Chasing the Wind

So many people in our world are trying to find contentment in their lives and material success or pleasure things that don't satisfy our deepest longings today on Truth for Life. Alastair beg takes us to the book of Ecclesiastes to chapter 2, to teach us how to deal with the disillusionment that will come inevitably chasing the wind.

There are so many wonderful benefits.

As you know, being down here and we took advantage of one that is my wife and I during the week when we went alongside some of you. I guess I to see at eternities gate, the van Gogh movie. I am not very well-versed in these things and so it was a discovery for me to realize that goal gone and van Gogh were not only contemporaries but that they were also friends in the little I know about postimpressionist painting and it is a little I has to do with Gauguin and one of his most celebrated paintings and the largest one he ever did have 5' x 12', which is to be found in the Museum of fine arts in Boston was a painting on which you wrote up in the top left-hand corner of this painting he painted it in Tahiti. As with many of his others and on the top left-hand corner. He wrote three questions do then all new New Who along New. Where Do We Come from, What Are We and Where Are We Going Even Catechized in the Roman Catholic Church, but He Was Testifying to the Fact That at This Point in His Life and He Did Not Have an Answer to Those Fundamental Questions. His Attempt to Discover If You like to Answer the Riddle of Life Left in an Answer, of Course, Which Comes across Clearly, Not Only in Ecclesiastes, but throughout the Whole Bible, God Has Said Eternity in Our Hearts and This Sets up the Great Dilemma You See, Because in Seeking to Live for the Immediacy and for the Moment. We Know All of Us inside of Us That There Is Something out There and beyond Us in the Passage That We Just Read the Teacher the Preacher the Pond and the Professor Column As You Choose Seeks out to Make Sense of Life under the Sun.

That's His Framework Every so Often He Punches through into Eternity, but He's Really Saying If We Take Life As It Is Revealed to Us in the Now and in the Here and We Try and Make Sense of It. When We Discover at Three Points.

I'll Tell You What We Are.

So You Can Know That Were Making Progress. I Usually Take Too Long on the First I Tell You That As Well for Your Encouragement. So First Right after I Have Three Words Word His Frustration. The Second Word Is Explanation in the Third Word Is Application. You Will Notice As You Listen Carefully As I Read That There Is This Frustration That Runs through the Passage As We Considered and Classically Summarized When He Says You Know What Is That Crooked Can Be Made Straight As in Chapter 1. What Is Lacking Can Be Counted and Eventually He Says You Know It's Really Just Chasing after the Wind. Those Who Look for These Things He Says Discover That It Is Vanity and a Striving after the Wind. What He Actually Does Is Point out That the Real Diorama for Us If We Are Thoughtful Is Not the Tragedy of Life, but It Is the Triviality of Life. That's the Point That Is Making and Other Things That We Thought Would Bring Lasting Value Would Bring Significance Would Grant to Us an Understanding of Things Are All Confronted by Life's Brevity.

The Future Is Slipping through Our Fingers A Lot Faster Than We Are Prepared to Acknowledge and so the Quest to Make the Best of It. To Enjoy It As Much As We Can. Is More Than Understandable Quest and One That Leaves Us Ultimately Forlorn David Myers. In the Book the American Paradox Says Here's the American Paradox. We Have Never Had so Much and yet We've Never Had so Little.

He Explains How This Is Infiltrated the Minds of Young Men and Women, Not People Who Have Done Poorly or Who Are Struggling by Those of Come from Good Homes Who Have Gone to College Who Find Themselves Baffled by a Sense of Emptiness. Their Self-Esteem Is High, but Their Self Is Empty.

I Quote They Grew up Being Told They Could Be Anything They Wanted to Be but I Don't Know What They Want to Be.

They Are Unhappy, but There Seems to Be No Cause for Their Unhappiness.

