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Ecclesiastes: The View from Down Under
Solomon’s Grand Experiment, part 1 Chapter 1:12-18
Please take out your bibles and turn in them to the book of Ecclesiastes and the very first chapter. One of the most intriguing American stories that I’ve ever run across is the story of Ernest Hemingway. You know, few have ever led as fascinating a life as Earnest Hemingway. Most people would say he really lived a FULL life. In World War I he was an ambulance driver. He also served in the infantry, and he was decorated for his heroism in World War I.
He was a war correspondent both during the Spanish Civil War, and also in World War II. He is best known as being a novelist. He was repeatedly on the bestseller list for his writings. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. He also won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953.
Some of you know that Ernest Hemingway lived a ‘full-gusto’ lifestyle. He traveled extensively; for example, he was in Spain, he was in France, he was in China, he was in Africa. He was a guy who was into danger and adventure. He hunted big game in Africa. He was a deep-sea fisherman par excellence. He was also a bullfighter. Adventure meant a lot to him. But during the course of his life he found himself drinking heavily.
Ernest Hemingway was married four different times. None of those relationships seemed to work. It just wasn’t enough. And so, discouraged, and despondent, Ernest Hemingway put a bullet in his head in a cabin in Idaho in 1961. You know, you hear that story, and you go, “why?” Why was that not enough, you know, what he had in his life? You ask the question, “What’s missing from a life like that?” And those kinds of issues are the issues that are tackled head-on by the Book of Ecclesiastes.
We have seen in our study that this is a confessional autobiography of a guy by the name of Solomon. A man who knew God; who drifted from God; who lived much of his life seeking fulfillment apart from God. And he writes this book to say to you and to me, “Don’t come this way; don’t come this way”. Ecclesiastes is a divine warning against attempting to find lasting fulfillment apart from God.
Now we have been pointing out that part of his strategy is to counter common assumptions that people have about life. One of those assumptions is the assumption that if I could just do _______; if I could just get _______; if I could just experience _______, then I’m really going to know lasting, deep fulfillment in life. And that assumption is going to be countered directly today.
I’ve entitled the message today, “Solomon’s Grand Experiment” and we’re going to see it in the second half of chapter one and on into chapter two. What really happens in this Grand Experiment that Solomon conducts, is he decides that he is going to fully live out his fondest dreams, actually the fondest dreams of humanity. No matter what you think they may be, he says, “I’m going to live those things out.” What you have here in his grand experiment is the ultimate in “The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”.
The unique thing about Solomon is that he had no mental limitations whatsoever. He was the wisest person who ever lived on the planet, save the one who was the God-man. He had NO financial limitations. He was the richest person who has ever lived on this planet. And he had no time or authority limitations; see, he was the King. Who else do you answer to on the planet when you’re the king? Nobody!
And what’s amazing to me is that, in the wisdom of God, He chooses to share Solomon’s Grand Experiment with us so that I might learn, so that you might learn, from him. Solomon really wants us to learn that there’s no need to go down some of the same dead ends that he went down. There’s no need to do it. He’s been there, he’s done that—and he’s ready to say, “Don’t come this way.” What this means is if we heed this warning, we can save years of fruitless frustration in our life. We can save a lot of needless heartache in our life. And this book is especially aimed—even though it has a lot of depth to it—at young people. Young people especially need to listen hard to what Solomon has to say, rather than being swept along by the relentless hype of our culture.
Now there’s going to be a backdrop we’re going to have this week, and next week, when we look at his grand experiment. It’s a quote I want you to be thinking about. It comes from Augustine, and he says this, “He who has God has everything. He who does not have God has nothing. He who has God and everything has no more than he who has God alone”. Now that’s going to be the backdrop for this week and next week. “He who has God has everything. He who does not have God has nothing. He who has God and everything has no more than he who has God alone.”
Now, let me give you the plan for today, this is what we are going to be looking at as we look at Solomon’s Grand Experiment. Two parts to it: #1, we’re going to look at The Preview in chapter one, verses 12 to 18. Then we’re going to look at The Experiment, part #1, in chapter two. We’re going to have part #2 of the experiment, Lord willing, next week. So, we’re going to look at The Preview that he gives us, and then we’re going to look at The Experiment.
By the way, if you don’t have an outline of the Book of Ecclesiastes, those are out in the welcome center. It will really help you if you want to do your own study, so pick one of those up as you work your way through the book. But let’s look at The Preview of all of this, in chapter 1, verses 12 to 18. I’d like to just read this; it says….
