Sermon Transcript
Well, we’re gonna talk about the life of Solomon. So when you look at the book of Ecclesiastes, you’re focused on King Solomon, and he wrote this book as the last book that he wrote. He wrote 3 books that we find in the Old Testament part of the Bible: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. And so if you’re not there yet, why don’t you turn in your Bible to Ecclesiastes, somewhere in the middle of the Bible, right after Psalms. You have Proverbs, and then you have Ecclesiastes.
So this was the 3rd book actually that he wrote. He wrote Proverbs first, a book filled with wisdom. Then he wrote Song of Solomon, and this is a tremendous book that describes the love relationship that he shared with the Shulamite woman. They ultimately got married, the dating relationship, or all that was involved in that relationship and marriage and so forth. So it’s a great book on love and marriage.
And then he wrote a book of regrets, Ecclesiastes. And we’re gonna look at this book because it’s something that can help us in our culture that we live in, a culture that’s chasing after meaning. So oftentimes we find ourselves living lives that are unfulfilling. And so this can not only be helpful to us, but it will be helpful to friends and others that hopefully would come and be a part of the series with us or maybe hear the series online or whatever it might be. Solomon describes how his life fell apart in his older years.
So things really started out well for him. Basically, God came to him and said, Solomon, what do you want? And this is after he was made king. He was the 3rd king. Saul was the 1st king for Israel, then David was the 2nd king, and this is one of David’s sons, Solomon, and he was the 3rd king over Israel.
He reigned about 970 to 931 BC. And so, at the beginning of that reign, God came to him and said, what do you want? And Solomon said, well, what I want is wisdom to judge your people. So, God gave him wisdom, and we see that demonstrated in the book of Proverbs and the book of Song of Solomon. He was a man of wisdom, but God also gave him a bonus.
He gave him wealth. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it? Wisdom and wealth. He gave him a lot of money. He had a lot of affluence, a lot of influence.
People knew about him all throughout the world. People would come to see him throughout the world, from throughout the world. So this was a man of prominence. He had wisdom, he had wealth, and ultimately he ended up with women. And if you know the account, you know that he ended up with 1,000 wives.
Well, actually 700 wives and 300 concubines, excuse me, concubines, not porcupines, but he had 1,000 wives, which would say to you, what happened to the guy’s wisdom? You know, what went wrong? Well, he writes about what went wrong in the book of Ecclesiastes. And so we’re going to take a look at this derailment that he experienced in his life, his detour, and what came about. And we’re going to hopefully learn from that.
In fact, The book of Ecclesiastes is a personal journal, and one of the best ways to learn, I think, is from somebody else’s experiences, especially if they’ve had bad experiences. Why go through the same bad experiences when we can learn from somebody else’s bad experiences and not repeat them? That sounds good to me. And so basically we have a journal of regrets, or some people call Ecclesiastes the inspired book of error. The inspired book of air.
So let’s just get started looking at verses 1 through 11. It says this: The words of the teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem. Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come, generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises And the sun sets, and it hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and it turns to the north. Round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea’s never full.
To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again.
There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, look, this is something new? It was here already long ago. It was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.
Now doesn’t that just get you excited when you read that account? I mean, you know, you read that and you think, this guy was like a grumpy old man, or something, you know, sitting over in the corner licking his wounds, or— it’s a man without meaning, which is why he starts this passage with meaningless, meaningless. He’s living a meaningless life, an empty life, a vain life. If you have a King James Version of the Bible, it says vanity instead of meaningless. It uses the word vanity.
So it’s vanity, vanity, all of life is vanity. When he writes that, he’s not talking about, you know, your grandmother’s piece of furniture. He’s saying life without God is vanity. It’s empty. It’s hollow.
There’s nothing there. It’s just pointless. It’s pointless. If you have The Message translation, it says it’s smoke. Nothing but smoke.
It’s momentary. It’s a fleeting existence. Now, it’s possible that you can relate to that right now. You can say that’s kind of— that describes my life. It feels meaningless.
It feels empty. It feels like I keep trying to find something to you know, fulfill me and I can’t. It could be descriptive of somebody that you know. It could be descriptive of a time in your life in the past. Hopefully it won’t be descriptive of a time in your life in the future.
