The following was originally preached live at Cross of Grace Church, repurposed by digital AI tools, and shaped by a human editor. Full sermon available at A Journey Through Ecclesiastes.

We’ve all heard the famous lines from Ecclesiastes: “A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.” The passage is beautiful, even culturally familiar. Yet if we’re honest, most of us find the poem frustrating rather than comforting. The reason is simple: we don’t struggle with the reality of hard seasons. We struggle with our resentment that those seasons exist at all.

The Preacher’s poem in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 was never meant to help us decode which season we’re in or to provide moral guidance about timing. The point is far more fundamental: every season of life—favorable and unfavorable, chosen and unchosen—comes under God’s sovereign hand. There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to embrace and a time to refrain (Ecclesiastes 3:4-5). None of these seasons arrive by accident, and none of them remain forever.

Yet we resist this teaching because we want only the favorable seasons. We prefer dancing to mourning, planting to uprooting, building up to tearing down. The resentment begins not when a hard season arrives but when we realize we cannot prevent it.

The Burden We Were Never Meant to Carry

Consider the transitions that provoke our controlling impulse most fiercely. A loved one dies, and we exhaust ourselves wishing we could turn back time or prevent the loss. Children leave home, and we resent the empty rooms that remind us of what we cannot recover. Financial security erodes, and we frantically attempt to force our way back into the season of stability we once enjoyed. In each case, the burden is the same: we are attempting to control the seasons of life—either preventing unwanted transitions or forcing our way back into seasons we have lost.

This burden is vanity, what the Preacher calls hevel—a grasping after wind (Ecclesiastes 1:14). Every season changes according to God’s plan, not ours. The difficulty of a season is not the problem; our resentment of change is. We demand not merely that God walk with us through transitions but that he exempt us from them entirely.

Some of us respond not with control but with denial. We refuse to acknowledge that the season has shifted, pretending that circumstances remain what they were or that our capacity has not diminished. This is equally exhausting. Whether we fight the season or pretend it does not exist, we are carrying a burden God never assigned: the impossible task of managing time itself.

The Gift God Offers Instead

Wisdom requires naming the season we are in rather than fighting it or pretending it does not exist. This is not passive resignation; it is an act of faith. When we acknowledge what season God has given, we position ourselves to receive what he is offering within it. The gift is not the season itself—sometimes the season is profoundly difficult—but the ability to rejoice, do good, eat and drink, and find pleasure in our work regardless of the season we are in (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13).

The Psalmist captures this truth beautifully: “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24). Notice the emphasis: this day, not the day we wish we had or the day we once enjoyed. The gift God gives us is today. Not control over which season arrives or how long it lasts, but the capacity to receive what he provides within the season he has ordained.

Here is the paradox: when we release the burden of controlling life’s seasons, we discover that multiple seasons coexist simultaneously. One difficult season need not obscure the gifts God is giving in other areas of life. A season of professional uncertainty may coincide with a season of relational abundance. A season of physical limitation may open a season of deeper dependence on God’s grace. Wisdom recognizes that life is not monolithic and that releasing control in one area frees us to receive God’s gifts in another.

What This Means for You This Week

Name the season you are in. Speak it aloud, not with resentment but with acknowledgment: “This is a season of waiting,” or “This is a season of loss,” or “This is a season of abundance.” If the season is favorable, receive it as grace and steward it with gratitude. If the season is difficult, confess your temptation to control it and ask God for the humility to trust His timing rather than demand your own.

The question before us is not whether hard seasons will come—they will. The question is whether we will release the burden of managing them and receive the gift God offers within them. Christians exhaust themselves not because life is difficult but because they attempt to carry what only God can bear. In the gospel we have been given not merely relief but a Savior who reigns over every season, who numbers our days, and who invites us to trust that this day—whatever season it holds—is the day the Lord has made.

Discussion Questions

• We get tired not just from hard things, but from carrying heavy burdens God never asked us to carry—like trying to control what happens next, or worrying we’re not doing enough, or being angry about unfair things we can’t fix. What is one thing you’ve been trying really hard to control or fix or understand that might actually belong to God instead? And what would change if you just... let it go?

• For parents: This prompt invites your family to identify one area where they feel exhausted—not from life’s real hardships, but from trying to control, fix, or understand something that belongs to God. Listen for what burdens your kids are already carrying, then gently point them toward the relief that comes from letting go.

• What burden did you hear yourself carrying this week—control, significance, judgment, or something else—and what stirred in your heart as the preacher named it?

• Where do I need to release a burden and receive God’s gift of today instead of exhausting myself trying to fix what belongs to Him?

James Shoemake

Home Group Leader at Cross of Grace Church

Earlier this year our pastors began wrestling with growth and how to steward it well. We set out before our church a specific consideration of whether we should build a larger auditorium building next to ours. We sought input from the church, sought wise counsel, and considered it very carefully.

Our question was, “Lord, should we build this building?” But we felt the Lord redirect us from that question into something unexpected to the question, “What does the LORD want to build?”

Psalm 127:1 reminds us, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

Here were three things we began to see:

• First, that there is a strong Scriptural pattern of multiplication. Most of the calls to generosity and giving in the New Testament are directed outward, beyond the church itself, to other places and work.

• Second, we felt a clear prophetic sense of God’s leading. This Spring after we showed the video of the work at our friend JP’s building in India a dear sister shared a sense with me. She felt that the Lord put on her heart that as we seek to build the houses of others, we can trust God to build our house. We resonated with that as pastors. We felt that before we considered a building project for us, we needed to consider others.

• Third, we began to see that God was already clearly at work in some areas and was inviting us to join him. We didn’t all have a sense as a team that this was the timing for a new building, but we did all clearly see God at work and open doors.

