Finding Meaning in a "Never Enough" World: An Interview with Bobby Jamieson on Ecclesiastes

Everything is never enough. It’s a feeling many of us know well, yet we struggle to name it. In this episode, we sit down with Bobby Jamieson to explore the ancient yet strikingly modern wisdom of Ecclesiastes.

Bobby shares how a 2021 sermon series turned into a personal spiritual challenge, forcing him to wrestle with the "vanity" of life and the pursuit of satisfaction. From stories of raising his four kids to deep insights on evangelism and apologetics, Bobby helps us piece together the "big picture" of a book that often feels like a riddle. If you’ve ever felt the emptiness of having it all or wondered why our modern world feels increasingly lonely, this conversation offers a profound look at how the Bible meets our search for purpose.

Bobby Jamieson is the author of several books, including Sound Doctrine: How a Church Grows in the Love and Holiness of God, Going Public: Why Baptism Is Required for Church Membership, Jesus' Death and Heavenly Offering in Hebrews, The Paradox of Sonship: Christology in The Epistle to the Hebrews, and The Path to Being a Pastor: A Guide for the Aspiring.

Native Exiles is a podcast from Alderwood Community Church, where we talk about following Jesus in the tension of being in the world but not of it. For more questions and inquiries, reach us at reachus@alderwood.cc or visit us on our website at alderwood.cc/ne.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Native Exiles Alderwood Community Churches podcast where we explore the tension between being in the world but not of the world. Today, I am really looking forward to our time with author and pastor Bobby Jameson to talk about his book, Everything Is Never Enough. Hope you really enjoy our time with Bobby. He's very insightful, very relevant, very practical, and we're gonna have a great time together. This morning I am talking with author and pastor Bobby Jameson, who's written a book, Everything Is Never Enough. It is a book that takes a very honest look at why we often feel very discontent and dissatisfied, even in a world where everything for us is going quite well. And uh and it's built around the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. I've got to tell you, Bobby, first of all, welcome. So glad to have you this morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Thanks, appreciate it. Good to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Full disclosure in perhaps some previous episodes, which I will leave unnamed. I haven't actually read the book that I'm talking about. I am happy to say I read and loved your book. Really. It it is one of the more influential books. I read this last year, so I was so glad when you agreed to meet with us uh to talk about your book and really, really looking forward to it. You are a pastor. You're a family man as well. I appreciated that. I'm a dad of two daughters. You interwove several stories about your family, which made the book that much more accessible. Tell us a little bit about what you do as a pastor and just briefly about your family.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yeah, sure. So um I'm the senior pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, which is a new church I've helped to start here in North Carolina. And uh it's a sweet congregation, unified, dear people. It's gone well by God's grace. Um, and my family, we've got I'm married to Kristen. We've been married for 18 years. We have four kids. Uh uh, our oldest is turning 16 on Friday, our youngest is seven, three girls and a boy, the boy's number three.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

You are a busy man. Fantastic. Well, handsful. I am really curious. What actually got you interested in writing a book about Ecclesiastes? I mean, when I think of Ecclesiastes, I don't know many people whose favorite Bible verse comes from the book of Ecclesiastes. I know a lot of people that just say this is interesting, but I don't get it at all. Like what got you interested?

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Totally. Well, I had planned I was for seven years an associate pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in DC, and I preached regularly there. And before 2020, I planned to preach a series on Ecclesiastes in 2020. And um, that was, yeah, that was pretty funny.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

What happened in 2020, Bob?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Exactly. Yeah, and then so we had we had COVID, we had all kinds of disruptions to our church life. Uh, of course, I wound up getting around to beginning it in 2021. The first happy new year, first Sunday of January 2021. It's basically everything is meaningless. You're never going to be satisfied, you're never going to be happy. Let's close in prayer and go home. Great, great new year message.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