The tragedy is, or the possibility is, is that this could be descriptive of our future life because this is describing Solomon’s older age. His older age, he fell into this kind of a life, a life without meaning. And of course, that life without meaning produced in him a meaningless, a meaningless mindset. We’re gonna primarily just focus on his meaningless mindset as we look at those verses I just read, verses 1 through 11. A meaningless mindset.
Now let me ask you, how important is a person’s mindset? It’s really important, right? Because our mindset is going to determine the kind of life that we live. This past week on Monday, I went in, I had a procedure at a hospital. It was kind of an, you know, inpatient-outpatient kind of thing.
And while they were preparing me for the procedure— this is a follow-up to the endoscopy that I did 3 months ago when I was gone for 3 weeks in a row and all the sickness, and I won’t go into all of that because you don’t want to hear it. But they said, we gotta do a follow-up on you to see if you’re doing better. And they said the result was I’m much improved. So I’m really happy to hear that. You know, I would’ve liked to hear you’re completely healed, but you know, you’re much improved and everything seems to be going the right direction was what they told me.
Well, while you go into the, you know, the room there where they’re gonna prepare you, you’ve got all these people coming in and you get there early and they start preparing you for the procedure. And so it’s one nurse after another. And Veronica came in and Gary and Monique and Gavin and Rachel. They all came in different times, you know, helping me get ready and the preparation before you go into the room. They sedate you and all the rest of that stuff.
Well, if I remember correctly, things were going by quickly. Veronica was engaging me in a conversation about, you know, a little bit about my life and asking me questions and stuff. And at one point she She found out that we are just 7 years new in this area, and she said, so where did you move from? I said, well, we moved from Phoenix. She said, how did you like Phoenix?
And I said, okay, I’m gonna give you an answer right now that’s from me, but this isn’t really kind of the answer that a lot of people would give you that live in Phoenix. I mean, the ones who are still living there right now, they probably wouldn’t give you the same answer that I’m gonna give you right now, but I really liked Phoenix except for the summer. The summers were terrible, made me never wanna live in Phoenix. I mean, it was just, it’s like so hot. Have you ever been there in the summer?
It is really, really hot. It makes you think you died and went to the wrong place. It is that hot. It’s just bad, okay? So I said to her, so, you know, that’s how I feel about it.
There are a lot of people there, they don’t feel that way about it. In fact, some people are members of country clubs where they play golf, and they intentionally, even though they could play in the morning, they play in the afternoon. They like the heat. That much in the summer. I mean, they just, they love it, but not me, you know.
I’m more like the first pastor that they wanted to get at the church that I went to there, Bethany Bible Church. They called up a guy who was here in California named J. Vernon McGee, and they said, would you come over and be our pastor? Leave California, come over to Phoenix, be our pastor. J. Vernon McGee said, no, there are 3 reasons I would not do that: June, July, and August. I identify with that.
And if you ever go there and you live there, you find out, you know, it’s not just June, July, and August.
It’s months around June, July, and August. Like for 6, 7 months you got your air conditioning on. So anyway, I shared a little bit of that with her. I gave her a piece of my mind that she probably didn’t wanna hear. Maybe she was thinking about moving there.
I have no idea. All I know is that that’s my mindset. That’s my mindset. And my mindset impacts my views of life, especially life in Phoenix. Our mindsets are absolutely huge.
And I say all of that to say, so we’re gonna look at a guy who’s living with a meaningless mindset, a meaningless mindset. And, and really what this is, is these first 11 verses can be like a diagnostic tool that you and I can use to determine how much of the meaningless mindset has infected our lives, okay? How much of the meaningless mindset has infected our our lives because it had got into every part of Solomon’s life. And so he describes what life was like for him in interesting detail here in verses 1 through 11. So we’re just gonna take a quick look at it.
I put a circle on your message notes if you want to use that to follow along, to help you, you know, jot down a few words. I’d encourage you to do that. We’re gonna go quickly, but a meaningless life described by Solomon. He starts with, what does man gain, verse 3, from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? What does he gain?
The first thing Solomon wants to say is a meaningless life is unprofitable. It’s unprofitable. Now, when you hear that, you gotta make the connection at the beginning here in verse 3 to 3 words that are there. Do you see ’em? Under the sun.
