So let's look at Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is a great book.
And again, you can look at these in a positive way
or a negative way.
I don't consider tonight's sermon
a depressing sermon whatsoever.
I find it encouraging.
I find it liberating.
And in fact, in some of my darkest hours
when I was the most depressed or the most upset,
I kid you not,
the book that I go to for encouragement is Ecclesiastes.
Others are grabbing for Psalm 23.
Others are grabbing for Psalm 1.
They're going to, for me, I go to Ecclesiastes
because I read Ecclesiastes
and the reason I find it so encouraging
is because I'm just reading all these verses telling me,
"Hey, everything's meaningless, everything's vain.
"It doesn't matter."
And then I look at my problems and I'm like,
"They don't matter either."
All this that's bugging me, that's plaguing me,
none of it really matters in this case.
And I don't know about you,
and I hope at least one person will benefit
from this sermon besides me.
But it makes me feel so much better,
just to realize, hey.
And just to be clear,
I'm not going through a rough time right now.
I'm actually doing great right now.
But I hesitate to say,
every time I say that behind the pulpit,
something bad happens.
So hopefully this is an exception.
But anyway, I feel great.
But you know what?
I know that there are probably a lot of people here tonight
that are going through hard things.
And I'm sure in the future,
I'm going through hard things.
And in the past, I've gone through many hard things.
And this encourages me because to the Christian,
remember that you will die is not some kind of a threat.
It's really just something to motivate me to do
with what I've got to enjoy every day
and to serve God every day and to work hard every day,
knowing that every day is a gift.
And remembering that I will die for me is like,
that's like saying to a marathon runner,
remember that there's a finish line.
Oh, thanks, that's depressing.
Nobody, no marathoner is depressed by the finish line.
Nobody who's running a marathon sees the finish line
just like, oh man, it's over, you're kidding.
I wanna keep going.
You know, maybe the rare person might feel that way.
But you know, most people are like, great, it's over.
Okay, so for the Christian, death is the finish line.
Death is the end of the race.
Death is the award ceremony at the end of the marathon
where we're handed out the medals
and we can talk about, and interesting,
you know, whenever you experience something
like a marathon or just any kind of a sporting event
or activity or difficult task,
you know, one of the things that you enjoy afterward
is talking to other people who did the same thing
and you can talk about the high points,
the low points and the stories,
and you know, it's kind of the party at the end
where everyone kind of just has fellowship
in their sufferings and joys and triumphs,
and it's gonna be the same thing when we get to heaven.
What a glorious reunion.
What a glorious day that's gonna be
to just get together and talk about it all
and just be done with it.