8/12/07 - Pentecost 11 - Ecc. 1:2,2:18-26

WHAT DO YOU LIVE FOR?
- You can't keep what you work for
- What you can keep you've already been given

Tell me if you know who I am describing: This man made for himself a massive throne of ivory and overlaid it with gold. It had six steps going up to it with two huge lions on each step - 12 in all. All of his kitchenware: plates, cups, bowls were all made out of pure gold. His palace was constructed out of the finest imported cedar logs in the world. And for the decorations inside that palace he had 300 shields made out of gold. If those shields were made today with gold at $646 an ounce, each of those 300 shields would be worth over $38,000 a piece. But that wasn’t all of them. He then made 200 more larger shields out of gold worth over $77,000 a piece. All together those 500 shields were worth $27,132,000 in gold. That was just for one aspect of his interior decorating… Many of you know by now that I’m talking about King Solomon. The wise son of David who ruled over the land of Israel.
Solomon also had 1400 chariots in his own garage. 12,000 horses imported from Egypt. And everyone from all over the world who came to see him and listen to him brought a gift. Scripture says that whoever desired an audience with the king brought him gifts of silver, gold, robes, weapons, spices, horses, and mules. Every year Solomon received 666 talents of gold. In today’s terms that’s $516,800,000 of gold per year. Solomon reigned for 40 years. And so if he averaged that amount of gold over 40 years, he would have accumulated $20,672,000,000 in gold alone. And that’s not counting the gold he got from the ships he sent off every three years or the gold from the merchants or from the traders or from all the kings of Arabia or from each of the governors in the land who gave him annual taxes in gold.
Solomon had more money than we can imagine. Solomon had more possessions than we will ever see in one place at one time. But Solomon is also the man who wrote down the words of our sermon text for today in the book of Ecclesiastes. Listen to the words the rich and wise King Solomon wrote: “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 he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun.” Solomon’s apprehensions were proved true. Almost instantly after he died the kingdom of Israel was split between his son, Rehoboam and his official, Jeroboam. Everything that Solomon had built up during his life was all for naught. But even before that happened Solomon came to realize that whatever he had in this life was meaningless because he could not take with him. All that he worked for, all that he wanted, all that he obtained meant nothing. The reason for him to live would not be found in anything he worked for. His reason for him to live came from what he had been given long before he ever had a thing.
What do you live for? And I want you to seriously think about that. It’s going to be different for everyone. Why do you get up every morning? What motivates you to go about your day, to go to work, to live your life? Some of you work to save up money. Some of you go to your jobs to buy what you want: cars, tvs, clothes… Some of you go about your day for your children. Some of you work so that you can take vacations. Some of you don’t officially work at a job any more and so you live to do what you want or to see your grandkids again or maybe you simply live to hold on to the things you acquired over the years. There is always something that motivates our daily lives. There is always something to which we look ahead. There is always something we live for, isn’t there? And the common denominator of all those things that we live for is this: they are all things that will make us happy. Whatever we strive for, whatever we work for, whatever we live for in this life are the things that we hope will make us happy. The problem is: all those things are meaningless. Money, possessions, vacations, family members, events, friends… they never last. You strive for them and long for them and look forward to them, but in the end it’s just a chasing after the wind. Those things will never make you completely satisfied because no matter how hard you work to get them you can’t take any one of those things with you. You are really in the same boat as Solomon was. He said, “What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.” All those earthly things that Solomon lived for were meaningless to him. And all those earthly things that you live for are meaningless as well because they don’t matter when you’re dead.
And so what should your mindset be? Every morning when you get out of bed should your entire purpose for living be focused on the things that make you happy in this life or should your mind be motivated by the happiness of the life to come? What’s more important to you as a Christian? Possessions or possessing the Word of God? Wealth or the riches of Christ’s gospel promise? Family or spreading the message of salvation to your family members? The passing joys of this life or the eternal joys of heaven? You know what the right answer is, but does the focus and the motivation of your day to day life reflect that?
