A Never-Ending Appetite

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, please take out your copy of God’s Word this morning in turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 6. And as you’re turning there, I want you to stop and consider what may be something you have never stopped and really considered about before ever in your life. So this is our goal just for a minute or two here to stop and consider how much our lives are centered around eating. Everybody in here, your life in some ways or other form is centered around eating. We arrange our days around meal times. And typically the most common pattern is to get those three square meals a day. We have names for our meals. That’s how much we appreciate them.

We don’t just call them eating times. We have names for when we do it in the morning. It’s breakfast. We have names for when we do it in the middle of the day. That’s lunch. We have names for when we do that in the evening, and it’s called dinner. We even have made up some other names for times in between those three that we normally have. We have brunch, the combination of breakfast and lunch. We don’t really have linner. Don’t try that on me. That’s not an official word. But we do have many snacks. We even name our snacks. We have an afternoon snack. We have a midnight snack. We have an after dinner snack. We talk about the parts of our meals.

We talk about the courses. You know, you’ve got the first course and the main course. And you’ve got dinner and then all those different kinds of things. I mean, we actually have a lot of our system based on eating. You can have the three square meals a day, even the definition or the adjective square. What does that mean? Well, that means that in each meal, you make sure that you get your daily recommended allowances of stuff from the food pyramid. You know, your breads and cereals, your fruits and vegetables, which in my mind are virtually non-existent. You have your milk. What else we got there? Meat. Oh, hello.

and meat over fire, that’s virtually its own category of, on the food pyramid anyway. We have people who go out of their way to eat more than just three meals a day so that they can keep their metabolism higher, why? So that they can keep eating more and not gain fat and weight.

So even the people who are trying to eat more little meals, that’s for the goal of being able to eat more. Ultimately, when you’re doing that, we have entire rooms of our houses devoted to food. There is the kitchen where you make food. Some of you may have a pantry where you store food, and then many of you also have a place called the dining room where you eat that food. Not only then part of our schedule, our daily schedule, but even so far as our floor plans of our very houses go, at least today, a lot of that is centered around food. We make lists of what we’re going to eat. We make lists to go to the store to buy the stuff to make what we’re going to eat. And then when we’re all sitting down to make a list of what we did eat and all the calories that we now have to go exercise off.

Seriously, that’s why people exercise. So they can eat more. They exercise so that they don’t just get to be this big blob and so that they can eat whatever they want. The amount of people, I’m not talking about world class athletes necessarily, Olympic fan of athletes, but a lot of people, they add an extra mile so that they can, later on in the day, have that piece of chocolate cake. Or maybe they’ve already had the piece of chocolate cake, and so they tag on some extra sit-ups later on. Why? Well, so that they can keep on eating and filling their mouths. We give food to people as gifts. We think that it is service to people.

So you know when we have somebody who gets sick, what is generally the primary way we think we can serve them? Bring them food. So it’s a gift, it’s a happy, fun gift, it’s a way to help serve somebody. The government, as I’ve already said, has established recommended daily allowances. We have to have labels on the back of everything you can possibly buy at the store that tells you the consistency, the amount of sugars, the amount of proteins and carbs and ingredients, high fructose corn syrup, how much of that is actually in everything that you’re buying or soybeans, pretty much is one of those two things. Not eating, all those things are centered around eating, but not eating, whether that comes by fasting or through poverty, either by your own choice or by somebody else’s choice, that is considered out of the ordinary. Most of us don’t consider the idea of not eating an enjoyable one. Our lives are centered around food and around eating. Why? Why is it that Why? Why is it that no matter what country you’re from, no matter what language you speak, no matter how old you are or when you have lived in history, that our lives, their lives, everybody’s lives are associated around eating. Why?

Why? It is because we’re hungry. There’s your brilliant answer. It is because you and I have this thing that is built in. It’s a built in alarm that is known as hunger or specifically defined as the appetite. Everybody’s got that. In fact, we don’t need to be taught how to be hungry. Nobody ever has to sit you down and tell you and explain to you what that means. How you do that. This is how you get home. There are three steps. Nobody ever has to tell you that. In fact newborn babies themselves are notorious. They are well known for their appetite, for that built in system. That like clockwork goes off and makes sure that everybody knows what is wrong until until they get satisfied.