That actually makes so much sense. I didn't, I didn't, I don't think you mentioned that in the intro to the book, that it was maybe maybe just in the acknowledgments.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, at the very end, I think I tell the story a little bit more. Um so it started as a sermon series, and I preached straight through the book in about 11 sermons. And it was, it was a rigorous spiritual challenge for me. You know, it's a hard book to preach. And, you know, getting wrestling with it, understanding what it means, submitting to, okay, here's what this chapter is saying. Let's go. And then finding a way to help connect it into people's lives in a way that would bring some insight, hope, encouragement. It was so much wrestling in the sermons, but by God's grace, I feel like the congregation responded warmly. Maybe some people were a little skeptical at first, like, why do we need a really sermon series on ecclesiastics? Why do we need it in the middle of COVID? Maybe we should be preaching something, you know. But it just got deep under my skin. And and I felt like when I got to the end of the series, I didn't want to be done with it. And, you know, maybe especially, you know, in DC, there's it's a it's it's a diverse congregation. It is, you know, diverse in many, many ways, age, station of life, etc. But there are a lot of people who are young, who their life is still kind of on its hopeful upward slope. And when you're doing Ecclesiastes work of kind of disillusioning, you know, going after idols of career, money, status, power, all these kind of things, it really does resonate. I think, particularly if you feel like your life is meant to be on this kind of upward slope. And so I just didn't want to be done. Uh, and it really resonated deeply with me as a way into evangelism and apologetics. And so basically I just kept reading, thinking, reflecting, and kind of what I think we'll get to soon. Um, just kind of the insight that occurred to me about how to kind of put the big picture of the book together. This often happens when you're preaching, right? You get to the end of a book and you go, Oh, now I've got a way to kind of put the big picture together. And and so that's what I think, I think literally it came to me in the last sermon or second to last sermon. That's fascinating. Um, and so I was like, Well, now I've done the work. So, anyways, it just it stuck with me, it got under my skin. I think Ecclesiastes, it's it's wrestling with all the biggest questions in life.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Meaning of life, purpose, satisfaction, happiness. Where can you find it? And um, yeah, so there's there's more I could say, but the book, the book sort of grabbed hold of me by the color and let me go.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

It it really is a book that just gets a hold of your attention because it's so unlike almost any other book in the Bible. And one of the things I think that resonates with me about the book goes back to something I said in the intro. Like the guy who's writing it, it's not Lamentations, where Jeremiah has just gone through this horrible, you know, disaster. Here's a guy who has everything he wants at his disposal. He can get anyone, anything, every resource is available to him, and yet he's still unhappy. And I mean, your opening in the book I thought was really fascinating along those lines. You said if we want something along the lines, if we want to complain about our unhappiness today, we do so in a place of far greater comfort than anyone has ever complained about it before. I I thought that was so poignant. Like, that's true, right? The world in so many ways is objectively a better place, but we seem to be more unhappy.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yeah, and especially in terms of physical comfort, right? Bodily and bodily wellness and flourishing, modern medical care. I mean, I don't I don't want to give up modern medical care. I'm totally thankful for it. And there's things that we could do at the flick of a button heat it, heating a room, cooling off in the summer, the kind of food that I mean, it it really is astonishing and what's available to us in the modern world, and yet even poverty, you know, by all objective measures, we have eliminated a lot of extreme poverty from the world.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I'm a missions pastor, and it's amazing to me. I will be in the most remote parts of the world, and people have cell phones and they have you know solar-powered electric lights. I mean, we have come a long way, but even here in our Western setting, we have so much, and yet we seem more lonely and unhappy than ever.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Yeah, and that's one reason why people have been saying for a long time that Ecclesiastes feels like an especially modern book. It's kind of like you can get it all, have it all, pleasure, power, possessions, all these kind of things at your fingertips, and you still feel empty. You know, you contrast it with the book of Job. Job discovered the vanity of all things by losing it all. You know, the author of Ecclesiastes discovered the vanity of all things by having it all.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