Those words, under the sun, Solomon’s gonna use it here in verses 1 to 11 twice, those words, but he’s going to use those words 29 times, 29 times in the book of Ecclesiastes. So you gotta understand that when he’s talking about this meaningless life, he’s connecting it to life that’s apart from God and a life that basically finds its meaning in humans or earthly existence, okay? So we’re not talking about a God-centered life, we’re talking about a man-centered life. And Solomon asked the question, is there anything to be gained in terms of lasting value apart from God? Can we apart from God find ultimate meaning in life?
And his answer is, no, it’s unprofitable. There’s no gain there. Now, he’s going to the depths of the whole thing here, obviously. You know, I mean, he is— he’s on the verge of despair. This, however, is an interesting question to ask.
You know, well, what’s to be gained? It’s kind of like you as a student asking the question, well, what’s the point of doing homework anyway? I mean, what’s the gain? Why bother? Is there any gain there?
Or it’s like a young mom or a young dad who asks about working or staying at home, you know, after having a kid. Well, what’s the gain? Should I go back to work? Because— and the question is, if I go back to work and then I have to get childcare, well, is it going to be enough pay to pay for the childcare and make my work worth it? Or why even bother?
What’s the gain? And essentially Solomon concludes a meaningless life is unprofitable. There’s no gain there. Going on, verse 4, a meaningless life is temporal. Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
What you have there is a description of a life cycle. So people are born, they live, then they die. People are born, they live, then they die. And, you know, it used to be that you, at least in this lifetime, got your name in the paper twice, you know, like when you were born, when you died. I don’t even know if that happens anymore because we don’t have newspapers anymore, but you get the idea.
What he’s saying is, is that people are temporal. They come, they live, then they die, they go, and generations replace them. So we can go all the way back and go back, let’s say, back to the GI generation, to, you know, 1901 to 1926. Well, that generation was replaced by the Silent Generation who lived between 1927 and 1945, and that generation’s been replaced by the Baby Boomers, and ultimately the Baby Boomers are being replaced by Gen X, or the MTV generation, and of course Gen X is being replaced by the Millennials or Gen Y, those born between 1981 and 2000. And of course, Gen Y is being replaced now by Gen Z, or the iGeneration, or some people call them the boomlets.
You may be a boomlet because you’re born between 2001 and, and the present time. But the idea here is that these generations come and these generations go, and basically, if you’re among a generation of people, you’re going to be in the limelight for just a little while. And then people are gonna forget about you because you’re gonna die. Kind of like Tiger Woods, you know, he was big but not very big anymore. Nobody’s talking about him anymore.
What’s fascinating is, is he says, but you know, the strange thing about this is the earth remains. I mean, people, you would think that, that like seems, doesn’t seem fair. The earth remains, not people. Aren’t people more valuable than the earth? You see where he’s going?
A meaningless life also, verse 5, is cyclical. It’s cyclical. The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises. So here you have this day and night cycle thing, you know, sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset. Isn’t there a song about that?
I’m singing it right now in my mind, you say. It comes up in the east and it runs across the sky and then it sets in the west. And then it comes up in the east and runs across the sky and then it sets in the west. Over and over and over. Doesn’t that just make you happy?
Or does that bore you to tears? You know, kinda like brushing your teeth. Oh, really? I gotta do this again? Twice a day?
I gotta do this? What a nuisance, a pain in the neck to brush my teeth. And then he talks about how life is repetitive. Verse 6, the wind blows to the south, turns to the north, round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. So now he’s talking about the wind cycle.
You ever look at the news reports on television? You know, the weather report at 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11? I mean, it’s like you could get news at any, any hour of the day. But if you see the weather report, it’s basically the same thing over and over, right? Expect prevailing winds to once again arrive this afternoon out of the south, and then they’re going to turn north.
Well, whoopee to that. That just really makes me happy. I wanna sit down and watch the news. Does the same thing over and over and over again. You ever had a widget job?
A widget job, what’s that? A job that could be done by a machine where you just stand there and you do the same thing over and over and over. If you’ve had one of those jobs, you probably said, I really don’t wanna do this very long. Now this isn’t very fulfilling for me. When I was in college, I worked at Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and I had one of those jobs where the glass would come down the conveyor belt.
