You Can't Take It with You

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, if you haven’t already, take out your copy of God’s Word and turn to Ecclesiastes, chapter 5. And the fact very much is that you can’t take it with you. Whatever it is that you accumulate for yourself, all the money, all the possessions, even all the accolades, you don’t get to take those things with you. Just as you come into this world, naked, you will leave this world, naked. Nothing in your hands. Your bank account is not transferred to heaven. No assets that you had here on earth, then you do get to take with you to the next life. You cannot take it with you. how desperately I think we need to get this perspective, this proper perspective on personal wealth and on money and riches and accumulating stuff, even as we think about those in our congregation who have passed away or who had loved ones who have just passed away as we think about that.

And even as we think about Christmas and the amount of time you guys are spending making your lists and checking the catalogs and making sure that you are telling your parents or whoever it is that you make a list for exactly what you want. That is going to be the thing that makes you happy. That is going to be the thing that defines you and enables you to really enjoy 2007. I’m telling you, and Solomon has been communicating this message throughout the whole book of Ecclesiastes, that that is not where life is found. So last week, we looked at chapter 5, verses 8 and 9. we saw the proper perspective on political oppression.

And then we began this larger section on the proper perspective on personal wealth. We saw, specifically then in verse 10, he who loves money will not be satisfied with money or stuff. Anything can fit into that blank that you find under the sun. Money just kind of summarizes it all. You will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? As they come in, as they go out, and all he gets to do is just watch the process. He doesn’t actually ever get to enjoy it anyway.

Then verse 12, sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. I promised you at the end of last week that I’d give you three reasons why you can’t get enough money, and let’s cover those quickly. Number one, three reasons you cannot get enough money. Number one is because money is intoxicatingly addictive. I know that intoxicatingly is a big word, but it really seemed to work well. I think money, this is the human condition, money is very much like a a drug and the drugs you get in satisfies you maybe temporarily but then you need more and more of that to keep getting that feeling or that buzz and money works the exact same way.

You desire it, you get it. Maybe you enjoy it for a little bit of time but then that amount of money is not what satisfies anymore. You need more. And just like you get intoxicated, you are controlled by this desire to get more and more and more. That’s what it means to be intoxicated, to be under the influence or under the control of something else. And there are way too many people who are intoxicated and addicted to getting stuff and more money. You know what? That means you’ll never get enough. whatever you get, there will always be the possibility that you can have more. So money, you can’t get enough money because it’s intoxicatingly addictive.

Secondly, you can’t get enough money because bills only get bigger. Your bills do not, generally speaking, as you grow older and as your bank account gets larger, your bills don’t get smaller. Some of your bills, obviously you have greater ability to pay, but for the most part, and They saw this specifically in verse 11, when goods increase, they increase who eat them. The more you get, the more people there are that you need to get for. The more you make, the more people who want to leech off of and participate in all that you are enjoying. Your bills only get bigger. You’ll never get enough to make sure that you’re paying for all of your bills because they grow as does your bank account.

And then third, a third reason you can never get enough money is because prosperity never equals peace. And so if you keep thinking that you just get more money and that’s what’s going to make you happy, that’s what’s going to provide security and a peace at night, that just isn’t even the case. That as well is another way to look at verse 12. Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. He has no peace, even though he has all kinds of prosperity. The more he has, the more he just has to be anxious over. And so, prosperity never equals peace, and if you think it does, you will never have enough money to get to that point where, oh, then everything is okay.

So three reasons you can’t get enough money. Number one is because money is intoxicatingly addictive. The more you get, the more you’re going to want. Secondly, your bills only get bigger. And third, prosperity never equals peace. That is all intended to wrap up this idea that money is not life, or in other words, life is more than money. Life is more than money. And you know what else? Even if life was about money, you can’t take it with you. Even if life was defined by our bank accounts and our possessions and all the stuff that we had, even if that was the case, then you die. And at that point, you don’t get to take whatever you have collected with you to the next life.

And that’s what our paragraph that we’re going to study this morning is all about. As we continue the proper perspective on personal wealth, last week we focused in on the fact that life is more than money. This week, you can’t take it with you. at chapter 5 verse 13. Solomon says, There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. Riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, and those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. As he came from his mother’s womb, he shall go again naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand.