I, the Preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task, which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with. I have seen all the works, which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said to myself, “Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.” And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.
Let’s look a little more closely at this preview that he gives us. You notice that he says in verse 13, “I set my mind to seek and explore”. The idea of that word “explore” is a word that means to investigate all sides. It means to look at every nook and cranny. It means that he desired to investigate ALL the secrets, the so-called secrets of life. He mentions there about things being “grievous” and the sons of men are “afflicted.” What he’s communicating is that life—as he’s gone out there and looked at things—he says that life is tough in a fallen world, it just is. There’s no other way you can add it up.
And then is verse 14, he says, “I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind”. What he’s really saying is if you go looking for significance apart from God, you know what you end up with—you end up with this word which we’ve seen before, “hebel”, in Hebrew. it means vanity or it means empty. He says when you look at life having significance apart from God, you just end up being empty handed. And because you’re empty handed, it ends up bewildering, and it’s like trying to catch the wind. I mean, is anything more fruitless than trying to catch the wind? And if you could ‘catch it,’ what would you have?—truly nothing. That’s what he’s saying. When it comes to life, and significance of life apart from God, there’s nothing really there.
Verse 15, I believe he’s talking about how we live in a flawed world, and we can’t fix it. Anyone ever noticed that? We see the flaws in the world, and we go, “I’d like to do something about that”. But we really can’t fix it. There are some inherent deficiencies in the world that we really can’t do anything about as human beings.
Then I want you to notice in verse 16, it says, “I said to myself, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem”. Just jot down 1 Kings chapter 3, because in 1 Kings chapter 3 it says this, God said to Solomon “There has been no one like you before you.” And He says, “There’s not going to be anyone like you after you”. He had more wisdom and insight and knowledge, from a human perspective, than anyone who ever lived. And Solomon says, “My mind has observed a wealth” of all this information.
I believe that when he went on this investigation, this Grand Experiment, that he mined the greatest thoughts from the greatest thinkers of his day. He read all the books. He heard all the ‘(audio)tape series’ that were done by the great thinkers. In fact, we learn from verse 17, that he decided to probe ALL the alternatives, all the alternative things out there.
Then he says, in essence, there’s nothing you can get a solid grip on; nothing that you can get a grip on at all. In fact, verse 18, he says, the more that you search; the more that you ponder the problems of life—the more the truth hurts; the more the truth stings. This word for “stings” is a very graphic Hebrew term. The term that’s used there is used of the excruciating after-effects of male circumcision. He says when you search around and you ponder the problems of life, the truth that you find—it hurts, it stings a lot on the interior.
See, the truth is that we were made to know God. We were made to have a relationship with God. Jot down Jeremiah, chapter 9, verses 23 and 24. You can look it up. We were made to know God and have a relationship with Him. If we miss that, we have missed the central truth of the universe. We were made to know Him and have a relationship with Him. Basically, what he says, when you’re looking for significance in his grand experiment—he’s
giving us a Preview—he says you end up just empty handed.
But now we want to look at the experiment in more depth: The Experiment; part number one. You know, as human beings go on a search for significance, generally we walk a certain path. One path—when we’re looking for significance—is the path I call, “Let’s Feel Good”. People say, “I want to go down that path to find lasting satisfaction”…the “Let’s Feel Good” path. Another path we often walk is the “Let’s Just Do It” path. We want to talk about the first path this week, “Let’s Feel Good,” and then we’re going to talk about the “Let’s Just Do It” path next week.
So, when we talk about “Let’s Feel Good”, what do people tend to pursue? Well, I think at least three things…#1 is Hedonism. In verses 1 to 3 of chapter 2 we’re going to see that. #2 is Materialism, to feel good by getting things. We see that in verses 7 and 8, rather actually 7 and 8a. And then Sexual Pleasure is the third thing in verse 8b. So, we’re going to say this, Solomon says this is the path a lot of people go down to find significance, and that is the “Let’s Feel Good” path.
The first element that he decided to investigate is Hedonism in verses 1 to 3. Now some of you go, “I’ve heard that term, but I don’t know what it means”. Well, what hedonism means is that pleasure is the chief goal, okay, that’s all it means. In Hedonism, pleasure is the chief goal. Notice in verse 1 of chapter two, it begins with these words, “I said to myself”. In fact, if you track through the first part of this chapter, the words “I”, and “my” and “myself,” you see they come up a lot. When he was going to do this Grand Experiment he says, “I just decided to do this myself”. He did not look to his father David, who had reaped consequences in his life for the sensuality that he had run after. He didn’t look to David and say, “What can I learn from my dad?”
