is all the effort and the prayer and the work with people and with the word is just useless? I get that, I get that feeling of futility, that feeling of failure. A few years ago, actually, this is a little weird, I'm surprised to see you in church. So if this is your first time here, I want you to know, God doesn't speak to us by any means, only through the word. But He did speak to me one time on a treadmill and I'm going to tell you the story, but you're not allowed to repeat it. I was, a few years ago, my doctor told me that I'm basically a diabetic time bomb waiting to explode. And so I said, yeah, I knew that, I was waiting on you to tell me, so now I'm going to get in shape. So I decided for the first time in my whole life, I was going to exercise and it really wasn't that easy. I was shocking all these people who exercise with a smile on their face, I don't get the joke. So anyway, I was working out, I was on the treadmill, I was trying to finish, it was hard. And it was during a time when work was going hard, it was difficult. And the church wasn't growing and people that we were really investing time in were turning away. And I was on the treadmill just kind of going at it, getting to the end of this workout. And different things work at different times for me to get me to finish a workout. And this particular time, it was worship music. And it's not always that way, but I was listening to this new album I had and the musicians were singing about seeing Jesus. They were singing, oh, glorious day. And I had a vision, sorry, there it is. I had a vision while I was on the treadmill and the vision was that I was seeing Jesus. And in a song, they're running, they're talking about running up to him and I ran to him. But the overwhelming feeling that I had was the feeling that you have when you're coming off a sporting field, a football field or a baseball field or whatever, and you've lost. And you see your dad or you see your coach and you just kind of fall on them and I saw myself kind of falling on Jesus' shoulder and sobbing. And all I could do was say, I did my best. I did the best I could do. I'm sorry, I kept saying over and over, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know that feeling. I think a lot of you had where you're just, you've come home from work or maybe even fired from your job or maybe you feel like a failure as a parent. And you just, you want to fall on somebody's shoulder who can comfort you and all you can say over and over is, I did the best I could do. I did everything I could do and it was not enough and I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The Bible recognizes that about work too, that it's hard, that it is often futile, that it is often fails. And that is a result of sin that has brought the world under judgment so that the ground has been cursed for our sake and so that we have been cursed and we are trying to force our work, the work of our hands to produce something that it cannot produce. And that leads us to futility. So if you'll open your Bible or turn your bullet into Ecclesiastes 2, verses 17-25, I will look at what the Bible says about this futility. Ecclesiastes is a book written as a form of wisdom literature and it gives us the example of a man who has everything and he is going to set out to find the good life. And he goes first by studying wisdom and he becomes the wisest man in the world and he finds that all that wisdom only leads him to great sorrow. The more he knows, the more he sees darkness and the despair of the world and it leads him to sorrow. And then he decides he's going to throw himself into pleasure and he amasses riches and wealth and he amasses women and song and food and he finds that at the end of all that there's only hangovers and there's no pleasure in it. And so then he throws himself into work and this is what he says about his work. He said, I came to hate life because everything done here under the sun is so troubling. Everything is meaningless like chasing the wind. I came to hate all my hard work here on earth, for I must leave to others everything that I have earned and who can tell whether my successors will be wise or foolish. Yet they will control everything I have gained by my skill and hard work under the sun. How meaningless? So I gave up in despair, questioning the value of all my hard work in this world. Some people work wisely with knowledge and skill. They must leave the fruit of their efforts to someone who hasn't worked for it. This too is meaningless, a great tragedy. So what do people get in this life for all their hard work and anxiety? Their days of labor are filled with pain and grief. Even at night their minds cannot rest, it's all meaningless. So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction and work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God, for who can eat or enjoy anything apart from Him. That's part of the reading of God's Word. One of my family's favorite movies is Surfs Up. Have you seen Surfs Up? It's about penguins surfing. It's Oscar quality stuff. I can't believe I haven't seen Surfs Up. And these penguins that surf, you have three or four different kinds of characters and all of them are great surfers, but they're all continually frustrated. You have this kid who's grown up and he's little and his friends have always made fun of them and his brothers always make fun of them because he wouldn't work. And he's going to use surfing to prove that he matters. He's a grown up. And you have the old hero and surfing was his identity but he can't handle the pressure of letting anybody down. And every time he gets on the surf board he feels all this pressure. And so he has to run away and you have kind of the new