That's so fascinating. And you said something. I actually heard you say this on another podcast. I thought it was very interesting. You said Ecclesiastes is a book that perhaps more than other Bible books yields more when you understand some basic things about the book going in. So let's assume, you know, some folks in our audience aren't very familiar with you know this little 12-chapter book tucked away in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Um, tell us a little bit about the author of this book. We've already talked about the fact he has unlimited resources. Who is this guy that wrote the book?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah, so the author just calls himself Kohelet, which is a Hebrew word that basically means the teacher. It refers to somebody who gathers people together, somebody who leads meetings, presumably to instruct. Um, you know, historically, very many Christians have understood it to be King Solomon. Right. He does call himself, refer to himself as a king in Jerusalem. He talks about his own greatness. I think it's possible that it is Solomon, but it's not, it doesn't say so explicitly. Right. So my reading of the book just doesn't depend on that. I just I just called the author what he calls himself, which is Kohelet. So again, it could be Solomon. A lot of it would fit with Solomon, but this is somebody who had power, possessions, pleasure, uh, and went on, even, frankly, like a quest to kind of systematically examine what's the worth, what's the value, what do you get out of, kind of living every possible life you could to the full. And that's like the first chapter and a half. So that really kind of sets the stage for the rest of the book. Frankly, he really does go on a quest for the meaning of life. He he develops his estate, his palace as well as he possibly could, plants trees, has gardens, gets the best musicians, has food and wine and all this kind of thing. And his conclusion, which really you get the flavor of the whole book by what he says in chapter two, verse 10, then I considered all that my hands had done, and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. So whether you take it to be Solomon or not, the point is this dude has experienced everything. It's almost like when you read a biography of Winston Churchill, you go, How did he live 10 lives in one? Like he lived more lives before he turned 30 than like most people do. So, so really, he's learned all these lessons the hard way by his own experience. That's kind of the key to really begin to open up what's unique about the book.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah, I think most of us think, wow, I'd love to try that experiment, right? I'd love to have unlimited money and time, and you know, I could tell anybody to do whatever I wanted. But yeah, that's sort of the irony of the book, right? Is that he ends in this place where he's like, it's not that great. I discovered things don't satisfy. You mentioned that word meaningless. Um I know the Hebrew word is heavel. I've seen it translated absurd, vanity, vapor. Uh talk to us a little bit about that word because it seems to be a really key concept.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah, that's right. So the Hebrew word is heavel. It's hard to translate in one English word because it's kind of a term of art. It's kind of his one word encapsulation of everything he's trying to say. And it comes up in the very beginning, chapter one, verse two. You know, translated here in the ESV, vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. So he's he's super emphatic in his repetition. This is the point of the whole book. Um, I think absurd is actually a really helpful one-word translation. Um, the the as as as is the case in many words like this, there's kind of a basic, almost literal or physical meaning of heavel, which is breath. And breath is it's here and it's gone. It comes and goes. If you breathe out on a cold day, you know, you see the puff of puff of air and then it's gone. And so one nuance of the word is something transient that doesn't last. But you can also develop from that something that maybe doesn't meet expectations, something that del doesn't deliver what it seemed to promise. And then uh the Kohela, the author of Ecclesiastes, kind of takes it even further into the realms of things that are flat out wrong, like injustice, like not getting what you deserve, like the best person not getting the prize, the smartest person not getting the job, the best qualified person, you know, the fastest person not winning the race. And so he uses heavily as this one-word encapsulation for all of that. And I think absurd is actually really good, a really good one-word equivalent, because even in light of some of the kind of 20th century existentialist philosophy of people like Albert Camus and their use of the word, it basically means something that doesn't fit, something that doesn't measure up to what you want, what you need, or what you expect. And that's really Ecclesiastes' summary of our whole relationship to the world. That's kind of the basic message is that the world is absurd. It doesn't give you what you want, it doesn't give you what you desire, it doesn't give you what you demand. Now, of course, it's not saying those things never happen. Right. But what it's saying, and this is the part that really stings and kind of gets under your skin, is it's saying those things aren't guaranteed. And it often doesn't happen, whether it's a matter of fairness, reward, justice. This world is fundamentally ruptured through the fall, and the resulting condition is absurdity. It doesn't do what we want.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Yeah, there is that sense that you can have all this stuff and it's just not gonna deliver. You you can't hang on to it. I think you bringing up the issue of, you know, 20th century existentialist philosophers is something we may circle back to, but it's one of the reasons people struggle with the book because they're like, wait, this doesn't fit my biblical worldview. Is he saying like everything is utterly pointless? I thought there was a, you know, a God directing all this. So we really run up against that. Maybe we'll deal with that a little bit more in the second half of the podcast when we talk about some of the pastoral application. But I want to hit something here in still trying to understand, not just the way the book of Ecclesiastes is organized, but something you brought in your book that I absolutely love, Bobby. You introduced Kohalet as a stand-up comedian. Sure. And I mean, I I realized it's really it wasn't just like an attention grabber from you. He really is a lot of times in the book. He's so ironically funny. Like, give a few examples that stand out to you. Oh boy. Ooh, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Um, you know, one, oh, let me think for a second. One one would be like when he when he goes after the workaholic in chapter four, verses seven and eight. Again, I saw vanity under the sun, one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure? This also is vanity in an unhappy business. It's it's dark and it's pointed, but there is a kind of humor there. Like, there is this ironic like this dude's on a hamster wheel, this dude's on a treadmill, and he doesn't see it and he doesn't see it, and he doesn't ask why. Yeah, and so there is this kind of irony and this kind of humor of like, you don't want to be that guy.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah. And it makes him so engaging. I think that you did a really good job of drawing that out in the book. You also talked about him, you described him as a philosopher as a at a party. And I think you know, most people are like, oh gosh, I hated my, you know, college, you know, philosophy 101 class. Who wants philosophy? But he's the guy at a party who you kind of, it's like a train wreck. You can't turn away. He's waxing on, and even though it's kind of doomsday, you're like, this is so fascinating because it resonates, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Exactly. He's the person who's staring at the hard realities we don't want to stare at, even including death. Death is the biggest reason why life is absurd, because it takes every good thing with it. It's it's game over, it's end of story. Um, and so yeah, it's like a philosopher at a party in the sense that he's exposing deeper meanings of things that are uncomfortable, that we don't want to look at, that we feel like, man, why are you getting all up in my business? Like, I'm just trying to have a good time. And ultimately, I think Ecclesiastes is trying to help you have an even better time. But you've got to go through some hard times to get to the better time he's pointing you toward.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

