The Search for Achievement
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Welcome to the Gospel in Life podcast. What if the gospel didn't just shape your private life, but transformed the way you show up in the world? One of the most visible places that would play out is in your work. Join us as Tim Keller teaches on how the gospel reshapes the way we approach our jobs.

Ecclesiastes chapter 2.

verses 70 to 26, and then right after that, as we have done a couple of times, a passage on the same subject, just a little further down in the book, Ecclesiastes 4, 4 to 8. So, it's a great way to start, isn't it? So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.

And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool. Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then he may leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. He must. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.

What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief, and even at night his mind does not rest. This, too, is meaningless. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This, too, I see is from the hand of God. For without him who can eat or find enjoyment?

To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This, too, is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man's envy of his neighbor. This, too, is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. The fool folds his hands and ruins himself. Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind."

Again, I saw something meaningless under the sun. There was a man all alone. He had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. For whom am I toiling, he asked, and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? This too is meaningless, a miserable business. This is God's word, a meaningless, miserable business. We're looking this month at Ecclesiastes. Why? Because the book of Ecclesiastes, the author...

assumes a position. He takes the position of what we were calling a practical secularist. Now, what does that mean? Well, this is what most of the people in most of the major world-class cities of the world today hold, really. This is the position of the elites, really, of culture, and increasingly, the general cultures in the West. And a practical secularist is someone who says this. He says, look, there may be a God, there may not be a God. He or she says, there may or may not be a God. But here's the point.

We don't know that God. We don't know what the will of that God is. We don't know if there is a God there for sure. And that means, A, we don't know where we've come from. And B, we don't really know what happens afterwards. As far as we know, when we die, that's it. This life is all there is. Now, what many people are saying, that's the position. If this life is all there is, if this life under the sun, which is the way Ecclesiastes' writer talks about it, if this life is all there is,

Doesn't that make life meaningless? Well, a very famous Harvard professor, Stephen Gould, puts it this way. He says, we are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar anatomy that would transform into legs for terrestrial creatures. We are here because comets struck the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, giving us mammals the chance that would otherwise not have been available. So thank your lucky stars, in a literal sense.

Now, this explanation of why we are here, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life from nature. We must construct these answers ourselves. There's no other way. Now, here's what he's saying. He says life is an accident. And therefore, when he says you can't read meaning in life from nature, that's a pretty euphemistic way of saying there's no meaning.

There's no transcendent order. There's no purpose. There's nothing we have to submit to. He says, well, now that might be very terrifying to think there's no meaning. He says, but that liberates us to construct whatever meaning we want. It's liberating. It's exhilarating. We decide what the meaning of our lives are. Now, the Ecclesiastes writer...

His job is to, even though he never met Stephen Jay Gould, one of the reasons why the Ecclesiastes writer, this book will still be around a thousand years from now if the world is still here, and nobody by then will have even heard of Stephen Gould. The reason that this book is so powerful is he looks at that kind of statement, and he says, that's just spin. Just spin. The Ecclesiastes writer says, I have tried it in three great ways, and we're looking at one each week. In three great ways, I have sought to construct meaning in life.

And he's done it, and we've seen the other two. Can I quickly summarize what they are? I mean, the one way you can construct your own meaning in life is become a cause-based person. Live for a cause. Fight injustice. Fight evil. Fight something that's wrong with the world. Be a cause-based person. And he tried that. And what does he say? Well, he says, if this life under the sun is all there is, if Stephen Gould's right, then justice is just a fiction.

There are no moral absolutes, and since there are no moral absolutes, why should my feeling that any particular action is wrong, trump the feeling of the perpetrator that it's okay? See? And see, if this life is all there is, justice is a fiction, absolutely a fiction. And the secular person has no basis for ever talking about justice. But, he said, we can't not believe in injustice.

And therefore we do go on fighting it. And that means to be a person who's constructing meaning out of fighting for a cause means every single day secular persons have got to engage in a violent disconnect between what they actually say they believe about the world and what they actually do when they see injustice and evil. There's no basis in their view. They can't not know that it's there. And so they have this violent disconnect. And so you see, if this life is all there is, you can't live for justice. Then secondly, he tried another way of constructing his own meaning.