bully on the block and surfing is his way of conquering the world. And he shows off his trophies like there's his girlfriends and they're his identity. And then kind of a minor character in the story is chicken Joe. And chicken Joe just loves to surf. And all surfing is for him is surfing. And at the end of the show chicken Joe gets into the finals and his response is, oh cool, that means we can surf more. Being overwhelmed with winning is not an issue at all. He just wants to surf. What the Bible tells us is this. There's a reason why I just did this. I'm about to preach to you Surfs Up. I got a gospel according to penguins on surf boards. Here it comes. Our work leads to futility and frustration because we're trying to ring from it, our security, our livelihood, contentment, status, importance, and it can't give us any of those things. Even harder we try to get those things from it, the more disappointment and futility and despair we're going to end up in. The only thing that work can give you is the joy of working. And you're created for that and that's important and that's a good thing. And you need to do it and you ought to do it. But as a writer of Ecclesiastes says, the best you can do is enjoy your food as a gift from God. And enjoy your work as a gift from God. Anything else is futility. Anything else is wasted. Your work is not going to give you the importance in life, the comfort, the status, the security. You think it's going to give you. And the more you think that you're going to get it, the more disappointed you're going to be. Work gives you the joy of working. Rest in that. Rest in the goodness of God. Rest in work as a good gift of his. Because work will never satisfy you. Why will work never ultimately satisfy? First of all, because work oftentimes produces failure. The ground was cursed for our sake in Genesis. And what Ecclesiastes says the most 23 is days of labor are filled with pain and grief. And even at nights, their minds cannot rest. It's all meaningless. We work to put food on the table. And our belief in America is that if you work hard, put your pants on every day, then you will achieve a certain level of financial security and you'll be fine. And we live in the greatest country ever. And oftentimes that actually happens. Oftentimes, if you work hard, you're able to provide for your family. But some seeds don't grow. Sometimes work fails. And it has nothing to do with how hard you work, how much integrity you show, it just fails. A good friend of mine was in the publishing industry in the 80s in Houston. And his company was doing better than he had ever hoped or imagined. And he was worth millions of dollars. And on top of the world. And he worked his way there. He was from very poor upbringing. And he worked his way there. And he and his partners decided that they were going to go to the next level. And they invested all of their money and personally guaranteed these enormous loans. So they could serve a broader base. And those of you who are in the fuel business know what happened to Houston in the 80s. They complete the whole city tank. And there was no need for his product. The other thing that went on in the 80s was computer technology developed and it developed to the level that in a matter of a few short years, people were able to do on their desktops. When he bought hundreds of thousands, when he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy equipment to do, he was unnecessary and he was in debt. And he got into this hole and he tried to work hard to dig himself out of the hole trying to dig enough out of this side of the hole to stack it up over here so you climb out. And it never worked. And he lost his health. He lost his friendships. He lost everything. And it wasn't his fault. Some seeds just don't grow. And the harder he worked did not get him out of the hole. And 15 years later he had to declare bankruptcy and say the whole thing was empty. I have another friend who works in the insurance business and he worked and worked for weeks, getting put in about 60 to 80 hours, putting together this proposal because he wanted to get the business of this particular company in town. And he worked hard and he did it well and he established a relationship there with the secretary, you know, so you can kind of get it in. And he dropped his proposal off early so it'd be before anybody else's. And then he waited for a call. He waited to hear, you know, he had gotten the business or not. And even if he didn't get the contract, they'd always call and tell you no one wants someone else. And he never got called. And a couple of weeks later he called the secretary back and she talks as she talks to him that moment of realization comes and she goes, oh, I'm so sorry. You got your proposal in early and I sent it off to the side. I never even put it in the stack with the other proposals. The boss never even saw it. Some seeds don't grow. Some seeds don't grow because of someone else's mistakes. Some seeds don't grow because of the culture itself just goes down. Some seeds don't grow because there's evil people in the world. I've got a friend who works with Hispanics in town and he talks about these guys getting to work and working for weeks and coming and asking for a paycheck and the bosses, you know, say, well, you know, you get two weeks paid but you have to work four weeks before you get the first two weeks. You have to kind of get a cycle going so they'll work for a full month and to come back and ask for the paycheck for the first two weeks. And instead of finding their boss there ready to pay them, they find an immigration officer ready to deport them. And the boss says, no, I'm not going to pay you. You're going to be belonging