And that's a message we desperately need to hear. Before we have you help us apply that message, one more thing I think you did that, and I I remember my first real exposure to Ecclesiastes as a Bible major in college. I had a whole class on Ecclesiastes, and it just, I was totally fascinated by a professor who had just dug into it and could open it up. But you brought something, I I've read several books on Ecclesiastes since. You brought something that I had not seen before that I think's really, really helpful. You suggest that for a lot of us, we see it as almost a contradictory book. You know, like the pointless part doesn't fit the rest of our biblical world very well. He says things like, you know, after you die, the dead know nothing, and you're as good as a dead animal. I mean, you're like, this just doesn't fit. So there's these things that seem contradictory. You suggest sort of a three-level view, a three-story building. Could you unpack that a little bit? Because I thought it was so helpful.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yeah, sure. So just to give a little credit where credit is due, part of the insight comes from Craig Bartholomew, who has a great commentary on Ecclesiastes. Part of the insight comes from Andrew Shedd, an Australian scholar, who has a couple of really helpful essays. But I kind of put their insights together and dressed it up with this metaphor of like the view from a three-story building. So you're looking out at the same thing, but you see something from the ground floor. You see more when you sort of go up an elevator, get onto the second floor, you get a better vantage point. And then there's even the third floor actually goes really, really, really high, sort of way up into the into the sky, so to speak, in Ecclesiastes. And basically what I'm getting at is that I think I think the author of Ecclesiastes is deliberately changing points of view. But the only way you recognize he's changing points of view is based on what he says. It's not like it's not like he gives you some key of like, hey guys, now I'm thinking about this from a God-centered point of view. And that that's that's part of the challenge of the book.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah. Um you say so uh that's kind of the key, I think, to understanding the book, and I would agree.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