I mean, Peter compares our need to hunger for God’s word like the need that a newborn baby expresses to eat itself. So our appetites are built in. Newborn babies communicate that. We classify people based on their appetites. We talk about people who don’t want to eat very much, or maybe who are sick, we call that a weak appetite. or an unhealthy appetite. We assume that there needs to be a desire, a hunger to eat. We assume that that is what is right so that people, I’m not picking on anybody, Ben Hanson, Jesse Martin, I’m not picking on anybody. We assume that they have healthy appetites. When you go to the staff Christmas party and you get, you know, a round table full of family style eating And the meal is almost done and you go over and like all seven plates are basically in a semicircle around one person.

It was actually a combination I think of Ben and James this past year. They both seemed to be good. That’s great. That’s a healthy, strong appetite. the cycle of hunger and eating and working and then getting hungry from working so you need to eat but you gotta work so you can buy the food to eat that you needed to eat because you were working that cycle is an endless, constant cycle that every one of us go through. I don’t think I have ever heard anybody complain about the fact of being hungry. I was thinking about that. I’ve heard people complain that their hunger is not satisfied. You know, I myself complain not anymore because I’m being thankful for everything I was on my way to this year’s summit.

I’m thankful even though the times I’m hungry. Amen, good. Good.

Well, I’ve definitely heard people be upset that they were hungry and they didn’t have anything to eat, that’s true, but I have never heard complain about the fact that hunger exists. Even when we think about people in another country who, you know, are maybe even dying of starvation, we’re not upset that they’re hungry. We’re upset that they don’t have enough food to eat to at least temporarily satisfy the hunger. We assume that hunger is a natural thing, a built-in beneficial thing. And in fact, if you don’t have hunger, you will eventually die. You will die because you will not eat and therefore get the nourishment and the energy from the food that you need to keep living. You don’t have any hunger, eventually that will take its toll on you. Nobody woke up this morning and as far as I know people, nobody woke up this morning, had breakfast and then started thinking that is a real pain in the neck that at 1127 that’s predicted that 1127 I’m going to be hungry again. We didn’t complain about the fact that hunger exists. We were just

starting to scheme how we were going to satisfy that. We assumed it was going to be there. We assumed that it was okay. The question was how are we going to get that satisfied? And the paragraph that we’re going to study this morning chapter 6 of Ecclesiastes verses 7 through 9 is entirely about the appetite. It is about hunger being the force that drives the entire rat race around us. This is the end of deception on wealth. The end of deception that Solomon is giving us on the proper perspective on wealth. And so far we’ve seen that there is more to life than money, that you can’t take it with you, that you may, if you have the gift of God, be able to enjoy the whole process. But if God doesn’t give you that gift, your life stinks. That there is nothing more miserable in life than going through this process. In fact, even having all of the stuff that you could possibly want and not being able to enjoy it. And this kind of summarizes why that process keeps rolling, why that wrap wheel keeps going around. It’s because of this built-in element of appetite for hunger.

Look at chapter 6 verse 7. All the toil of man is for his mouth. All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite.” The NAS translates that the soul’s desire, but it’s the exact same word as appetite back in verse 7. So I like the ESV keep the meant consistent. But verse 9, then, better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite, this also is vanity and a striving after we. This is I think another way to talk about what moves us. This is another way to describe why we make the choices and why we do the things that we do. At the showroom last year I talked about the word affection and how every person has these affections that and make them like some things and dislike others that draw them to some decisions and repel them from others.

This is just another way to talk about the same kind of thing and then using an illustration to do that of eating. Instead of affections, it’s our appetites. It’s our desires. And there are four truths about the human appetite. And like I say, this is more than just me trying to tell you what you learned in biology class about how the hunger of pain is worked. This is an illustration meant for us to understand why we do what we do in our lives. Based on our appetites, our hunger, and there are four truths about this human appetite that we’re going to look at this morning.

