What Am I Living For?
GNLCC 1/9/2005 Ecclesiastes 1:16-2:11 Matthew 22:34-40
If you were to take an honest examination of your life today, how would you answer the question “what am I living for.” What is it that you believe is worth your spending your life in the way you’re spending it? Each day is spent on something and we don’t get it back. What is it that once you’ve got it, you will feel as though you finally made it. You’ll feel happy at last. You will know that this is life as it is suppose to be. This is the good life.
A lot of people feel that, you know if I just had more money. My life would be all that and then some. I was listening to WCRF the other day and Dave Zenadis’ Ohio Round Table program came on. He spoke of Jack Whittaker. There were many of us who would have loved to have been in Jack’s shoes just a couple of years ago. Jack went to church. Jack had one granddaughter, 15 year old Brandi Bragg. On Christmas Day in the year 2002, Jack’s fantasy, the American fantasy, many of our own fantasy came true. Jack hit the lottery for 314.9 million dollars all by himself. It was the largest lottery win ever.
How would you have liked to have been Jack’s daughter Jack’s daughter would get out $5,000 per week to spend. His granddaughter Brandi would then get about $5,000 a week as a teenager. By the time she was 17 she had her own apartment and several cars including a Hummer and Cadillac Escalade. Jack had more money than he knew what to do with. He had received a lump sum of $113 million dollars, and he gladly paid tithes to his local church. That’s 11.3 million dollars of a tithe. Now if you were Jack or his teenage daughter what would you be living for?
We would think that a $113 million dollars would bring us so much happiness that we would not know what to do with it. You’re only partly right, and that’s the part of not knowing what to do with it. Since his winnings, Jack has been found in strip clubs. Jack developed a gambling addiction to high stake gambling. Jack was arrested twice in 2004 for drunk driving, and on January 2nd Jack was ordered to check into a rehab center. Last September, Jesse Tribble, an 18 year old friend of Brandi, was found dead in Jack’s house from an overdose of cocaine, oxycodone and methadone.
What about Brandi? Did her life take off like so many teens think it would with a $5,000 a week allowance. How many of you would be willing to be her friend. What she found was that everybody wanted a piece of her money, but very few were interested in her as a person. She had been A quiet young girl with a beautiful smile. By time she had reached 16, Jack said, “she is the most bitter 16 year old that I know.” Jack began to regret the toll the money was having on his family. Brandi turned to those who were using drugs to be her new friends. What can be more dangerous than a teenager experimenting with drugs with an unlimited amount of cash at hand? You know what happened next.
On Christmas Eve, two years after the Christmas Day Powerball Lottery Jackpot Win, Jack and his family buried Brandi, his only 17 year old granddaughter who was dead from a drug overdose. Her body was discovered wrapped in a sheet and plastic tarp, alongside a junked van at the home of her boyfriend.
Do you think Brandi ever got the right answer to the question, “what am I living for.” Do you think Jack has the right answer? What about you, do you think you have the right answer? What makes you so sure that what happened to Jack and his family could not happen to you? Why do so many of the superstars in our world who seem like they have everything end up at the end of a needle with cocaine or some other drug being injected into their bodies.
In the bible, one of the wisest person to ever live did ask the question, “what am I living for?” He was wise, not because of being a genius. His name was Solomon. Just as he was beginning his reign as the king after his father David died, God appeared to Solomon in a dream and said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give to you.?”
Now if you went home and had a dream, and God said to you, “Ask for whatever you want me to give to you,” what on earth would you ask for? Solomon asked for wisdom to govern the people and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. God said, because you asked for this, in addition I will throw in wealth, fame, and knowledge that no one before you has ever had, and no one after you will have again.
Solomon then set out to find out what was really going to make him happy in life. Solomon was the first one to say, “you only go around once in life, so enjoy yourself why you can and get everything out of it you can.” Solomon went looking for pleasure. Having a knowledge of what was right and wrong was not the same thing as actually choosing to do it. Education is not always the key to change in behavior. That’s why God seeks to change hearts.
The first thing Solomon tries in his search for meaning is pleasure. He gets together with his friends for a party in chapter 2 verses 1-3. Eccles. 2:1-3 I thought in my heart, "Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good." But that also proved to be meaningless. 2"Laughter," I said, "is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish?" 3I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly--my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.
