A FRIENDLY RECOMMENDATION

Remember God. God is the author, and also the final editor. Hear how creation's author is crafting a satisfying and happy ending to what could have been a sad story. Dr. Michael Ziegler's message, A Friendly Recommendation, is next, today on The Lutheran Hour. I'm Mark Eischer. Thanks for joining us today. The Lutheran Hour is listener-supported. To learn how your gifts and prayers help in bringing Christ to the nations and the nations to the Church, go to LutheranHour.org. Now here is our speaker, Dr. Michael Ziegler. She wasn't even trying to give me a friendly recommendation. She was just describing it, witnessing to what the book did for her. I was so happy it ended the way it did, she explained. I just closed the book when I finished it and cried for like a half an hour. I hadn't read the book that she was describing, but I knew the feeling. It's the joy of a long and winding story that you couldn't have written, nor even predicted. But when you got to the end, and you saw how it all fit, how all the threads came together, and you wouldn't have wanted it any other way, and it's just so satisfying that you can't help but choke back some tears. Or just let them flow. Now usually when I hear someone raving about a new book, I'm skeptical. I don't assume that it would have the same effect on me. But in this case, when she described it, I knew right away that I wanted to read the book. Not just because of her recommendation, but because I knew the author. I hadn't read this book, but I had read another book by the same author, so I knew. I knew that what she had described would be so. Not just for her, but true also for me. Now if only the same could be said for life. That we have the same author. And that we know this author. And that he can do what a good author does. Or do you see yourself as the author of your own story? But then can you write an ending that will satisfy you? The problem with trusting yourself, or any human, is that we're all working from essentially the same limitations.

Limits in our experience, knowledge, skills, powers. This is even the case for artificial intelligence, since it's just an enormous conglomeration of human strengths and shortcomings. The problem of trusting AI to become the author of our story is the same as the problem of trusting other humans. Which is the same as the problem of trusting yourself. Even if you could manage to write into existence everything you ever wanted, what happens when you find out that everything still isn't enough? This is the problem that an ancient philosopher once discovered. That even everything is never enough. His conclusions still feel relevant today. This philosopher lived about 3,000 years ago. And he had hit the lottery of life situations. Having the good fortune to be born as a king, during a season of peace and prosperity in the kingdom. He was one of the few people in history who really did seem to have the capacity to claim sole authorship over his life. He was, perhaps, the most brilliant and least limited human who has ever lived. He got everything he wanted, and no one, no other human, had the power to deny him. He had all the food, free time, friends, side hustles, plus followers, admirers, sexual partners, concerts, excursions, life hacks. He had it all. But somewhere around middle age, he hit a wall. Writer's block, so to speak. And he knew that he could never craft a satisfying ending to his life story. He wasn't enough to satisfy himself. Listen to how he says it. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done, and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was vapor, vanity, void. Chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun. The quote comes from the Bible, from the book of Ecclesiastes, the Bible's most famous philosopher.

Author Bobby Jameson has recently described the book of Ecclesiastes as three views from a building, a building with three floors. We'll talk about the view from the first two floors now, and we'll get to the third floor later. Ecclesiastes' philosopher spends most of his time on the first floor, on the ground floor. This is the space of everyday life where he's been trying to write his own story, but it's come up empty. Exhausted from the emptiness, occasionally the philosopher takes the stairs up to the second floor. And from this vantage point, he looks at the world from a different perspective, through the window of biblical faith. Now just in case you need a refresher on biblical faith, here are the basics. God is the creator of everything, which means that God is the author of life. And God is currently authoring your life story, and mine, and everyone's, everywhere, all the time. And he's doing this so that we would come to know him and trust him because he's the only one who is enough to satisfy us. From the second floor, the philosopher of Ecclesiastes sees the world through the window of the first two chapters of the Bible, through Genesis chapters 1 and 2. These chapters describe how everything we are and everything we have has come to us as a gift, a gift from a glad and generous God. That's the view from the second floor. And back down the stairs on the first floor, from the ground floor, he sees life through Genesis chapters 3 and 4. Those chapters tell how humanity, because of our distrust in God and because of our desire to become our own authors, replacement gods, we plunged ourselves into ruin and misery and brought the whole created order down with us. These views from each floor, taken together, show us a complicated world, a world that is good but fallen, beautiful but broken, a gift that's been hijacked.