I I do think it is kind of a key, yeah. And so the first key is that basically most of the book, when he's engaging with life's absurdity, he's in an observational mode. He's saying what anybody could experience, what anybody could understand. If you just go through life with eyes open, this is what you're gonna see, this is what you're gonna, it's gonna happen, it's gonna be absurd. And that's where, like those dark, despairing kind of things, yeah, is a man any better than an animal who knows what happens when you die? Well, from a this worldly point of view, those are the limits of our experience, our knowledge, what we can say, what we can have control over. And that's even the point about him being a little like a stand-up comedian. Yes, he's knowingly not giving you the whole story. That's part of how he makes the point. I think it's deliberate. And I think you see that especially when you contrast it. There's these seven statements throughout the book that commend joy and they commend accepting your lot, and they commend eating and drinking and enjoying life with the wife of your youth. There are these, and and and it's interesting, they all have this kind of tone and flavor in common, and it comes up seven times, almost like a bell chiming throughout the book. And so if you kind of separate the more observational stuff from this bell tolling kind of seven times of these joyful embraces of the good gifts of life, one thing you notice is that in those seven statements, uh, creation itself, life itself, and all the good things in them are explicitly said to be gifts of God. God is the creator, God providentially ordains all things, he gives you life, he gives you every good thing in your life. He even um go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart. I think this is 11 9, because God has already approved what you do. He this this stuff's his idea, man. He made it. He made he made bread, he made grapes to ferment, he's he's loaded up the world with all these good things. And so when you put all those statements together, you go, wait a minute. Now he's looking at life from the standpoint of it's from God, it's a gift of God. All the good things in it are God's idea. And when life is this overflowing bounty of gifts, even when there's hardship, even when it ends, even when there's toil mixed into it, there's still goodness for us to receive from God. And so this is part of the insight of Bartholomew. He says that Kohelet shifts back and forth from a more observational mode, what anybody can see, to a more confessional mode, what you believe based on, knowing God is the creator and the ruler of all things. So that's the second floor. You go up from the ground floor, everything's absurd. The second floor, everything's a gift. And the thing is, you're looking at the same stuff. And it feels like a contradiction. To say everything is absurd and everything is a gift, but to learn how to hold those two things in tension is really a key to the whole book and a key to life. And then just briefly, the third floor, there's just a few places where the vantage point of eternity kind of peeks in that will give an account to God for everything we've done, that He will one day right every wrong. Ecclesiastes is very unsparing in diagnosing injustice. And it talks about God writing all those wrongs in chapter eight, in particular, he'll bring every deed into judgment in chapter 12. So there is a vantage point of eternity. And what that does is it kind of gives you a glimpse beyond the whole thing. It it puts everything into perspective that, yeah, we will we will answer to God for how we act in this life. This life isn't all there is. Um, so most of the material in the book is that tension between absurd and gift, between level one and level two. But eternity pokes in a few places here and there.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

It it reminds me of a song, you know, where the chorus like doesn't fit the verse or something. I mean, you might like the song, but you're like, I've never heard that combination, right? So to say things are absurd, but you should enjoy them. And by the way, God's gonna judge you. You know, it's just this weird combination of thoughts. But I again, I thought that was a hugely helpful insight. And I want us to take a moment and pause, and we'll come back and talk, Bobby, about how do we apply all this to our very puzzling and incongruous lives. All right, we are back with Bobby Jameson, author of the book Everything Is Never Enough. A deep dive into the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, and we've talked about how to approach the book, how to understand the often confusing structure of the book. And now I want us to turn our attention to where you really take the book, which is what do we do with this? What do we do with the fact that things are impossible to hang on to, that life often brings dissatisfaction, even when we have what we want? You had a line early on that I just loved, and I'm gonna read it here. You said, Ecclesiastes tries to convince you that many of the world's most common promises are false friends, and you should break up with them. I thought that was fantastic. Talk about some of those false promises and what does it look like to break up with them?

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Yeah, boy. Well, there's a big one would be just kind of a selfish path toward self-fulfillment, as if that will make you truly and lastingly happy. Um, but maybe even if you sort of double-click on that to just get a little bit more specific, I think one of the biggest ones in our society is that we tend to load up all our sense of worth, value, identity, et cetera, in our work. That's the only universal cultural currency of you being a worthwhile human being is your work. And I think so often we have uh an inflated expectation for sort of what our work will do for us. We have expectations that can be very hard to meet of kind of like a, oh, if I do this, this will happen. If I do this, this will happen, uh, and kind of pursuing growth or development or kind of a career trajectory, or even more viewing it as a sort of vocation that the Lord has called me to. I think starting by asking, what are your expectations for your work? Comparing that with what scripture teaches about work. Even in Ecclesiastes, there's there's these demolishing kind of statements about work being toil, vanity, not lasting. You build this business, you do it all, and you got to give it to somebody who's gonna, you know, squander it all and ruin all that you've worked for, and you won't be around to fix it, right? That's like the end of chapter two. But then there are these statements about rejoicing in toil. And so I think, like just very one, one kind of very concrete case study. Okay, so Ecclesiastes says, work is is full of toil, work is full of hardship, work will not sort of fill your soul and make you happy in a lasting way. On the other hand, there are these really challenging exhortations to rejoice in toil, like in chapter 5, verse 19. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil, this is the gift of God. Now, toil can still be hard, repetitive, boring, you know, same thing every day. But the spiritual test Ecclesiastes poses to you is how can you rejoice in the toil? Not just like what you can get from it, the the money, the payout, the vacation, the, you know, something you get from it. How can you rejoice in it? And so I think that also that also opens your eyes to what is a good gift of God, sort of to me and through me, in the work he's given me to do. And even if that work is just getting kids ready for school and getting them out the door, and we've had kind of a crazy couple of days with like dentist appointments and and doctor's appointments, and it's kind of interrupting normal work, and I'm doing more stuff, and I'm like Mr. Chauffeur, Uber driver to all these. It's like, you know what? There's a degree of frustration there. I'm not spending my day in my sort of optimal, optimized way. But you know what? One of my vocations is as a husband and father. And so helping extra with the kids and getting people to appointments. And I should be grateful to the Lord for the flexibility he's given me to do that. Uh, what what is good? What has God given me in this toil? Well, I'm caring for a child. I'm helping that child be well in body and soul. You know, so the the twofold test of what absurdity should you maybe be expecting from your work when you're just expecting it to be all kind of rainbows. Uh and then what in the toil can you rejoice in? There's kind of a realism there that can lead to contentment, not just contentment through bringing your own desires or standards down, although that's part of it, yeah, but contentment and kind of going, wait a minute, here is the goodness in the thing God has actually given me.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