And the second way, if you're not going to live a cause-based life, you know, against injustice, you lead a pleasure-based life. And you seek pleasure and beauty. But, last week we saw, the Ecclesiastes writer showed us, if this life is all there is, any perception of beauty is nothing but chemicals. There's no such thing as beauty. It's just chemistry in my brain. I may feel there's a difference between love and just sex, but there's no difference. I may feel there's a difference between beauty and deformity, but there's no difference. And yet...

Not a single one of us, though a secular person has no basis for belief in beauty, not a single one of us can really deny that we know it's there. We can't not know there's beauty. We can't not seek it. We have a passion for it. And therefore, the secular person lives in a violent disconnect between what they, he or she, actually says they believe about the world and what they actually do every time they listen to music and every time they kiss their loved one.

Now, that's not the only thing you can do. You see, the Ecclesiastes writer is saying, I've done this. I have been trying to construct my own meaning. And it's not liberating. He says it's meaningless. He says it's burdensome. He says it's crushing. Now, he's not done. There's one more.

If there's no meaning in life that you can have to submit to, there's no God, there's no transcendent order that you have to submit to, and if there is, therefore, you're free to construct your own meaningful life. He says, I tried one, the cause-based life. I tried the second one, the pleasure, beauty-based life. But there's one more thing to do. Work. Achievement. You see, success. Accomplishment. And as he decides to do that, we see in the book,

When he decides, I'm going to let work be the meaning of my life. I'm going to create a work-based life. I'm going to make work and my career the organizing principle of my life. He finds three things. First of all, he finds that a life of work is not worth it. Then secondly, he tells us why it's not worth it, and then he tells us what is worth it. Work's not worth it, why it's not worth it, and what is.

Now, the first thing he tells us is that a life built on work, a life organized on the basis of work, and I'm going to keep coming back to what I mean by that, is not worth it. Well, why not? He tells us this basically, well, let's look at the what of it and then later the why. In chapter 2, the very beginning, he says in verse 18, his summary statement, I hated all the things I toiled for under the sun.

because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. Well, we'll look at that in a second. I hated everything I did under the sun. Earlier in the chapter, this is what he says. I undertook great projects. I built houses. I made gardens and parks. I made reservoirs to watered rows. I amassed silver and gold for myself. So he's made it. You know, one of the things that's kind of cruel...

about the calls of the Stephen Jay Goulds of the world. Create your own meaningful life. Very, very few of us have actually got the furniture and the ability to do it. This guy was smart enough to be highly effective at a cause-based life, working for the cause. And secondly, he had the money to be highly effective at a pleasure-based life. And now he's got the talent and the ambition to be highly, highly effective at a work-based life. I mean, most of us just don't have that.

But he did. And so he went all the way down each one of those roads. And what happened? When he says, I hated everything I told for under the sun, what he's really showing us, especially in the rest of this paragraph, he's showing us that success fails on its own terms. Success fails on its own terms. What do I mean by that? Success fails on its own terms. I'm not trying to say as a model person,

Look at all these bad things the person is doing to be successful. That's wrong. Well, see, that's judging one life and its foundation on the basis of somebody else's foundation. Now, let's be fair. Let's go and take a look at what success itself claims. And on the basis of its own terms, success fails, he shows us. Well, what are the terms of success? Well, it's this

Why are you working? I mean, why go through all the heck and the hell and the pain of work? And the answer is we expect success to pay off in three ways. We expect work to bring us satisfaction to give us recognition and to make a contribution. To bring satisfaction, to give recognition, to make a contribution.

Those three things. And what he shows us basically, and this is, he's very powerful, very powerful. And there's no place probably where this is going to ring more true than New York City. He says they fail on all three counts. You can use them as tests. Does work give satisfaction? Does work bring recognition? Does work actually make a contribution, leave a legacy? And the answer is no. So let's take a look real quick.

