S69E1 | When MEANINGLESS is MEANINGFUL | The Monotony of Life | Rev. Nick Korir

I'm beginning a series with us on the book. It's a book that is an, it's got an interesting name. Help me pronounce it. It's E, clay. Now, this is what I want to try and ask you to do. Now in English it's that complicated. Can you try and pronounce it in your mother tongue? E, clisiasis now in your mother tongue, okay? Turn to your neighbor and tell them, you are at a Sijui. You know, I think it's okay if you don't know it. Let me give you a clue. Let me give you a clue. In many of our mother tongues, it's actually directly translated the preacher. Okay, so if you can say the preacher in your mother tongue, probably that's the name of the book itself. So you can turn to your neighbor now confidently and tell them, I'm in a Jua. Okay, you know, and in my mother tongue, it's called Amdou in death. That is, by the way, that's, you see how deep my mother tongue is, eh? Amdou in death. So whenever you're greeting me, you can say, I am in death. Yeah, the preacher, okay? Because that's a book of Ecclesiastes. The title that we have given, this book is When Meaningless is Actually Meaningful. When Meaningless is Meaningful. And this book has about 12 chapters. We've tried to break it down in the month. And I'll cover about two to three chapters every single Sunday, all right? So let me just give us a breakdown so that you can prepare ahead. You can begin to read ahead. And you know, the sections that we are covering, even as we cover the book of Ecclesiastes. I'll begin today by looking at the monotony of life. And then the next Sunday, we're going to look at the futility of wealth. And then we're going to look at the reality of death. And finally, we're going to conclude with the certainty of faith. The certainty of faith. So please begin to read ahead. We're looking at the first three chapters today, but we're going to look at those chapters as we go along to the end of the month. Now as we begin to focus on this book, I just want to ask us a question. Which country do you think is the happiest country in the world? Which, now someone mentioned Kenya and people are very, very, let me, when I initially looked at that happiness index, I was very curious to find out what number Kenya is. The happiness index for 2026, they looked at 147 countries in the world. And it, I don't know if it broke my heart, for some of us it's encouraging that we are not 147, but we are actually number 110, all right? So for those of you who remember, remember index numbers. When your index number, you know, if you're not below 120, I think you're okay, yeah? Sidio, Apanah, Ume Kata, okay. So what do you think is the happiest country in the world? Who said Finland? That is very correct. What do you think is the second happiest country? You know, Norway is the fourth, all right? So there's Finland, then there's Iceland, and then there's Norway, Denmark, all the Nordic countries are top five. So now you know where to live, eh? And then somewhere in between, there's Costa Rica. And I was very surprised, because these are the Nordic countries, and then there's another country. There are several things that they use to be able to determine the happiness index. They look at this strong social support systems that a country has, the safe environment that a country has. If the country has free healthcare and free education, if it has low corruption, if it has high personal freedoms, all these together comprise of what they use to determine that. So now you know, okay? Interesting. Which one do you think is the happiest profession in the world? According to workplace data, not according to your desires and your faith, and you know, according to date, which do you think is, this one surprised me. This one pleasantly surprised me. Which do you think is the happiest profession in the world? Imagine it's not teachers. Guess what? It is the clergy. Buonas if you will. And when I read that statistic, I walked up to my wife and told her, I am happy today. So I was so excited. So priests, pastors and ministers are considered according to this study. But also interestingly, pilots are up there, all the pilots, kudos to all the pilots that are here. And hands-on traders. Hands-on traders like landscapers, firefighters, people that do a lot of hands-on work are considered of the, so thank your neighbor and say, oh yeah, oh yeah, Paul is on. But the question I want to ask us is, what does happiness look for you? What does happiness look like for you? All of us have different pictures or images of happiness. What does happiness look like for you? Now I'm that preacher who asks you to turn to your neighbor because your neighbor is a very important person. It's not a mistake that they are seated next to you. Could you turn to them and give them a picture? For some of you, you're saying, it's a bouquet of flowers like this. For some of us here, I wouldn't say from which community, it has to deal with food. It has to, for happiness to happen, it has to be a food agenda somewhere around there. For some of us, maybe, no, let me not continue, okay? So please turn to your neighbor and tell them, this is the image that I have of happiness. For happiness to happen, this is the image that I have. Okay, go ahead. What does happiness look like for you? Now, I think for me, many of you already know, right? For me, many of you, let me ask production if you could just play that video. Just to give you a picture of what happiness looks like for me. Okay? I don't know if it's there. This is what happiness looks like for me. This is it. This is all I'll do in heaven forever and ever. You're told there are chariots there. So forever and ever and ever in heaven, this is what happiness looks like. All the troubles in the world are gone. They are gone, you know? Right there. Today, I'd like us to meditate on an equation. Because many of us sometimes think and wrestle with what some people call the formula for happiness. And many of us try and figure out this formula. And today, we want to try and fill in these blanks. If you could put that formula, how would you fill in these blanks to this equation? This plus this plus this equals happiness. This plus this plus this equals happiness. Because happiness is one of humanity's oldest pursuits. We change jobs for it. We study for it. We earn for it. We invest for it. We travel for it. We marry for it. We buy for it. We entertain ourselves for it. All in the interest of discovering true happiness and pursuing true happiness. And in the book that we're going to look at this month in