He chose to ignore divine counsel, some of which he had written himself under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit earlier in his life [see the book of Proverbs]. He said, “I’m going to do it my way. I’m going to do it my way and I’m going to go on a pleasure safari. Here’s what I want to do, I’m going to live out my wildest dreams. I want to seek for my ultimate fantasies to become reality. I want to go on a pursuit of ecstatic delights. I’m going to pursue hedonism.”
And so, the first thing that really comes up is, is that of laughter. We see that in verse 2. Part of his search was to experiment with laughter. And you know, it’s hard to imagine what this would be like in his day, but, in our day, you know, we would do something like this if we were going to experiment with laughter: we would just arrange for an endless parade of the best comics around. We would have our own personal comedy club and we would have from Leno to Letterman and from Chris Rock to Sinbad. We would just bring’em all in—go ahead, let’s do this, let’s do this humor thing.
Now I want you to understand, when he says here in this verse, he says, “I said of laughter, it’s madness and of pleasure, what does it accomplish?”…he’s not down on a sense of humor. See that? He’s not down on humor here; having a sense of humor. In fact, we know from the Bible that laughter is therapeutic. It says in Proverbs 17:22, “a joyful heart is good medicine.” But what he’s really saying is: as I began to experiment with laughter, I realized that life cannot be built around fun and games, because after you’re done with the fun and games, the real world is still there. You know, after you stop laughing, the real world awaits you. So, he says, when I began this experiment and I looked into hedonism, I ended up concluding regarding laughter, what does it [ultimately] accomplish? Where did it really get me?
You know, there is a classic story told of a troubled individual and he decided to go visit a psychiatrist. And he went to this psychiatrist, and he said, “You know, I’m extremely lonely, and I’m very, very unhappy. And Doc, I really just don’t know what to do about it.” And the doctor said, “You know, I’ve been hearing a lot of people talking about a world-renowned clown who is in town. In fact, a lot of people who haven’t been able to laugh in a long time have gone to see this clown perform and they come out laughing. He’s made everyone laugh, and maybe that’s one thing you could do. You could just go visit that clown and you could laugh some of your blues away. And he said, “Well, Doc, you see, I am that clown.” True story. You know laughter—if you’re trying to build your life around that—what does it accomplish? What does it accomplish? He went down the path of “I want to feel good”, “I want to feel good”, “let’s feel good”.
So, another thing he experimented with was wine, in verse 3 it talks about that. We could include stimulants here. He said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get high! That’s what I think I need to do to feel good about my life…I’m going to get high.” You know, I lived through the sixties [1960s] and a big part of the sixties was ‘expanding your mind.’ This is the way this went, so that you could “find” yourself. So, people were into all kinds of stimulants. And you know what’s interesting—because I lived through that era—I can tell you that there were a number of people who died ‘expanding their mind.’ And some of those are famous people that you know.
Most people who lived through that era in America—most of them would candidly admit to you—that the substances that they smoked, and the powder that they snorted, and the pills that they popped, did not deliver what they thought they were going to get. In fact, most of them would admit that it really didn’t lead anywhere. The problem with just getting high is that you have to come back down after being high—and life is still here. Let me give you another passage you can look up later. Proverbs chapter 23, verses 29 to 35. Proverbs 23:29-35. There you can read an assessment that was assembled by Solomon from an earlier period of his life and what he thinks the impact is of stimulants and getting high.
There’s another thing he wanted to get into when he says, “we just want to Feel Good”—that’s what we want to do, Let’s Feel Good”. Not only did he have the “laughter thing” going and the “enjoyment thing,” and the “high thing”, he also had the “Party Thing” going. I mean, if you’re going to just feel good, let’s just do the Wayne and Garth thing: “Party on dude.” “Here we go, let’s get it going”—where you get into the food and you get into the drink and you get into the music.
Now when I say to you, there has never been anyone like Solomon before, not only in his wisdom, but in his resources and in his freedom, I’m not kidding. In 1 Kings chapter 4, there’s a list there of the provisions of Solomon’s house. The food that was consumed by everybody in one day—they have calculated out that it would take about 30,000 people to eat that amount of food. So—you have to imagine this when you’re talking about “party on dude”—it’s not like three guys and a keg somewhere. It’s not that. It’s 30,000 people having the wildest party: day after day, after day, after day. Incredible to think about!