This also is a grievous evil. Just as he came, so shall he go. And what gain is there for him who toils for the wind? Moreover, all his days he eats in darkness, in much vexation and sickness and anger.” What a good deal. Actually, it’s not a good deal at all. Verses 13 and 14 provide for us Solomon’s reflection. He starts out at the beginning of verse 13. This is a typical way that he introduces a subject. He says, there is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. This is life on the planet. This is what he’s been describing to us. This is his area of expertise. Life under the sun. This is something that he saw, and this particular observation and reflection is of a very grievous evil.

How does the NAS translate that? Grievous evil. So ESV and NAS have it the same way. The word evil describes a misery or a distress, a great problem or issue, but this is not just any old evil. This is a grievous evil. I did some study on what that word meant. And grievous is a word in the Old Testament that is connected with the idea of being sick, of feeling bad, sometimes in an even incurable sort of way. For example, in Nahum chapter 3 verse 19 we read, There is no easing of your hurt, your wound is grievous. kind of an inescapable pain or sorrow or difficulty. It is grievous. In fact, maybe we would translate this.

Solomon saw this thing that was evil, and it made him sick. It was such a grievous evil that it kind of gave him irritable vowels, but not in a physical way, in an emotional, psychological, in a spiritual way. This observation, this reflection makes him sick. Well, three parts to his observation. First is the person who was hoarding everything. Hoarding is that idea of hungry, hungry, hippo. You guys ever play that game? Just came to my mind. Hungry, hungry, hippo got all the balls out in the center. And everybody has this little thing. They’re just beating on the tail of the hippo, I suppose. And the head of the hippo kind of goes out and then tries to grab all of the balls that it can pull back.

So it goes out, grabs them, pulls it into your little collection. That is life for most people. It’s hungry, hungry, hippo. They’re going out just trying to get, get, get, get, as much as they possibly can so that they can win the game. They’re the ones with the bumper stickers that say, he who dies with the most toys wins or whatever that is. So this is a person who is hoarding everything. riches were kept by their owner to his hurt.” This is the first part of the grievous, the sickening kind of situation he sees, that riches were kept by their owner to his hurt. You have the hoarding and the hurting. The riches were kept, that is, the rich man sought out and stored up.

You think maybe of the guy in the New Testament who was just building bigger and better barns to hold all of his stuff. He was having a successful prosperous crop, and so his barns were getting full, and so what he needed to do, he needed to build bigger stuff so he could hold more and more and more, hoarding it, collecting it, storing it up. But rather than provide him with happiness, it was just the opposite. Rather than provide him joy, because he had all of this stuff. He was hoarding it all. Rather than bring him joy, it was to his hurt. That is just not how we act. We think if we could just get some more, then that is what would make us happy.

In this case, hoarding everything leads to the opposite result. How can this be? How can hoarding, how can having, even having everything, How could that possibly lead to someone else’s hurt? You know why that’s the case? Because that’s the way God has set it up to be. Just consider some of these verses from Proverbs. Proverbs 28-22, A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon him. Proverbs 28-25, a greedy man stirs up strife, but the one who trusts in the Lord will be enriched.” And Proverbs 28, 27, “…whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.”

And the way that God has established for life under the sun, even to work, is that when you give and are generous, you get. you don’t actually get money back, but you get a joy and a happiness. That’s the kind of formula that God has set up life under the sun to work by. But when you collect and amass and store and hoard and keep it from others, even from other people who have need, it results in hurt. Because of that hurt is actually getting hit by a bus, that probably is not the kind of hurt. If your bank account gets over $80 million, automatically you get hit by a bus. That’s not the point of the hurt. Some of the hurt may actually be all the stress and the anxiety that come along with it that we just looked at in the previous paragraph.

That definitely could be the hurt.

Some of the hurt could just simply be God making it so that you can’t enjoy what you have. God is actually personally involved in our bank accounts and in our stuff. And he is interested in watching our attitudes when it comes to our possessions. Which if you listened at all to Pastor Zimmer’s sermons through Matthew chapter 6, you know that actually God is the one who owns it all anyway. And it’s when we fail to consider that he is the one who owns it and has control of our possessions. We’re just stewards of his stuff. That makes a difference in how you approach life and it makes a difference in the kind of life you can enjoy. We’ll see next week in the next couple paragraphs that it is possible to have joy, but so many people work and get and have no happiness at all. That’s a judgment of God on them. So riches were kept by their owner to his hurt. Not only does a rich man have more reasons to stress, it is a God-ordained principle that hoarders will not be happy.” Hello, I mean how many of you have already watched the little DuckTales version of Scrooge? Scrooge

not happy. It’s perfect season of the year to bring up Scrooge as the illustration. Counting every every penny so to speak. Stingy in giving. Collecting, hoarding, and you know what that was entirely to his hurt. That’s just how God has set it up. Having it all is not really all it’s cracked up to be. Well, that leads to not only then hoarding everything, but the first part of verse 14. Now we see him lose everything. All those riches that he had collected and hoarded for himself, and those riches were lost in a bad venture. So, it definitely is possible that the hoarder is not happy because of all the stress of having.

