Sermons From The Chapel

Life is short, unpredictable, and often unequal. In Ecclesiastes 9, Solomon confronts the realities of living in a broken world, reminding us that we cannot control our circumstances, guarantee our outcomes, or escape the certainty of death. Yet his message is not one of despair, but of joyful contentment. Rather than wasting our brief days chasing what we cannot control, we are called to receive life as God’s gift, enjoy His blessings, and faithfully give ourselves to the work He has placed before us. But there is an even greater hope for the believer. Where Solomon considers the value of our work within the boundaries of this earthly life, Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15 that our labor in the Lord is never in vain. Even when the headwinds are strong and the work seems small, Christ gives eternal significance to what we do. Life may be short, but in Christ, it is never wasted.

Why do the wicked sometimes prosper while the righteous suffer? Why does justice seem delayed, and why doesn’t life always work out the way it should? In Ecclesiastes 8, Solomon reminds us that wisdom is essential, but it has limits. We cannot control every circumstance, understand every outcome, or comprehend everything God is doing. Yet we can know His character, trust His providence, enjoy His gifts, and live faithfully before Him. Ultimately, our confidence rests not in our ability to make sense of life, but in the righteous King who conquered death and will one day make all things right.

In Ecclesiastes 7, Solomon reminds us that living well in a broken world is not about having a life free from trouble, but about living wisely, fearing God, and trusting Him through every season. Even a life well lived is not always sunshine and roses, and we will not always understand God’s purposes or receive the answers we desire. Yet God calls us to enjoy the good days as His gifts, remain steadfast in difficult times, and resist the temptation to grow bitter or chase after the empty promises of this world. True contentment comes when God is at the center of our lives, teaching us to receive what He gives, trust Him with what we cannot understand, and live each day for His glory.

We’re often convinced that a little more will finally make us content: more money, more possessions, more success, more experiences. But what happens when we have more than we could ever need and still cannot enjoy what we have? In Ecclesiastes 6, Solomon exposes the vanity of pursuing abundance as the answer to our deepest desires. We can possess good gifts without enjoying their goodness, accumulate more without finding satisfaction, and spend our lives chasing what we cannot control.The answer is not simply to want less, but to find our ultimate good in the One who gives every good gift. Through Jesus Christ, we can learn to receive our portion with gratitude, trust God’s goodness even in difficult seasons, and discover that true contentment is found not in having more, but in having the Lord as our portion. Stop postponing contentment until tomorrow. Enjoy the gifts, trust the Giver, and seek your deepest satisfaction in Him.

In Ecclesiastes 5, Solomon reminds us that enjoying life begins with having a right relationship with God. The gifts, experiences, and blessings we receive are meant to be enjoyed, but we can only truly appreciate our portion when we recognize the Giver and approach Him with reverence. Join us as we consider what it means to enjoy the life God has given us, find contentment in His provision, and keep our relationship with Him in its proper place.

What happens when the relationships we need most are the very relationships that can hurt us most? We were made to share life with other people, to have someone who knows us, helps us when we fall, tells us the truth, celebrates our victories, and stays when life gets hard. Yet Ecclesiastes 4 reminds us that even our best relationships can disappoint us, change, and eventually be separated by death.So where do we find the faithful Friend our hearts are really longing for? Ecclesiastes points us toward a longing that only Jesus can ultimately satisfy. He is the Friend who does not abandon, betray, or fade away. Come explore the beauty, pain, and limitations of human relationships, and discover why our deepest need for companionship finds its answer in Christ.

Enjoy your rainy day! Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us that life is filled with changing seasons: times to laugh and weep, build and tear down, live and die. But beneath all those seasons is a God who remains sovereign and good, and who has set eternity in our hearts. As we explore this familiar passage, we’ll look beyond the temporary rhythms of this little life to the hope of the resurrection. Because we serve a living Lord, this life is more than worthwhile, and even the rainiest days can be received with hope as we trust the God who holds every season in His hands.

In Ecclesiastes 2:18–26, Solomon turns from the vanity of pleasure to the vanity of labor. What happens when we spend our lives working, building, accomplishing, and accumulating, only to die and leave it all to someone else? The worker disappears while the work remains, and Solomon wrestles with the painful reality that we cannot ultimately keep what we spend our lives building.Yet the passage does not call us to stop working or abandon enjoyment. Instead, Solomon points us to a better way: receive the fruit of our labor as a gift from God, enjoy it while we have it, and refuse to make work, achievement, legacy, or pleasure our ultimate hope. The question is not simply how hard we work, but what our work is ultimately for. In Christ, we are reminded to invest our lives in what death cannot take away, laboring for the Lord and trusting Him with the fruit of our work.

In Ecclesiastes 2:12-17, Solomon turns from the pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of wisdom and considers the sobering reality that both the wise and the fool ultimately face the same end: death. If everything we accomplish eventually fades away, where can we find lasting fulfillment? Solomon’s meditation takes him to a dark place as he confronts the limits of wisdom and the vanity of life under the sun. Yet for the believer, death is not the final word; Romans 8:23 points us toward the hope we await: the redemption of our bodies and the fullness of what God has promised. This sermon considers whether our hope is found in what inevitably passes away, or in the eternal hope that God has secured for his people.

In Ecclesiastes 2:1–11, Solomon sets out to answer a question every human heart eventually asks: What would finally satisfy me? Having found that wisdom could not give him what he wanted, he turns to pleasure and gives himself over to laughter, wine, possessions, accomplishments, wealth, and every desire his eyes could find. And remarkably, Solomon succeeds. He gets what he wants, enjoys what he has pursued, and then steps back to consider it all. His conclusion is not that pleasure is bad, but that it cannot bear the weight of being our ultimate good.This passage exposes the restless heart that keeps looking for the next thing to make us happy. Good gifts become cruel masters when we ask them to give what only God can give. But the answer is not to abandon joy. In Christ, we are called away from counterfeit pleasures and brought into the presence of God, where there is “fullness of joy” and pleasures forevermore. Solomon ran the experiment for us. The question is whether we will learn from what he found, or spend our lives asking vapor to give us eternity.