My thing would be to pick the glass up, take it off, put it into a crate. That was it all day long. Pick the glass up, put it into a crate. You know what my favorite time of the day was? When work was over.
Yeah, as soon as we could get out of here. Second favorite was break, of course, or lunch or something like that. A meaningless life is repetitive, Solomon says. And then he says a meaningless life is predictable. Verse 7, all streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from, there they return again. The water just flows to the sea. We’re talking here about the ocean, but it’s never full. You ever ask that question? Why is the ocean never full?
I mean, why isn’t it like overflow? What, what is that? Well, because of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, collection. What’s that called? Students, the water cycle, right?
The sun evaporates, enormous quantities of water evaporate, and then vapor condescends and forms clouds, and the clouds turn into water, or they drop water from the skies in the form of rain like we’re experiencing right now, or sleet, or snow, and that feeds the rivers, that feeds the oceans, and then we just start all over again. How does that make you feel?
Boring, monotonous. Like, you know, somebody asks you, so what did you— what did you— or what are you going to do today? Well, I’m going to do what I did yesterday. What’d you do yesterday? Well, basically the same thing I did the day before.
What’d you do the day before? Well, what I did the day before the day before. That’s what I did. Boring, predictable. And then he says a meaningless life is tedious, verse 8.
All things are wearisome, more than one can say. It just wears you out. It’s exhausting. Physically, emotionally, life is just exhausting. Kind of like how you feel when you’re a new college student and you get into college and you know what they give you?
They give you the general ed classes. Like, wait a minute, didn’t I just do this in high school? Didn’t I just have English in high school? Didn’t I have biology in high school? Didn’t I have history in high school?
I gotta do this? This again? Are you kidding? Come on, can’t we just get into my major? No, this is all part of the deal, right?
Part of the tedious part of, of college. And then he talks about verse 8, how life is unsatisfied. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. That’s interesting. The eye never has enough of what it sees.
The ear never has enough of what it hears. When I read this, this took me back to that song that the Rolling Stones did back in the 1960s, I Can’t Get No Satisfaction. Have you heard of that song? I can’t get no satisfaction, they said, ’cause I try and I try and I try and I try. When I’m driving in my car and the man comes on the radio, he’s telling me more and more about some useless information supposed to fire my imagination.
I can’t get no, oh no, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey. That’s what I say. Some of you are saying, what is he talking about? You’re just too young to hear what went on back then. The stones, what they knew was what Solomon is writing about.
Life can be unsatisfying. The eye never has enough. That’s why you’re thinking about getting a new phone. I gotta get a new phone. This thing’s old.
It’s like 6 months old. Oh no. You know, this thing’s old. I can’t get enough of that. That’s why you’re gonna buy a new phone at some point.
Or, you know, the ear doesn’t have enough. I gotta go home and I gotta download, download, download. I gotta get some more tunes out there because the ones I have right now aren’t bringing me any satisfaction any longer. And then he says a meaningless life is unoriginal, verses 9 and 10. The new is just basically a recycle of the old.
He says, what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, look, this is something new? It was here already long ago. It was here before our time.
What is he saying? Human beings are basically doing the same thing they have always done, just over and over in different forms. Interesting perspective on this by Old Testament scholar Donald Glynn. He talks about what Solomon’s driving at this way. He says, man’s journey to the moon and the discovery of America, though different, were both explorations of distant places involving adventure and risk.
And the invention of dynamite and of the atomic bomb sharing the element of shared the element of discovering an explosive. Thus, what is true in the realm of nature, the constant repetition of previous accomplishments, is in essence true of the activity of people and produces only indescribable weariness and a lack of satisfaction. You’ve heard it, same song, 30th verse, or whatever verse you’re on, right? It just seems like we’re doing the same thing. Just wait, just wait.
It’ll come back, it’ll be the same thing. Ties will be fat again. I know they’re narrow right now, but they’ll be fat, just wait. You’ll see. Pants will have bell-bottoms again, just watch.
