SUNDAY (LIVE) - March 01, 2026 | Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 Introduction - Matt Heverly

When life is not safe, when life is not controllable, when there is no one to blame for it, we get frustrated, and we get angry, and we get anxious, and we get depressed. Because life is better at life than we are, and it's going to whack us all at some point. And we better be equipped to be able to handle when life is better at life than us, and something unpredictable happens, uncontrollable happens, and there is no one to blame. [00:39:25] (29 seconds)  #EmbraceUncertainty

He says, when we get up to there, you will walk on grass, and grass will feel like you're walking on knives because it's so real up there, that we have not experienced reality yet. But there's coming a day when the one seated on the throne will say, I'm making all things new. The glitchiness, the hevel of life is gone. We live the way that we're supposed to live. We're Pinocchios, and one day we'll be real boys and real girls living with our king the way we're really designed to, and all the hevel is gone. Happy day that will be. That's the one that's seated on the throne, saying that to you and me. That's the hope. It's why we finish every Sunday with the bread and the cup. [01:03:54] (41 seconds)  #AllThingsNew

I'm not saying all safety is is bad, cause if I said that, that'd be unsafe for my email, but there's been a creep. There should've been like, from Ralph Nader in the nineteen seventies and the exploding Pinto. It's like, you can't get we can't be safe enough. Now, it's, don't say something that makes me feel unsafe. So, we've actually moved all the way to that level now. I should never feel unsafe. I think safe words make soft people. And I think hard truths make strong Christians. [00:33:46] (37 seconds)  #HardTruthsStrongFaith

Solomon is saying, listen, I'm gonna look at, I'm gonna explore life as if there is only the here and now. He's a secularist. There's no god. There's no heaven. There's no eternity. Nothing. It's just under the sun. I'm gonna explore what life would mean if there truly was no God. If we embraced atheism, I'm gonna explore it. And under the sun is just a constant theme throughout this book, looking at life as if there's no God. What happens if you do that? [00:54:57] (33 seconds)  #UnderTheSun

And I think hard truths make strong Christians. That we gotta hit on uncomfortable things and tackle them head on. Whatever they are, atheism, existentialism, nihilism, we should purpose. Like, we need to talk about those kinds of things that might make us feel uncomfortable, that might shatter some of our own safety things, but it's very important that we tackle them. Secondly, I've noticed this about culture. We wanna control everything now. So we want to like, to me, if I look at modern [00:34:19] (35 seconds)  #CourageousConversations

Ecclesiastes is a man who has everything. He's king. He's sovereign. He is wealthy. He has a massive reputation that goes out through the known world at that time. He's got ladies. He's got pleasure. He's got palaces. He's got everything, and it's not enough. Now, very few of us will suffer like Job, but we will suffer, and we'll need the wisdom of Job to go through that time. None of us will be like Ecclesiastes. None of us. But all of us will have something. [00:43:48] (41 seconds)  #WealthCantSatisfy

So now, if a woman gets pregnant and it's unwanted, it's uncontrollable, it's inconvenient, it's interfering with a career, it's interfering with her life, what does America say she can do? Well, you can kill that baby because you need to be able to control your life. You need to make sure it's predictable. And then even on the other side, death. We want to control death. Like, I'm gonna decide how and when I die. If you're old like me, I'm 54. [00:36:05] (36 seconds)  #ControlObsessed

It's got crazy now. When I was literally studying this and writing this out, I happened to read this news source, lifenews.com. Canada is killing people in assisted suicide the same day they request it. Same day delivery. The amazon.com of euthanasia, just north of us. Not even thinking about not not, hey, you should do some counseling. Maybe we should talk about this. Nope. Same day. Because we're gonna make sure that life is controllable. [00:37:08] (34 seconds)  #EuthanasiaConcerns

But we are convinced that someone has to be blamed for everything. They're not natural disasters anymore. What are they called? Climate change. And if I would just stop using my gas blower, climate wouldn't change anymore. Like, somehow, we could actually change like, they're not gonna wait, they've happened for thousands of years. But it's just like victimization thing, like, we will find someone to blame for this. It's a hurricane. There's no one to blame. [00:38:18] (30 seconds)  #BlameCulture

