Chasing the Wind 5

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Speaker 1: Chasing the Wind, Episode five. I tried pleasures. So what happens when you finally get everything you want? Central idea. Q doesn't condemn pleasure. That would be silly. He does something far more interesting, provocative. He gives pleasure everything I'd asked for and watches what happens. Great experiment, right, let's conduct a highly scientific experiment. Tomorrow morning. You wake up and discover that you have five hundred million dollars after taxes, right, all right, and then start dreaming. Mortgage gone, student loans gone. That kitchen you've been talking about for eleven years, demolish it, fireplace, build a deck, replace it, build another kitchen where the kitchen used to be. Hate your job. Here's a fun sentence. I quit travel, food, house, cars, cabin, beach, what you now? Here's my question? Would you finally be happy? A new question has been asked before? What do you think cues answer might be? And don't give me the Sunday School answer, because most of us have quietly entertained some version of if I just had enough fill in the blank, everything would be okay. Fortunately, someone has already done the research. They've done the experiment for you, and his name is cohleat and unlike you, he actually had the five hundred million dollars. Welcome to Gospel Rant Podcasts and Doctor Bill Senior YouTube channel. I'm your host, Doctor Bill Senord. We're free wherever you get good podcasts of course on YouTube as well, so please subscribe. One of the fastest ways you can help us grow and expand this messages by leaving comments below. Thank you sincerely for that. Also, thanks for making Gospel Rant Podcasts one of the top ten percent in the world and top sixty Christian podcast in Colorado. Thank you for listening every week. We hope that it helps to regularly hear listen God's love for the unlovable, the unloved, the unlovely, the unworthy, and the unlikely. Have you heard that before except here? Is it resonating. That's what our God innately does. And by the way, those things that's me, that's you. We're just a little bit honest, and it's good to be honest in the presence of God. I want to get right into this after this brief word from our sponsors, I'll be right back. Ecclesiastes too, I said to myself, come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good. That's fascinating. First of all, he's talking to himself. All right, little you know, the cheese has slipped a little bit off the cracker. This isn't Q accidentally becoming decadent, immoral and so forth. It's an experiment. You see. He's got this a research question. Ken pleasure provide the yatron, the lasting gain in Hebrew. That wisdom couldn't find his wisdom anyway, So Q turns himself into the laboratory. It's kind of like one of Gary Larsen's scientists. The hypothesis is this human existence feels absurd because humans aren't enjoying enough of it. Propose treatment, experiment more fun. That seems reasonable, right man, let's begin. Q tries laughter and almost immediately he says it's madness been pleasure. Yeah, he observes, what does it accomplish? Well, Q, that was pretty quick. I mean, imagine paying for the greatest comedian in Jerusalem, private performance, best wine, food, everybody laughing, and Q is sitting they're taking notes writing laughter, interesting physiological response, unfortunately still mortal. And then the comedian looks over, could somebody remove the depressing king from the front row. Yeah, there's something recognizable here. Have you ever been having fun while simultaneously noticing, Hey, I'm supposed to be having fun. Why am I not happier? Q? Well, then let's try alcohol wine. I tried cheering myself with wine, he says. But notice, Q says, his mind is still guiding him with wisdom. Again hilarious, Sad, I mean, how would you explain that he's not losing control, at least by his own admission he's conducting research. I guess I've tried to explain it that way before. This isn't I got drunk. This is I conducted an extensive longitudinal study of cabernet, and what's the investigating what is good for humans to do during the few days of our lives? As already death lurking underneath the party, Q sees it. Q isn't really searching for pleasure. He's searching for something pleasure can do about mortality and purpose and identity, and pleasure can't do that. Now. Ecclesiastes too becomes almost cinematic. Q bills hous's vineyards, gardens, parks, reservoir servants, herds, flocks, silver gold, singers, entertainment, sexual pleasure. End quote I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. Yeah, there is, of course you did. Q. Then comes the sentence that makes the experiment legitimate. Quote I denied myself nothing, my eyes desired close quote well what could go wrong with that? By the way, most of us can't test Q use hypothesis. I don't recommend you trying to do this experiment. We run into too many obstacles money, time, opportunity, morality, spouses, family, law enforcement occasionally, and Q claims essentially, if I wanted it, I went and got it. So we have something extraordinarily valuable. A man with virtually unlimited resources ask, can it enough? Finally become enough? That's his thesis question. So we do this. Our version of Q is maybe a little more limited. I worked hard today. I deserve this. You've said it. I've said it. Food, drink, shopping, vacation, scrolling, phnography, drink, another Amazon package, another episode, another glass, another promotion. None of those things are necessarily equivalent morally or ethically, obviously, but beneath many of them can live the same little promise this will make me feel better enough worthy whole, and often it does for a moment. Dopa means great, and that's important. Pleasure does work. Food tastes good, sex feels good, wine can be enjoyable, vacations delightful, Winning feels better than losing, and Q himself admits, my heart took delight in all my labor, and that's important. The Bible isn't saying pleasure is a fake. It's saying something subtler and more poignant. Pleasure is real. It just can't carry the weight we put on it. It doesn't make you whole, doesn't make you enough. It can make you feel good, and that's not all bad, but it not what you're