So the question went from “Lord, should we build this new church building?” to “Lord, how do we join you in building the houses of others?”

So we will not at this time undertake building another church auditorium. Maybe in the future. But right now we see God leading us into three things:

First, we’re going to throw everything we have behind the Horizon church plant with Sal. God willing there will be regional funds of about 50k from Sovereign Grace behind this plant for year one. But we’re committing to make a second year commitment to this plant of a least 50k. If the plant is totally sustainable it’ll be a gift to them, if it needs more help than that we’ll give it. That’s a total investment of at least 100k.

Second, we want to invest significantly in the building with our friend JP in India. There is a massive gospel need in JP’s area and after much prayer it seems clear that the best way to reach that village and region is actually through a school – reaching students, opening doors with families, investing in the next generation of believers. And there are real possibilities this could be used for other gospel work as well. But the work will cost several million dollars. Some donors are already leaning in. But we want to join them. So to start we’re going to give 100k toward this work and we will gladly consider more, and may do fundraising efforts for it here.

Third, we want to proactively invest in our next church plant after Horizon. We do not want our Horizon plant to be the end of our church planting road, but the beginning. We want to faithfully plant churches in our region and around the world until Jesus returns. And we believe there’s a very good chance this next church plant will be right here in the El Paso region as well. But we need to help capable, godly, qualified men explore whether they are called to this and we need to fund it. So today we’re setting aside 100k to help men explore church planting from our church to El Paso and beyond.

We are taking these steps to build the houses of others – Horizon, Andra Pradesh, Next Plant – and trusting that God will take care of us.

Now, a practical question – What about our own growth here at Cross of Grace Church? We believe we need to make some immediate investments here at Cross of Grace that will help us welcome as many people as we can through our doors. We have some things we already know we’ll do and some things we’ll consider. We know that we’ll build more parking, we know that we’ll create more shaded space for fellowship, we know we need more seats and dedicated overflow space. We’re considering other things like sound and video improvements, improving our cooling in summer, and more. We will give you an update on that rebuilding project in 2-3 weeks.

When I began praying I was asking God, “Lord what’s our 20 year plan? Give us the whole thing!” And instead it was like the Lord gave us the next 2-5 years and said, “Trust me–One step at a time.”

Psalm 127:1 says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

May he continue to build, and may we continue to join him.

The following was originally preached live at Cross of Grace Church, repurposed by digital AI tools, and shaped by a human editor. Full sermon available at A Journey Through Ecclesiastes.

Most of us operate on an unspoken assumption: that if we collect enough good moments— successful projects, pleasant experiences, satisfying purchases—they will eventually add up to a meaningful life.

We chase the next promotion, the next vacation, the next home improvement, believing that accumulation will produce fulfillment. What we rarely stop to ask is whether pleasure works that way. Does it compound? Can individual moments of satisfaction be banked against future emptiness? The Preacher of Ecclesiastes tested this assumption deliberately, and his findings are strikingly relevant. In Ecclesiastes 2, he catalogs an exhaustive experiment with pleasure: "I said in my heart, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself'" (v. 1). He pursued laughter, wine, building projects, vineyards, gardens, parks, pools, servants, herds, flocks, silver, gold, singers, and "many concubines, the delight of the sons of man" (vv. 4-8). He denied himself nothing his eyes desired and refused his heart no pleasure. His method was thorough—nothing was left untried. And his verdict? "Behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun" (v. 11).

The Pleasure That Doesn't Carry Over

The Preacher's discovery is not that pleasure is bad—he experienced real enjoyment in his pursuits. "Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them," he writes. "I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil" (v. 10). The pleasure was genuine. The problem is that it did not carry over. When he stepped back to consider the whole—when he asked whether all those pleasurable moments had accumulated into something lasting—the answer was no. Individual pleasures cannot be banked. They do not compound into meaning. Each one evaporates, leaving us ready to ask, "What's next?" This is the exhausting treadmill our culture has us running. We assume that if we just stack up enough good experiences—enough successful projects, enough pleasurable purchases, enough social validation—we will eventually arrive at contentment. But pleasure does not work like interest in a savings account. It does not accumulate. The happiness we felt yesterday does not roll over into today. We wake up and have to start again.

The Hunger That Outlasts the Meal

We believe that pleasure should satisfy because it feels so substantial in the moment. But the Preacher discovered that pleasure is poor at producing gain—what lasts beyond death, what survives the test of time. He writes, "What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest" (vv. 22-23). The payoff for chasing pleasure is not fulfillment but anxiety. The question "What's next?" becomes a torment. This is the kindness of Ecclesiastes: the Preacher ran the experiment so we do not have to. He tested the theory that accumulating pleasures produces a meaningful life, and he published his findings. We are spared from having to climb to the top of that ladder only to discover there is nothing there. The book is not in the Bible to shame us for desiring pleasure—it is there to tell us the truth about what pleasure can and cannot do, so we stop demanding from it what it cannot give.

Gifts, Not Gains

The passage does not end with empty hands. After twenty-three verses of grasping, another hand enters the story: "There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God" (v. 24). The same realities—food, drink, work—reappear, but now they are identified as gifts rather than gains. The shift is not from having pleasure to having none; it is from grasping pleasure as ultimate to receiving it as gift. When we grasp pleasure, we demand that it do what only God can do—provide lasting meaning, secure our future, satisfy our deepest hunger. A gift makes a lousy god. But when we receive pleasure from the hand of God, we are freed to enjoy it for what it actually is: a kind provision from a generous Father, given to be enjoyed in the moment without being burdened with the impossible task of answering the question, "What else is there?" The gospel of Jesus Christ resolves the grasping posture. Christ is the gain the Preacher could not find under the sun—the one treasure that death cannot take away. Because Christ has already secured our ultimate future, we no longer have to demand it from created things. We are freed to enjoy food, drink, work, and pleasure with open hands, receiving them as gifts rather than clinging to them as saviors. The hunger that outlasts every meal is finally satisfied in him—not by accumulating more, but by resting in the one who is enough. Where are you still trying to accumulate your way to meaning? The

Preacher's experiment offers a merciful shortcut: there is no gain under the sun. But there are gifts from God's hand—and the posture that receives them is open hands, not closed fists.