They Are More Connected to People through the Internet and yet They Have Never Felt More Lonely They Want to Be Accepted and yet They Often Feel Alienated. Never Have We Had so Much. Never Have We Had so Little Baby Boomers Not Escaping. If You Read the Literature on My Generation. You Will Know That It Chronicles the Fact That Those of Us Who Were Born a Little Earlier Who Are Now into Our Late 60s or Early 70s Are Fraught by Frequent Feelings of Indecision and Anxiety of the 3 AM Wake up in the Middle of the Night. That Sense of Being without Foundation and Finding That despite All We Have Done Unless It Is Something More. We Are As of Now Unable to Fill the Void That Is Where Some of My CS Lewis Can Be Tremendously Helpful and in Mere Christianity. You Remember That As He Addresses This Issue. He Provides This Wonderful Insight. I Quote Sizzlers.

If I Find Myself a Desire Which No Experience in This World Can Satisfy the Most Probable Explanation Is That I Was Made for Another World. If None of My Earthly Pleasures Satisfy That Does Not Prove That the Universe Is a Fraud. Probably Earthly Pleasures Were Never Meant to Satisfy but Only to Arouse It.

To Suggest the Real Thing.

Therefore, Says Lewis, I Must Make It the Main Object of Life to Press on to That Other Country and to Help Others to Do the Same. Know the Shorter Sorties Catechism Begins. What Is the Chief End of Man. Answer One the Chief End of Man Is to Glorify God and to Enjoy Him Forever. There in the World of the Selfie Catechism Calls out to Us. It Is about Glorifying God Not Glorifying Oneself.

It Is about Enjoying Him and Then Enjoying Other Things How Vastly Different Is That from Hemingway and Asked to Remember His Great Credo Life Is a Dirty Trick, a Short Journey from Nothingness to Nothingness, Frustration, Explanation in the Bible. We Have All Kinds of Genres.

In Other Words, Ecclesiastes Does Not Read the Same Way As One of Paul's Letters. The Letters of Paul of Peter of John. Don't Read the Same Way As a Gospel Which Was Written and so from Ecclesiastes and Frustration. I Want to Direct Your Attention to One of Paul's Letters by Way of Explanation He He Says Solomon That the Sense of Chasing the Wind End of Emptiness Is Particularly Their Prerogative of the Intelligent of Those Who Are Able to Think Einstein in Keeping with Ecclesiastes Said, I've Discovered That the Man Who Know the Most Are the Most Gloomy Night Now. Why Is This Well. Paul Actually in Addressing the Corinthians Tackles This Very Straightforwardly and I Want to Read Just a Brief Section 2 Where He Says, Is the Wise Man. Where Is the Scribe. Where Is the Debater of This Age Has Not God Made Foolish the Wisdom of the World for since in the Wisdom of God the World Did Not Know God through Wisdom It Please God through the Folly of What We Preach to Save Those Who Believe Now We Would Not Want to Know Anything of a Kind of Mindless Christianity Would We Recognize That Our Minds Matter.

We Recognize That Biblical Christianity Calls for Us at Every Point to Think That the Story of the Gospel Stands up to the Most Rigorous and Vigorous Investigation.

But If Intellect or Wisdom Were the Key in a Number of Us Would Immediately Be Ruled out Because We Would Not Qualify Any More Than We Have Qualified in Our Studies. What the New Testament Is Pointing out Is Something Quite Dramatic. It Is Saying That It Is in the Wisdom of God That the World Did Not Know God through Wisdom. In Other Words, There Is an Invisible Boundary between God and Ourselves, and It Is on Account of That That Will Alienate so That When We Talk to One Another about a Sense of Alienation with It Is Alienated from a Friend or Family Member or a Spouse or a Sense of Psychological Alienation Work and I There's a Dissonance in Me and My Own My Own Mental Capacity. Underlying All of That Says the Bible Is This Great Alienation That We Have Distanced from God.

In This Way, and the Answer to That, Contrary to Contemporary Notions of Spirituality. The Answer to That Is Not Found in Our Deeper Self. Contemporary Spirituality Suggests to Us That If You Look inside You Can Probably Find the Answer If You've Been Looking inside Yourself Recently and Your Honor's Will Be Forced to Conclude That You Found More Questions Than You Find Answers so Contemporary Notions of Spirituality Go like This.

Yes There Are A Lot Of Problems but They're All outside of If You Will Look inside Yourself, You Will Be Able to Find the Answer in Your Deeper Self.