craving. As a human being created by God, you're created for more, not less. Pleasure is good, but you're created for more. There's something more we subconsciously were created to crave. Let's look at vacations, right, I mean, you plan the vacation for six months, you finally arrive, ocean, beautiful room, dinner, sunset is wonderful, and then something deeply offensive happens. Tuesday, then Wednesday, and suddenly you're packing airport, delayed flight, laundry and Monday morning email. Nothing went wrong. That's precisely the problem. The vacation succeeded, it was wonderful and it ended Wow, DeBie Downer And Qu's problem isn't that good things aren't good. It's that he wants them to provide something they were never designed to provide. Wholeness, permanence, identity, value, enoughness. Pleasure says, enjoy me, and we here rescue me and save me. And pleasure can't do that. You know that moment when the Amazon package arrives. You've been tracking it eight stops away, five two stops and it's here. You open it, excellent, and then three days later it's an object. Q own yesterday, I want that today? Where should I put this? Six months later? Why do we have so much stuff? And that's Q's problem, compressed into an Amazon box. Desire creates anticipation, acquisition creates pleasure, and then the brain adjusts and what next? What's the next hit? Q didn't have Amazon Prime, he didn't need it. He was kind of an early Amazon Prime himself. So Q looks at everything. The party ends, the Ecclesiastes two eleven. Q steps back. He looks at the houses, vineyards, gardens, money, entertainment, pleasure, accomplishment, everything his hands have done, and he gives us a review havel, chasing the wind, foolishness, no lasting, yetrone gain under the sun. And this is where the humor of Ecclesiasty should disappear, because we get it. We can imagine that moment. Most of us can preserve the fantasy. Maybe if I had more, but Q can't because he tried it. That's the point, by the way, that's what makes this satirical exaggeration. He had more, this character, this metaphorical character. I'm assuming he had more and it didn't work. And that's shocking, maybe eye opening, and maybe sad. Maybe Q's research began asking the wrong question. What if pleasure is at the problem. What if Q is asking pleasure a question it was never designed to answer. He asked, can you give my life ultimate meaning? Pleasure says nah. Can you defeat death? Nope? Can you make something permanent? Nah? Then in a CeNSE you're meaningless? Wow? You know, maybe not. Let's put some edges on this. Maybe ice cream doesn't need to defeat death to be good ice cream. Maybe laughter doesn't need to last forever to be a gift. Maybe sunsets don't fail because it only lasts ten minutes. This begins to open something fascinating and ecclesiastes and for us, what if gifts become havevel foolishness when we demand that they become our god. Q wanted pleasure to give him something it couldn't, And maybe that doesn't make pleasure meaningless. Maybe it means pleasure is Oh, let's call it pleasure. It's a gift, it's a momentary, it's received, it's enjoyed, it's released. If we can do that, and we should, I'm not saying we do. Maybe the person who can enjoy a glass of wine or some beverage of your choice and the person who needs that glass of wine or having two completely different experiences. So, in a roundabout way, Q has discovered something important. You can possess everything you desire and still not possess what you're ultimately looking for, but maybe you can get something and something valuable and important. Pleasure Que's not finished, not remotely all right, So pleasure that one didn't work. That experiment fun that it didn't work. Maybe pleasure was too shallow. Maybe meaning comes from doing something important, building something. Yeah, accomplishing something, leaving something behind, a legacy, houses, careers, companies, ministries, books, children, You know something with my name on it that says I was here. There's only one problem. Eventually somebody gets Grandpa's air fryer. All right, what's next? I will let you know after this brief word from our sponsors. My new book Good Enough Christian is out. It's seql to Good Enough Parent and the Good Enough Christianity series. It's getting great reviews. Here's part of the press release. Could God's Love actually frighten us? New book explores why Christians struggled to experience a love they say they believe. Good Enough Christian asked a provocative question, what if God's love is so vast, unconditional and unlike human love that part of us is actually afraid to trust it? Meaning is that if it's too good to believe, it's must be too good. And yet this is true, our brain, you see, is starts working against us. Back to the press release, author says our brains may actually resist unconditional love. Wow, that may be one of the hidden obstacles keeping sincere Christians stuck. Wow. Huh yeah? What if we don't know what to do with such a love like that, and our subconscious says what run back to the press release, Many Christians believe one lie about God's love? What if our biggest problem is that we have a subconscious fear of God's love for us? Check it out. It's on Amazon Kindle. It's going to be unaudible, it should be unaudible by now, and check it out. Get it into your church and your church library if it has one, to your church leaders, your pastor Bible study. Go through it with your teenagers. Yeah, with your teenagers. This is asking questions that I'm going to suggest they're asking. It should be valuable for discipleship, evangelism, training, devotions, book studies. Yeah, well, thanks for listening to my series Chasing the Win. Next time I tried success? What if you actually accomplish everything you set out to accomplish and then have to leave it to somebody else? Exactly? And that is becoming the voice of the series. Q isn't being mocked because he's bad. We're laughing because he's us. No guilt trip, No Christians shouldn't enjoy nice things. That's definitely not my message or cues. Ecclesiastes is much more interesting than that, and episode six should hit perhaps the most respectable modern substitute for meeting achievement. What happens after you get there. We'll see you next time. Take our child of God