These are three ways in which work fails. It's not worth it. It's not worth it because it doesn't bring those three things. First of all, he says, what about the satisfaction? Let's look inside. Most all the books, and I did, I read a pile of books on, you know, work. And all the books, common sense books, not Christian books, not non-Christian books, just books all out there. And one of the things they say is you're not successful unless inside there's a sense that you're doing what your passions are. You're doing what you're fit to do. That inside there's a satisfaction that it fits you.

Okay, what's he see when he looks inside? Well, he sees verse 22, a pretty poignant verse. He says, Now there's three things that work brings on the inside. First of all, pain. Pain, by this he means the sheer hurt.

of continual exertion, of pounding your strength down. Work just wears you down. And that's when everything's going well. Somebody recently did a major survey and asked just tons of people, and you probably know the answer to this, if you had a 25th hour in the day, if somebody could suddenly give you one more hour for every day, what would you do with it? And what did they all say? What did 85% say? Sleep. See?

Pain. Work wears you down, work pounds you down, work drains your strength, and that's when things are going well. Then the second thing you have is grief. Why? Because you cannot work without disappointment. In a work-based life, you're always being evaluated. In a cause-based life, and certainly in a pleasure-based life, you don't have this constant evaluation. But you have to come to grief. There has to be failure. There has to be disappointment. Markets eventually do go down.

And nobody, nobody, nobody gets picked on even most of their auditions. I mean, work is rejection after rejection after rejection. So pain if things are going well, grief if things are not going well, and then of course that's just during the daytime. At night, you worry, what will tomorrow bring? Will it bring grief or will it just bring pain? What's going on? See, what's there to worry about? Either way, it's bad. You should just stop worrying.

There's only two things that can happen, and both of them are terrible, so why are you worrying? Now, you see, careful. What he is saying is, under the sun. To some degree, every kind of work will involve these things. The pain, the grief, the worry. But the more, here's what he's saying, the more you build your life on work, the more you build your life on career, the more you build your life on success...

the more you're going to experience this kind of brokenness. And that's just on the inside. So the first thing we say, should work be satisfying? And he says, there is some satisfaction of work, but the internal brutalizing, the brutality of work just comes in and just knocks you out. Studs Terkel, years ago, in 1972, wrote a very famous book, and it was called Working.

Subtitle, "People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do." Now usually a 1972 book on any subject you say, "Well, it's dated." Except everybody agrees that 1972 work was a lot easier, that it wasn't as brutal, it wasn't as stressed, right? Everybody agrees. And this is what he said in his opening paragraph after talking to hundreds of people in 1972. Here's what he said.

Does it sound like Ecclesiastes? This book, being about work, is by its very nature, therefore, about violence. Violence to the spirit as well as to the body. It's about ulcers as well as accidents. It's about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all, about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the willing walking wounded among the great many of us. What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days are pain and grief, and at night...

he can't sleep. Now that's the first. It doesn't bring satisfaction. Instead, it brutalizes. Secondly, it does not bring recognition. Now in a minute I'm going to get back to this because of the three things that people expect work to bring them, satisfaction, recognition, contribution. This is the one that it most fails to do. But I'm not going to get into that immediately because under the second heading I think this is the secret for why work is so brutalizing. But

If you want to see one more way in which work fails to give what it says, what we think it's going to give us, take a look at the very bottom of the page at the very end of chapter four. And we see something that really got him. He saw it. You know, he's moving through life and he says, I saw something meaningless. There was a man all alone. He had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. For whom am I toiling? He asked.

And why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? This too is meaningless. Now, look what we have here. Here's a man who's successful. He's got recognition, but not the kind we really need. You see, if satisfaction is the psychological payoff we're hoping for, recognition is actually the social payoff. To some people, success means money. In some fields, you don't make much money, but the one thing success always means is esteem, approval, see?

Acclaim, recognition. People know, they respect me because I make the kind of money that I can now I can live in this neighborhood with this kind of address or I'm the kind of person who gets my painting shown at this kind of gallery. You see, it doesn't matter. A person who's selling their paintings and a person who's, you know, making billions on Wall Street probably do not have the same lifestyle. It doesn't matter. What's success? Recognition.

