Living Above The Sun

So a couple of months ago, my son and I went backpacking because he decided he wanted to go backpacking with friends this summer. And I said, hey, before you go and do that, he's 18. And I said, before you go and do that, let's, you and I go backpacking together just to make sure you know how to stay alive out in the wild. And so we got in my Jeep. We went off-roading for over an hour to get to the trailhead. And we hiked into this campsite, took us about four or five hours to get to the campsite right as the sun was setting. And so I said, okay, son, I'm gonna go get some firewood. You set up camp here. Cause just before this, he said, yeah, dad, I have a tent. I'm ready to go. I'm like, okay, great. Bring that with you. And so he's setting up camp. I'm going out, I'm collecting firewood. It's getting dark really fast. And I'm like, okay, I need to get back and get this fire started, show him how to start the fire. And so I get back and I look at this tent that he had put together. And I said, son. This is a one-person tent.

And he looks at it and he goes, huh, I think we can fit. My wife and I share a king-sized bed. And sometimes it's not big enough. And so I'm looking at this and I'm trying to play out the scenarios, whether I'm big spoon or little spoon, this is not the memory I'm wanting to create with my son. And so I, luckily in my pack, I had a little like pocket hammock thing that I could stretch out between two trees. And I said, son, you take the tent. I'm gonna sleep tonight in the hammock, which sounded very brave at the time. He went to bed. And as the fire's going down, you know, made sure the fire was out. I get into this tiny little hammock and I have a Glock and a holster on my chest. And I have an extra magazine because in my mind, the bears all have guns out here in the woods. And so I'm gonna have to defend myself. And I woke up every 15 to 30 minutes all through the night. And at one point, I actually heard something crunching in the dark. And it was probably a deer eating an acorn. But in my mind, it was a bear chewing on bones. And it was waiting for me to fall asleep again. Because in the hammock, I'm already just at mouth level. It would be the easiest kill this bear's ever had.

And so after a very long night, the sun started to rise again. And we get up and my son, he gets out of this tent and he goes, I slept great. That was amazing. And I said, wow, let's pack up and go home. And so we packed everything up and we went home. Here's the beautiful thing though, about tent camping is it's temporary. This wasn't the permanent situation. I didn't have to live every night this way. We broke down the tent, we broke down the campsite and we went home and I slept in my own bed. And I've never felt safer inside the walls of my home and under my roof. I've never felt more comfortable in my bed than I did that next night. The good thing is tents are temporary. They're meant to be taken down. We're in a series right now. And the series title is a little bit dark, I'll admit. Series title is You Will Be Dead Soon. And we're reading the book of Ecclesiastes together. Now Ecclesiastes, that's kind of a weird title for a book. It's in the Old Testament. It's written by one of the wisest men who's ever lived named Solomon. And Ecclesiastes literally means teacher or preacher. That's the Greek word for the Hebrew word that it was originally written in.

It just means teacher or preacher. And the key verse in Ecclesiastes that we've been looking at every week in this series and our hope is that you would memorize this verse is Ecclesiastes seven, verse two, which says it is better to go to a house of mourning, meaning it's better to go to a funeral than to go to a house of feasting. It's better to go to a funeral than it is to go to a wedding. Why? Because death is the destiny of everyone. And the living should take this to heart. As we approach the end of this series today, we're gonna be mostly in chapter 12 of Ecclesiastes. But if you haven't been with us in this series, let me kind of summarize what Ecclesiastes has been all about leading up to where we're gonna pick up today. This is Ecclesiastes one, verse 14. Kind of sets the tone for the first 10, 11 chapters of Ecclesiastes. He writes, I have seen all the things. What does that include? All of it, everything. All the things that are done, and listen to these words, under the sun. I have seen all the things that are done under the sun. All of them are meaningless. A vapor, vanity,

a chasing after the wind. Everything done under the sun, meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. I want you to picture, as we think about this phrase, under the sun, I want you to picture in your mind a sunrise. And as the sun is moving across the sky, the sun symbolizes a couple things. In ancient times, it's actually the same thing it symbolizes today. As we think about being under the sun, we're thinking about a geographical location. We live here on planet Earth. And actually, the Earth is rotating, and so we see the sun go across the sky, but it's actually us that are spinning. Under the sun is representative of being geographically here on Earth. It also is symbolic of time. And as you picture that sun moving across the sky, at sunrise, moving across the sky throughout the day, and then setting at night, it is symbolic of the passing of time. We're all on this Earth, and this Earth is spinning, and we only get so many turns on the merry-go-round of this planet. And then we give up. Our life's here on Earth. Your life is like a vapor, it's like a mist. It's here one moment, and it's gone the next.

