THIS SUNDAY! Join Element at Ferini Park in Los Alamos at 9:00am for ONE Church Service In The Park! All are welcome. Help us Celebrate together with Old Days.
Aaron Carlberg - September 8, 2019
21. Transformation Instead of Vapor - Ecclesiastes 8:1-9
Welcome back to the book of Ecclesiastes. We spent the first part of this year going through this philosophical Old Testament book that centers itself on questions of life, wisdom, and God. The author of Ecclesiastes is King Solomon who is constantly asking questions about where our focus lies: on things “under the sun” (meaning the realm which we create) or the eternal. Solomon will use the words “Yet when I surveyed” to push us to face, with brutal honest self-examination, what life without God is truly like. This is why we called the series “The Existential Hangover.” The word “existential” relates to existence; the big question of the book being NOW WHAT? I had it all, bought it all, did it all, accomplished it all and now what? The writer of the book “had it all” in the realm of the created and says “I now want to tell about that which exists beyond the realm of what we create.”
From Series: "Ecclesiastes - The Existential Hangover"
Ecclesiastes is a book that deals with the idea of our existence. The teacher of the book looks at life "under the sun," which is a way to say "our life a part from who God is." Under the sun refers to all of our works that are temporary and contrasts them with things that are eternal, the things that belong to God who isn't confined to live "under the sun." The book looks at a life of someone who achieved everything anyone could have wanted yet still wakes up the next day and says, "now what?" We are calling the series the Existential Hangover because we will deal with our lives and how they are meaningless without Jesus. Ecclesiastes asks questions that can only be answered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