Ecclesiastes, Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, the wealthiest king that Israel ever had. A man who could pursue whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, conducts a very elaborate experiment to be able to fill in these blanks, to be able to discover, to be able to find the source of happiness, the source of satisfaction, the source of meaning in life. He is trying to figure out the dashes. He's trying to figure out what fits so that he could answer this equation. And Solomon begins this book that we're looking at today with the end in mind. He begins the book with what he discovered at the end. He begins this book with the answer at the end and he sets the tone for the whole book as he explains how he discovered that answer that he gives. And in verse two, he begins this book in chapter one that says meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher. Utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless. This word meaningless is repeated so many times in the book of Ecclesiastes. This word actually, in the original Hebrew, it actually, the word that is used is hevel. The meaning of the word hevel, the word that is used literally means vapor. It means breath, it means mist. Now, many of us in this season understand what this means because it's, the image that Solomon is giving us is, remember during the chilly season that we're just, you know, coming out of, you've taken a hot cup of tea in the morning, you've walked out and it's freezing, and you, I don't know how to, you know, do it, Vizuri. You, I think that's the only way I can be able to do it. You blow some vapor into the air. And the image that Solomon is giving us is, it is visible, it is real, but it is quickly gone the second you try and hold it. That's hevel. It is real, it is visible, but the minute you try and get a hold of it, it is gone, it has dissipated into the air. And in chapter one, Solomon tries to describe the meaningless nature that he has discovered around this quest of happiness, around this quest of satisfaction in life. And he tries to describe it, and he starts in chapter one by using the three most powerful forces in creation. He uses the sun, the wind and water to be able to try and describe what he has discovered. He says the sun is interesting, it rises and it sets, and then it goes again rises and it sets. And the sun does not look like it ever arrives. It continues in a cycle day after day. It goes round and round. The wind looks like it never finishes its journey. It goes in one direction and it looks like it keeps going and going and going and going and it never quite arrives. And then he uses the image of a river and he says a river is interesting because the river flows and it flows into the ocean but there is no time the ocean can say it's enough, it's enough, I am full. It doesn't look like that ever happens. So the image is giving us is that life looks like there's some sense of motion. It keeps going round and round and round forever. And then after he uses these forces of creation or nature, in verse nine of chapter one, he now shifts and it turns to human experience. And in verse nine he says, what has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done and there is nothing new under the sun. Some of us feel like Solomon is describing our weak. You know the sameness of our weak, that wheel that never stops. You wake up, you brush your teeth and then after that you go and have breakfast and if you have children you wake them up to prepare them to go to school and then after that you change and prepare yourselves to go to work and then you go to the same bus stop and sometimes even the same mat, you get into the same route and you go to the same office and you sit on the same chair and you open the same gadgets and you talk to the same people and sometimes our lives feel that way. But he says amidst this monotony, Solomon tries to do an experiment to discover that if amidst this monotony of life you can actually discover happiness. And it's interesting because 3,000 years later today as we speak, the script has not changed. The same three common places in the passage we are looking at today that Solomon tried to experiment and discover what happiness is and where happiness can be gotten from are the same three routes that we commonly use today to try and get us to the destination of happiness, to try and get us to that place of satisfaction, that place of fulfillment. And today for the purposes of this sermon I've titled them, Head, Heart and Hand. And I'm trying to fill in this equation the way Solomon filled in this equation in the routes and the paths that Solomon used to try and discover happiness because these are the same routes and the same paths that we use today to discover happiness. So I'm going to look at the first one that he looks at which is the head, the second one the heart and finally the third one is the hand. And just for us to understand this, the head is when we say I will be happy when I know enough, that's the head. And Solomon pursued this path of happiness. And the second one is I will be happy when I experience enough and we'll see how Solomon pursued experience to try and become his source of happiness. And the third one I will be happy when I achieve enough and we see his pursuit of achievement in terms of him trying to get a source of happiness. Let's start with the first one, the head. The first one is the head. Now I hope when Ecclesiastes, is that how you pronounce it? Hab, Buanasifiwa, Tumetokambali, yeah? Squizzitonesa pronounced Eccli, Siastis, Buanasifesana. If you could turn with me, we are reading verse 13, verse 16 and verse 18. Ecclesiastes chapter one, can we read verse 13? The Bible says, I applied my mind to study and explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind. And we go to verse 16, he says, I said to myself, look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me. I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge. Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom and also of madness and folly, but I learned that these two is chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow and more knowledge, the more knowledge, the more grief. The first route that we see Solomon taking to be able to achieve and experience happiness is a route many of us take, and that route is the intellectual route. Many of us pursue education. Many of us pursue degrees and academia. We pursue proficiency in different skills and different areas. We pursue knowledge and information and insight in the interest of feeling fulfilled, feeling satisfied and feeling happy. Now, many of you know that Solomon was one of the most learned men of his generation. Solomon, according to First Kings, spoke over 3,000 Proverbs. And it's interesting because in the book of First Kings, it's also stated that Solomon wrote over 1,000 songs. This man was multi gifted. In fact, kings would send envoys to Solomon to sit at his feet so that they can just hear him think. He was that learned. He was that endowed with wisdom and knowledge and understanding. The point that Solomon is making here is there is nothing wrong with education. There's an entire book in the Bible that is a book of wisdom, the Proverbs. But notice that the verdict on wisdom is this. When wisdom is pursued as a source of happiness, when wisdom is pursued as a source of satisfaction, this is the verdict that Solomon gives, verse 18. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief. If you pursue it with a desire to gain a sense of happiness and fulfillment and satisfaction from it, why? Why is it described this way? It's described this way because let me give you an illustration. Knowledge or this understanding that many times we pursue is like an x-ray. Okay? It's like an x-ray. It is not a surgeon. So when you have a fracture, the x-ray only has the ability to show you the fracture, but it doesn't have the ability to reset the bone. It doesn't have the ability to sort out the problem. So what Solomon is telling us is this. Basically what Solomon learned is that all that knowledge gave him, all that understanding gave him, it was a clearer understanding. The knowledge that he gained gave him clarity or more clarity on the brokenness of this world, the unfairness of this world, the limits of ourselves because clarity without the power to fix it doesn't bring peace, doesn't bring fulfillment, doesn't bring satisfaction. What does it give? Grief. It produces grief. In fact, I like the message version of this verse. It says, the more you know, the more you heart. It's painful. And sometimes we passionately desire to know more so that we can get more satisfied and we get disappointed because at the end of the day, what happens? We heart more. Accumulating wisdom and knowledge does not deal with my anxiety. It does not deal with my sense of unfulfillment. Instead, many times it sinks me deeper and deeper and deeper and in of itself, in and of itself, it cannot fulfill. So when the mind does not deliver. Now, do you remember high school? Your high schools had some labs for experiments. So assume Solomon, when he was talking about the head, went to the physics lab to do this experiment. Then now Solomon says, this experiment has not worked. He now comes out of the physics lab and he goes to the chemistry lab because now he's trying to test the heart. So since the mind did not deliver, Solomon does not give up. He instead simply changes labs and he goes to the chemistry lab because now he's trying to test this path of the heart, the heart and look at chapter two, now verse one. It says, I said in my heart, this is Solomon and each time he says, I said in my heart or I said he's now going to the next path. He's looking at the next option. I said in my heart, come now. This time I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. Behold, this also was vanity and he continues on after verse two. All the way to verse 10, he lists the things under pleasure that he experimented with. So when knowledge fails to deliver happiness, what many times we do is we move from the head and we now move to the heart. So if thinking cannot make me happy, maybe feeling can make me happy. So we begin to pursue fun, we pursue laughter, we pursue entertainment, we pursue food and drink and travel and romance and hobbies and experiences. Whatever can give me an emotional lift, whatever can lift up my spirits. That's what we now pursue because this looks like the path that is going to get me to true happiness and to test if appetite could do it for Solomon because intellect did not do it. Solomon now tries escapism into various experiences of pleasure and we see in verse two, he tries laughter and he gets people to make him happy and laugh and smile. In verse three, he tries stimulants. He says, cheering himself with wine. And in verse eight, we see he even turns to music. He finds male and female singers to come around him so that they can be able to lift up his spirits. At the end of verse eight, he even tries sexual pleasure. Many of you know that Solomon had how many wives? 700 and by the way, not just 700, 700 wives of royal birth. I mean, this brother was in another league. Buona Sifuessana. In the harem that is mentioned, in this harem that is mentioned in verse eight, it's 700 wives and 300 concubines. He tried sexual pleasure. He withheld himself nothing. Nothing. He released himself into trying to find happiness in this way and basically Solomon immerses himself in nightlife. Solomon went from Westlands to Kilimani, Sherehe to its limit. Solomon was chasing for the next high. Solomon was chasing for the next laugh. Solomon was looking forward to the next, we can't. And the reason he was doing that is because the last one wore out faster than he expected. And you know what? That's actually what Solomon discovers. He discovers this very harsh truth that pleasure wears out faster than we expected because pleasure has a very shrinking half-life. The thrill that you barely experienced a few moments ago, hardly registers now anymore. You need a bigger dose so that you can experience the same effect. And he realizes that his pursuit for joy is not really the pursuit of joy anymore. He's actually chasing the memory of joy. He's chasing an experience that he had before that he wants to relive. The point here that Solomon discovers is pleasure does not satisfy. Pleasure simply increases or intensifies the craving. Pleasure is powerful, but pleasure is temporary. This is a man that had the resources to buy anything. He had the resources to access any pleasure available or accessible to anyone in the ancient world. And this man is reliable in his verdict to us because he could access anything. And at the end, the verdict that he gives us is this. Pleasure is governed by a very interesting law, the law of diminishing returns. The more you seek pleasure, the less you find it. And this becomes his greatest frustration. And he said, then let me try something else because this too has not worked. So he moves, which was the first lab? The physics lab, okay? He moves to the chemistry lab. Then finally he says, maybe this experiment will work in the biology lab, okay? So Solomon now goes to the third lab for the final experiment. So