We believe we're going to change the world. I'm going to change the world. And then one day, we wake up and we're old and we're ready to die, and we change nothing. That's what the go yell at is going to say. And you're gonna say, please tell me the good news, preacher. And he'll say, that was the good news. It just gets worse from there. We don't matter. What we do doesn't matter. So people that say there's no god, why bother then? [00:57:26] (29 seconds)  #ChangeRealityCheck

We don't matter. We're an accident of a bunch of chemicals that happened a long time ago that kept being more and more accidents, more and more and more accidents, and finally it became you and me. That if our beginning was insignificant, if there's no God, then our end is going to be insignificant. Doesn't matter how powerful you are, doesn't matter how important you are right now, you're just a footprint in the sand before a wave comes. Love doesn't matter. Just a accidental chemical that occurs in your brain that leads you to reproduce, that's all it is. [00:59:02] (40 seconds)  #AccidentalExistence

That there are people that say might is right, and we will take advantage of anyone who is weaker than us so we can get what we want. So, Proverbs, this is the way things should work, says, yeah, there's a glitch in it. There's a glitch. And then, Job and Ecclesiastes, what they are is they're telling us that, yeah, that's the Gaussian curve, the middle of it, but there are extremes in life. Job is the story of a righteous, good, godly man who does nothing wrong and loses everything. [00:43:10] (36 seconds)  #WisdomAndSuffering

And I think our culture needs, like, hard truth in desperate times. Like, you need hard truth. Because here's what I see in our culture. In my 54 years, here's what I'm noticing, like, trends in our culture. Trend number one is we idolize safety. Like, safety is paramount to us. I watched this in my youngest daughter. My oldest daughter, excuse me, Carissa. She's 25. When she was born, we had to put her in a car seat and then a booster. [00:32:47] (33 seconds)  #IdolizeSafety

And then the third big trend that I've seen in my life is this kind of victimization, like, everyone's a victim somehow. And the one that just puzzles me is if there's a natural disaster, they've happened for all of human history. If there's a natural disaster now, class five hurricane hits Louisiana, class five hurricane runs up the Eastern Seaboard, whatever it is, all of a sudden, there's all these investigations and look at all this damage that happened. We have to investigate. Someone must be to blame. Like, it's a class five hurricane. [00:37:42] (34 seconds)  #VictimCulture

So you read the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is telling you and me, this is how the world, under god's rule, should work. But always remember this. It's called the book of Proverbs, not the book of promises. It's saying, this is how life should work, how it normally works. If you are a guy that applies himself well, and is diligent at your job, and faithful to show up and does his work hardly as under the lord, then most likely you're gonna be rewarded. That's how it normally works. [00:41:10] (37 seconds)  #PracticalWisdom

The skies that used to be the rain and dominion of birds, now we can not only fly in the sky, can fly to other planets because we're gonna control it. Human decay, that's been normal. You get sick, the body wears out, you die. Now, we've got medicine that's just pushing boundaries. We've got longevity experts that say, do this and you'll live longer and longer and longer. There are people that are saying, we are gonna defeat death in this generation. We won't die anymore [00:35:25] (28 seconds)  #DeathDefyingDreams

So you read the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is telling you and me, this is how the world, under god's rule, should work. But always remember this. It's called the book of Proverbs, not the book of promises. It's saying, this is how life should work, how it normally works. If you are a guy that applies himself well, and is diligent at your job, and faithful to show up and does his work hardly as under the lord, then most likely you're gonna be rewarded. That's how it normally works. [00:41:10] (37 seconds)  #ProverbsNotPromises

movement, like, the the way all the way from thousands of years up until now. It's all driven by we wanna make life predictable. We wanna make life where we can dominate it, influence it, affect it. That's what we want to do. So darkness that governed most of human civilization caused people to go to sleep. What do we do now? We control it by a light switch. I'm not going to sleep. I'm going stay awake. [00:34:54] (32 seconds)  #ControlEverything