Dicussion Questions

• The Preacher in Ecclesiastes 2 conducts a deliberate experiment—testing pleasure, wisdom, and toil to see if any of them produce lasting gain. What version of this experiment are you currently running in your own life? What are you hoping will finally satisfy you or make life feel meaningful? When you look at that pursuit, what would it mean for it to 'carry over' into lasting gain? What would success actually look like? (Ecclesiastes2:1-11)

• Ecclesiastes 2:18-23 describes the anxiety that comes from knowing we must leave our work to someone else over whom we have no control. How does that particular fear show up in your life—whether with money, relationships, your children's futures, or your legacy? What would it look like to stop trying to control what you cannot control? (Ecclesiastes 2:18-23)

• The passage turns at verse 24, where the same realities reappear not as gain to be seized, but as gifts from God's hand to be received. The sermon traces this as a movement from closed fists to open hands. What would it mean practically—this week—for you to receive something as a gift rather than something you have to earn or control? What would you have to let go of in your heart to do that? (Ecclesiastes 2:24-26)

Sal Valenzuela

Church Plant Resident at Cross of Grace Church

You worked eighteen months for the promotion. Stayed late. Sacrificed weekends. Delivered ahead of schedule. And then the week before the announcement, the company restructured.

The role vanished. You’re still in your old job, wondering what you have to show for all that effort. Or maybe it’s not a promotion. Maybe it’s the dream house you saved for that fell through at closing. The restored relationship that collapsed again. The degree that opened no doors. The side business that folded after three years of grinding.

You put your hands out to hold the thing you worked for, and it evaporated.

Friends, Ecclesiastes has a word for that experience. The Hebrew word is hebel. Vapor. Smoke.

The thing that looks solid from a distance but dissipates the moment you reach for it.

Life Under the Sun Is Ungraspable

When the Preacher opens Ecclesiastes, he doesn’t ease into the diagnosis. He names it up front: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:2–3).

That word vanity—hebel—it’s not just “meaningless.” It’s more specific than that. It means vapor. Smoke. The Preacher is saying that life under the sun is fleeting, ungraspable, and ultimately out of your control. You work with all your might toward something, and just as you’re about to close your fist around it, it vanishes.

Think about the last time you poured yourself into something. Maybe it was a project at work, a savings goal, a fitness plan, a relationship you tried to repair. You gave it everything. And then—for reasons you couldn’t predict and couldn’t prevent—it slipped through your fingers. That’s hebel. That’s the vapor-like quality of human effort under the sun.

And here’s what makes it so disorienting: sometimes the work does pay off. Sometimes you get the promotion, close on the house, see the relationship heal. But even then, it doesn’t deliver what you thought it would. The promotion comes with new pressure. The house needs repairs. The relationship requires maintenance you didn’t anticipate. Even when you grasp the thing, it still feels like vapor.

The Diagnosis We Won’t Accept

Modern achievement culture won’t admit this. We’re told that if we work hard enough, plan smart enough, optimize our routines and our portfolios and our networks, we can secure the outcome. We can make it stick. We can be the exception.

But Ecclesiastes won’t let us off that easy. The Preacher has seen it all—wealth, wisdom, work, pleasure—and his conclusion is relentless: “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” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Every generation thinks they’ve figured out how to beat the system. Every generation discovers they haven’t.

So here’s the diagnostic question Ecclesiastes wants you to answer: Where in your life are you white-knuckling something, trying to control what cannot be controlled? Where areyou attempting to master the ungraspable?

Maybe it’s your career. Maybe it’s your kids’ outcomes. Maybe it’s your financial security or your reputation or your health. You know the area. It’s the one where you lie awake at night running scenarios, trying to close every gap, eliminate every variable. It’s the thing you can’t let go of because you’re convinced that if you just try hard enough, you can make it permanent.

Ecclesiastes is telling you: it’s vapor. And the harder you squeeze, the faster it dissipates.

The Paradox of Release

Now—before you hear this as nihilism, before you think Ecclesiastes is telling you to stop working or stop caring—here’s the good news: Ecclesiastes also says your work is good. It’s a gift from God. You’re supposed to eat, drink, and find joy in your toil (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

The book holds both truths at once: work is good, and work is often futile. Both are true. And the way forward is not to collapse into resignation but to release your grip. You cannot control the outcome. You cannot force the thing to stay in your hand. But you can receive your work as a gift, do it with joy, and trust that God’s purposes never evaporate.

Here’s the shift Ecclesiastes is inviting you into: stop grasping at wind. Open your hands. Do the work in front of you as an act of worship, knowing that whether it “succeeds” by the world’s standards or vanishes like vapor, God’s purposes stand forever. Align yourself with His work, not your own fleeting projects, and you’ll discover a freedom the achiever never knows.

The promotion might vanish. The plan might collapse. The thing you’re holding onto might slip through your fingers. But God’s Word stands. His purposes never fade. And when you stop trying to be the one who controls the outcome, you’re finally free to enjoy the gift of the work itself.

Friends, life under the sun is vapor. But there is a God above the sun who holds all things.