And so as the preacher, as the teacher, is looking at life, he's talking about everything that is under the sun. And he kinda goes down the list of all the things that you and I would chase after in this life, and each one of them, he says, it's meaningless. For example, he talks about work. Work, ultimately, is meaningless. Somebody else will have your job one day. All the toil, everything that we do, what do we have to show for it? The preacher says it's meaningless. Accomplishments, all the little trophies and ribbons and all of that, guess what? In 100 years, nobody cares, meaningless. Aren't you glad you came to church? Wisdom, he says, that's meaningless, why? Because you can be the wisest person in the world, but life is random. There are things that might happen. You might have all the wisdom in the world, and you get a diagnosis. He says it's meaningless. Wealth, meaningless, you can't keep it. You can build it, you can accumulate it, but you will die, and somebody else will get it. And there's no control over what they do with it. And a lot of people, they'll gain that wealth, and they'll squander it. He says it's meaningless.

Pleasure, he says, meaningless. Because appetites grow. As soon as you think you've satisfied pleasure, there's desire for more and more and more. He says that's all meaningless. And then he says, youth, youthfulness. Well, surely this has some value. And he basically says, nope, that's meaningless, too. You'll be dead soon. Life goes by fast. And all these things that we're chasing after, it's like he's lobbing it up, and then dikembe matumbo, he's just swatting it right back down. Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. I'm gonna do a quick survey. All of our locations, if you would, if you know the names of both of your parents, would you just raise your hand and keep your hand up right now? All locations, yep, hands all over. Okay, keep your hands up if you know the names of all four of your grandparents. Keep your hands up if you know the names of all eight of your great-grandparents. Oh, a bunch of hands went down. You're like, there's eight? Yeah, there's eight, unless you're from a wild family. I don't know, there's eight. Okay, keep your hand up if you know just two names of the 16 great-great-grandparents.

Pretty much no one, okay. You and I are gonna be forgotten in 100 years. We're not gonna be remembered. And the whole point that the preacher's trying to make, all these things that we're chasing after, chasing after, he says it's just meaningless. It's a chasing after the wind. Just like sandcastles, eventually, time is gonna level the field. We will be lost in the history. And if you're like, well, now we have social media, and so people will remember. Do you think they're gonna go through all the social media of all the ancestors? And by the way, even if you knew the names, of your great-great-grandparents, you don't actually know them. You don't know what their life was like. You don't know their personality. You don't have a connection, this relationship with them. The point that he's making in the first 11 chapters of Ecclesiastes is all those things we think are really important. Time is gonna have its way with us. Under the sun, all of this is meaningless. But at the end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12, there's this turn. He's kind of deconstructed all the things we chase in life. And in verse, chapter 12, verse one, he says this. Remember, remember, and that word for remember,

it's not like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. Now I remember that was a thing. When he says remember, this means to recognize, to be mindful of, to constantly marinate on your creator. Remember your creator in the days of your youth. What is he doing? He's turning our attention away from all of these things that are under the sun, and he's turning our attention to what is above the sun. He says, remember your creator in the days of your youth. Before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them. And he goes on, there's this beautiful poetry in chapter 12, symbolizing old age. Talks about arms shaking, joints failing, tooth issues, bad eyesight, can't hear, early mornings, the music's too loud, stairs feel like mountains, hair turns white, activity slows, and desires wane. That's all the symbolism that he unpacks in those following verses. And then he says, before the days of trouble, what he means when he says, before the days of trouble, if you're like, well, he's not talking to me because I'm not in my youth anymore. Listen, if you are not on your deathbed, he's talking to you. He's talking to you. He's saying, before you are on your deathbed. And in verse five, he even unpacks,

before you step into eternity, and everybody else goes mourning you in the streets, you wanna remember your creator. Verse six, remember him before the silver cord is severed and the golden bowl is broken, symbolic of losing our lives. And what is he saying here? He's saying, life is precious. Life is valuable, and life is fragile. Before the pitcher is shattered at the spring and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from. You and I, mankind, we were created from the dust of the ground, it says in Genesis. The God breathes life into Adam. He gives life to Eve, that we have the breath of God in our lungs while we are alive. But we were taken from dust, and to dust our bodies will return. Dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Remember your creator, we're thinking above the sun, we're thinking eternal now. Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher. Everything is meaningless, reminding us all that's under the sun. It's a vapor, it's a chasing after the wind. He's trying to wake us up. The teacher, the preacher is saying, wake up. 99% of the things that we're worried about, 99% of the things that we are chasing after