That’s possible why it’s to his hurt. It’s also possible that God just specifically is prohibiting him from enjoying them. That could be to his hurt. But now there’s a third reason given to us by the context, and that is you might have it all and then lose it all. That is certainly to your hurt as well. Here the man’s riches were lost in a bad venture. The implication is that he lost it all. Not just that he lost a bunch or even the majority, but that he lost it all. Because if you look down in the next verse, it says he has nothing in his hand. He’s holding on to nothing. He’s got zero. Solomon doesn’t tell us exactly what this, you know, bad venture or this bad investment.

He probably doesn’t need to tell us what that is because our own imaginations can conceive of a hundred different ways that you could lose everything that you have.

Even right now, whatever you have or those who do have bank accounts, you just think about how easily and quickly any one of a hundred things could happen that would take it all away by tomorrow morning. It’s that easy to lose it all. It’s not hard to think about Job. It’s not hard to connect this idea thinking about a man who had it all even though we don’t think or we don’t learn in the book of Job that Job was hoarding it all for himself, nevertheless, here was a man with great riches and great material prosperity and blessings, and in the span of a couple hours. How difficult do you think it would be to lose your money and to lose your crops and to lose your livestock? Losing money when it’s on the computer screen, that doesn’t really surprise me because if you’re in a Windows machine, it’s really that easy to have your bank account go from thousands to zero in just a moment. But actually losing sheep, that seems tougher to me. Physical sheep running around the room, how you just lose those

quickly, and that was exactly the case for Job. Very physical assets that he He had to his name. And not only all of his prosperity, but even then his family, his ten sons and daughters. He lost it all in the span of a very short period of time. God’s arm is not short to do the same thing for us. At a moment’s notice, everything you have that you’ve been hoarding could be lost. Not only then are riches no guarantee of happiness, having riches themselves is no guarantee. Or at least having it for a long period of time. And so that leads to the third element here of this reflection which is having nothing, the last part of verse 14.

And he is father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. The miscalculation of the investment or the venture, whatever it is that he got involved in turned into quite a misfortune, especially since he was having a kid, having a son. The NAS makes it a little bit more clear that this is not having a son at the end of the son’s life or at the end of the father’s life, where then we’re talking about an inheritance, though obviously if you have nothing when your son is born, you may not have anything when you die to give to him either. But the idea here is that he’s got all this money, he’s hoarded it for himself, and then finally has a son, but he loses it all right before his son, so he doesn’t even have money to put food on the table.

Doesn’t even have money to take care of his own kid, his own child. Losing your money does not always happen at a convenient time. Right when you’re having a kid, just trying to think back about the two kids that we have, losing all of our money, right when they were born, that would not have been good. So far as, like, trying to plan diapers. You know how expensive diapers are? How expensive all the little things are? Even just the bare necessities. You got to have some money to help keep somebody else living. And so here it is. He loses it all. An inconvenient time. There’s nothing in his hand. He’s got nothing to share with his son now, let alone then the possibility of sharing an inheritance with him in the future.

The father spent his life pursuing something that was like chasing the wind. insubstantial, he wasted his life for something worthless. Well, that leads us to verse 15 and the reality. 13 and 14 are Solomon’s reflection. Here’s the reality. And verse 15 really is kind of a proverb. We’ve seen Solomon share some of these with us already. It says, and as he came from his mother’s womb, he shall go again. naked as he came and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand.”