The Story of the Bible Says the Absolute Reverse the Real Problems That We Face Are inside of Us and the Answer to Those Dioramas Is Found outside of Us. You See, by Any Standards.

Our Contemporary World, Not Least of All in Our Western Culture Is Desperately Sick Men and Women Are Perhaps in This World Today More Happy Unhappy Than They Have Ever Been and in Search of an Explanation We Turn to the Bible and the Bible Says There's Bad News before There's Good News. In Other Words, That Our Souls Are in Disrepair. The Very Essence of Who We Are.

The Business Office. The Thing That Makes Isaiah's That Will Last Forever Is in Disrepair and That's Why in the Bible Always Talks about How Our Souls Are in Need of Salvation When My Friends Excluded in This Way.

Incidentally, in the in the Anthem This Morning.

We Had Some Forms Though the Eye of Sinful Man Thy Glory May Not See What It Was As If the Writer Is Saying in Our Present Condition. We Cannot Ultimately See God and His Glory, Why Because God Is outside the Realm of Our Intuitive Radar Is Not My Line Is a Friends Line Is a Great Line That God Is outside the Realm of Our Intuitive Radar. Therefore, We Cannot Access and on Our Own Terms, nor on Our Own Time Notices. The Bible Is He Who Comes to Exercise, It Is He Who Has To Cross That Boundary in Order That We Might Know, and It Is He Who Has Done Exactly That, in the Person and Work of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ. God Became Flesh and Dwelt among Us, and We Have Now Seen His Glory, the Glory of the Only Begotten of the Father Full of Grace and Truth. Note I Don't Know This Congregation This Morning, but If You Are a Thinking Soul and of the Same Time Not Convinced of This, Let Me Tell You What Ought to Be Going through Your Mind Something like This.

This Is Absolutely Foolish. This Is Foolishness That Why Would That Be Because to the Mind of the Unbelieving Man or Woman. It Is Exactly That. That's What Paul Says for This Word of the Cross Is Folly to Those Who Are Perishing, but to Those Who Are Being Saved It Is the Power of God for It Is Written, I Will Destroy the Wisdom of the Wise. Quoting from Isaiah I Will Destroy the Wisdom of the Wise and the Discernment of the Discerning Eye Will Frustrate or Is It. However, the Report. The Application Frustration Explanation Application so from the Poetry and the Wisdom of Ecclesiastes to a Brief Authority in the Letter of Paul. I Finally Added to the Gospels and What We Discover. Well, It Is This Message of the Cross. What Happened on the Cross.

Well, a Sinless Man Die. It Was a Dark Day Sign of God's Judgment Is Coming. God Turn the Lights on and There Was Music and Joy at His Departure God Turn the Lights off in the Middle of the Day Was Dark and Eerie Darkness, a Sign of God's Judgment to Remember the Plagues of Egypt and the Ninth Plague before the Death of the Firstborn Was the Plague of Darkness Covering the Whole Land a Dark Day Allowed Cry, My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me, the Answer to That Is That He Was Forsaken in Order That We Might Be Forgiven.

A Dark Day Allowed Cry a Torn Curtain Huge Big Curtain in the Temple. The Barn Way of Entry. That Said, You Are Alienated from God and You Cannot Access God in Your Own Terms and in Your Own Time and in That Moment the Curtain Was Torn down. You Know the Story. There Were Two on Either Side of Him, One on Either Side. There Were Cussing Him out Saying Things like, If You're the Son of God.

When You Get down from the Cross. This Is Ridiculous.

Save Yourself the City Can Save Other People, but He Couldn't Save Himself, and Then in a Moment of Insight. The One Fellow Said to His Friend Harry, I'm Not so Sure This Is the Right Line. We Are up Here Getting What Our Sins Deserve. But This Man Has Done Nothing and He Realized All He Has Come to Bear the Punishment That I Deserve in Order That He Might Grant to Me of Forgiveness That I Don't Deserve Her Some Lovely Photographs of Some of You Men and against Ladies to but Mainly the Man Looking Your Best in the Golf Courses and in the Various Places around There. You Are Someone Is Taking a Photograph and I'm Sure on That Day You You Said to the Photographer. How Do I Look and They Said You the Real Root Yesterday and You Were Absent and and and End up to Do Your Best for Me. I Do Do Make Sure This Doesn't Do Justice. I and Somewhere in the Back of Her Daughters Mind Was the Phrase Coming out in Is Not Just As You Need Servants, His Mercy Remember Remember the Merchant of Venice, Though Justice Be Thy Plea. Consider This, That in the Course of Justice. None of Us Should See Salvation.