don't really matter. I saw this illustration when I was in high school, and I share it often with our church. There was a camp speaker, and he had a rope like this. And he took this rope, and just imagine that this rope goes on forever and ever. It stops at the end of the stage. But just, let's use our imagination. He says, this rope is a timeline of your life. And you'll see here at the beginning of the rope, there's this little red part. This is all your time under the sun. We all have a birth date, that's the beginning. And all of us, there's gonna be a day where we breathe our last here on this earth. And right now, we're living somewhere in the middle here of this red part. But what the teacher, what the preacher is turning our attention to is this, that there is a creator, there is a God in heaven who created us, who knit us together in our mother's womb. That knit together our soul with our bodies, and we, everybody, will spend eternity somewhere. And the preacher is saying, remember, dwell upon this. Marinate your mind on the reality that there are things that will matter a thousand years from now. And it's things that are above the sun. Right now, while we live here, we are just tent camping. And our tents, our bodies are temporary.

They're meant to be taken down. And the Bible teaches one day we will receive a new body. There'll actually be a new heaven and a new earth. And God's gonna restore all things and all that's been broken by sin in our bodies and in this world, He is going to restore and to redeem it all. And we'll be free of the presence, the power, and the penalty of sin in our lives and in the world around us. That's the promise of the Bible. But right now, we are living this very quick life. It's like a vapor, the Bible teaches. We are tent camping. It's been said, in light of heaven, the worst suffering on this earth that you and I can experience will be no more serious than one night's stay in an inconvenient hotel or in a really bad campsite. Compared to the new heaven and the new earth, compared to a thousand years from now, compared to eternity, this is just light momentary affliction, the Bible teaches. All the troubles that we will face. And yet here we are somewhere on this timeline and we're so fixated only on what is under the sun. And the preacher is saying, don't focus on that. You're focused on the wrong things. And we tend to do one of two things.

Either we look back on the past and we have this feeling, this emotion, we've given it a name, we call it nostalgia. And nostalgia is where we look back on our lives, we look back at some moment that happened in the past and we go, but wasn't that so amazing? Weren't times just better then? Weren't those moments amazing? And let me just tell you, when you feel those feelings of nostalgia, here's what that is. Those are just little pinpricks of the reality of the kingdom of God poking through in your life. There are moments of God's goodness, his grace, and you remember it and you remember it so fondly, but it is just a slight little appetizer of the banquet that's awaiting us. Some of us were focused on the past. Some of us were just focused on the future going, well, one day, once I get there, and what we're actually talking about is we're talking about going from here to here. Once I get here, then I'll experience joy in my life. Once I get that promotion and I go from working here at the job to working here, oh, then my life will be complete. Once my paycheck increases from this to this, then I'll be satisfied. Once this relationship, man, once the kids get out of diapers, that's when,

that's when my joy will be complete. All the parents of young kids, let me just tell you something. All the old people used to tell me this all the time. It goes by so fast. They're not lying to us. It goes by so fast. And sometimes as parents, especially as young parents, we think, well, this is just a phase, right? So we're looking forward to the next phase. And I wanna challenge your thinking on that. It's just a phase or it's just a season is true. And so enjoy the season that you're in. Because there'll come a day that you're no longer in that season, and you'll look back on it with nostalgia. And you'll realize there were a lot of good things in that season, and you were so focused on the future, you missed it in the present. Do you wanna know the irony of our best years, or our best months, or our best week, or our best day, or even our best moment in this life? Do you wanna know the irony? Is that you and I, we probably won't know it's the best until after it's gone. We won't know that it was our best year until we get to that point in life where we're looking back and we see things are moving downhill in some way, or we got a diagnosis or whatever.