And I think that this is pretty significant to understand or necessary to understand because if you miss this, If you miss the proper perspective on what to do with your appetite, not just your appetite, like I say, to get Mountain Dew and Cheetos, I’m talking about your appetite, where you go to have your soul satisfied, you miss this, you are in for a very long, miserable life of pursuing and never having any joy. If you can get this perspective on your appetite, on the human appetite, and see where we actually get satisfaction, you’ll have a kind of joy that nobody can take. So four truths about the human appetite.

First comes in verse seven. The human appetite is relentless. It’s relentless. This is the preacher’s assertion. He’s making a statement. He’s telling us the truth. all the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. As if I say in the root of human activity is the appetite. All the work that you do grows out of the soil of appetite and hunger and desire. If there was no appetite, there would be no work. If you weren’t hungry, there would be no work. And that happens both on the physical and on the spiritual realm. You would not have this great desire to work, to make money, to pay for the food, to fill your stomach, if you weren’t physically hungry.

hungry and the same goes for any other goal or aspiration that you are hungry for in your life unless you have something that is making you desire it you’re not going to go reach out get off the couch and pursue it really not only would there not be word if you didn’t have hunger there really would not even be life if you don’t go back again to the physical thing you don’t have a a healthy appetite that leads you then to eat, you’re not going to even exist for too much longer. And the picture then of filling the mouth or satisfying the appetite is a perfect picture of our lives.

The appetite, the physical appetite, represents all the things a man desires for his happiness. And the mouth has just been a picture of serving yourself. Everything that we do is meant to satisfy ourselves. The food that we eat or the other kind of soul food that we try to gain for ourselves to make ourselves happy. I actually thought about titling this message, truths of the soul as told by the stomach.

Because again, this appetite, this working, hungering, desire, eating and not being satisfied is the perfect illustration or perfect picture of something bigger than just a physical food. It is known as the law of reciprocity for those of you who care. This is the law of reciprocity. It’s a give and take kind of system, almost like I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. I’ll get food so that it will satisfy me And I will be satisfied so that I can work to get more food. It’s just this ongoing, never-ending cycle. A similar proverb is found in chapter 16, verse 26 of the book of Proverbs. You can write that down.

Proverbs 16, verse 26 says basically the same thing. A worker’s appetite works for him. His mouth urges him on. Trying to think about the horse that you dangle the carrot out in front of it. And I would make big horse looks, if I could do that. I showed my teeth out there so I could get a good idea. But I don’t really desire to look that stupid right now. So maybe afterwards you can ask me if I’d give it a shot. But you can kind of think about the horse’s mouth urging it on. It sees the goal. It sees the food right there. and is constantly then pursuing it, pushing after it, and trying to attain it. And so for us, our appetites get us going.

They move us to get off the couch. But hunger can be a difficult and a hard masking. Hunger is a dominating force. It does have the potential to make people cranky. Hunger has the potential to deceive people. Isn’t that one of the worst things when you go to bed and you’re kind of hungry and then you have a dream where you’re starving and then you get to eat and you woke up in the morning and you had that eating your pillow. I mean there is a work of hunger that can take place even while we’re sleeping. That makes us imagine things or makes us wish we had something else. The problem with the appetite is that it never goes away.

As long as you have breath, you will have to one degree or another some kind of appetite. You may appease it for a time. You know, we’ll get done and you’ll go to lunch and you’ll eat your double whopper with cheese or whatever it is that you’re going to have. You’ll go home and have that nice pot roast and mashed potatoes that Jerome has made or whatever it is that you’re going to eat. And you will then for a couple hours be able to nap and feast with your big fat belly laying on the couch watching football or whatever it might be. And so you will be dominated for every minute of this afternoon by your hunger, but you’ll get up from your nap and you’ll think, hmm, maybe I should get a snack.