this country. There's evil people in the world and sometimes their exploitation causes us to work and work and only produce futility. It's true. It's real. And that's a struggle. And sometimes we feel like our work is completely wasted and nobody sees it. And if our work is focused on squeezing out that existence, it will lead to disappointment. But God gives us something else. He gives us the promise that He sees us. He says, I decided there's nothing better than to enjoy work and food and drink and to find satisfaction and work. And I realized that these pleasures, our food, our drink and our work are from the hand of God. When I first moved here, we had about six families that wanted to plan a church and one of them, the second I arrived on the ground decided they didn't want to be part of it. And that was great. That was really encouraging. And accidentally saw my wife was coming back from that particular meeting and I was walking through the yard. And my wife came out to greet me in the yard and she was not supposed to be there. I was supposed to have a few moments alone and I didn't get them. And so I just kind of collapsed on her shoulder crying. And I said, I want my old life back. In the midst of that kind of despair, I had a meaning downtown. And it was winter, it was raining and I didn't know what I was doing. I met with Paul Moreno. I remember we met on Cherry Street. And I was just kind of overwhelmed with the bigness of Tulsa and my own anonymity. Nobody knew me. Nobody cared that I was here. And as I left that launch, I was just overwhelmed with that thought. Nobody cares or even knows that you are here. And I was walking in my car and I had to cross the street to get to it. And I looked down in the middle of this rainy wet gutter. It was a dead bird. Again, Presbyterian disclaimer, this doesn't usually happen because spoke to me through that bird. Sorry. And he said, birds don't fall to the ground apart from my father's will. I know that that bird is on the ground. And I know you're there. I see you. I see your work. It is not missed. You are not absent. You're not being missed. I see you. I see what you're putting in. Trust me. Lord tells us even in the midst of our failures, he sees our work. And he's with us in it. Work is hard because it's often as a failure. Secondly, work is hard because it produces futility. It's never enough. We never get enough. This is the case of a man who is all alone without child or brother yet who works hard to gain as much wealth as he can. But then he asks himself, who am I working for? Why am I giving up so much pleasure now? It's also meaningless and depressing. He's saying here, even when work does produce, even when it is producing fruit, even when we are getting wealth from it, it's never enough. It's never enough to make us happy. And we have a hard time believing that we really do. And I just showed you a video of Tom Brady on the wealthiest, most successful, beautiful men that you're ever going to see. You don't have the opportunity to look as good as he does, much less to make as much as he does, or be as famous as he is. Every kid in the country wants to grow up a quarterback. At one point, you wanted to be a quarterback. At one day, you did. And he is there at the absolute top of the world. And he's saying to us, this isn't it. This is not satisfying me. When John Rockefeller was a wealthiest man in the world, he was asked how much money is enough. And his answer was a little bit more. The problem is, you don't believe that. You think 100 million, that would be enough. The people who have 100 million tell you, it's not enough.
And the question really is just for you, would you take their word for it? Will you take their word for it? Because you're never going to get there. And so it's easy for you to just think, well, if I got there, I'd be happy. And you blame your job, and you blame your situation, and you blame God for not giving you those opportunities. The reason why you're discontent is because you don't have the stuff you think would make you content. And the people who have it say, I'm not content. Will you take their word for it? I think we all kind of have this, what I call a back porch dream. And the dream is that we walk out on this back porch of our fantasy house, whatever the house looks like for you. And we sit on our back porch, which looks like whatever yours looks like, you know, mine's wooden and it's wrapped around. And you sit on your dream patio furniture, your dream porch furniture, and you look out at your dream backyard, and you sit next to your dream spouse, who may or may not be the spouse that you have now, that's not what this sermon's about. And you think, when you get that, you will be happy. You will be content. And the reason why you're not content is because you don't have that. And the people who have that aren't content either. And they're telling you that your work will never produce it. Now, I am not telling you you can never be content. I'm telling you to work will never get you there. You can be content. The Bible tells us how to do that. He says this in Hebrews 13, keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Now, he doesn't just stop there. I hate me would just stop there. Just be happy with what you got. That's like your mom saying, children in China would be happy to have that. Send it to him. And still, I'm going to make me eat sauerkraut. But he does not just stop there. He says, be content with what you have. For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Why are you to be content with what you have? Because you have Jesus. And in him, you have everything. You have everything. He who did not spare his own son, but freely gave him up for us