Release what you cannot control. Trust the One who can. And discover that the very work that felt pointless becomes joyful the moment you stop trying to grasp it.

Small-Group Discussion

· What would it look like to name that specific area of your life—rather than hide from it or numb it? (Ecclesiates 1:2-3)

· What fear comes up when you imagine letting go of that control?

· How should the fact that God is taking history toward new heavens and new earth change the way you approach this week’s repetitive routines and frustrations? (Isaiah 43:19; 2 Peter 3:10-13)

Preached by Daniel Everhart, with digital editing into current format

The Doctrine That Unsettles Us

When suffering crashes into our lives — when the diagnosis comes back terminal, when the child we prayed for remains wayward, when the pink slip arrives, when the marriage dissolves — we face a profound theological question: Who is in control here? The answer unsettles many Christians. If God is sovereign over suffering, doesn’t that make Him the author of evil? Wouldn’t it be better to imagine God as grieving alongside us, powerless to prevent the atrocities, His hands tied by human free will or natural consequences?

But Scripture presents a radically different picture, one that at first seems harder to understand but ultimately becomes our only lasting comfort. In Lamentations 3, Jeremiah stands in the ruins of Jerusalem after the Babylonian destruction and makes an astonishing claim: God Himself — not merely the Babylonians — is the agent of this affliction (Lamentations 3:1-18). The repeated pronouns leave no room for evasion: “He has driven and brought me into darkness... He has besieged and enveloped me... He has made my teeth grind on gravel” (Lamentations 3:2, 5, 16).

Divine Agency, Not Autonomous Evil

This is not the complaint of a bitter man accusing God of injustice. Jeremiah understands that God’s judgment on Jerusalem is just, deserved, and consistent with His covenant promises. The people violated their covenant obligations; God acted in covenant faithfulness by executing the judgment He had warned would come. In this framework, God Himself is the agent of affliction, acting not capriciously but in accordance with His revealed character and purposes.

The theological precision here matters immensely for our pastoral comfort. If the Babylonians acted autonomously — if evil operates with no boundaries, if suffering happens outside God’s sovereign control — then we live in a universe where atrocities rule with no purpose, no limits, and no redemptive trajectory.

But if God rules over all affliction, if He is sovereign rather than merely a passive observer, then suffering has boundaries.

Evil does not get the final word. There is a God bigger than our atrocities who is ruling, reigning, and working all things together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).

The Comfort of Boundaries

Consider the griefs that mark contemporary Christian experience: the cancer that metastasizes despite fervent prayer, the infertility that stretches year after agonizing year, the child who walks away from the faith, the sudden job loss that threatens financial ruin, the chronic pain that never relents. In each case, we face a choice about how to interpret our suffering.

If we adopt a theology where God has lost control — where He stands on the sidelines wringing His hands, unable to intervene — we are left with no comfort beyond stoic endurance. Our suffering becomes meaningless, a cosmic accident, evidence that the universe is fundamentally chaotic and that evil ultimately overpowers good.

But if we embrace the biblical testimony that God is sovereign over suffering — that He sets boundaries around affliction, that He purposes good through pain, that He works redemptively even in our darkest moments — then we discover profound comfort. Our suffering is not meaningless. It does not exceed God’s knowledge or control. He has not abandoned us to the whims of fate or the cruelty of autonomous evil. He has a good plan.

A God Who Rules With Purpose

The gospel humbles us as we grasp this truth: the same God who exercises sovereign control over suffering is the God who demonstrated His steadfast love by sending His Son to bear the full weight of divine wrath on our behalf. In Christ, God entered into the deepest affliction, enduring the Father’s judgment that we deserved. The Man of Affliction in Lamentations 3:1 points forward typologically to Jesus, who suffered darkness in Gethsemane, betrayal, mockery, physical agony, and the cry of dereliction: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Because Christ endured God’s sovereign wrath for our sins and rose victorious from the grave, we have every confidence that God’s sovereignty over our suffering is motivated by love, constrained by purpose, and directed toward our ultimate good. He is not a distant deity experimenting with our pain. He is the Father who disciplines those He loves, the Shepherd who leads through dark valleys, the Sovereign who promises that suffering produces endurance, character, and hope (Romans 5:3-4). Jesus is the proof of his love for us. Jesus is the example of how God’s sovereignty, even in suffering, can produce good for eternity.

Lifting Our Eyes

In the ruins of life, when everything seems to be falling apart, we can lift our eyes to the God whose steadfast love never ceases and whose mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). His sovereignty over suffering is not a doctrine to fear but a truth to embrace — the foundation of our hope that even in affliction, we are held by a God who is bigger than our pain, wiser than our understanding, and faithful beyond our comprehension.

Great is His faithfulness.

Full sermon in original format available at crossofgrace.net

When we think about threats to our faith, we imagine the dramatic scenarios—public persecution, intellectual challenges so strong they shake the foundations, a culture so hostile we’re forced to choose. We prepare for the frontal assault. We steel ourselves against outright denial.

But Paul, writing to Titus, warns of something far more subtle and far more deadly: distraction.

Not the bold rejection of the gospel. Not the open embrace of false teaching. But the slow, steady drift away from what matters most—entangled in endless controversies that profit no one and accomplish nothing.

Here’s what Paul writes in Titus 3:9-10: “But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.”

The More Subtle Danger

Look, throughout Titus, Paul addresses two major threats to the church. The first is obvious—the Circumcision Party back in chapter 1, people who openly denied the sufficiency of Christ and taught a false gospel. Paul doesn’t mince words about them. He calls them out directly.

But here in chapter 3, he names something different. Something quieter. Something that doesn’t announce itself as heresy but will still destroy just as effectively.