And the team of gourmet chefs that they put together—you know, they’re not ordering out of McDonald’s here. You know this is the top-level food, the best-of-the-best-of-the-best, cooked by the best. And you can just imagine, you know, the way he would party. He’d probably have these multiple pools working, you know he had the large screen TV’s there, all the stuff that we’d have. He’s having these parties and he goes through with that and he says, “You know what, the problem with that is you kind of feel good while you’re partying, but there’s no lasting satisfaction there, none at all”. So, when you’re talking about “Let’s Feel Good, let’s experiment with that, let’s feel good”—the first part of the experiment was Hedonism. Let’s just feel pleasure in our life.
The second part of his experiment, in terms of “Let’s Feel good”, fell into the category of Materialism. We see that in chapter 2, in verse 7 and the first part of verse 8. Verse 7 says, “I bought male and female slaves, and I had home-born slaves. I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem, and I also collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces.” Now, you read that and you go: “What’s the big deal?” But you have to understand, in that day, this is a list of the toys and the stuff that you get to make you feel good. Slaves, male and female slaves, not only that, but I had the ones that were born here, the ones that I raised myself. Now those are really the good slaves. I had all those slaves. I had the flocks. I had the herds. These were the measures of materialism of the day.
Historians tell us that Solomon had the world’s largest fleet of ships. They were his. So, if you just kind of think about it in modern terms, it would be like having multiple cruise ships. Can you imagine? How many people have ever been on a cruise? All right, a few of you have. Can you imagine you own multiple cruise ships yourself? This is what life was like for Solomon. “Hey, I want that one. I want to buy that one. “I’m going to have that one made”. It’d be a lot like, in our day, having your very own fleet of 757 airplanes. You know, anywhere you want to go, anything you want to go pick up, anything you need, you know, just call the pilots in: “Hey we’re all flying, you know, all 30,000 of us are going to go over here”, or whatever. That’s the kind of situation he was in, in terms of the things that he collected.
We learned that he also had 12,000 horses. Now that’s a lot of hay to feed 12,000 horses. But again, you know, those were the toys of the day. It’d be a lot like having, in our day, 12,000 cars. Anybody here have 12,000 cars? Okay, nobody. Nobody’s got 12,000 cars. That’s what Solomon was like. And you have to understand, you know, if he had 12,000 of these things, he would have like the multiple Hummers, you know, one for each day of the week. Where’s the Tuesday Hummer? Where did I park that thing, you know? That’s what it was like for this guy. There was ‘no-holds-barred.’ Anything he wanted to have. I’m sure that he had the best of the horses. So, it would be like having all the world’s top luxury cars. Every single one, he owned multiple copies of. All the world’s top sports cars, he would have had those. See how this works? It’s incredible to think about.
You see, when it comes to “Let’s Feel Good”, I went deeply into the materialism thing. In fact, it says in verse 8, it talks about how silver and gold were collected. We learn, as we cross-reference sources, that he collected 666 talents of gold a year in taxes that came to him. Now, you go, “that doesn’t mean anything to me”…you know, 666 talents. Try 25 tons of gold a year… 25 tons! Anybody ever seen a ton of gold? I don’t think so. That’s a lot of gold. 25 tons of gold every year came to him. You see how there’s no spending limits here?
In fact, it tells us in 2 Chronicles chapter 1 (verse 15) that silver and gold “were common as stones” in Jerusalem. Now, I’ve been there. I understood when I went to Jerusalem why they stoned people, if you catch the drift. You get a little hacked [mad] at somebody, you just, you know, reach down and there, you’ve got one. There are stones everywhere. And it says, “as common as the stones”, that’s how common silver and gold was during Solomon’s time! I mean, there are, there’s no credit limits on the credit cards here. Okay. None! Kind of hard to imagine!
And then he talks about how, you know, “I acquired male and female singers.” You just have to think of this in modern terms. I mean, all the top concerts, you know, all the top groups, he basically owned them. He would have had the best home entertainment system ever. Okay? He would have had like luxury boxes to all the top teams in the land.
In fact, we learn from chapter two verse ten, he says this—this is an amazing thing, ‘cause I don’t know of any other human being who has ever said this, he says—”whatever my heart desired, whatever my heart desired.” He is saying: “I never told myself, no.” Anybody here ever be able to say that? “Whatever I desired—I’ve never told myself no, not even one time.”