all. He's given us the fullness of the Godhead. And you have everything. And he's not withholding anything from you. And this contentment that you think is going to come when you get to a certain status level in your job or when you get into a certain financial economic status. I want you to know that if the Bible is true, you can have it right now. You can have it right now. It is not easy. It requires drilling down deep and believing something that's hard to believe. It requires you to believe that the Lord of the universe who loves you so much that the gate his own son for you has given you everything that you have. He's not withholding anything bad from you. If he is withholding anything bad from you, it's because it's not best for you. It's not because he's selfish and won't give it. And what that means is that the back porch I have right now is my dream back porch. The spouse that I have right now is the spouse that the Lord who loves me so much that he gave me his own son. He gave her to me. She's perfect for me. The children that I have right now are the perfect children for me. The children that I don't have right now are the perfect children to not have from that bad grammar. It's not best for me. And I can trust him. That's hard. I'm not saying that's easy. It is hard. But it's true. And that's the only road that's ever going to get you to contentment. On the other hand, I want, I want to apply this to you in a little bit of a twisted way. Because of this, when you talk about work, there's nobody who works harder and feels, I don't think, feels like more of a failure at the end of the day than a parent. And I want you to hear this. Every mother, I know. That's how this way to you. But maybe I guess I don't know. Every mother, I know, feels like an absolute failure if their children eat a cookie. I can't believe I did that. I ruined them. And every mother, I know, feels like an absolute failure if they deprived their child of a cookie. Every parent, I know, feels like you're a failure if you're not making your child learn piano. I'm just not pushing them to be the best. And every parent, I know, feels like an absolute failure if you make your child practice something he doesn't want to practice. I'm so mean. I'm probably going to make him anxious and have anxiety disorders because I pushed him so hard. Women, men who are comparing yourself to a standard you will never meet. And I want you to know that the Lord of the universe who loves your children so much that he gave his only son for them gave you to your children. You are God's blessing to your children. And he doesn't hate your kids. And his goal is not to curse them. His goal is to bless them through you. And I need you to believe you need to believe you will never be content in your work as a parent until you believe that you are a blessing to them. Because God is blessing them. Your good parents. Contentment does not come from achieving a certain level of stuff. Contentment comes from believing that you have everything. It could possibly make you happy because God has given you a son. Our work is often times hard and it fails and we need to remember that God sees us. Our work often times is futile because the more we produce it still doesn't make us happy. And we need to remember that God has given us himself to make us happy. And finally our work often times is futile because it's a hard word to say futile. How do you want me to say it? Futile? You like futile? Okay, Amber wants me to say futile. Our work is, finally it's futile because it's selfish. And when I say selfish, I mean I don't mean greedy. I mean we just work to make ourselves wealthy. I mean it's selfish in the sense that we work for ourselves. We work to make ourselves happy. We work to establish a status or a work ethic or to make a contribution to society where we believe that we are important. We work to quiet the voice in our head that says we're not important. For those of you who just only experienced the sequels in the 80s, you're going to have a hard time believing this but Rocky was originally a serious movie. And actually one best picture. It wasn't just a stupid action movie designed to make as much money as possible without paying writers. It was originally a serious movie about a guy growing up in Philadelphia who needed to know that he wasn't a bomb. And toward the end of the movie the night before his big fight he can't sleep and his girlfriend asked him what's the big deal and he says I just have to know if I can go 15 rounds with the champ, I will know that I'm not a bomb. The reason why our work is futile oftentimes is because we are working to prove to ourselves that we're not bombs. I've got one good friend in his 60s who gets up early every morning and goes to work so he can quiet his father's voice in his head so he can say to his dad see how hard I'm working dad. Now the first one of the office again. His father passed away 20 years ago. But he's trying to prove not to his dad. He's trying to prove to himself that he works as hard as his dad. He's not a valuable human if he doesn't. And as long as we're in that treadmill trying to prove to ourselves how valuable we are, it only leads to despair. I'm pleased he said that I observed that most people are motivated to success because they envy their neighbors but this too is meaningless like chasing the wind. We want to prove the thing is this is the thing about envying your neighbors. Your neighbors don't only care about you but you care about what they think about you. So being driven by the envy of your neighbors really means you think you're a failure because you're not as successful as they are. And so you kill yourself to prove to yourself that you're as good