Back up on the second floor, Genesis chapters 1 and 2 show us an ideal world. And if you read it, maybe it feels out of touch. But even these chapters were written with empathy for people like us, people who spend most of our time on that ground floor. One clue that they were written with us in mind is the way Genesis 1 describes the initial condition of God's creation. Without form and void is the traditional translation of the Hebrew words, but other translations put it more bluntly, wasted and empty. Elsewhere in the Bible, those same Hebrew words describe a barren desert, a howling wasteland, a broke-down, boarded-up city, a ruined kingdom. So why put it in these terms? Why depict this ideal beginning as a hopeless, trackless wasteland? Because even these chapters were originally written for people who weren't there for the beginning, who hadn't seen the ending but were now living in a literal wasteland. And some days their lives felt wasted and empty. But from these first words, Genesis begins to assure them and us that the God who is with us in the wasteland is the same God who once made a wasted beginning into a joy-filled end. We're dealing with the same author. So come up the stairs for a moment with me, up to the balcony from the second floor and see the world from this view, through the eyes of faith. It looks like this. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was wasted and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, let there be light. And there was light, and God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.

And there was evening and there was morning, one day. Then God said, Let there be an expanse between the waters, a canopy, and let it separate water from water. So God made the canopy, and He separated the waters under the canopy from the waters that were above the canopy. And it was so. God called this canopy the heavens. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. Then God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered to one place, and let dry land appear. And it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the gathered waters He called seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation, plants bearing seeds and trees growing fruit with the seed in it, according to its kind on the earth. And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants bearing seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with the seed in it, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. Then God said, Let there be lights in the canopy of the heavens,

and let them separate the day from the night, and let them be as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the canopy of the heavens to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made two great lights, the greater light to rule over the day, and the lesser light to rule over the night. He also made the stars, and God set them in the canopy of the heavens to give light to the earth, to rule over the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. Then God said, Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the canopy of the heavens. So God created the great creatures of the sea and all the living creatures with which the waters teem, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the waters of the sea and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, beasts and creeping things and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth according to their kinds,

and the beasts according to their kinds, and all the creeping things that creep across the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make humankind in our own image and after our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over the beasts and over all the earth and all the creeping things that creep on the earth. So God created humankind in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them. And God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and all the living creatures that move on the earth. Amen. God said, Look, I give to you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree bearing fruit with the seed in it. They shall be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and the birds of the heavens, to all the creatures that move on the earth, to everything that has the breath of life, I give every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made. And look, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. In this way, the heavens and the earth were complete in all their host. And on the seventh day, God completed the work that he had done. And God rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. And God blessed the seventh day. And God made it holy, because on it, God rested from all his work of creating that he had done. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day God made the earth and the heavens. That's from Genesis chapter one. So how do those words sit with you? Maybe you can look out your window, or if you're outside, just look around and you can see it. You can see that same dry land, that same earth, and all the things that creep on it and the waters that gather into the sea and the trees

