God, Our Greatest Treasure

Introduction

I want you to picture in your mind what a super succesful person looks like—what do they have, how do they look, what do they do?

What did you picture? (cars, money, clothes, expensive restuarants, private flights) Let students answer.

These are the pictures of success that the world feeds us. All the “successful” people our culture celebrates have these things.

Society tells us that money, popularity, and acheivements are what make a happy person and are what give a life meaning. If you remember Plato’s Cave Allegory we talked about last time—that’s cave thinking. Those things are just shadows on the wall that can’t satisfy us.

The writer of Ecclesiastes knew all about this. He said chasing after these things is “meaningless—a chasing after the wind.

Why is this important?

Because most of us feel the pressure to achieve. Maybe it’s living up to our parent’s standards, getting good grades, being popular online, etc.

We think that doing, having, or being these things will make us feel complete and satisfied.

But God’s Word teaches us that the only way we can feel complete and satisfied is in having a relationship with God.

Do you wrestle with a desire to be content? Have you ever wondered if you were created with a purpose? Or have you questioned why you exist?

God’s Word teaches us that we were made for more than chasing after these shadowy things that can’t actually fulfill us.

God made us specially, in His image, to be in relationship with Him, each other, and the world.

Big Question: What does it mean for me to be human created in the image of God.

Let’s jump in and talk about it.

I. We all want something.

What’s something that you currently want? If I offered to buy you anything right now, what would it be? Let students answer.

We are almost always desiring something new. But we desire more than just stuff don’t we?

We crave things that money can’t buy. We crave relationships and acceptance. We crave skills and opportunities. We crave happiness and pleasure.

The stuff we buy is usually attached to these deeper longings.

Above all these things though—what we crave the most if for our life to have meaning, to matter. We want to know what our purpose and place in the world is.

Every person has longings because God has created us to be in relationship with Him.

When we don’t find our purpose in God we’ll spend our lives trying to fill the void in our hearts with things, stuff, and experiences. The problem is that they’ll never be enough. The may distract for a while but eventually we’ll feel that deep longing for more again.

Humanity has a restless craving in our hearts that can’t be satisfied by the world and it’s pleasures—this is evidence that there’s something (who is a someone) beyond what this world can offer that you were made for.

Saint Augustine said it this way, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.”

When we get hungry it is because God designed us to eat food—we desire fulfillment because God designed us to be fulfilled by Him.

Here’s the key to our desires: we have to order them right.

When we desire God first in our lives, we learn how to desire the good life that God has for us.

Hear that carefully—I didn’t say when we desire to not go to Hell, when we deisre for our prayers to be answered, when we desire knowledge about God…I said when we desire God, relationship with God, to be known by God and to know God what happens is that the worldly desires we have are revealed to us for what they are and we can rightly pursue the life God has for us which brings actual fulfillment.

At the end of our lives we want to hear from Jesus, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

This is the destination when we pursue God’s kingdom. It can’t be found in the world because (2nd Point)

II. The things of this world will not keep us satisfied.

Can you think of a time when you got something that you really wanted and were disappointed after getting it? (track suit)

The newness of things can wear off really quickly. We just know those shoes, that phone, or that relationship with that person is going to satisfy us…if we can just get that thing we’ll be happy and content.

And often when we get the things that we are wanting they do make us happy…for a little while.

But then it wears off and some new want replaces the old one. And we think, “This time it’ll be different.” But it’s not. And we do this again and again.

Finding our happiness in these things is like trying to hold onto smoke, it’s impossible.

Even if you got everything you ever wanted you would still not be fulfilled.

This is what happened to the writer of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 ESV

I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 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.

A little context here. We might not think much of fruit trees, parks, gardens, and flocks of animals—but these were the iphones, nike shoes, and xboxes of the day. All the greatest things of that age the writer of Ecclesiastes had. He had all the things and acheivements and experiences that his world told him would bring him happiness, fulfillment, and purpose.

And what was the result for him? Fulfillment? Happiness? Purpose? No, he says it was “all vanity and a striving after the wind”.

And I want you to fight a temptation here. When we see an example like this we usually pridefully think, “Well, that was this guy. If it were me I’d do it right and be satisfied.”

We can be so sure that happiness is found in these things that even when we see an example that proves otherwise we think, “Well they just did it wrong.”

Don’t do that here. Hear the lesson God’s Word teaches. Have wisdom and learn from someone else’s experience.

The pleasures that the world can give us, even when they are good things, are just fleeting shadows when we try to possess them apart from God.

Strangely, as Christians, we often seek satisfaction in what we don’t have while overlooking the truth that ultimate satisfaction is found in God. We look past our greatest treasure longing for trinkets.

Let’s not be those who long for trinkets because...

III. We are only satisfied by God.

The enemy doesn’t want us to find satisfaction in the God we were made to know. So he lies to us...

One of those lies is that God doesn’t really want much to do with you. God saved you because He’s good but after that he just tolerates you. That’s a lie.

Beloved, and I call you that because God calls you that, beloved God loves you, God enjoys you, God wants to be in relationship with you—he has created you for that very purpose.

Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

God is a master artisan and has created you as a masterpiece with a special purpose. You have a purpose given to you by God. You were made in the image of God.

God’s word sheds light on this...

Genesis 1:26–27 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

It means you aren’t random. You aren’t pointless. You have value and calling.

You were created to know God and bear his image.

We were made to reflect the goodness of God to each other and the world around us.

Every single person who exists in the world comes from God, bears His image, and is worthy of dignity.

Every person was made to be free in Christ and so what does that mean for those of us who are saved in Christ?

We live as God’s representatives in the world. Not as bible beating, joyless, insufferable people.

But as those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. As those who experience the living and active word of God changing our hearts and minds. We live as those with abundant joy calling others to come and know the one that they were made to know.

What a high calling and purpose God has put on your life!

We are God’s people. We belong to God and have been made knew in Jesus Christ. Do you believe this about yourself? Is this true for you?

If it’s not come to Jesus and be free from the tyranny of what the world says will make you happy.

The perfect grades, the perfect job, the perfect relationship…they are all just grasping at smoke and wind.

Let go of those things and embrace who you are in God through Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.