In that first story observational view, which we all experience and feel, you just touched on it with kids, with work. I mean, and you unpack so many of the things, as he does in the book, right? Even touching on our marriages, on our money, on our time, on our leisure, all the things. What is some pastoral advice you have, Bobby, to help us sort of maybe move from that first level, first floor sense of extreme frustration. Sometimes it's extreme, sometimes it's just sort of, you know, the norm, to that place of enjoyment and seeing things as a gift. I really find it fascinating that Kohlet says at times, God enables us to enjoy. And at other times he says, you should enjoy. How either way, how do we get there?

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Yeah, it is one of those interesting, you know, there's a kind of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. He sees it as God's gift. Even the ability and power to enjoy the things you have is a gift of God. Um, and so because it depends on the state of your heart, it depends on what's going on inwardly. And so I think you could maybe a couple of different steps in answering your question. You know, one is asking, where are my desires disordered? Where are they overgrown? Where have I turned a desire for a good thing into kind of an ultimate thing where this must happen or it must go a certain way, it must take this shape, or else I cannot possibly be happy. So there is some diagnosing and uprooting of idolatry on the one hand that I think Ecclesiastes points us to, and that the kind of whole structure of a thought is like, where are your idols? Where are the things your heart is too wrapped up in in this world? Um, I think on the other hand, there are, you could even say, spiritual or practical disciplines of receiving life as a gift. I mean, a very simple one is just giving thanks for specific good things, even when you are tempted to find fault with, well, I don't have this or it didn't go this way. Flip it around and thank God for what He's actually given you. You know, a phrase that I use in the book and um that that I use all the time of my life now is a small good thing. You know, I got it from John Wilson, who founded Books and Culture, and said, they're just doing a small good thing. And at the end of the day, they're all small good things. All the things the Lord has given us. And even in the midst of frustration, hardship, disappointment, unmet expectations, even real deep suffering. Where can you look around and see the small good things God has given you? Um, and then thank him for it. And frankly, enjoy it. Um, and don't despise it. Don't don't be thinking more about the bigger thing you wish you had, but you don't have any more, or you might never have it. Think about and give thanks for and enjoy, and even in a sense, focus on the thing God has actually put right in front of your face.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

You talked a lot in the book about limits, and clearly that's one of Kohhalette's messages to us is that's the heavel, right? You it's not a bad thing, but you try to grab it, you try to hang on to it, you just can't. There are built-in limits to every good thing. Um I thought your pastoral voice really came through. Um, in fact, just another quick plug for the book. That was one of the things I enjoyed a lot about the book. We didn't get lost in all the philosophical, you know, questions and ramblings. You had a lot of really good practical pastoral advice. And I liked how you ended several of your chapters with just a little landing statement. Here's a couple that jumped out at me. In the chapter on time, you said happiness comes not from trying to freeze time's flow, but from receiving its limits. And then in the chapter on getting enough or recognizing our limits, you said happiness comes not from trying to make this world satisfy all your desires, but from realizing that it never will. Happiness begins to glimpse new dimensions when you discover that everything is never enough. Why is it so hard for us? I mean, we we can talk about the fall, you referenced that. We're sinful, broken human beings, but I think I'm fascinated by how culture conditions us to constantly want more. Where do you see that?