Well, that was Solomon and he said: I’m going to try to feel good by having stuff. You know, what’s interesting to me is how those of us who even know God are often sucked into the vortex of this kind of thinking. Steve Arterburn put it this way, he says, “Don’t we all believe deep down that [if we’re going to be honest] if we could just have IT, then we would truly be fulfilled, or at least partially satisfied? Maybe IT is a new computer, or a new house, or a new car, or a new (and higher paying) job, or a new wardrobe. And isn’t it also true that once you manage to buy IT, then IT, after a short period of time, is not enough and it must be replaced by still another IT?” He goes on to say, “The cycle of materialism always ends in some form of addiction. What we thought would free us ends up enslaving us.”
Solomon says, You know, this experiment, I got into this “Let’s Feel Good thing”—and part of it was the materialism deal—and you know what, he says, “It left me feeling empty. It was fleeting. The feelings I got from it—they, they were unfulfilling.”
So, he’s looking into this pathway of “Let’s Feel Good”. First you had Hedonism, secondly you had Materialism, and then thirdly—an American favorite—Sexual Pleasure. It’s mentioned in the end of verse 8 with just a few words. It almost goes right by you: “I was collecting the pleasures of men, many concubines.” “Many concubines.” Now, a concubine was a woman who was dedicated to your sexual pleasure. 1 Kings 11:3 tells us that he had 700 wives. I think of that as 700 mothers-in-law, whoa, okay? But he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Now just, again, you have to think about this. I mean, this is so outside of our way of thinking. He had 1,000 women he could have sex with any time he wanted to. And you know, these just aren’t a bunch of nags out there. These were the best-of-the-best. These were the cream-of-the-crop. In fact, you know, Solomon was the greatest sexual athlete in human history. He was the king of the erotic. You know, if he lived today, he would have subscribed to all, you know, those erotic channels. He would have been getting all that stuff.
You know, our culture, for a while, has been worshiping sex. It really has. Dr. Sorokin wrote a booked called The American Sex Revolution and he wrote these words, and they are so, so right on. He says, “The sex drive is now declared to be the most vital mainspring of human behavior. In the name of science, its’ fullest satisfaction is urged as a necessary condition of man’s health and happiness. Sexual chastity is ridiculed as a prudish superstition. Nuptial loyalty (that’s the vows of marriage) is stigmatized as an antiquated hypocrisy. The traditional “child of God” created in God’s image is turned into a sexual apparatus powered by sex instinct, preoccupied with sex matters, aspiring for, and dreaming and thinking mainly of sex relations.” You know, I’m watching some of the reports on some of the television programs that are coming on TV, and that’s exactly what they are. They are portraying us as preoccupied with sexual matters, aspiring for them, and dreaming and thinking of nothing but that. And Sorokin goes on to say, “Our civilization has become so preoccupied with sex that it now oozes from the pores of all American life.” The amazing thing about Dr. Sorokin is that he wrote that several decades ago. It’s gotten worse.
And our society is out there pushing us. You know? You want to experiment with sex? Pick up some condoms from the school nurse. You want to see what it’s like to have sex without a lifelong commitment—you just move in with somebody. That’s being pushed on us all the time. Here’s the idea though: that if you pursue sexual pleasure outside of the plan of God—which is a little word called marriage, husband and wife—if you pursue sexual pleasure outside of the plan of God you can be amazed where that will take you. You start pursuing that outside the plan of God, you can be amazed where that can take you.
One illustration of that is the very life of Solomon. In his life, if you track it, is a downward spiral. He was married to the wife of his youth, and he wrote a book called the “Song of Solomon” or the “Song of Songs” about that. But he drifted from the wife of his youth and began to get involved with Pharaohs’ daughter. And that was just the first of many of those little adventures. He added hundreds into his personal harem, and it tells us in 1 Kings 11 that those women turned his heart away from God. If you pursue sexual pleasure outside the plan of God, you will be amazed at where it will take you and how it will mar your life.
Ed Young tells the story of an Englishman by the name of Malcolm Muggeridge. Perhaps you’ve heard of his name, but he was a respected journalist, both nationally, in Britain, and internationally. And he tells a story in his autobiography that goes like this: he had been faithful to his wife for the length of their marriage. But he’d carried the thought in the back of his mind, that if the right opportunity ever presented itself, he would be intimate with another woman. That opportunity seemed to present itself when he was in India, teaching journalism, far away from his wife and family.