Just wait around for a little bit, it’ll happen. Blouses will have puffy shoulders again. That’ll come back, just wait, wait, wait. Just wait, and then when you see it, you’ll think, that’s brand new, but it’s not really new, it’s just a sign that you have a bad memory. That’s all.
Things happen that have already happened. And then he says, verse 11, a meaningless life is forgettable. There’s no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow. Isn’t that encouraging? That all of those accomplishments and all of those awards and all that you’re doing right now, yes, it’s remembered for moment, but it’s just gonna be forgotten.
People will forget how many things you invented, all the records that you broke, all the jobs that you did. They’ll forget your green thumb, and they’ll forget your strawberry pie recipe. It may be good for you, but they’re gonna forget it. So Solomon says, there you got it. A meaningless life, which is the product of a meaningless mindset.
It’s looking at life as it’s repetitive, it’s circular, it’s monotonous, it’s boring. In other words, when you read that, it’s one of those sections of scripture where you say, you know, I don’t want this. I mean, I don’t want that. I don’t want my life to be meaningless. I want my life to value for something.
I don’t, I don’t want to get into that state. Where I’m looking at life saying, this, this is awful. Do you? No, we don’t want to be there. When I look at that, it just, it makes me want to stay in bed.
That’s what it does. You know, I mean, like, why, why get up?
It’s, it’s how I feel when people ask me, Dave, would you like to go for a run? No, you know, my answer is no. I always say no to you. If you ask me, do you want to go for a run? I always say no.
Would you like some cauliflower? No, I don’t want any cauliflower. Okay, don’t, don’t bring cauliflower over my house. It’s just going to sit there and then ultimately go to the trash. It’s like I would feel if you, you know, asked if I wanted to go pull weeds with you.
Want to go pull weeds? No. I mean, what’s the gain? What’s the profit? What’s the meaning of that?
They’re just gonna come back. I don’t want to do that. It’s why some of you feel when you’re told to do homework, like, you know, what’s the point? What’s the point? Make your bed.
What’s the point of that? Are you kidding? It’s just gonna get messed up again. That’s why we don’t make beds around here, say. Or, you know, go eat some breakfast.
Why? I’m okay. I don’t, I don’t need breakfast. What’s the point? What’s the profit?
Why bother? This was my mindset. Seriously, this was my mindset through 2 years in high school. So growing up all the way through 2 years in high school, I had a meaningless, boring mindset. That is in part why I was not a great student.
I didn’t see the point. I didn’t see the value. That is why I got to a point where hanging out with my friends in high school on Friday night and cruising Belmont Avenue in Fresno, California finally got to me. I couldn’t take it any longer. It was just like, why are we doing this week after week after week?
What is the value of this? And some of you totally understand that because you’ve been down that meaningless road and you said there’s got to be something more than this. The tragedy is, is that Solomon even ended up there. This guy, think about this, Solomon, the wisest guy in the world. He was a brilliant speaker, he was a brilliant teacher, he was a brilliant leader, he was a brilliant author.
He built the temple. He built the first temple that Israel owned. He was wealthy, he was a king, but he still lost it. I mean, he just totally lost it. He was derailed in his connection to God.
Why?
We could put a lot of detail together. Let me just give you 2 little sections of Scripture to contemplate. They’re found in the book of 1 Kings. 1 Kings chapter 3, verse 1 says, Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. Now, you may not think much of what that verse is saying, but that verse is telling us that Solomon started to do the things that God did not want him to do.
He did not want him to marry an Egyptian, and he did not want him to marry a second time. He was already married to the Shulamite woman. This was the beginning of him walking away from God. And that walk continued so that when you get in 1 Kings chapter 11, you get this in verses 1 to 4. King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter.
So besides that Egyptian’s daughter, Pharaoh king’s daughter, he loved many more women than that. So not only did he have 2 wives, but he had many wives. Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, you must not intermarry with them because— and here’s the reason— they will surely turn your hearts after their gods. Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.
He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines, and his wives led him astray. And then this, verse 4: As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God. That is to say that there was a time in his life when his heart was fully devoted to God, but then as an older person, he lost it. He lost it in his relationship obviously with women, but more importantly, he lost it in his relationship with God. Now let me ask you this question.