Paul calls them foolish controversies—endless arguments about genealogies and Old Testament laws that determine nothing important, profit no one, and accomplish nothing. They’re just arguments for arguments’ sake. Unprofitable and worthless.

Here’s my perspective after fifteen years of ministry: for most Christians, the greatest danger is not that you’ll wake up one day and deny the faith. The more common danger is that you’ll slowly, week by week, get distracted from its essentials.

Calvin saw this clearly. He wrote that Satan, through his cunning, uses the impudent talkativeness of heretics to entangle good and faithful Christians, drawing them away from the worthy work God has placed before them. It’s like wandering off the trail and getting tangled in the brambles—you didn’t mean to leave the path, but suddenly you’re stuck, bleeding, making no progress. He uses the word “entangled” which I think is vivid and apt here.

And here’s the tragedy: while you’re tangled up arguing about things that profit no one, the work God actually gave you to do goes neglected. Your family sees the back of your head while you’re at the keyboard. Your neighbor never hears the gospel because you’re too busy winning arguments on Reddit. Your church needs you serving, but you’re distracted. So here are seven questions to ask yourself to make sure you aren’t falling off of the trail.

Seven Questions to Ask

So how do we know the difference? When should we engage in theological dispute, and when should we walk away from distraction?

Paul’s test is simple: Is it profitable and worthwhile? But let me give you seven diagnosticquestions to help you discern:

• First: Is this a gospel issue? Does it touch the person and work of Christ, or the means of salvation?

• Second: Does this have major theological implications that ripple out into doctrine and life?

• Third: Does this have practical, daily implications for how Christians live?

• Fourth: Are you the right person to engage this? Do you have the knowledge, the calling, the relationships?

• Fifth: Is this the right place and the right person to have this conversation? Or are you arguing with strangers online who have no reason to listen to you?

• Sixth: Do you actually have the time and attention this requires? Or will engaging this mean neglecting your family, your church, your actual responsibilities?

• Seventh: Do trusted, godly people in your life agree with your assessment that this is worth your energy?

Think, for example, about the flood account—when it happened, how it happened. Discussing it has a place. But getting into fiery, angry arguments with strangers on the internet? That’s a Titus 3 issue. Walk away from that argument. But the biblical definition of marriage and sexuality? There are huge implications for life on a daily basis. That’s a Titus 1 issue. Stand firm there.

The problem is we get it backwards. Too many people are lions on the message boards and cowards when it comes to living a godly life in their home. Let it not be true of us.

The Warning About Division

And here’s Paul’s warning in verse 10: there’s a kind of person who loves stirring updivision, who becomes warped and self-condemned. After warning them once or twice, have nothing more to do with him.

That’s strong language, right? But Paul knows what I’ve seen in ministry: people who neglect their families to engage in constant theological disputes always end poorly. They become warped. They become sinful. They become self-condemned.

Do not give your best energy to what is profitless and worthless.

The Better Way

Here’s the good news: you know how you avoid distraction? You get your hands full with the right things.

I once asked one of our early pastors how they avoided getting tangled up in theological rabbit trails while planting the church. His answer? They never had to strategize to avoid distractions. They were just too busy with God’s saving work, too consumed with restoring the church to its biblical design, too aware that time was short.

When you’re consumed with the right things, distraction falls away on its own.

So here’s my charge, friends: refuse to give your best energy to arguments that profit no one. Test every controversy by Paul’s standard—is it profitable, is it worthwhile, does it advance the gospel or adorn it? And if it doesn’t, walk away.

Your life is too short. Your mission is too urgent. Your family needs you too much. And Christ has called you to better things.

Somewhere in the last two generations, the church absorbed a piece of cultural air without noticing it had absorbed anything. It is the assumption that sexuality is a need. Not a desire, not an appetite, not a gift — a need. Like water. Like sleep. Something you can be deprived of in a clinically meaningful sense.

This is a stronger claim than it sounds. If sexuality is a need, then telling an unmarried adult to abstain from it indefinitely is not a hard call to faithfulness — it is, by definition, cruelty. It is depriving a human being of something they are constituted to require. And the moment that framing settles in, the entire biblical sexual ethic collapses into something the modern listener cannot hear except as a form of harm.

The Bible’s answer is direct. No, it isn’t. Sexuality is not a need. It is a gift.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7:25–31 in a moment of intense crisis, that you don’t have to get married. In fact it can be good and right to be unmarried: “Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is.”

The difference matters because gifts and needs operate by completely different logics. A need is something whose absence wounds you. A gift is something whose presence delights you. You can live a long, fruitful, fully human life without a gift. You cannot live without a need. To call something a gift is to say I can be content without this, and I receive it gratefully when God gives it. To call something a need is to say if I do not have this, something has gone wrong with my life.

Romance, sexuality, marriage — these are good gifts. They are very good gifts. The Song of Songs is in the canon precisely because God is not embarrassed by the gift. But here is the move the modern Christian almost cannot make: a thing can be a good gift and still not be a need. The fact that it is good does not make its absence a deprivation.

Think of a fire. On a clear evening in October, in a fire pit, with the kids around it and marshmallows on sticks, a fire is a glorious thing. Move that same fire eighteen feet to the left and into the living room and it will burn the house down. Move it to a dry national forest in August and it can take out fifty thousand acres. The fire has not changed. The fire is still good. What has changed is whether the fire is in its place.

This is the church’s whole sexual ethic in one image. The gift, in its place — covenant marriage between a man and a woman — warms the house. The same gift, out of its place, takes down whatever it touches. We have all watched the wildfires. We know what happens.