Or I definitely need to eat something before I go to church, why? Well, because if I don’t eat before I go to church, then it’s gonna be really long before I’ll be able to get home and pray. No, that’s nobody’s concern. Their concern is that there’s gonna be a really long time if they don’t eat before church because, you know, then they’ve got church. And then maybe we’ll have to, you know, mom and dad are gonna be done with people afterwards and we’re not gonna be able to get back home and have my dinner.

That’s because hunger is relentless. That’s what the point is. The human appetite is relentless. It is oppressively constant. It doesn’t let you go. It is incessant and inflexible. It’s ruthless, it’s untiring and unbending. It is going to whine and complain and perhaps even cause you some kind of pain until you listen and obey. That is what the hunger does. I suppose our appetites are somewhat like the engine of a treadmill. And you, if you’ve ever tried to run on a treadmill, you know that the engine that is pulling the belt is a pretty hard taskmaster. It doesn’t really care if you’re tired. It doesn’t really care how you’re feeling that day.

It expects you to keep up and to keep satisfying it, the ward of the treadmill. treadmill, it expects you to keep satisfying you by putting one foot in front of the other, and, man, if you don’t satisfy it, you are going to pay. And you could potentially pay in any number of the parts of your body by not serving the Lord of the treadmill in the way that it demands. And so you will pay if you do not satisfy your hunger. The longer you try to ignore it, the more you try to get away from it, the louder and more annoying and again more painful it might be. Some see a contradiction in this idea of appetite and hunger being the thing that drives us.

And specifically with this statement in verse 7, all the toil of a man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. the really bad news of the verse is that you’re doing all this work. Everything you do is to make you not hungry anymore, and yet you keep getting hungry. You keep desiring more. You’re not satisfied. Something will see a contradiction in that with that and the passages on enjoying the process. Does this mean that there is, in fact, no joy that is possible at all? But eating and drinking and finding enjoyment in one’s toil is not the same thing as saying that one day you’re going to eat and drink and find enjoyment in your toil so much that you won’t need to do it the next day.

That’s the problem with batting averages. I had a decent batting average when I was in high school, when I was in college. A decent batting average. You know what that batting average gives you the next time you get up to bat? What that guarantees for you? Jack squat. Seriously, you can have a 1,000 batting average, meaning that every time you’ve gotten up before, you’ve gotten a hit. Does that guarantee you that your next got bat, you’re going to get a hit? Not at all. Not even close. In fact, we know that in baseball, a 1,000 batting average likely means that the next time you get up, you’re not going to get hit.

So batting average doesn’t guarantee you anything, and you can enjoy the process all you want today doesn’t guarantee that you’ve arrived and it’s done and there’s no enjoying of the process to you tomorrow, then somehow you have gotten to the end of the process while you’re still living here under the sun and don’t need to do it anymore. God never promises that. God promises that you need to enjoy the process today if you want to have actual joy and that’s going to be the same tomorrow. And the next day. You can enjoy the process all week long. Still doesn’t change that next week. Enjoying the process is what needs to happen as well.

The gift of God is not to make you happy because you are finally full. There’s no more to do. Rather, the gift of God is to make you happy in the process, whether you’re at the bottom of the the bottom of the Ferris wheel or the top of the Ferris wheel. God’s gift is to make you happy as that whole cycle goes around from hunger to eating to hunger to eating so on and so forth. God doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to be happy because at some point you’re going to end up on the top being full. Nobody ever gets to that point and stays. It’s one constant process. And the appetite is relentless. is relentless, so you either have joy in the process of the appetite or you have none.

Some people, I think, believe they can get out of that, and that moves us into the next verse. Most people don’t want to moment by moment be depending on God for their happiness. people want to work their way to the top of the Ferris wheel, thinking that once they get there, that’s it. That’s all they need.