Have you ever had somebody tell you, don’t do that for your own good? They’ve said to you, you know, don’t go down that road? We tried as a family to help my sister not marry a guy. We told her just straight out, listen, this guy is not good for you. He does not have any love for God in his life.
Don’t marry him. In fact, she came to me and asked me if I would perform the wedding ceremony, and I ultimately said, I can’t, I can’t do that. That is hard to do, to say no to your sister. I can’t do that. But we did, and it turned out to be a miserable marriage that produced 2 children, and these 2 children have been in and out of jail for years, for years.
The marriage didn’t last very long. Ultimately, she divorced this guy, and by the grace of God, God gave her a new husband, somebody who loves God, and her life has completely changed, but if you were to sit down with her right now and have a conversation, and ask her the question, would you ever do that again? You know what she’d say? Absolutely not. Made my life miserable.
What we have in Ecclesiastes is the confession of a man who knew what was best, but he turned his back on it and he lived under the sun, and it resulted in a miserable existence. And when you look at this account, you have to say to yourself, this could happen to us. It could. He was the wisest person in the world. Think about it.
He even had a good upbringing. He grew up in David’s family. He also was on track spiritually. I mean, come on, he wrote the book of Proverbs. That’s about as on track as you could get.
He had it all, and yet he totally messed up his life. You know what he ultimately missed out on? What he ultimately missed out on at the end of his life was living, instead of a miserable life, a meaningful life. Fascinating. I was just, as I was looking at this passage, I kept thinking to myself how important this mindset is, because if you were to just insert into the passage instead of the word meaningless, the word meaningful.
In other words, you, you say, so what would have been like, what would have been like for Solomon had he lived a meaningful life? How would have this been explained then? I mean, what would be the perspective that he would have lived in and perhaps written about? What would have it been like? What would have his thoughts and words been then?
We were playing around with that here the last week, Bernice and I, and we said, you know, maybe it would look something like this. And so we did a little paraphrase of this passage we just read, and we said, let’s just think about this from the other side of the coin. Instead of a meaningless, let’s think about the meaningful side. It might look like this: meaningful Meaningful, says the teacher, so meaningful. Everything is meaningful.
When we walk with God, man is blessed through all his labor at which he toils under heaven from generation to generation while the earth remains forever. The sun rises and sets and hurries back to rise again to give us another day of life. God has set the wind to blow to the south and turn to the north. Round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full to the place the streams come from, there they return again.
All things help us learn and grow more than we can explain. There is always more for us to see and hear. What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. Yet there is always something new under heaven for us to discover.
If our eyes are open, we can say, look, this is something new. Though it was here already long ago before our time, we can see it and know it now. Faithful, godly men of old are remembered long after they’re gone, and even when those who are yet to come will be remembered, they will be remembered by those who follow. What’s that? It’s just, it’s the same passage, it’s the same existence in a sense, in that we’re living in the same place, but there’s a different mindset.
It’s, it’s a mindset that’s looking at life from a meaningful perspective. And so what this can do is really translate everything that we’ve just talked about from an unprofitable life to a profitable life, so that life, instead of being something where there’s nothing to gain, becomes an opportunity to make great gains every day for heaven. Instead of living for a temporal existence, we live for an eternal existence, because life then is preparation for eternity. We are learning now how to love God and how to love each other. It is preparation for eternity.
And instead of life being a repetitive nuisance, it becomes a repeatable opportunity so that whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, it is an opportunity to live for God and to glorify him. And instead of life being a predictable bore, it becomes a remarkable testimony of the faithfulness of God as we see God provide for us day after day after day. And instead of a tedious assignment that’s wearisome, it becomes an invigorating journey where God is developing us and he’s changing us into the people that he so longs for us to be in a relationship of love with him and with each other. And instead of an unsatisfied craving of the eye and the ear, we can be satisfied in our spirit and content even if all we have is just food and covering. And instead of an unoriginal accomplishments, no, now it’s all about improvable privileges where God gives us these raw resources to serve him in our generation.
And instead of a forgettable track where there’s no remembrance, life becomes a memorable contribution where we get to leave a legacy and an impact on people. And how does that come? Well, that’s all the result of a whole different mindset. What kind of a mindset? It’s not the result of a, a man-centered mindset.