The therapeutic culture cannot make this distinction because it has flattened gifts into needs. If sexuality is a need, then the only ethical question is how do we get this need met? And every answer will eventually involve detaching the fire from its proper place. But if sexuality is a gift, the ethical question changes entirely. It becomes am I receiving the gift on God’s terms, or am I demanding it on mine?

The deeper problem under the gift-versus-need confusion is older than the sexual revolution. It’s the oldest confusion in the human heart — taking a gift from God’s hand and treating it as a god. Money does this. Family does this. Career, ministry, children, sex, the approval of other people — all of them are gifts, and all of them have, at one time or another, been promoted to god.

A gift becomes a god the moment you decide you cannot live without it. I cannot be a complete person unless I am married. I cannot have a fulfilled life unless I have children. I cannot be at peace unless my career succeeds. These are not Christian sentences. They are religious sentences pointed at something other than the God of Israel.

The cure is not to despise the gift. The cure is to receive the gift from the right hand and to keep it in the right place. Romance is good. Sex is good. Marriage is good. Children are good. Money is good. Receive every one of them with gratitude. And do not, under any circumstances, give them the throne. They will not hold it, and they will burn the house down trying.

Paul ends his counsel about considering marriage during a local crisis with a simple, but profound, aside: 1 Corinthians 7:[40] “Yet in my judgment she [the unmarried] is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” Paul doesn’t see marriage as ultimate, he sees the presence of God as ultimate. He has rightly put romance and sexuality in the category of a gift, not a god. And there, he is content.

So too, may we be.

The Need

Men and boys are in a crisis today: Boys are 7% more likely to drop out of high school than girls, a gender gap that Fortune last year noted “has gone largely unaddressed by schools.” They have higher rates of unemployment, have shorter life expectancies, and are four times more likely than females to die by suicide. For every 100 bachelors degrees awarded to women only 74 are awarded to men. The largest drop in employment in recent years has been that more and more men aged 25-34 are unemployed. In the new category of “death by despair” (suicide, alcohol, addiction, etc.) 3 out of 4 deaths are men. (See more in The Washington Post.)

One man a reporter talked to summed up the main issue many men are facing: “I just want someone to tell me how to be.” But where do we turn to get guidance on what it means to be a man? And how to become one?

The Guide

We have a book, we have a guide and it is found in the Bible. Being a man is not making the most money, hitting the highest workout PRs in the gym, having the most man toys, or being popular on dating apps. Being a man is much more fundamental.

Men were created, by design, and that design is good. God embedded some things deep within men that they were meant to be. From Genesis 1-3 author Jon Tyson defines manhood this way: a man is an image bearer and son of God, entrusted with power and responsibility to create, cultivate, care, and defend, for God’s glory and the good of others.

Our first father, Adam, failed to be what he was made to be with devastating consequences in Gen 1-3

• He was passive and didn’t stop evil from entering the garden

• He did not accept responsibility for his wife, creation, or his failure

• He did not lead out courageous when he should have

• He traded the greater reward for the bite of a forbidden fruit

But Jesus Christ provides a hopeful picture of what it means to be a man in Romans 5

• Jesus was not passive but actively on his Father’s mission

• Jesus accepted responsibility for his mission and even for all his people, going to the cross for them

• Jesus leads courageous as the head of the church and is working a plan to restore all things

• Jesus endured the cross for the eternal good of his people

In manhood we aim to imitate Jesus.

The Hope

All of us fall and fall as men. None of us are who we should be. That’s why Jesus came. John 3:16 tells us “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.” Because Jesus died for our failures we can life a new life. Read more about the hope of Jesus here.

The Principles

What does it mean to pursue manhood?

Here are four principles of what it means to be a man drawn from author Robert Lewis:

1. Reject Passivity

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2)

Every man faces the temptation to do nothing, to be passive, not to take action. The world then conforms us to its mold. Biblical manhood means shaking off passivity and doing what needs to be done and taking action.
Read the story of a young boy who saved his sister from a dog attack.

2. Accept Responsibility

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” (1 Corinthians 16:13)

Every man faces the temptation to shirk responsibility. But men are made to accept responsibility for themselves and others at home and work and the world around them. This is a posture that says “I’m willing to take this on, I’m willing to be accountable for this.”

Watch a small character accept a large responsibility, taken from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

3. Lead Courageously

“But as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:16)

Every man faces the temptation to shrink back where there is a moment that calls for leadership and courage. But men were made to lead out courageously whenever there is opportunity across the various areas of their lives. Courage is the call for all men, not just a few.

Read Teddy Roosevelt on courage and the call to the arena.

4. Expect the Greater Reward

“Behold I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done” (Rev 22:12)

Every man faces the temptation to trade long term good for short term pleasure or comfort. But biblical manhood means looking to the reward ahead and working toward it. The great things in life of eternal significance don’t happen immediately so men work faithfully now. And the greatest things in life we only receive in eternity so biblical men work for that great and final day.

Read the story of Jim Eliot who said “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Resources

Community

• Find community at Cross of Grace

• Find other good churches in your area

Books on Biblical Manhood

• The Shepherd Leader at Home by Timothy Witmer

• Disciplines of a Godly Man by Kent Hughes

• Thoughts for Young Men by J.C. Ryle

Books on Raising Sons

• Raising a Modern Day Knight by Robert Lewis

• The Intentional Father by Jon Tyson

Books for Men

• Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose (non-fiction)

• The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (non-fiction)

• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (fiction)

Books for Boys Becoming Men

• The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson (fiction)

• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (fiction)

The Gospel of Mark is not a tidy book. It ends, famously, without resolution — the women flee the empty tomb, trembling and astonished, and say nothing to anyone. No appearance of the risen Christ. No triumphant closing scene. Just silence and fear and an open question hanging in the air.