Solomon had some great comedians at the party and boy did they laugh. In order to keep the party going, Solomon looked to the finest of wines. He used his wisdom to make all kinds of drinks putting in all kinds of ingredients. He was doing nothing more than using drugs to stimulate his mind and his body. But then he began to discover what the drug addict and the alcoholic discovers. If you live for pleasure alone, enjoyment will decrease unless the intensity of the pleasure increases. After a while you have to do a lot more to get the same kind of feeling. Eventually you get to the point, that there is little enjoyment, but you’ve become addicted.
For example, the more that Solomon drank his wine, the less enjoyment he got out of it. He needed something that was stronger and stronger in order to have the pleasure. He discovered the sad result is desire without satisfaction. Instead of Solomon’s exotic wines we could substitute alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, money, fame, or any other pursuit, and the same principle will hold true. The principle is when pleasure alone is the center of life, the result will ultimately be disappointment and emptiness. Solomon was able to see the path he was on was going toward an addiction and to the destruction of his body and mind so he chose something he thought would be more positive.
He decided to take a more active role in finding meaning by doing things. He built magnificent palaces and beautiful homes for himself. He designed breath taking parks with gardens and flowers so colorful that you would say, wow and be left speechless. He had the largest collection of herds and flocks of animals than anyone else in the city of Jerusalem. That would have been today’s equivalents of a personal car lot of Benzes, Jaguars, Porches, Hummers, Mercedes, and Bentley’s.
He taxed the people and the surrounding nations so hard that his income was out of this world. He had more gold and silver than we could imagine. His money would make the lottery winnings look like chump change as we use to call it. He was the first to have video dancing like you see on BET. Only instead of watching the video, everybody performed live in front of him. He acquired a great number of men and women singers and dancers to perform before him.
He never saw a beautiful woman that he didn’t like. He married 700 women as his wives and had 300 official girlfriends on the side. Who knows how many one night stands he had? He had become a sexual addict and nothing was setting him free. He didn’t have the internet for pornography so he used actual women and young girls for his fantasies. He did not set any boundaries as to what he would allow himself to enjoy.
He had a full buffet of food every meal. There was always prime rib, sirloin steak, chicken, ducks, venison, ox, sheep, leg of lamb and a whole lot more with all the fixings and trimmings of every meal. Solomon is the only person I know of that had this kind of wealth, lifestyle, and was ruler of the people living out in the open. If you asked him, Solomon, “what are you living for”, he’d probably say take a look around me and see everything I have, and you’ll know what I’m living for.” But if you asked him, “Solomon are you glad about it, are you really happy inside.”
He’d say, as he did in verses 2:10-11 Eccles. 2:10-12
I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. 11Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
Solomon is saying, “ “to be honest with you, I find all this meaningless. It’s like I’m chasing after the wind, never quite grabbing whatever it was I was chasing after.
How on earth can you have all that he had, and come to the conclusion that it was meaningless. Some of us are saying well give it to me and let me try it. Well, it did not bring Solomon lasting happiness, fulfillment, or peace in his life. Solomon admits, pleasure is here for a while but then its gone as quickly as it showed up. Each time I got a little less out of what I was doing.
What’s some of the truth about pleasure. 1) If all we are concerned about is pleasure, we will become selfish and destroy any chance of having lasting joy in life. 2) People who exploit others for pleasure usually end up alone. 3) Pleasure can never bring true satisfaction. 4) People will always want more and more regardless of how much they already have. 5) Possessions, money, popularity, fame and the like will not give lasting happiness. 6) Pleasure comes with a price tag. Are you really willing to pay it the choice. 7) Nobody wants anybody to spend a lot of time talking about the pleasure they had at their funeral.
Now don’t get the impression that God is against us having fun. Because God is not. We are simply a society that has gone crazy seeking after pleasure. Why are the done dealers thriving? Because millions are seeking to buy experiences to help them escape the real issues of life. It’s not just the drug dealers who are selling us things that will not satisfy. Be careful of simply living for pleasure because .people who live for pleasure often use and abuse others to get what they want. They find themselves ending up with broken relationships as well as empty hearts. People are more important than things and thrills. We are to be channels, not reservoirs; the greatest joy comes when we share God’s pleasures with others.