We won't know that it's the best in the moment, you won't realize it till it's already gone. And so what the preacher is teaching us to do is to enjoy every moment that we're in, to appreciate the gifts that God has given us. Because if we can get in the habit of each and every day, appreciating all the good gifts that God's given us, we'll never miss it. When it's our best year, when it's our best month, and when it's our best week, when it's our best day, we'll be fully present in the present that we will not miss those moments. And if you've ever given somebody a gift, you know the best part of giving a gift is seeing the person open it and enjoy whatever that gift is. And our Heavenly Father has given us gifts in our life and so many of us, we're just letting those gifts go right in front of our face and we don't appreciate them whatsoever. Part of the Christian life is enjoying the good gifts that God's given us. Yes, this world is broken, things are not as they should be, but guess what? He's gonna restore and redeem them all. He's gonna make right everything that's wrong. Yet along the way, there are good gifts that He wants us to enjoy, to appreciate. Enjoy your life today, it's a gift. There's another conclusion that we can come to

studying the words of the teacher or the preacher. And it's this, that the word meaningful, if everything's meaningless under the sun, meaningful is living above the sun. That there are things in this life that are actually things that would be defined as above the sun. You hear this often at Sun Valley, in the end, all that matters are God and people. Everybody spends eternity somewhere, that there is a reality beyond this physical world that exists. And so to love God, to serve people, is living above the sun. And much of our chasing after the wind that we all fall into, by the way, this was written almost 3,000 years ago, and yet it's timeless because it's just human nature. The chasing after the wind is us trying to create this meaning in our lives. But listen, what if meaning in our lives wasn't something that we had to create? Meaning is not something that you and I need to create in our lives. God has already given our lives meaning. He's already declared that our lives are meaningful. That his mission that he has in this world is meaningful. In fact, his mission is eternal, it's not temporary. And he says, you were created eternal, not temporary. And you can join me in the mission

of helping other people meet, know, and follow me to experience my love, my grace, relationship with me. When we do that, do you know what that is? That is meaningful, meaningful, meaningful. It's why the New Testament writers, Paul writes to the church in Colossae, he says, set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. The church at Corinth, he says, always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. It is not meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. When you serve the Lord, that is meaningful, meaningful, meaningful. Jesus says, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. This last week, we wrapped up our camp season. And one of my greatest joys working at Sun Valley and serving our NextGen team is camp season where I make it a point to go to every one of our camps, all of our kids camps at every campus, our preteen camp. There was one of them I didn't make it to because I was at our kids camps, but I went to our second preteen camp, our junior high camp, our high school camp. And I walked around and I talked to our volunteers and I said, thank you so much for volunteering. Thank you so much for serving. And again and again, I heard the same thing back from you.

You said, no, thank you. This has been one of the most meaningful weeks for me. And as I stepped back and I looked at all the leaders that were pouring into all of these students, the words meaningful, meaningful, meaningful kept coming to mind. Church, because of your generosity, some of you don't realize this, but we set aside a million dollars of what is given here at Sun Valley. So if you give at Sun Valley, if you give a dime, a part of that went to helping these kids go to camp this year. Because of your generosity, because of you regularly giving here at Sun Valley, we had 5,249 participants, including our leaders. We can celebrate that number. And here's why we should celebrate these numbers, because every number has a name, every name has a story. And every one of these stories matters to God, the campers and the leaders. The impact at camp, it was not just for our kids and our students, it was for the adults as well. We had 1,425 volunteer leaders between all of our camps. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And there's so many stories that it's hard to put

a number to, so many stories of life change, of reconciliation, of forgiveness, of growth in their faith, kids wanting to serve. But one of the numbers I wanted to share with you guys is the students and the kids who surrendered their life to Jesus. The number of kids and students who their eternity is forever changed because of the saving grace of Jesus. We had 322 kids and students say yes this summer at camp. This last week was our high school camp, and there we had 1,411 campers and adult leaders, and we had safety team and nurses. By the way, our nurse and safety leads, they're volunteers, and at the end of it, they were at every single one of our camps, and I said, hey, how you doing, you know? Are you exhausted? And our head of all of our nurse and medical, she said, I can't wait to go back. I miss being there. I said, you're gonna have to wait like 49 more weeks, and then we'll go back again. But there were individuals like Scott, who was at our high school camp. Scott was pouring into high school boys, and Scott was at camp because somebody in his small group who goes to camp regularly challenged him and said, hey, I think that you would actually benefit from serving at camp, and so he signed up to go to camp, and at the end of camp, when we're all exhausted and everybody's tired, and it's been a long week,