They have just eaten a Daniel’s broiler, and they are full combination of a couple things in popular culture, but nonetheless, some people think that they can work their way up to the top so that they’re not going to need to deal with all of this unhappiness of being hungry again. Is there a way to get out of your appetite? Can you escape the process? Verse 2 tells us that human appetite is inescapable. You can’t actually get out of the process. This is Solomon’s explanation of the appetite. Verse 8, for what advantage has the wise man over the fool, and what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living. Honestly, two rhetorical questions here. And just reading through verse 8, if you read verse 8 all by itself, I have no idea what it’s talking about. Even reading verses 7, 8, and 9 in order and knowing that verse 8 is part of the paragraph still can be difficult to figure out what this is talking about, what these two questions are referring to, there is no doubt, whatever they mean, there’s no doubt that they are functioning

as an explanation of verse 7. Somehow they are explaining something about verse 7 because verse 8 starts with 4. Or because of these things, so verse 7. Somehow, whatever these verses mean, these truths about the wise, the fool, and the poor man help us to understand the appetite. I think one of the keys to figuring out what verse 8 is referring to is the word advantage. Advantage is actually a key concept for Solomon. He already told us earlier in Ecclesiastes that man has no advantage over the beast because they both die. He not has any context but it’s the use of the word advantage, chapter 3 verse 19. He told us that the rich have have no advantage because their bills get bigger, as it plays the ass of chapter five verse 11.

Solomon is also concerned not only with this issue of advantage, but with the idea of gain. Gaining something, whether that’s gaining advantage or gaining a position or gaining something satisfying, both advantage and gain are similar. For example, in chapter one verse three, he says, what does man gain by all the toil, which he toils under the sun? Chapter 3 verse 9, what gain has the worker from his toil? Chapter 5 verse 16, just as he came, so shall he go, and what gain is there to him the toils for the wind? The question we’re trying to figure out is concerning advantage or gain. Since every man is working for his appetite, I think verse 8 is trying to tell us that in another way, Every man is working for his own advantage.

He’s working for his own gain so that he can satisfy his appetite once and for all and never need to go through the process of being hungry and working and being hungry and working and the whole process. And the wise man do it. Can you outsmart your appetite? And that’s what the first question is asking. Can you be so wise that you can outsmart, get out of your appetite? This is the effort of the wise man to overcome his appetite, either by philosophy and convincing himself original. But there he is. He’s not going to be able to convince himself by some kind of philosophy mind trick. That’s not going to happen. Or better yet, likely, the wise man is going to use his wisdom to try to succeed in his work.

And perhaps if he succeeds in his business ventures, he will gain the money that then he can purchase all the stuff he needs and therefore satisfy his wants and his hunger once and for all in a final kind of way. On verse 8, ask the very simple question, what advantage has the wise man over the fool? Because even the fool who is just going by his whims and his wants, who is not working and scheming and using his wisdom to get all the stuff for himself, the fool keeps on hungering, but so does the wise man.

There is no way for the wise man to escape any better than what the fool can escape so far as dealing with his appetite. You can work, your work can flourish, you can accomplish all your dreams, you can get all the money there is in the world, and you can eat at all the best places, and you can buy all the bubblegum and candy that your heart has ever desired. And yet, tomorrow, you’re still gonna wake up and be hungry. It doesn’t matter whether you’re wise or you’re a fool, you can’t escape the appetite. Well, if we can’t outsmart our appetites, maybe we can ignore them. I think this is what the second part of verse 8 is referring to with the poor man.

This is the attempt of the poor man who knows better than to focus on his hunger. It’s not a good practice for the poor man to be thinking about how hungry he is. Because he’s probably going to be hungry for a long time. Because he’s got no food here. He’s poor, but he knows how to conduct himself before other people. Well, he’s able either to persuade them to help him out, or he at least has friends along with him who are poor and in the same condition. But even though he has this social ability, And maybe other people give him stuff, or maybe he at least has people that hang out with Wally Sunday, it doesn’t enable him to ignore the fact of the appetite.