And yet, for two thousand years, that unresolved ending has been the point.

Some well-meaning monk or church historian, apparently convinced that a proper gospel needed a proper ending, added additional material — verses that appear in many Bibles today, but with a marginal note acknowledging they were absent from the earliest manuscripts. The impulse is understandable. Open endings are uncomfortable. We want resolution.

But Mark’s ending is not a mistake. It is an invitation.

The Gospel of Mark invites us to bring our own unresolved lives — our question marks, our losses, our failures, our doubts — to the empty tomb. Why did that happen to me? Or When will this be fixed? Or Is there hope for failures like me? We’re invited to bring those to the empty tomb. But when we arrive, we discover that the tomb has a question of its own for us.

I. What Is the Worst Thing That Has Ever Happened to You?

The Women at the Tomb

Consider the women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning.

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. — Mark 16:1–2

They were coming to perform the final, sorrowful duty of love: to anoint a dead body before it decomposed. Three days had passed. The smell of death was already in the air.

These were women who had walked with Jesus through years of ministry. Mary Magdalene — a woman who had been used and broken by the world and then restored by Jesus — had staked everything on him. Mary the mother of James had welcomed him like a son, seen him welcomed at her table, watched her extended family expand around him. Together, they had witnessed miracles and listened to his teaching with astonishment. They had seen in Jesus the fulfillment of everything Israel had hoped for: a King who could deliver, restore, and save.

Now he was dead and decomposing in a tomb.

What is it that you carry to the empty tomb? What hope has collapsed, what dream has been buried, what loss has left you wondering how to go on? Bring it with you as we approach the tomb.

The Crack in the Foundation

These questions are like cracks that keep breaking into our lives no matter what we do. We experience real pain — genuine loss, genuine brokenness — and our first instinct is to cover it over. A new relationship, a new career, a change of scenery.

My wife and I nearly bought a house once with a major problem that had been hidden. We loved the house, but there was a strange paint job of jaggled patterns all over the walls. We learned later that the foundation was failing and that this paint job was hiding dozens of cracks over the walls and ceiling.

This is so often what we do in life. We paint over the cracks and tell ourselves the house is fine. The best that other religions can do is paper over the cracks of human experience, but no philosophy can fix the problem in humanity’s very foundation.

But Scripture refuses to let us settle for cosmetic repair. The Bible traces all suffering — every loss, every death, every broken relationship — back to a common root. As Paul writes:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. — Romans 5:12

In the opening chapters of Genesis, there is no death — only peace and flourishing. In Genesis 3, sickness and death and brokenness enter the world. Sin fractures our relationship with God, with one another, and with creation itself. The cracks run all the way to the foundation.

No amount of painting over them will reach that deep.

The Answer in the Empty Tomb

And then the women look up.

And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back — it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.” — Mark 16:4–6

The text is plain and unadorned: Jesus really died. The tomb was real. The burial cloths were there. And Jesus was not.

History has produced many remarkable religious figures — teachers, prophets, martyrs, founders of great movements. Only one has descended into the foundation of the world, gone all the way down into death itself, and come back out. Only one.

Centuries before the resurrection, the prophet Isaiah had spoken of a day when God would do something almost too large to comprehend:

He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces... It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.” — Isaiah 25:7–8

That day arrived on Easter morning.

C.S. Lewis, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, gave us one of the most memorable ways of putting it: because of the great sacrifice, “death itself starts working backwards.” The resurrection of Jesus sets death running in reverse.

For all who trust in Christ, the losses of this life are not final. Hurts can be healed — now and forever. The dead will be raised. Paul puts it simply and staggeringly:

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. — 1 Corinthians 15:22

“What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you?” The empty tomb answers: in Christ, even that is not beyond undoing.

II. What Is the Worst Thing You Have Ever Done?

The Disciples’ Failure

The first question concerns what has been done to us. But the Gospel of Mark is not content to leave it there, because the truth about human beings runs deeper than victimhood. We are not only sinned against. We also sin.

Mark makes this point with almost brutal honesty. When Jesus is arrested, the disciples — the men who had traveled with him for three years, who had seen the miracles and heard the teaching and pledged their loyalty — flee into the darkness. Every one of them. Mark includes himself in this indictment, noting in chapter 14 that one young man fled so desperately that he left his cloak behind and ran naked into the night, exposed and ashamed. It is not a flattering detail. It is an honest one.

And then there is Peter.

Peter — the loudest voice, the most fervent pledge of loyalty, the one who said he would die before he denied Jesus — denies him three times. Not to a judge or a soldier. To a servant girl. The bravest of the disciples, the boldest, collapses in fear before a question from someone with no power over him at all.

The Weight of What We’ve Done

There is a kind of anonymous prank that used to make the rounds: someone would mail a letter to a stranger reading simply, “I know what you did. Soon everyone will know.” The results were revealing. People confessed to hidden affairs. Others fled to other countries. Long-buried crimes resurfaced. The joke, if it could be called that, worked because it touched something universal: most of us are carrying something we would rather no one know.

Our instinct in moments like these is to find someone worse than ourselves and take comfort in the comparison. “At least I’m not like them.” But this is a smaller comfort than it appears.

The weight of a wrong is not determined only by what was done, but by who was wronged. An offense against a stranger is one thing; an offense against a close friend is something else entirely. And if that is true — if the closeness of the relationship multiplies the weight of the wrong — then the most serious offense any human being can commit is not against another person, but against God himself. The One who created us. The One who loves us most.

When we see it in those terms, the disciples’ failure stops looking like something distant and foreign. It begins to look very familiar.