I think one of the reasons we think this is a proverb, it kind of has that rhythm to it, but even more so, this now is stepping away back out of the specific situation where he describes with the rich man. It applies to the rich man, but this is universally true. This is a true statement for everybody who has ever lived at any time in any place. No one is an exception to this rule. That’s one of the things then that I think makes it a proverb. This is a generally accepted truth that you come naked and you leave naked. You come with nothing and you leave with nothing. There is no doubt in my mind by this point that Solomon is thinking back to Job because this was actually Job’s very response to losing everything that he had. In Job chapter 1, Job responds, though the attitude is different than the attitude with which Solomon is sharing it, Job responds to the reports of having lost everything by worshipping God and saying, naked have I come, naked will I go, whatever the Lord gives me is great, blessed be the name of

the Lord. Job is a guy who demonstrates even by his use of this proverb, and in fact this undoubtedly Solomon is thinking about Job’s writing because Job is the oldest book likely in the Old Testament anyway. had access to the book of Job. Whereas Job was worshiping, Solomon is kind of pressing the truth down on us in a negative way saying, look, so stop pursuing all of it. Stop thinking that that’s what life is all about. Job loses everything. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That was Job’s response of worship because his perspective on money and wealth was right. But all around us are people who probably may be a little bit irritated that we can’t take it with us.

We know it, but maybe we think we can escape what happens to everybody else. Just try to think back, if you can, to when you were born. Just everybody right now. Try to think back. I’m not going to have you lay down in the fetal position and then stretch out like you’re trying to get out. get out, but just think back to when you were born. When you come out, you’re naked. Literally, you are naked. Naked is not a metaphor when you are born. Naked is very literal. That is the truth. You have no clothing, not even a shirt on your back. You’ve got nothing.

You’ve got nothing. Zero. Everyone enters the world with Jack Squat. That’s what you have to your name when you enter. Jack Squat. That could be all of our names for the first few moments when we’re born. We are nobodies with nothing. This is the universal experience. No baby has ever been born and then waited for the envelope of cash to follow. This is mine. I’ll be using this while I’m here. Thank you. Doesn’t happen. No baby comes out with, you know, some jewelry on that then they can pawn the pawn shop to get some cash to buy some formula or some diapers or whatever they need. It just doesn’t happen. Being born is not like being arrested.

When you’re arrested and they check you in, you give them what you have. So you give them your ring if you have one, your watch, your wallet, and they put it in the little envelope, and while you’re in jail, that’s yours. And then when you get to go, they find your envelope and they give you all your stuff back. That is the exact opposite for what it’s like when you are born. You come with nothing. And just as you came with nothing, each one of us in here, just as true as that is, is the truth that you will leave with nothing. You will take nothing that you have collected to the next place. The end of your life is like the beginning.

you’ll take, which is Jack squat. That’s it. And yet, keep that umbrella principle in mind, that proverb in mind, and yet, what do we spend our lives doing? We spend our lives in pursuit of getting, whatever it is. Our days are filled with getting and thinking that what we get is going to make us happy. Clenching onto your possessions won’t change the fact that when you die, you will not be able to hold onto them any longer. I think this is so true. Doug Wilson put it this way. He said, you can’t take it with you. This well-worn cliche is ignored as often as it is spoken, and frequently by the same people. We know it. We understand it. We believe it. And we say it. But typically, we ignore it just as fast as we’ve said it. This was one of the things my dad regularly told me.

My dad always was telling me, potentially not always in good things because he was not a huge investor, per se. And so, he had the pretty simple philosophy is, if he had money in his pocket, that it was fair to spend it, because you can’t take it with you. And there ought to be, perhaps, some saving for the future, some stewardship, some wisdom of what God has given us while we’re here. But when that becomes the focus, and see, that’s the thing is so many of us will want to say, well, you know, it’s a balance. And we use that phrase to rationalize our love and pursuit of stuff, oh, it’s a balance. And I’m not trying to disagree that we should save and that we should not spend everything that we keep and have some for a rainy day and blah, blah, blah. But it is such a slippery slope to fall down over the other side where you start, depending on that, to make you happy.

And it’s all around us. It is really absurd. You can’t think about that proverb, that you come naked and you leave naked. What you come with, you leave with. You can’t think about that too much before you realize that all of this pursuit is really absurd. It is totally inconsistent with what is a universal truth. Well, that leads us to the third major point, which is the recap in verses 16 and 17. And it gives us a reiteration of the problem. Verse 16, this also is a grievous evil, a sickening kind of thing. Just as he came, so shall he go. And what gain is there to him who toils for the wind? Solomon makes it now an absurd statement.