It’s the result of a God-centered mindset. And so, what we have here really as we look at this passage is the difference between living a godless life, because a godless life produces a meaningless life, and a God-focused life which produces a meaningful life. And this God-focused life, this meaningful life, is vitally connected to a personal connection to God. And so what this does this morning is this, this kind of causes us to hopefully think again, what kind of life am I living? Is, is my life meaningful?
Really? Or am I infected? Am I infected with the meaningless life that so many other people are living in this world that is being lived apart from God. You may recognize the name Christopher Parkany. Christopher may be one of the leading classical guitarists in our world.
He actually achieved this accomplishment by the time he was age 30. He was also, by the way, a world-class fly fishing champion. But in spite of the fact that he achieved that kind of fame as a guitarist and a fly fishing champion fame, in spite of all of that, life failed to bring him happiness. He was so weary of performances, he was so weary of recording sessions that he went out, he bought himself a ranch, and he gave up the guitar completely because it just didn’t work for him. And he thought, well, this is going to be it.
But instead of finding happiness He became increasingly even more empty even though he had another life on the ranch. In fact, he came to the point that he wrote this: If you arrive at a point in your life where you have everything that you ever wanted and thought that it would make you happy and it still doesn’t, then you question things. It’s the pot at the end of the rainbow I had that, and I thought, well, what’s left? He gets it all, and he comes to the places of lamenting. Basically, he’s got his own Ecclesiastes.
What’s left? Well, things changed for him when he visited some friends, and his friends took him to church. And while he was at this church, he found faith in Jesus Christ. And out of that came a hunger for God’s word. That he found satisfying to his soul.
In fact, Parkening said this, you know, I was really struck by this passage in 1 Corinthians 10:31 where it says, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. I thought when I heard that, there’s a guy whose perspective’s shifting. That if you can, whatever you do, you take the most mundane thing that you could do, which is eating, and be able to do that for the glory of God, your mindset’s starting to shift. He said, later I realized there were only 2 things I knew how to do: fly fish for trout and play the guitar. Well, he says, I’m playing the guitar now absolutely by the grace of God, and I have a joy and peace and a deep-down fulfillment in my life like I’ve never had before.
My life has purpose. I’ve learned firsthand the true secret of happiness. David Stein, who plays piano in the first worship hour, came up to me after the service. He said, you know, I was playing in a concert and Christopher Parkening was there and he played the concert and he said it was really good. And then afterwards he came back into the area where we, who had played with him, were, and he came back in that area and he gave all of us a cassette tape of his testimony of faith in Jesus Christ.
The guy’s life has been completely changed because he got connected to God in a personal way through Jesus Christ. We can chase, we can chase the meaningless life, and ultimately it’s going to produce the same thing it produced in Solomon. Emptiness, or we could chase a meaningful life, meaningful life that’s found in God, that’s God-focused, that’s connected to a personal relationship with him. Our prayer is that as we do this study together, we learn what it is that Solomon ultimately learned once he got off the detour. Life is found in God, it’s found in a relationship with him, and that more than anything else is what it is we need to chase.
Let’s pray. Father, thanks for this time today. Thanks for the opportunity to think about our perspective and focus in life. May we be people who live with a God focus. May we be people who are vitally connected to you.
And we pray for our friends and others and perhaps even ourselves this morning if we’ve been detoured by life If we have been derailed from that which matters most, may we, even as we think through what it is we’ve talked about this morning, intentionally make a shift from a life that is lived apart from you to a life that’s vitally connected to you. We pray for anybody who’s here today that has yet to make that shift, that even today would be a day where they would say yes. To that life. Or Lord, that they would continue to explore the wonderful desire that you have to have a relationship with them, which is incredible, and a relationship with every one of us. May they say yes to that relationship.
May their life be changed. And so thank you, God, for this journey we’re going to be on together. May we be changed by it and learn much from it. For we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. Well, friends, as you go out today, I hope that this week produces for you a meaningful life in all of its fullness through the power and the strength of Jesus Christ.
May you live in such a way that you live a meaningful life vitally connected to him. Thanks for being here today. Have a wonderful week. As we leave this morning, we always take a benevolence offering if you’d like to give to that. You’re welcome to do that.
The plates will be out there in the lobby. Lord bless this week.