as they are. And that type of selfishness takes all forms. We try to prove that we're significant. Maybe we're not one of those fools that chase after money. We chase after what's really important. We're going to make a contribution to society through our work. Or maybe it's just by being religious and being holy. And I'm going to be more righteous than my neighbor. I'm going to be smarter than my neighbor. I'm going to be more serious about something than our neighbor. And that desire to justify in ourselves never works. The working chasing after this desire to prove to ourselves that we're valuable. It never works because you never escape that judge that you're carrying around in your own heart. And at the end of the day, you know this, if you're old enough, no matter how hard you worked last week, if you hit the snooze alarm tomorrow, you're going to feel guilty about it. That judge in your own mind is going to tell you, you're worthless and lazy. You can't quiet that by working. You might quiet at one day. Some of us are in a place where you can't possibly quiet it. It's impossible to be a great, to be great at my job. Oftentimes experiences impossible for me to put it in the number of hours it takes to be a great minister, a great father, and a great husband on the same day. There's just not that many hours in a day. So no matter where I spend my time, no matter what I do, I'm going to go to bed that night feeling like a failure on one of those three levels. It just can't be done. And if we work to try to quiet that voice in our hearts, it's going to kill us. But there's another way to quiet it. We quiet it not by getting our sufficiency, by getting our importance, by getting our value out of what we do. We quiet it by getting our value out of how much we're loved. I'm valuable. I'm valuable, not because I have a lot of people who come and hear me on a Sunday morning. I'm valuable because the Lord of the universe loves me so much that he gave his only son so that he can be with me. That's valuable. You are the pearl of great price. God gave everything away for just so he could get you. He gave away everything for you. That's where your value comes from. And when you receive that, when you believe that, then you're able to receive all of his other gifts, your food, and your drink, and your work, and your spouse, and your children, and your lack of a spouse, and your lack of children, those all are things that God who loves you have given you, and you can receive them. And you can actually enjoy them. You can enjoy them. I had another treadmill vision. It's weird. Years ago, I haven't had another one since. I promise. It doesn't happen to me every day. But I was back on the treadmill about three months after the initial vision, and I was in Dallas this time, and I got up early because I have to work out before I go to these meetings. And I'm a bad human if I don't, and nobody came to church on the Sunday before. It's always a Monday on my visions. I don't care how many people come. It's always nobody. You realize that. I'm preaching to these empty chairs right here. And so I was just depressed, and I was listening to the same song. It's the same playlist, right? So the same song comes on at the end of the workout. Once again, I'm running. I'm at the end of the workout. I'm listening to glorious day. I'm thinking about seeing Jesus. And there he is. Bam, the vision comes back. And once again, I fall in his shoulder, and I start saying, I'm so sorry. I didn't win. I'm so sorry. And this time Jesus picks me up, and he says, Ricky, you're in the band. You don't win the game. You weren't even on the playing field. Why do you think you lost? You think I would let you win or lose? You're just not that good. I won the game. Everything that you really care about, everything that you are working so hard for, I've already given you. You're working so hard to save those people in Tulsa. I died for them. I've already saved them. It's just your job to let them know that I saved them. You're playing the song. You're playing the fight song. You're children that you're so convinced that you're a terrible father, and you're going to have to spend years in counseling. I've already saved them. I love them. You're a gift that I've given them. All that food and that drink and you're so worried that you're going to not be able to pay the bills next month. I'm feeding the birds of the air. I'm going to feed you. I'm going to feed your kids. I've already done that. The game is over. I won. Will you just play your little trumpet? Let people know that I won. I've done all the work. It's all just a gift. Just receive it and enjoy it. When we receive it and enjoy it, man, you're able to bless your kids by enjoying them. You're able to bless your work by enjoying it. The job that you're going to tomorrow is God's way of blessing you. He gave it to you because He likes you. Changes your mind about it, frees you up, enables you to have joy. That's what I want for you. I want you to be able to work with joy. Enjoy it as a blessing of God's hand. Please pray with me. Father in heaven, I pray that we would rest in what you have done for us. I pray that we would enter the true Sabbath that you have inaugurated. Sending us your son to let us rest in him. I pray Lord that our work, the work of getting up on Monday morning and checking emails and getting into the office early. I pray that the work of changing diapers and putting kids to bed, I pray that the work of getting up and opening up your books and writing papers and studying subjects. I pray that all of that we would be able to do it with joy knowing that it's from your hand. And you love us and you're not punishing us. I pray in Jesus' name.