If you read the Book of Ecclesiastes all the way through, Solomon gets to the point of saying, “look you can live your life anyway that you choose, but remember in the end you’re going to give an account to God for the decisions you make. Now that I’ve experienced all that I have experienced, my best advice to you is to remember God while you’re young and don’t travel down this road I’ve traveled. For after all is said and done, fear God and keep his commandments for this is the purpose of mankind. God is going to judge us all for the good and the bad.” Solomon died a spiritually bankrupt person. All those women he had, turned his heart away from God so that he was serving their gods. When he dies, there is no great love between him and his people and he’s very distant from God. Solomon knew what was right to do, but chose not to do it. It’s not as easy to walk away from doing wrong as we think once we get on the wrong path.
If we looked at Jesus instead of Solomon, we would get an entirely different picture of where to start in life. If we said Jesus, what am I to be living for, Jesus would say, You’re here to Luke 10:27 (NIV) " ’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’"
What is Jesus saying we need to find real joy in life. We need two kinds of love that leads to two kinds of relationships. We need a love that leads to relationship to God and we need a love that leads to a relationship to people. To “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind” means that every area of a person’s life should be focused on God. Nothing must be held back. That which we choose for our pleasure has to also be given to God in order for God to give us satisfaction with it.
The word for love is agapao, referring to totally unselfish love. We need the Holy Spirit to have unselfish love in our hearts, where we’re not asking the question what’s in it for me. We’re loving because we choose to love. We have to choose to love God. While God wants his people to obey him, God also wants their love.
God says love me with your heart, by letting me be the center of your emotions, your desires, and your affections; God is saying me with your soul, your being and your uniqueness. That which makes you you. God is saying love me with your strength, which is that which is the driving the force or the will or determination you have in life. Love me with your mind, which is your intellect. Trust my knowledge above your own. Submit your reasoning to my word
But there’s more, if you want to enjoy life, you’ve got to love people. It is impossible to have a good vertical relationship with God and not have a horizontal vertical relationship for people. For when we love people, we will lose our desire to cause them to sin or to take them out of relationship to God. When someone loves us, they look out for our best interests, even when it may mean denying us some pleasure for the moment. If I love you, I’m going to do what’s positive in bringing you closer to the Lord. I’m also going to stop engaging in what I know to be wrong because love always wants what’s best for the other person.
Jesus gives us commandments not to hinder our fun, but to help us enjoy what’s really important in life. One of the great tragedies of human being, is the sense of pride we all have where we think we are far smarter than we truly are. We can look at a hundred cases of disaster and think it will never happen to me, even though we are walking the same path.
We deceive ourselves into thinking I can handle it. You know, Jack Whittaker was very well off as a successful businessman even before he won the lottery. Surely if anybody could handle all that money at once, it would be him. But you know something, you can get a billion dollars and it’s not up to you to determine how much you enjoy it. Solomon also wrote in “Eccles. 6:2 (NIV) , let me tell you one other thing that I have seen, “God gives a man wealth, possessions and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires, but God does not enable him to enjoy them, and a stranger enjoys them instead. This is meaningless, a grievous evil.”
We are nowhere near as in charge of things as we might think. We can plan, and we can scheme, and we can excuse or justify our behavior. I deserve this. It will only be this one time. I won’t get caught. People are in prisons by the millions believing they would not get caught. Many many more are in prisons without bars because of their actions. Lives filled with regrets and if only. Lives have been turned upside down because people did not consider all the consequences before taking action.
If you are not living for God today, then know that your living is in vain. Your future according to God’s word is not a bright one. You may figure on having many years left before getting right with God, but I want you to know I have buried, babies, children, teens, young adults, middle age adults, and elderly adults. When death comes knocking it doesn’t care who you are, how old you may be or how close you are to reaching your goals.
You recognize that everything you have worked for is left behind. Only your relationships will survive. Your relationship with God and your relationship with others. Is your family as important to you as making more money? Are the needs of others ever allowed to impose on your lifestyle? Who are you treating wrongly today for whatever reason? Does you attitude really need an attitude adjustment? God is in the attitude change and adjustment business.
Jesus came into this world for the sole purpose of putting your in a right relationship with God, so that you can be right with God and with others. He put it this way, “The enemy comes only to kill and to destroy. “I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly. What are you living for today.