We Do but Pray for Mercy.

Some of Us Are Here This Morning Chasing the Wind Religiously Less. That's Why We're Here Because You Know We Can't but We Concluded That Somehow or Another. This Is All about Something That Is Done by Me.

This Routine Was for the Bible Says Is Know This Whole Story Is Not about Something Done by You. It Is about Something Done for You. It Is a Gift to Be Received Not a Diploma to Be Achieved and That I Suggest You in This Kind of Context Is the Rub. Final Quote from an Old Professor from Oxford, Mansfield College, Oxford, Nathaniel McLean, He Said to His People in This Day the Ultimate Scandal of Our Evangelical Faith Lies Not in Dogma or in Symbolism. But in Its Intolerable Offense to Human Pride, the Man of Taste and the Woman of Culture Cannot Bring Themselves to Say Nothing in My Hand I Bring, Simply to Thy Cross I Cling They Feel No Need of so Arthur Salvation. To Then It Is Therefore Nonsense, or Mere Mythology That the Majesty of God Should Take a Sinners Form and Die in a Sinners Place the Frustration Is Hard to Avoid the Explanation Is Clear, but Tough to Accept the Invitation That Is Extended to Have It Apply to Our Lives Is Clear. We Watched the Fishing Boats Come in a Couple of Afternoons and It Was Nice. It Was Freezing Very, Very, Very Much like Scotland and and It Reminded Reminded Me of a Quote from Another Old Scottish Worthy. Samuel Rutherford and Samuel Rutherford Lewis Was Addressing the Folks in His Day about These Very Things and and This Is What He Said to Them, He Said, Stoop, Stoop down with the Topsail. It Is a Low Entry to Go in at Heaven's Gate.

You Still Have the Lord Your Topsail. Have You Entered through the Gate, and If Not Today You Find Salvation Is a Gift That Can Be Received, but Can Never Be Earned to Life-Changing Lesson from Today's Message Titled Chasing the Wind on Truth for Life with Alastair Back As We Think about the Gift of Salvation, We Are Reminded of the Miraculous Way.

This Gift Arrived As a Precious Baby, Silent Night to Celebrate Our Savior's Birth. We Want to Invite You to Join Alastair Bragg Tomorrow at 8 PM Eastern As He Hosts an Online Musical Concert Titled a Parkside Christmas for Complete Details about How to Enjoy the Sounds of the Season Online Go to Truth for Life.org/Concert the Holidays Also Inspire Many of Us to Set Goals for the New Year. Maybe One of Your Goals Is to Get Together As a Family for Regular Family Worship, but Leaving a Family Bible Study Can Feel Daunting for Most of Us It's Challenging to Put Together a Plan That We Can Stick with. So Our Team Is Selected and Easy to Use 52-Week Bible Reading Guide That We Want to Recommend to You. The Title Is Exploring the Bible Together. It's Designed to Help You and Your Family Spend Just A Few Minutes in God's Word Each Day during 2021 Would Love This Book Because It Lays out a Convenient Way for You to Read about Five Bible Verses Every Day. By the End of Next Year. Your Family Will Have Read Verses from Genesis All the Way to Revelation. Each Daily Entry Also Includes a Couple of Questions for Your Children to Think about If You're a Parent Struggling with How to Do Family Worship, Exploring the Bible Together Is a Perfect Resource Requester Copy When You Make a Generous One Time Gift Today. Simply Tap the Image on the Mobile App or Find It Online at Truth for Life.or You Can Call 888588788 from Bob Lapine Tomorrow We Begin a Special Series Titled Christmas in the Beginning I Hope You Can Join Us in the Bible Teaching of Alastair Begg Is Furnished by Truth for Life Where the Learning Is Prolific