he texts the youth pastor just how grateful he is for the opportunity to serve, and how God has transformed Scott's life, and now Scott is gonna continue to serve these young men in small groups throughout the year. He's committed to walking alongside them in their journey of following Jesus. This is Katie. Katie, who's in the middle of this group, kind of to the top there, she is a high school teacher, meaning she's around high school students all the time, and if you're around high school students all the time, you might go, I need a little break, but Katie said yes to coming and serving at camp, and she poured into these young women, and she herself was transformed through serving and pouring into them, and she also said, I'm in, I'm committed, I'm gonna keep showing up on Wednesdays for the high school group, I'm gonna keep leading this small group, I wanna keep seeing these girls grow in their relationship with Jesus. Katie also serves at her high school, sponsoring a Christian club there that's grown this last year. It went from being like 30, 40 high schoolers at this Christian club by the end of the year, it was over 150, and God is using Katie. Yeah, let's celebrate that. To be a part of what He is doing

in the lives of young people, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful. So my question for all of us is, what are we doing with our one and only life? What are we doing with the time we have here on this earth, because it goes by fast. What are we doing with the time we have here on this earth, because it goes by fast. And all the things that we chase after, the preacher's saying, it's not really that important. There are a few things that matter a whole lot, and really, it comes down to two, relationship with God and relationship with people. That is what is meaningful, meaningful, meaningful. Live for something above the sun. Paul writes to the church at Corinth in 2 Corinthians chapter four, leading into chapter five. He says, for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. In other words, it'll feel like one night in an inconvenient campsite. So we fix our eyes, not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, aka meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. But what is unseen is eternal, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, talking about our bodies, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven,

not built by human hands. Paul is saying our tents are temporary, yet God is preparing a place for us that is permanent. And it's so good. And so while we have time, we want to remember our creator in the days. of our youth. And if you're here today and you haven't surrendered your life to Jesus, I want to invite you to experience his saving grace in your life, to move from death to life. 100 years from now, this world may forget you, may forget me, but there is a God in heaven who knit you together in your mother's womb, who knows every detail there is to know about you, and he loves you, no matter who you are, no matter what you've done, no matter what's been done to you. Now God took on flesh, he lived a perfect life that you and I could never live, and he laid down that life for you. He paid the debt of all of your sin for you because he loves you. And he paid that debt with his own life. His body was placed in a tomb on the third day by the power of the Holy Spirit, he rose from the grave, conquering death. And he offers life to whomever would receive his gift. If you're here today and you're ready to surrender your life to the saving grace of Jesus,

I wanna invite you to do so right now. I'm gonna pray, and you can pray in your own mind, prayer is talking to God and he hears your thoughts, you don't have to say this out loud, but you can just tell him right now, God, I know that I've sinned. And I know that sin separates me from a relationship with you. Jesus, thank you for living the life I couldn't live and becoming the sacrifice to pay the debt of my sin and for conquering death. Jesus, I surrender my life to you. You are the Lord and the leader of my life. Jesus, I trust in you. Thank you for saving me. Help me to follow you from this day forward. In Jesus' name, amen. If you said yes to Jesus, we have a gift we wanna give you. This is a Bible, this is God's word to us. This word is timeless. It's what we've been reading from, it's what we've been learning from throughout this series. This is an incredible gift God has given you. And so if you wanna receive this, if you said yes to Jesus at the end of our service, if you would just come forward to first step, there's a table at the front of the room and we have a Bible we wanna give you, we wanna celebrate that decision with you.

For all of us, you'll be dead soon. I love that title. But death does not own you. You belong to Jesus. He's conquered death for you. Which means when our bodies die, the Bible actually describes it this way, it's like a seed being planted in the ground. And the seed dies, but it gives way to a much greater life. And one day our bodies will die, but our souls will be with God. We'll actually receive a new body, free of sickness and decay. But until that day comes, we wanna use the life we live in these bodies, in these tents, to help as many people as we can, meet no one, follow Jesus. So if you're here and you're not serving anywhere, I wanna challenge you, live for something meaningful, meaningful, meaningful. And I wanna pray that God would use the time that we have for our good and for his glory. Would you pray with me? Father, for each of us here, would you help us to live lives that are meaningful, meaningful, meaningful? And would you help us to enjoy all the amazing gifts that you give us along the way? God, we're grateful, even right now, for breath in our lungs.

We're grateful that we get to gather together and worship you. There's so many things, God, that you've gifted us, and we say thank you. Would you help us to use the time that we have for living above the sun? We ask you. Ask and pray in Jesus' name, amen.