I finally got people to see who I am and who love me and who value me and who respect me and who esteem me. And that's what it's about. But this shows, what this shows right here, this little picture is very frightening. Here's a man all alone. And this always happens.

Why is that man alone? Shouldn't he have respect? Yes, he's got respect, but he's only got respect from afar. The real relationships that you really want, the relationships that really feed this human soul and the human heart, have been destroyed by work. First of all, his family's not there. Why? Probably because of neglect. And his friends are not there. Why? Well, I can think of three good reasons. One is he just never spent any time to maintain friendships. Too busy. Number two...

He just became so one-dimensional and uninteresting because all he ever did was work that he really, he didn't attract friends. Or number three, he alienated and trampled on people on the way up the ladder. Now, if you don't recognize this, if not in yourself, at least in people you know, you're not looking very hard. Work in this world promises to bring you closer to people, and all it does is it isolates you. It alienates you.

It's estimated that most of us spend half of our waking hours at work. How does the wisdom of the Bible apply to our careers? In other words, how can our work connect with God's work? And how can our vocations be more missional?

In his book, Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller draws from decades of teaching on vocation and calling to show you how to find true joy in your work as you serve God and others. The book offers surprising insights into how a Christian perspective on work can serve as the foundation for a thriving career and a balanced personal life.

Every good endeavor is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's love with more people around the world. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. So instead of satisfaction, there's brutalizing. Instead of recognition, there's alienation and isolating. And then lastly, and we'll be real quick on this because he does this every week, contribution.

See, everybody says to really be successful, you want to leave a legacy. To really be successful, you want to do something that counts, that makes a difference. You want to make a contribution to your field. You want to be remembered. Oh, we want to be remembered. We're going to talk more about that tonight, actually.

But here's what Ecclesiastes does. You know, there's an amazing consensus about this, that work is the way that you get a hold of the world and you make your mark on it. Here's two guys that probably their politics weren't quite the same. One is Henry Ford, one is Karl Marx. And Karl Marx said this, labor is the very touchstone of man's self-realization. Man labors to transform his world, to put his own mark upon it, to make it his, all by work.

Henry Ford said, I don't think that a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night. Thinking men know that work is the salvation of the race, physically, morally, and socially. Work does not just make us a living, it gets us a life. Okay? Here's one of the things they both believe. Work is the way you get a hold of life and you put your mark on it and you leave it different and that's how you know you've made a contribution. And the Ecclesiastes writer says, wait a minute, wait a minute. What if this life is all there is?

See, if this life is all there is, and there's no ultimate meaning in life, we're trying to create meaning in life, right? So we go out there to work. But if this life is all there is, when you die, you might be one of the very rare number of people who's remembered for a hundred years. But eventually you will be utterly forgotten. What's he say there? Why does he hate everything under the sun? Look at verse 18. It goes three things. One is...

I die and I leave it all behind. Secondly, either a fool or a wise man gets it. And then suddenly he says, wait a minute, it doesn't even matter if it's a fool or a wise man. Even if it's a wise man, the wise man will be forgotten. In the end, look what he says. Both the wise and the foolish will be forgotten. There will be no difference. Eventually, the sun will burn up and everything will be gone. Nothing you do will make any dent. There was an epitaph on the grave of a very famous English writer.

who was trying to make his mark. And the epitaph has always haunted me. You know what it says? It says, I only plowed water. You plow water, you pull your plow out, there is no sign that you were ever there. You do not make your mark on the world. The world sweeps you away. You're a wave upon the sand. And the Ecclesiastes writer says, there is no contribution. The more you think about all of your incredible work, it just trivializes it.

I mean, it's not, you don't even have to think a little longer and say, oh yeah, someday, you know, the sun will go out. But in the meantime, there was a man who spent his entire life, entire life, writing Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, in which he sat down over a hundred years ago, took every word in the Bible and he put it in columns so you could look up every place the word and was, or every place the word king was, right? You know what a concordance is? Whole life.

How long do you think it takes today to write a concordance? Do you know what you can do by computer? Ten minutes. Five minutes. He spent years and years and years. This is the nature of the world. Everything you do, you're just plowing water. Now, what's the Ecclesiastes writer saying? Oh, gosh, it's just spin. Work is not worth it.