There is no way to have smarter appetite, there is no way to ultimately ignore your appetite, and otherwise seek to control or overcome their appetite. Though the poor need to control their appetite, neither the wise man nor the poor man can obey them. The human appetite is inescapable. This, going back to our illustration where the appetite is like an engine, that is, pulling the belt on the treadmill. Some of us may think, well, it’s an office treadmill program. Stop getting beat up by the treadmill. But verse 8 explains to us that we are chained to the treadmill. And so you either get up and get running in step with the belt or you just keep bouncing and smashing into it and different parts of your body keep being hit and pummeled by the ongoing belts.

You don’t get off of this treadmill. So it’s relentless. It keeps going and it’s inescapable. You can’t avoid it. You can’t get off. You can’t escape the process. That’s the whole thing about Ecclesiastes. You can either enjoy the process as a gift of God, or you will loathe the process as the most miserable thing in your life, but you will not avoid the process. Your choice is not to enjoy it or avoid it. Your choice is between enjoying it as a gift of God or hating it and being heat up by it and never being satisfied. You can’t get out of it. And if those things weren’t bad enough news about the human appetite that it’s relentless and it’s inescapable, that leads us to the first part of verse 9, which is that the human appetite is elusive.

This is the comparison that Solomon gives us. Verse 9, better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite. It just gets worse. Specifically, the situation gets worse for non-submitters. Submitters to god’s sovereignty. The appetite is relentless and escapeable and elusive. This is another one of the creatures better than proverbs. And the contrast is between contentment and craving. I don’t think that this better than proverb is simply about possessing or not possessing. I think it’s specifically about being content with what you do possess or craving what you don’t yet possess. Better is the sight of the eyes.

That is, better what you already have and what you can be happy with that’s right in front of you. Better is the sight of the eyes. Then, always wishing for something else, whether that’s the next, or the other, or the new. The wandering of the appetite describes this, wishing you had something else. Solomon already pursued that in chapter two, where he thought one thing would give him satisfaction. He tried it out, he cussed it out, it was empty, randomly. So he moves on to the next, thinking that that’s gonna be the thing. His appetite kept laundering, being loose, not being able to catch it or hold onto it.

We have a similar English proverb, a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, meaning that what you have, be happy with that, rather than trying to get something else then is no guarantee. Again, I think verse nine is more than just a contrast between possessing the knot, it’s a description of, or a contrast between the attitudes, between our perspectives on contentment and craving.

There is something built in, you guys know this, there is something built in that just says the grass is greener over there. You can be surrounded by the greenest, most luscious grass And there is something about our cravings, our built-in appetite that says, ooh, this is good. This is good in here somewhere here. This is good, but maybe that’s going to be better. I’m not saying we have to crave this. I’m saying this. So this is good. Something built in says that it’s greener over there. And then what always happens when you get over there? Well, it’s not quite as green as I thought it was, but look over there, which may have been where you just came from.

Maybe someplace else, but that’s how it works. And we are perpetually in this thing when we’re, at least if we are, dominated by our cravings of not being able to be satisfied because our appetites wander. And once we get what we thought we wanted, okay, well what I really want is this. Maybe you’re familiar with one of Isop’s fables. This is a dog and his reflection. It’s not very long. I think you’ll appreciate it. A dog, the butcher had thrown a bone, was hurrying home with his prize as fast as he could go. As he crossed a narrow footbridge, he happened to look down and saw himself reflected in the quiet water as if in a mirror.

But the greedy dog thought that he saw a real dog carrying a bone much bigger than his own. If he had stopped to think about it, he would have known better, but instead of thinking, he dropped his bone and sprang at the dog in the river, only to find himself swimming for dear life to reach shore. At last he managed to scramble out and as he stood sadly thinking about the good bone he had lost, he realized what a stupid dog he had been, it is very clueless to be greedy. We all have right now so much to be thankful for and confident that yet we are dominating by wanting something else. And that’s not good. You will potentially give up the good stuff you have to try to get something better and in the process lose both. It was what you already had and not gained the thing that you were hoping for.