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah, boy, there's several different elements of our culture today that, as you put it, condition us to want more. I mean, one is kind of a positive thing that can so easily go awry, which is just to say that if you're in a situation in America or the modern West where your basic material needs are kind of relatively taken care of, there's just endless opportunity and options to think about, to consider, to maybe think about pursuing. And that that breeds kind of the paradox of choice, right? Like, well, what do I choose? I'm saying no to a million things in order to say yes to one thing, whether you're thinking about work, career, whether you're thinking about how to spend your time or means of enjoyment. So I do think that that in one sense, these are rich blessings. You can pursue work that will use different gifts you have and different interests and serve people in different ways. It's a blessing to have any measure of choice, but then the choice can be overwhelming. The choice can be paralyzing, you can always be counter, you know, second guessing, always rethinking. And then things like um, even uh, if you just think about the availability of electronic communication in general, not yet to get to kind of social media, but even just the ability to be always on, always reachable, always available, it can kind of turn your life into this blur where you're always a sort of elsewhere, never fully there. I mean, I think we all experience that to some degree. And even just your attention being divided, kind of like Voldemort and Harry Potter dividing up his soul into whorecruxes, you know, just the sort of bleed of attention from this text or this phone call or this message, or, you know. And again, there could be a blessing and a benefit to being able to communicate that quickly and efficiently. But boy, if your attention is always divided, you're kind of never a whole person. And then I do think um social media of various kinds, you know, breed a comparison that can suck away enjoyment. Even if you're not big into a game of trying to have a following or getting likes or whatever, even just scrolling through whatever somebody else presents of their life, whether it's Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is, um creates a sort of, you know, seedbed for envy, a seed bed of comparison and thinking, oh, I wish I had, I wish I had that. And so, yeah, I do think our this is again some of the ways in which Ecclesiastes especially resonates with our culture. And frankly, I do think it commends to us more of a posture of resistance, more of a posture of critical distance, critical engagement. If you are using these things, how are you using them? Um and uh yeah, that there's there's ways in which we we have to not only accept limits, but in a way impose limits. It actually takes work, you know, leave the phone downstairs when you go up for bed at night so that you're getting like eight, 10, 12 hours away from that. You know, you know, I I've I've told for a variety of reasons, I've often counseled people like go back to an alarm clock, you know, for different, different struggles, different temptations, different challenges. Like, right? You don't need it for an alarm clock. Get a single-purpose technology, get that thing on your nightstand, get away from your phone for 12 hours. You can do it.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Yeah, and I love you, brought it really down to a very practical level, too. I mean, like I do a lot of marriage counseling, and I loved your chapter on marriage, you know. Like maybe, maybe, hey, you and I are both family guys, you know, we're thinking, or I'm thinking, you know, yeah, I'm not looking for some lofty, you know, I'm not gonna win the lottery, I don't need a 4,000 square foot house. I'm a pretty simple guy. But even in the area of marriage and family, you know, there are limits. And accepting the fact, well, especially when you think about what you see in media, whether it's social media or in movies, we always are confronted with the perfect marriage or the perfect family, the perfect outfits, and everybody happy at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. And you did a great job, I thought, in that chapter. It was a brief chapter, but it really was powerful for me. Just even accepting our limits in, you know, this is a family and it's a gift, but our ultimate home is eternal, which I think that's a good way to go into where I want to kind of land this thing. That third story view, you know, you mentioned it just comes up a couple times, especially chapter 12, which might be one of the more familiar parts of the book that people know. And like, again, it seems incongruous. And I'm curious, Bobby, why, or how do we go from like, okay, I'm buying this cohole? Like, yeah, you're right. I should be focused more on what God has given. I'm gonna enjoy my life more. But wait, you want me to end on God is gonna judge every last thing I say and do? How is that supposed to make me happy?