And the more you build your life on work in order to make a meaningful life, the more the meaninglessness of this life will break through into your life through your work. Hear that? The more you try to make this life meaningful through work, the more you build your life on success and career, the more the meaninglessness of life will break through onto you through your work. You'll feel it. After a while, you'll say, I hate life. Now, why? What is wrong?

Why is this happening? That's a very important question. You say, okay, sure, what does that mean? Well, I want to know what it means. Why should it be that we want these things and why can't we get them? Animals don't seem to be bothered. Why are we so broken over our work? Why are we so messed up? And the passage tells us two things. Now we're going deeper. The first thing it tells us is there's actually an above-the-ground reason and there's a below-the-ground reason, all right?

There's an above-ground and below-ground reason. If you haven't experienced the brokenness of the world through your work, if it hasn't started to brutalize your life, then this might not be all that... You might not concern you. Well, please, store it away for a rainy day. They will come. But right now, here's what the above-the-ground reason is, number one. The lack of an identity. Look at chapter 4. Go down to chapter 4 and look at the very first statement in verse 4. This is one of the most categorical statements that he makes anywhere. What does he say?

He says, all labor and all striving comes from envy of your neighbor. All labor and all achievement. Now, if this was a lecture on philosophy economics, you could all go home because I'm absolutely unqualified. So what am I saying this for? But I'll tell you one thing. This is a radical biblical deconstruction of all secular understandings of economics. What is he saying? He says, what is the engine that makes people work in spite of the horrible brutalization of society?

that you experience in work. What gets people going? What makes economic productivity? What motivates it? And what he's trying to say, it's always envy and it doesn't matter what... You see, in capitalism, capitalism uses the engine of individuals envying individuals and communism or socialism, it just uses the engine of classes envying classes, but they're basically the same. But that's not his main point. So this would be the basis of a radical deconstruction of all secular understandings of economics.

But what he's really saying is this: there's something wrong in our heart. So the reason our work is unfulfilling is you may say, "I'm working just to do a good job." And you know, to some degree you can do that. Or you may say, "I'm working to make a product that really helps people." And to some degree you can do that. But what he's trying to say is not that that isn't to some degree possible. But what he's trying to say is fundamentally, the primary reason you're working, because there's something deeply wrong with the human heart,

The thing you're actually manufacturing is not a product. You're manufacturing a self. You don't know who you are. You are trying to prove yourself and your work is never about you. It's never about others and it's never about the work. It's always about you. In your work, you're always trying to prove what? You're trying to prove that I'm somebody special. I'm somebody real. I'm as, as to put in C.S. Lewis's terms, in your work, you're saying all the time, I'm as good as you. That's what you're doing.

There's this deep need to, by competing, to move up the ladder, to prove to yourself something. And that's what's driving you. Absolutely. That's the reason. He says there are other good motives in there, but at the bottom, at the bottom, there is something going on in the human heart. And the thing that's down there is an identity vacuum. You don't know who you are. You wouldn't be trying to prove yourself. It wouldn't be such a nightmare when you lose.

You know, you say, "Okay, I lost money." But that's not what it's the humiliation. It's the loss. What is going on? It's a psychological death. It's a loss of a self. It's a loss of an identity. You are your art. You are your money. You are your business. You are your address. The fact that my address is 50 Sutton Place or 10 Soundview Drive, you know, in Greenwich. That's me. That's not just an address. This is not just a bank account. It's all about you. And that's the reason why you're never satisfied and why you never feel quite you can get recognized.

That's the reason for the drive. That's the reason for the brutalization. It's the reason for all of that. He says all labor and all achievement springs from this need to go beyond your neighbor, above your neighbor, to prove that you've got a self, to prove that you're there, to prove you have a reality. But that's just the above ground. That's just the above ground. He says there's actually also a below ground. Now, before I do the below ground, let me just point out, do you see why? Because we are trying to manufacture a self, that leads to overwork,

If you just do your best in a balanced life, you almost never will get the kind of recognition you want. See, if work was really about just doing your best, you would never overwork, but you do. If work was really just about helping other people, you would never overwork, but you do. But you break on through the healthy barrier. You push the dial into the red.