You are working to get the wind. It’s just another way to talk about striving after the wind and trying to grasp it and hold onto it. That is how successful you are going to be in getting happiness out of stuff is like trying to grasp the wind. Just won’t happen. In case we weren’t paying attention so far, he reiterates, he repeats the issue. It doesn’t satisfy. You can’t take it with you anyway. It’s a grievous evil. More than that, then he gives us in verse 17 the exacerbation of the problem.

I’m really pleased that I got to include intoxicatingly and exacerbation all in the same message. Specifically, it comes from verse 17, “‘Moreover, all his days he eats in darkness, in much vexation and sickness and anger. Maybe if we still don’t get it, Solomon takes a bad situation and makes it worse. As if it wasn’t a grievous evil enough that life is more than money, it can’t satisfy, and that you can’t take it with you. By the way, all the days you spend trying to pursue it are going to be really a pain in the rear. It’s not like you’re just going to enjoy all of it while you’re here pursuing this vanity and then you just can’t take it with you at the end.

Notice that even right now while pursuing it, it’s no fun. Moreover, the word that begins verse 17, there is no equivalent for it in the NAS, but it is a word that moves the thought to the next level. That’s the idea of exacerbation is aggravating it, making it extreme. It’s like when you have a sore, when you get a flu shot, and then somebody comes up and starts poking you right in your flu shot. That’s exacerbating the pain. It is aggravating it and making it worse than perhaps it even needed to be. This is a serious reason for despair. Four things describe this kind of life. Darkness. Look at verse 17. Darkness as a metaphor or a symbol of misery. You can look at, it’s not just that the lights are turned out or that he’s not paying his electric bill. And so he’s living in darkness.

That’s not what this darkness is referring to. At least two or three other times in the book of Ecclesiastes, darkness refers to misery or despair or confusion. So what you get is darkness, dread and despair, much vexation or much anger. Maybe that’s ulcers. Then you get sickness, actually feeling worn down and tired by all of this pursuit, and and then anger or rage, all of the inconsistencies and things that are unfair and how you were cheated and all the bad investments you made and how it’s everybody else’s fault. And you know how long you get that? What’s it say in verse 17? How long does that describe your life?

single stinking day of your life. All his days. This is such a beautiful quote, again from Doug Wilson. If he works hard and frets and worries a whole lot, he can make sure that his fine clothes for the short time he does have them are nothing but nice wrapping paper for ulcers. He labored all that while to amass his very own treasure of balloon I just I I got stuck when I read that balloon juice I almost laughed out loud in my little study at home balloon juice you know because when you have a balloon and you blow it up undoubtedly some of your saliva gets into the balloon if if it doesn’t actually come out as spit into the balloon then your hot air may condense on the inside of the balloon as you’re blowing it up so So even if you’re not just, and spitting it right into the balloon, that’s why when you blow a nice balloon and you got it already and then it breaks, it feels a little wet.

You know what that is? That’s balloon juice. And for all of your efforts and labor, that is what we’re collecting. Balloon juice. So while Solomon doesn’t deny all possibility of joy under the sun, it is possible to have joy in toil. And we’ll see again in the very next paragraph, starting in verse 18, he’ll get back to where true joy can be found. But his point here is that it is not to be found in your collection and in your hoarding of stuff. A life lived for money will be a life filled with stress. Whether you have it, hoard it, or lose it, money is not what life is about. I think part of the reason for that, even Jesus explains in Matthew 6, it’s an issue of worship.

You can’t serve God and money. And you won’t. And for all the talk of balance and perspective and not going to extremes, the fact is Jesus very clearly explains, you will serve one Master. And in fact, He tells us who that ought to be, that we ought to be loving and worshiping God pursuing righteousness and His kingdom and then what? Then all those things are added to us. But if you spend your life working and serving to get all those other things, then you end up getting nothing. You get neither the kingdom nor the possibility of joy here, at least in a lasting way. Father, I ask that you would help us, whether young or old, to take this medicine and perhaps even to let it immunize us.

Merchilization and materialism and greed and coveting at every level that is all around us, from ridiculous pursuit of Christmas gifts to investing on the stock market and everywhere in between. May we wrestle with, cause us by your spirit, and even through this passage that we studied to examine our own hearts and our own worship, where we ourselves are focused, even this morning and this week, and our lives would not be spent in pursuing balloon juice and wind and vanity, but in pursuing you. We trust you. We love your Son. We want to serve You and look beyond the sun. And we pray all this in Christ’s name. Amen.