Everybody Wants to Rule The(ir) World
Enjoy this message from Pastor Tyler Schoenberger called "Everybody Wants to Rule The(ir) World" on Sunday, November 1, 2026 at Reach Church in Bear, Delaware!
We all carry a deep desire to be in charge of our own lives, to set our own terms and decide what is good for us. Ecclesiastes 7 takes that desire seriously and traces it to its root. The writer of Ecclesiastes spent his life searching for wisdom that would allow him to figure out life on his own terms, only to conclude that true wisdom remained far beyond his reach. His final verdict is striking: God made humanity upright, but we have spent our entire history chasing our own schemes. That conclusion points directly back to Genesis 3, where the serpent's temptation was never really about fruit. It was an invitation to autonomy, to trust our own judgment over God's word and decide for ourselves what is good.
The problem is that this pattern did not end in the garden. It continues in our everyday lives, often in subtle ways. Many of us believe in God and genuinely want His blessing, but we have already decided what success looks like, what will make us happy, and where our lives should go. We invite God in to bless the plans we have already made rather than allowing His wisdom to shape what we want in the first place. That is still autonomy, just dressed in religious language.
Jesus did not come to play a supporting role in the life we have designed for ourselves. He came to give us an entirely new life. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1 that Christ became for us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Because He is our righteousness, we do not have to earn our standing before God. Because He is our sanctification, our growth rests on His grace rather than our own effort. Because He is our redemption, our future is secure in Him rather than in our ability to hold everything together. True wisdom, then, is not becoming better at ruling your own world. It is the growing recognition that you were never meant to, and that dependence on God is exactly what you were created for.