I get caught up in the moment too. Sometimes I am so focused on the blessings of this life that I forget I can’t take them with me. No matter how happy they might make me while I’m here on earth, none of those things are going to matter anymore when my time on earth is done. We should know better than that! We should know better than to live our lives for the things of this earth when they will never last. But we forget and we ignore and we disgust our Lord who gave us all these blessings in the first place by neglecting to remember that none of these things we work for on this earth really matter. The Lord does not want us to be motivated by the things of this life. He doesn’t want the focus of our days to be on what we can get or who we can see or what kinds of fun things we can do. They will not last. They will not survive the grave. The only thing that we will be able to take to the grave is the promise.
The only thing that we will be able to take with us when we die is not something that we worked for, but the promise that Jesus has given us free of charge. And Jesus’ promise is this: “Whoever hears my Word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). The promise that we have been given is the promise of eternal life. The promise of eternal life is the only thing you have on this earth that you can take with you. And so the promise of eternal life is the only thing worth living for in this one.
Has that ever motivated your every day living before? Have you ever waken up in the morning and thought, “The Lord has given me the sure promise of eternal life! Everything I do today is going to be motivated and directed by that fact!” If that has ever been your first thought in the morning - I praise the Lord that he has filled you with such a joy for his salvation. I don’t think I can ever say that has been the first thought to cross my mind. I’m sure it has rarely crossed your mind either. And so I guess it’s a good thing that this promise of eternal life is not something for which we have to work. Christ already did the work for us.
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). Christ was rich, there’s not doubt about that. He had everything. He was in heaven experiencing the joys and glories and perfections of what he created. But for your sake he became poor. He gave up everything. He gave up the joys and the glories and the perfections of his heavenly home and came to this earth - an earth we have filled with sorrow and shame and sin. He became a servant, an outcast, he became a man hated by the world and murdered by his own people. By the world’s standards he was a poor as poor could be. He didn’t have a home. He didn’t have a means of income. He didn’t have a family that could carry on his name. He died at the age of 33 with nothing “so that you through his poverty might become rich.” He gave up everything - even his own life - to give you the promise of eternal life. He rose from the dead to guarantee it was valid. And he ascended into heaven to wait for the day that promise would be fulfilled. You are rich because of Christ’s poverty. You have everything you could ever need because you have been given the only thing that you can take with you to the grave. You have been given the promise of eternal life. That is the only thing in this life that will last. And this promise will last forever.
Did you notice that Christ didn’t put any qualifications on this promise? He doesn’t say that the promise of eternal life is only for those who really deserve it or only for those who really want it or only for those who really work for it. No, the promise of eternal life is absolutely free and for all people. It’s for you. It’s for me. It’s only for sinners. And if this promise is only for sinners, what other gift could be more needed? What other gift could be more undeserved?
Doesn’t the knowledge of this fact make everything else in this life seem rather meaningless? What else can compare to the promise of eternal life? Now, it’s good to enjoy the earthly blessings that the Lord has given us in this life. There’s nothing wrong with being happy about the ways the Lord showers his grace down on his people. But those things should not be our motivation. Those things should not drive us to do what we do, to say what we say, and to think what we think. Those things should not be what we live for. We should live for exactly the same thing here that we will live for in heaven. And that’s the promise of eternal life.
But the question is: how are you going to live for that promise of eternal life in this life? Your focus is going to change, isn’t it? Your motivation every day will be a little different. The things you spend your time on, the things you spend your money on, the things you spend your effort on, will take on a whole new meaning. Because if the promise of eternal life is the only thing that will go with you to the grave, it would seem imperative that you spend every waking moment spreading the news about this wonderful gift to as many people as possible. And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing as Christians in the first place. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing as a congregation. And why wouldn’t we want to? Why wouldn’t we want to live for the precious promise of eternal life? After all that we’ve done wrong to deserve the opposite! And after all that Christ as done right for us to make sure we have it anyway!
I hope that you take a long look at the wise words of King Solomon today. He knew what really mattered because he had everything else that didn’t. And although we don’t have as many possessions (and distractions) as Solomon did, we are just as rich because we have the exact same promise. The promise that has been given to us without cost. The promise that will go with us to the grave and see us to heaven. The promise that guarantees us eternal life. The promise worth living for in this one.
Amen.

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ… to him be the power forever and ever. Amen” - 1 Peter 5:10-11