swaying and the birds soaring above and the canopy of the sky. You can see it. Everything is a gift. Or maybe you're having one of those days or seasons or years, and it all seems wasted and empty. On some level, we can all relate to Ecclesiastes' sigh. I have seen everything that is done under the sun and look, it's all vapor, vanity, void. Maybe you don't feel that way all the time. I don't, not all the time, but in the moments I do, I need a witness who knows our author. And Genesis is a good place to start. Genesis tells me how God, even out of a wasted void, made everything very good. But how do we live on both floors? How do we live in a good but fallen creation, a beautiful but broken world, a gift that's been hijacked by us, self-publishing pseudo-authors suffering from a terminal case of writer's block? This is where Ecclesiastes' third floor can help us. Author Bobby Jamison pictures it. He observes that there are no stairs to this third floor. To get there, we board an elevator. Ecclesiastes pushes the button and the elevator rises fast and long. When the doors finally open, we emerge and approach the window. The view here is striking and strikingly different. Ecclesiastes stays only long enough to make a brief announcement. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole of humanity, because God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. This view from the top is also a witness for us. Remember God. God is the author and also the final editor. And as editor-in-chief, God has already graciously cancelled this ridiculous project that we could never hope to finish and should have never even started in the first place, because this isn't our story. But to save us, God didn't stay up there in his executive editorial suite. No, God came down to ground level with us. God sent his Word, his representative, his Son, Jesus. to be our witness and Jesus published this announcement The time is fulfilled. He said the kingdom of God is at hand Repent and believe in the good news In other words, you don't have to be your own author. That's God's job Not everyone took well to Jesus message Admitting failure is hard Humiliating and some wouldn't accept his truth as the truth

They tried to censor him cancel him ban him just like we do in all our subtle ways today and This sordid story ended with people just like us rejecting God's Word Putting him to death Nailing him to a cross all that creative potential Wasted and empty But it was in this act That God pulled the ultimate Never saw that one coming Because it was in the death of Jesus God judged all our destructive storylines God buried the whole failed project once and for all and when God raised Jesus from the dead He made him the final witness that we needed the proof that this author our author Can start a story even in a wasteland? Jesus is the witness God's most friendly recommendation But Jesus does more than rave about God's book. He is the word who writes the book the author become human Now for merely human authors you can't count on them to deliver the same Satisfying endings in each new book because they're working within their own creaturely limits, but God God works out of generous Abundance God is not sitting alone in the darkness waiting for inspiration No His joy is already full in the eternal story of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit For God the story has no beginning and no end, but he made a beginning So that we could share in his joy so that we could help write new chapters the new episodes See you were never meant to be your own author, but you are made in God's image Which means that you're not a replacement for God, but a reflection You were made in God's likeness you were made to create and relate you were made to collaborate With God not just in the book, but in a whole franchise Inspired by the original movies and TV series soundtracks on stage productions documentaries board games

Bobbleheads you name it You were made to be God's co-authors God's witnesses God's friendly recommendation to a world who needs him so that their ending would be in him and his joy will be ours and What has always been true for him? Will also become true for us in the name of Jesus Amen At Lutheran hour org you'll find free online resources archived audio our mobile app and more That's Lutheran hour org Next the hymn of the day come Holy Ghost creator blessed music courtesy of the hymnal project Michigan District LCMS Come Holy Ghost creator blessed and make our hearts your place of rest Come with your grace and have the aid and fill the hearts which you have made to you the counsellor we cry to you the gift of God we pray we pray we pray we pray we pray we pray we pray we pray to you the gift of God

most high the fount of life the fire of life the souls anointing from above Rye, far away our wily foe, and your abiding peace bestowed, with you as our protecting guide, no evil can with us abide. Come, let us join our cheerful songs, with angels crowned our throne. Tell a thousand, thousand, diamond tongues, God on that joyful horn is our one. Worthy the Lamb, that I may cry, to be exalted thus. Worthy is the Lamb, our lips declare, for He was slain for us. Worthy the Lamb, that I may cry, to be exalted thus. Worthy is the Lamb, our lips declare, for He was slain for us. For He was slain for us. From Concordia Publishing House, that was David von Kampen's setting of our cheerful songs. Now Dr. Ziegler invites you to join him in praying the Lord's Prayer. Taught by Jesus and trusting in His promises, we are bold to pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you with His favor and give you peace. Amen. The Lutheran Hour is made possible through the support of faithful listeners like you. To learn how your prayers and gifts can extend the worldwide outreach of the Lutheran Hour, go to LutheranHour.org. Next week, guest speaker Chad Lakees tells how Christ redeems and restores us.

I'm Mark Eischer. This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries. Lutheran Hour Ministries Lutheran Hour Ministries Lutheran Hour Ministries