Easter at Houston's First

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us,"

- C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing.”
- Blaise Pascal

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

• Hebrew word hebel literally means vapor, breath, emptiness.

• Life without God is smoke in the wind.

“Then I considered all that my hands had done… and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

• Solomon tried wealth, pleasure, achievement.

• Conclusion: full life externally, empty life internally.

“All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.”

• Endless consumption but no satisfaction.

“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

• Humanity tries to fill the soul with things that cannot fill it.

“My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

• The human attempt to fill emptiness with leaky containers.

“Surely every man stands as a mere breath!”

• Again the vapor / emptiness imagery.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

• Work without God equals emptiness of outcome.

“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”

• The greatest example of full outside, empty inside.

“Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

• The rich fool story is about empty success.

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

• Jesus is the answer to the emptiness problem.

"The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living."

"Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar."

"Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son."

"The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a distinguishing mark for you; when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will be among you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt."

“What then?” they asked him. “Are you Elijah?”

“I am not,” he said.

“Are you the Prophet?”

“No,” he answered.

Matthew 12:40
"For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights."

"From then on, Jesus began to point out to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day."

Matthew 17:23
"They will kill Him, and on the third day He will be raised up. And they were deeply distressed."

Matthew 20:19
"Then they will hand Him over to the Gentiles to be mocked, flogged, and crucified, and He will be resurrected on the third day.”