Or sometimes what will eventually happen is like what's happened here, probably, in this man's life. You begin to underwork. You eventually begin to say it means nothing. Why? Because you're not really working to do a good job or for other people. You're simply working for recognition, and when you don't get the recognition, it tastes nothing. If people don't notice you, if people don't see what's going on, if you're not being paid for it, the fact that you're doing a good job or you're helping somebody else means nothing. Or at least it doesn't mean the main thing.

It's this identity vacuum that drives you into the ground. And that's the above ground reason. But then there's a below ground reason. And it's fascinating. What's the real reason? Why do I need to prove myself through my work? Why am I driven like this? Well, look at this. Again, it's at the very, very bottom. He contrasts something in this very fascinating verse 5.

He says, "A fool folds his hands and ruins himself. Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind." What's he saying? He has this fascinating picture. First of all, you have two handfuls of work that will ruin you for all the reasons we've said. Then you have another possibility, and that is no handfuls of work. The fool folds his hands. Why?

Because he's pretty much give it up. Almost for sure what happens is you overwork and then eventually you just lose all your desire to work because of the brutalization of work. But no handfuls of work is a different kind of ruin. They're both ruins. So what does he suggest? What does he put out there? Look at this. He says better one handful with tranquility. Now, what he's actually saying here is that the picture is in one hand you've got a full hand of work. That's hard work.

But on the other hand, even though it's translated tranquility, literally in the Hebrew it says quietness. Not just quiet. You need a handful of quietness. He says the problem is there is a deep kind of rest, a deep kind of quietness that's so powerful that it can sweeten and calm us and it can make a fresh life even with the other handful of work. See that? Deep. Deep.

Experts will tell you, you don't need length of sleep, you need depth of sleep, you need rapid eye movement sleep, REM sleep. And the Ecclesiastes writer is talking about something deep down, and he's saying there's a restlessness in you, that's the reason you have to prove yourself, and you need this deep, supernatural, divine quiet. And until you work that in, remember in the old days, the only way that you could keep meat from going bad was rub salt in it, that kept it fresh?

The only way you can keep work from killing you is to rub in this deep rest. Well, what is this? This is the great, great theme of the Bible. It's in the book of Genesis. It's in Psalm 95. But probably the best place is, for our purposes, is Hebrews 4. And this is what Hebrews 4 says. There remains then a rest for the people of God. Anyone who enters God's rest rests from his own work. Now, hear this. You may not be religious today.

You may not even believe in God. The Bible says though, let me give you, the Bible gives you this analysis. You may not even believe in God, you may not even be religious, but you're working for your salvation. Deep down inside, the Bible says everybody, regardless of your beliefs, you know there's something wrong with you. You know you're not good enough. You've been blaming your parents, or you've been blaming your upbringing, or you've been blaming the ethnic group you came from, or you've been blaming your small town, or maybe you were blaming your church.

or your synagogue or your religion but the bible says you're not looking deep enough we all feel there's something wrong with us we all feel we're not good enough and we're all working performing and you see some of us are just getting right into the job and even though you're not religious you're working for your salvation and there is a rest there what you need is a rest from your work in your work do you hear that that's the tranquility you need a rest from your work in your work

You need a complete rest. Well, where does that come from? Lastly, this is the life he says it's worth it. Where do we get that? Number one, we're told here the life that is worth it is a gift from God. Go back up to the top of the chapter, the middle, pardon me, verse 24 of chapter 2. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too is from the hand of God. Now look at that.

Satisfaction and joy in your work, that handful of tranquility that will sweeten your work, is not something you can earn. You have to receive it. It's a gift. You can never get it by striving. You'll never attain to it. It's a gift. That's the first thing. Secondly, first of all, it's the gift of God you need. Secondly, it's the pleasure of God.

two times in these verses right here, verse 22 to 26, the believer is someone who's spoken of in this way, the one who pleases God. Now, unfortunately, in English, I always get so angry about some of these language issues. The word pleasant and the word please is so tepid. You know, if you say, I went to a movie, what did you think? Well, it was pleasant. Well, that means it wasn't all that great.