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Yeah, well, I do think that in a way, that's a question that only the gospel can answer. You know, so so to face judgment, that should make us reflect, that should make us self-critical, that should make us, in a way, fearful. Knowing God is going to judge us should make us fear God. Um, but thankfully, that's not the whole story. Jesus himself suffered that judgment. Jesus himself paid for the sins of every believer. Jesus himself endured absurdity, alienation, uh, exclusion from the presence of God, suffering the wrath of God, so that all who believe in him would be reconciled to God and would have the absolute guarantee, right? So so much of what Ecclesiastes is about is no control, no guarantees. There's an absolute guarantee of eternal life, of the new creation, of being with God forever, and of being satisfied in Him. The satisfaction that Ecclesiastes is striving for, but says you can't have Him, right? At your right hand is fullness of, or in your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's the promise that Christ fulfills for us. So I do think that this talk of judgment, it points us to an eternal horizon, which really on its own is more of a problem than a than a solution. But but I also think that, you know, it it becomes not just that God will evaluate and pay back and punish. But in Ecclesiastes, there there's hints, there's clues. Um, like in in chapter 8, verse 12, though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God because they fear before him. That's a promise that I can only fully cash out on the far side of judgment, to say, it will be well for those who fear God. After all Ecclesiastes has done to say, well, it's not going to be so well, and then it's gonna end. Yeah. That's so good. That cashes out as, yes, it is going to be well, perfectly well, completely well. And so, really, Ecclesiastes brings us to an eternal perspective that that shrinks our present problems down to size.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Isn't there a place? I think it might be in chapter 11. I don't have it in front of me right now, but where he like goes deep dive on, yep, God's gonna judge you for everything you say and do. So therefore, go and eat and drink and be happy. Like it's it's that incongruity again, like they're right next to each other.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yes. In chapter 11, exactly. That's that's a transition from verse 9 to verse 10. Yeah, walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment. Enjoy it and know that you'll be judged. Which, in a way, you know, frankly, like if you if you're asking, well, what's the limit to earthly enjoyment? Can it can I enjoy this? Well, ask. How's it going to look in the judgment? You know, so so it really is a it's not like he takes away with one hand what he gives with the other. There's a genuine ethic of enjoying good gifts and good creaturely realities in Ecclesiastes. It's not saying, oh, that means you really can't enjoy anything. It's just enjoy it and know you'll give an account for it. Have if those two things can coexist side by side happily, yeah, praise God, go do it. Throw that party, invite those people, get that, get that house by the lake. You know, how are you gonna use that house by the lake? Are you gonna use it generously and and you know, let people stay there for free when they're, you know, could really do with a weekend away, or have a missionary come stay there on a furlough and they can get rest. And, you know, if you're thinking, hey, here's something God has given me to enjoy, and here's ways I want to, you know, use it in a way that'll honor the Lord and can stand scrutiny at the judgment, go for it. But if you're just getting that lake house just for sort of one more feather in the cap, one more weekend away for yourself, one more investment property, where you're gonna go flip it and make money off it and whatever, well, you got some heavier questions to ask about how's that gonna stand up in the judgment?

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Yeah, for in the love and grace and goodness of Jesus, it's already approved. I love that verse that you brought up. It's already approved. But it was such a helpful book. Before I say goodbye, I'm gonna spring a question on you here. Now that you've dove into the depths of this inscrutable book in the Hebrew wisdom literature, is Song of Songs your next uh challenge? Do you mean I go there next?

SPEAKER_01 39:33

Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I did I did write another book that should be coming out maybe a year, year and a half's time that is has some themes that continue out of this, uh, but it's on death to self. So it's a little bit more of a New Testament through the teaching of Jesus, some of these hard lessons, um, just taking Jesus' teaching on death to self and kind of tracing it through the whole Christian life. There's echoes of Ecclesiastes, there's, you know, because Ecclesiastes, you gotta, you gotta die to get its message. Um, but that's so that's not Song of Songs, not quite wisdom literature, but that'll be Lord willing, the book will be called The Death You Need, um, and maybe in a year, year and a half.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

Fantastic. Well, I will hold out for that book on the Song of Songs, but very much look forward to your next one. I can't commend it enough. It's available on Amazon and a hundred other outlets. Such honestly, one of the best books I read this last year, Bobby. So thank you for that gift to the church, and we really appreciate you taking some time to be with us.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Praise God, appreciate it. Good to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

God bless. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Native Exiles. I hope that was really meaningful to you to hear Bobby talk about how God has directed us in something maybe we never even considered. How to be happy in this life. Really encourage you to pick up Bobby's book, interact with it. We'll look forward to Bobby's next book, and we'll look forward to meeting you again next time on Native Exiles.