The target of our appetites are elusive. That is, they’re on the move. They are they’re slippery, they’re difficult to catch and hold on to. Better to enjoy the present good than looking to the future and hoping for more good, and like I say then get a night of dinner. This is one of the reasons why, and if you read my vlog from earlier in the week, I was able to put my resolutions for this year on, and one of in my effect, the last revolution is to be radically thankful. This is the idea of being content in the process. I am a different person when I’m thanked. And it’s only possible to be thankful with the right perspective.

And I know that when I’m not thankful, that typically comes because I’m not submitting to God. I’m not submitting to the one who is sovereign. I’m thinking that I should be sovereign, or that I am the center. But when I’m thankful, I’m trusting in his sovereignty, submitting to that. I’m trusting in his promises. I’m obedient to his command to give thanks. When I’m thankful for when I am dominated by my appetites for something more, my wandering appetites, I’m unthankful, I’m not content, and the process is absolutely miserable. Being thankful, being content, better is the sight of the eyes, what you have right there in front of you, let that impact you.

Like Paul, we want to be able to say that we know how to be raw low and how to abound in every circumstance, whether we have much or we have little to be thankful for what everybody’s giving us. And that leads us to the fourth element about the human appetite. Not only is it relentless, not only is it inescapable, not only is it elusive, but human appetite in and of itself is vanity. Last part of verse nine, this also is vanity and a striving after win. This is the ninth vanity, though it appears paid more times by itself, including verse nine has been used 23 times already in the first six chapters.

Striving after win, this is the ninth and final vanity out of the 31 times in the book, 23 have already taken place. And it’s talking about our pursuit of whatever we think is going to satisfy us, and how you either are pursuing the right thing to satisfy, to submitting to God and enjoying the process as his gift. Or you’re going to keep looking for whatever you think is going to make you happy. And you’re going to keep working and keep putting the food in your mouth. And it’s going to be bigger to you. It will be not lasting and unhappy to you if there’s no joy in the process. Has we finished this morning? Is the appetite a blessing or a curse?

That’s one big role. Is the appetite a blessing or a curse? The answer is yes. It is a blessing or a curse. For those who find their treasure under the sun, to those who want to be sovereign in their own lives, to those who love the world and the things of the world, to those who are seeking to find pleasure and satisfaction and go consistent, your appetite is a curse to you. Because it gets you up every morning and drives you to work and to pursue and to eat, And yet at the end you are still empty. That is a curse. But to those who have their treasure in heaven, and to those who do submit to God who is sovereign, to those who love Christ and submit to Him and are content with whatever He gives them, specifically those who receive the gift of God of enduring the process, you have to pay His blessing.

It’s beneficial, it keeps you going, And you can enjoy the times when the appetite is strong and you get to eat and you can enjoy the time after it when you have just eaten your meal and the hunger pains are quieted down and you can enjoy that whole process if what you’re truly seeking to be satisfied on is Christ, not the food. You can enjoy so many things in life because of Christ Or those very same things will be most vain and worthless and empty to you if you try to suck the satisfaction out of them. And so this morning is your appetite a blessing or a curse for you? What’s your perspective on that? If it is a curse for you right now, the reason for that is because you’re seeking to satisfy your appetite in the wrong places, in the wrong place.

Jesus offers you something way better than that. Turn to him, it will only to him. That’s the theme from the year. And Father, we want that. We want the appetite, our own affections and desires, to be strongest for you. It isn’t wrong to treasure things and to desire things. What’s wrong is to treasure things in the wrong place. We’re not to lay up for ourselves treasures on earth. We’re not to seek to fulfill our appetites with things come to the Sun where Moth and rust destroy, thieves break in and steal, but we are to lay up treasures for ourselves in heaven. The reason that at least Jesus gives us that is because where our treasure is, that’s where our heart is going to be.

And our hearts can’t be satisfied. The taste that a heart knows is possible, this can’t be found here on this planet, at least under the sun by itself. It can only be found in you. So draw our attention to you, turn our appetites, our affections to you. Let the stuff of this world turn to gravel in our mouths. that we would always be satisfied by you, your son, and other than something, we pray all this appreciation for you.