But you see, the trouble is that, let's think a little bit. The same Hebrew word, even in the same English word, the same English word for pleasant is pleasure. Pleasure. And this is saying that a believer is someone who gives God pleasure. The believer is someone who God looks at and you are his pleasure. You are his beauty. He looks at you and he sees a diamond. He looks at you and he sees a work of art. He looks at you and his own heart

is filled with delight. If you knew that, that would be the quietness that would give you a rest from your work in your work. The book of Zephaniah talks about it in some of the most visible and vivid terms. In Zephaniah, this is what it says. Sing aloud. Be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has taken away the punishments against you. The Lord is with you. He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you. See? Pleasure. He will quiet you with his love.

He will rejoice over you with singing. How could that be? That would be it, wouldn't it? If you could know that God doesn't just say, yes, yes, you're doing a good job. If God would actually come to you and say, you give me pleasure. I delight in you. You are an absolute beauty. And stand over you and essentially embrace you and delight in you and dote on you. That would quiet you with his love. Well, how would you get that?

How could that be? The first thing you need is the gift of God. The second thing you need is the pleasure of God. What's the third thing you need? You need the rest of Jesus Christ because it's Jesus. It's Jesus who said in Matthew 11, 28, this is his gospel invitation. Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.

Come unto me. Now there it is. You say, well, how do we get this rest? How could I know that God loves me like that? How could I experience that? It's very simple. First of all, Jesus Christ says, come unto me. Not come unto that. Not do all these things. Me. Come to me. A person. Some years ago, somebody once said to me, you know what? I'd be a Christian if I could have an airtight, watertight argument for God. Well, you know what? Read the Bible.

And read Jesus Christ and read about him. Jesus does not say, follow my teachings. He says, come to me. Read who he is. Read what he does. Read how he works. Read how he lives. And you will see God has not given us an airtight, watertight argument. God has given us an airtight, watertight person. Come to me and take my yoke upon you. What's that mean? It means this.

Jesus Christ, remember when he was so troubled in the garden the night before he died? He said, I am troubled in soul. I'm in agony even unto death. He lost his rest. He took our sins upon himself so that when Jesus Christ, when we believe in him, God can look at us and he can sing over us and that quiets us with his love. Only Jesus can give you that kind of rest. Only there. That's the handful of rest. Now, if you believe that and you understand that, what does that do? It changes everything.

That is the handful of tranquility that you can rub into your work and it will change the way you do anything. It'll change the way you do anything. You don't need to do... Right now, if you don't have the quietness knowing he sings over you with love, you're never doing anything for itself. You're doing things to get something. Everything you're doing in your work life, you're trying to do so that you can get something. But what if you knew that you had everything already through Jesus?

then you would begin to work just for the sheer joy. You'd do the thing you do for the sheer joy of doing it. You'd help people just for the sheer joy of helping them, not just so you can feel like you're a better person. Do you see it all? Oh, brother, better is one handful of tranquility and a handful of work. That's the balanced life. Some of you need to go from two handfuls of work to one handful of work. You know what that means? A balanced life, first of all. Less work done, less recognition, less contribution, and yet...

the only contribution that will last, the only achievement that will last forever, and the only rest that will make your work satisfying. Hear these words. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that it's possible for us to do all these things through Jesus. We ask that you would help us see our work transformed. Father, for those of us who are with us that don't know you or are not sure they know you, they don't know what they believe, I pray that

that the work, the meaninglessness they're experiencing in their work would be a thing that would actually drive them to you. And for those of us, Lord, who know you, I pray that you would help us to see that until we are quieted with your love, we don't have the quiet necessary to work as we should. So many of us, though we're Christians, Lord, we just need the success. We're cast down when we don't have it. We pray, Lord, that you would show us that this is the only real success.

I lay me down in sleep, and I wake for the Lord sustains me. The Lord, my God, is a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. Let this be true for all of us today. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the wisdom of God's Word to your life. For more resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com. There, you can also subscribe to the Gospel in Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other helpful resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

Today's sermon was recorded in 1998. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.