“And Peter”

Here is where the Gospel of Mark does something astonishing. Having laid out the failure in full — the flight, the denials, the cowardice — the angel at the empty tomb delivers this message:

“But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” — Mark 16:7

Two words in particular deserve to be held in the light: and Peter.

Jesus does not say, “tell the disciples” — and leave Peter to wonder whether the invitation extends to him after what he has done. He singles Peter out by name. The worst offender, the one who should by any reckoning have forfeited his place — Jesus calls him back explicitly. Not to punishment. To restoration. To renewed relationship.

Peter would go on to help lead the early church. He would write portions of the New Testament. He would eventually give his life for the faith. How does such a story become possible after such a failure?

Peter himself gives the answer. Writing later to early Christians, he describes what made it possible:

...you were ransomed... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. — 1 Peter 1:18–19

The offense against God — the one no amount of effort or good intention can cover — was paid not by us, but by God himself. The debt was absorbed at the cross. And because it was fully paid, there is no sin and no guilt left outstanding for those who come to him.

There are many jokes I’ve heard about St. Peter at the pearly gates, but remember that it’s a miracle that Peter would find himself behind the gates at all. Imagine his record being reviewed – he couldn’t even stay awake to pray with Jesus, he so misunderstood Jesus’ mission he resorted to violence, then he was such a coward he denied Jesus. And then denied him again. And then again. How is that such a failure could find himself welcomed behind the “pearly gates” of heaven? How could a failure be restored?

Perhaps Peter’s answer would be simple: I was invited.

Mark 16:7 is the invitation: “And Peter.” Jesus, on the other side of the cross and empty tomb speaks not a word of judgment or condemnation, but a word of invitation.

That word of invitation — “and Peter” — is still being spoken. Whatever you have done, whatever you have hidden, whatever you are afraid cannot be forgiven: look again at the angel’s message. Find your name there. The invitation has not expired.

III. Who Is Jesus to You?

The Question the Gospel Was Always Building Toward

Throughout the Gospel of Mark, a single question echoes again and again: Who is this? Who is this man who teaches with such authority, who heals the sick, who commands the wind and the waves? The question builds through chapter after chapter, demanding an answer.

Two answers arrive near the end. First, the Apostle Peter: “You are the Christ” — the Messiah, the promised King of Israel. Then, at the cross, a Roman centurion who has just watched Jesus die: “Surely this man was the Son of God.” A Jewish disciple and a Roman soldier, arriving at the same conclusion.

He is the King. He is the Son of God. He is the Savior.

And that is why the empty tomb does not simply announce good news. It asks a question.

Evidence That Cannot Be Dismissed

For the original readers of Mark’s gospel, the evidence was not merely historical — it was immediate. The names in the text were real names; the people could be located and questioned. And the evidence of ordinary men and women willing to die for what they had seen and heard was all around them. This was not mythology. It was testimony.

That testimony has not grown quieter over two thousand years. We have the manuscript evidence — the Gospel of Mark is among the most well-attested documents from the ancient world. We have the historical record of the early church, an unlikely movement that spread across cultures and continents with extraordinary speed. And we have, perhaps most powerfully, the ongoing evidence of lives changed: men and women across every language, culture, and century who have encountered the risen Jesus and been made new.

The question the empty tomb asks is not primarily academic. It is personal.

The Question Is Yours to Answer

It is possible to know a great deal about someone without knowing them. A biography gives us facts; it does not give us a relationship. The Gospel of Mark is not primarily offering information about Jesus. It is offering an encounter with him.

Perhaps you are reading this as someone for whom Jesus has always been a distant figure — a religious name, a historical footnote. The empty tomb confronts you with a decision. Who is this man to you?

Perhaps you once knew him, or thought you did, but you have drifted. You’ve wandered. You’ve looked up and found yourself far away. The invitation of Mark 16:7 is still extended: he goes before you. He is waiting.

Perhaps you grew up surrounded by faith — in a church, in a Christian family — and you know that the people around you know Jesus. But do you know Jesus?

The Gospel of Mark ends with an unresolved question precisely because it refuses to answer that question on your behalf. It brings you to the tomb. It shows you the stone has been rolled away. It gives you the testimony of those who saw what they saw.

And then it asks: Who do you say he is?

A Personal Word

At the empty tomb we find hope that continues to rippled out into the world. My wife and I are testimonies of this. Too often people assume that because I’m a pastor nothing bad must have happened to either of us, or assume that we’ve always been good nice people. Not so.

My wife Jenn grew up carrying tremendous loss. She was a twin who lost her sister at a young age, then lost another sister years later. Her home life was volatile and difficult. She buried so much of it, as people do. But as a teenager, she heard a message about heaven and something changed in her. She felt and understood in a profound way that because Jesus rose, she had the hope of heaven. The worst things are not final. They can be undone. That understanding has shaped her life ever since.

My own story runs along the second question. I appeared, from the outside, to be a good kid. But through my teenage years I was quietly living a double life, carrying patterns of sin I kept hidden from everyone around me. It finally came apart in my late teens, when I was serving in a Christian ministry and the whole truth surfaced. I had taken the trust of real people and broken it. I called my pastor. After he let me speak, the first thing he said was this: “Ricky, as you’ve repented, God forgives you. He loves you. He’s for you.” That moment changed me again.

So the empty tomb is not a monument to a past event. It is the source of life that is still flowing — into grief, into guilt, into doubt, into the ordinary brokenness of ordinary lives. Jesus has changed ours.

He can change yours too.

He has risen.

Mark 16:1–8 | Romans 5:12 | Isaiah 25:7–9 | 1 Corinthians 15:22 | 1 Peter 1:18–19