Each morning, just as routine, he would get up and he would go swimming in the Ganges River. One such morning, he saw a woman bathing herself in the river, quite a distance away, and the thought to himself, “This is my moment”. I’m a wealthy Englishman; she’s a poor Indian. What could it hurt? Who will know? And as he began to swim upstream to her, he was struggling, you know, not just against the water and the current, but with his conscience. “Malcolm”, a voice inside him said, “don’t do it”. But then another little voice said, “This is your chance. It’s now or never.” And he continued to swim toward her, staying underneath the water until he was only a few feet away from her. And when he surfaced, it was he, not she, who experienced the shock of a lifetime. He came up out of the water and looked into the eyes of a woman who was a leper. Her nose, he said, was eaten away. There were sores and white blotches all over her skin and the ends of her fingers were gone. She looked more like an animal than a human being. Immediately he thought, “what a wretched woman she is.” But, almost at the very same moment, he was overwhelmed with the devastating thought, “what a wretched man I am”. See? You begin to pursue sexual pleasure apart from the will of God and you will be amazed at where it will take you.
You know, there’s a myth that we have to demolish a little bit. The myth is that sin is not pleasurable. Where did that come from? I mean if sin wasn’t pleasurable there would be no temptation, right? It is pleasurable. The trouble is that it’s temporary. It’s a flash of gratification. When I was growing up in my spiritual life, I knew a great friend of ours, who was an African American evangelist by the name of Sammy Dalton. Sammy was great at communicating on the people’s level. And he used to say this about his prior lifestyle, where he was into a lot of sexual promiscuity, and he said, “You know what this came down to?” He said, “one day I was just adding up and thinking about it. You know what it came down to? Six seconds of pleasure and then what? You get six seconds of pleasure out of it and then I was just feeling empty about the whole thing”. See, the myth is that sin is not pleasurable, but the truth is, the truth is that operating outside the will of God has its’ consequences.
Ed Young, who tells this little story of Malcolm Muggeridge, shares this little principle: it’s a good one, “You cannot mean business for God and live in the flesh at the same time”. Men and women, young people, get a grip on that one. “You cannot mean business for God and live in the flesh at the same time.” “You cannot mean business for God and live in the flesh at the same time.”
Solomon’s grand experiment, he’s saying, You know what? I want you to learn from where I’ve been, and the dead ends that I have been down. And I’ll tell you what the problem is with a “Let’s Feel Good” path. He says, “its’ hebel; it’s vanity; it’s empty; it’s hollow; and ultimately, it’s unfulfilling. Now that’s part #1 in The Grand Experiment. Part #2 comes next week.
And then, just to give you a little bit of a clue what we’re going to be doing on VW [visitors welcome] Sunday is in a shortened form we’re going to take this week and next week and kind of package it into a shorter message that will be geared toward some of the people that you might bring here.
But as you know, we like to do Life Response after we’ve spent some time peering into the Word of God. I’ve got two steps of Life Response that I think we all need to pursue.
The first life response is to Analyze. I would encourage you to go home and analyze a little bit. Analyze how much you may be caught up in the “Let’s Feel Good” approach to fulfillment. You know, look at the area of Hedonism—where pleasure is the chief goal—and just ask yourself, “am I into pursuing that as the chief goal of my life?” You know, the chief end of man is not pleasure, it’s to glorify God. So, do a little analyzing.
Analyze yourself in the area of Materialism. Have you been thinking, you know, I’ll feel fulfilled if I can just get another IT, if I could just get IT, if I could just get IT! In truth, fulfillment is found in knowing and walking with God.
And analyze yourself in the area of Sexual Pleasure—outside of marriage because those who are married have no restrictions on themselves [within the marriage relationship]. But could it be today, that you are on the verge of reaping some consequences? Could that be? Could it be that God planned today to be a warning to you? Remember, you can be amazed where “it” can take you, and “it” can mar your life. “You cannot mean business for God and live in the flesh at the same time.”
So, the first Life Response is to Analyze. The second Life Response is simply to Ponder. I want you to ponder and think a little bit about what Augustine has said, when he said, “He who has God has everything. He who does not have God has nothing. He who has God and everything has no more than he who has God alone.
Let’s pray together. Father, we thank You for Your Word. I thank You that it’s alive; that it’s powerful; it’s practical; it’s right where we are as human beings. And we would pray that You would open our eyes to learn from Solomon. May we learn from him. Nothing would be more foolish than to fail to learn from someone who knew so much and had so much and had so few restrictions. Teach us we pray. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.