Show Video of That’s Life
http://www.worshiphousemedia.com/mini-movies/8915/Thats-Life
This week we will learn about the areas that Solomon put most of energy into in his life. Read with me Ecclesiastes on the overhead to see what they were.
SLIDES 2-9
12 I, the Teacher, was king of Israel, and I lived in Jerusalem. 13 I devoted myself to search for understanding and to explore by wisdom everything being done under heaven. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. 14 I observed everything going on under the sun, and really, it is all meaningless—like chasing the wind.
15 What is wrong cannot be made right.
What is missing cannot be recovered.
16 I said to myself, “Look, I am wiser than any of the kings who ruled in Jerusalem before me. I have greater wisdom and knowledge than any of them.” 17 So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind.
18 The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief.
To increase knowledge only increases sorrow.
1 I said to myself, “Come on, let’s try pleasure. Let’s look for the ‘good things’ in life.” But I found that this, too, was meaningless. 2 So I said, “Laughter is silly. What good does it do to seek pleasure?” 3 After much thought, I decided to cheer myself with wine. And while still seeking wisdom, I clutched at foolishness. In this way, I tried to experience the only happiness most people find during their brief life in this world.
4 I also tried to find meaning by building huge homes for myself and by planting beautiful vineyards. 5 I made gardens and parks, filling them with all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I built reservoirs to collect the water to irrigate my many flourishing groves. 7 I bought slaves, both men and women, and others were born into my household. I also owned large herds and flocks, more than any of the kings who had lived in Jerusalem before me. 8 I collected great sums of silver and gold, the treasure of many kings and provinces. I hired wonderful singers, both men and women, and had many beautiful concubines. I had everything a man could desire!
9 So I became greater than all who had lived in Jerusalem before me, and my wisdom never failed me. 10 Anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure. I even found great pleasure in hard work, a reward for all my labors. 11 But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere.
12 So I decided to compare wisdom with foolishness and madness (for who can do this better than I, the king?[a]). 13 I thought, “Wisdom is better than foolishness, just as light is better than darkness. 14 For the wise can see where they are going, but fools walk in the dark.” Yet I saw that the wise and the foolish share the same fate. 15 Both will die. So I said to myself, “Since I will end up the same as the fool, what’s the value of all my wisdom? This is all so meaningless!” 16 For the wise and the foolish both die. The wise will not be remembered any longer than the fool. In the days to come, both will be forgotten.
17 So I came to hate life because everything done here under the sun is so troubling. Everything is meaningless—like chasing the wind.
18 I came to hate all my hard work here on earth, for I must leave to others everything I have earned. 19 And who can tell whether my successors will be wise or foolish? Yet they will control everything I have gained by my skill and hard work under the sun. How meaningless! 20 So I gave up in despair, questioning the value of all my hard work in this world.
21 Some people work wisely with knowledge and skill, then must leave the fruit of their efforts to someone who hasn’t worked for it. This, too, is meaningless, a great tragedy. 22 So what do people get in this life for all their hard work and anxiety? 23 Their days of labour are filled with pain and grief; even at night their minds cannot rest. It is all meaningless.
24 So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat or enjoy anything apart from him?[b] 26 God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy to those who please him. But if a sinner becomes wealthy, God takes the wealth away and gives it to those who please him. This, too, is meaningless—like chasing the wind.
A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Slide 10
Ecclesiastes was written predominately to the rich. Only the rich have the luxury to think about the meaning of life. The poor are most concerned with just living each day. And remember all of you here are rich. There might be varying levels of wealth here but all of you are rich.
How many of you ate fresh fruit this week? How about a banana? Those come from Central America over 5000kms away! How many of you went hungry this week? How many of you had a bed to sleep in and a roof over your head? How many of you own your own house? How many of you have traveled to a warm country during the winter months? How many of you know that you can see a doctor if you get sick? Most of you said yes these.
Ecclesiastes speaks more to people in Canada today than it did when it was written shortly before the death of King Solomon. We are hundreds of times richer than the people of Solomon’s time were.
As I mentioned two weeks ago Ecclesiastes was also written as part of the Wisdom Literature genre in the Old Testament that includes Proverbs, Song of Songs and Job. The purpose of Wisdom Literature was to give a God centred response to what the world around them was saying.
Wisdom literature was not just a Jewish style of writing. All the nations around them wrote wisdom literature. Even though there writing style was similar the contents was very different.
The Babylonians and the Canaanites wrote wisdom literature. They taught that we essentially had no control over what happened to us. Their world around them was really just sort of a cosmic science experiment or drama done by the Gods.
Essentially the Gods were bad. According to writings that we have from the ancient city of Ur, the city that Abraham came from, they wrote that the Gods were too lazy to work for themselves. Their solution was to take animals and change them, and make them smarter so that would be able to be good workers and slaves.
Their ancient wisdom literature taught them that the best way to live was to not be too good or too bad at anything they did. Everything was to be done in moderation so that maybe the god’s would not take notice of them and make an example of them.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the most famous example of ancient wisdom literature outside the Bible. It was written around 1200BC or around 250 years before Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes.
The story goes that Gilgamesh is the greatest King to ever live. He is 2/3 god and 1/3 human. In the beginning of his reign Gilgamesh was a highly immoral king. He did all sorts of bad things that I cannot mention from the pulpit. Because of this his subjects did not like him.
Through his adventures to discover meaning in life he became friends with a wild “beast man” named Enkidu. Gilgamesh learns how to be a nicer guy through their friendship and adventures together.
But being good doesn’t work out for Gilgamesh either. All he gets from being good is he is blamed for things he didn’t mean to do.
At the end of Gilgamesh’s life he is promised immortality if he can stay awake for six days and seven nights. The problem is he falls asleep right away. The story ends with Gilgamesh weeping over the knowledge that he knew he would soon die. He concludes saying the God’s aren’t fair and everything is meaningless .
This story sounds sort of familiar doesn’t it? The epic of Gilgamesh was a twelve scroll series, an ancient best seller. Solomon, being the wisest person to have ever lived would surely have known about the epic of Gilgamesh.
Knowing this helps us understand the culture that Solomon was writing to. The Epic of Gilgamesh rings with truth but it is not the whole truth. It is only partial truth. Solomon’s wisdom literature gives the whole truth. The first hint of that is found in 2:24-26 where Solomon says,
24 So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat or enjoy anything apart from him? 26 God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy to those who please him.
But if a sinner becomes wealthy, God takes the wealth away and gives it to those who please him. This, too, is meaningless—like chasing the wind. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
I will talk more about this in the concussion of this message.
Slide 11
The passage that we read earlier can be broken down into three main sections.
1. 1:12-18 teaches us that seeking wisdom for wisdom’s sake is Meaningless.
2. 2:1:-11 teaches us that seeking pleasure for pleasures’ is Meaningless
3. 2:12-26 teaches us that wisdom and joy come from seeking God.
The first section is about how Solomon sought after meaning by seeking wisdom. Before I started my sermon it was read by Gorge Born how Solomon received his wisdom. Then ____________ read how he used that wisdom in a really neat story about to prostitutes.
The first time when I read theses stories at age 18 I stopped and said to my self, wow this a really wise guy.
But what is Wisdom? In a seminary class that I took just weeks before I came to Waldheim on Wisdom Literature the Professor Perrier Gilbert taught that there are four levels of Wisdom. They are:
Show Slide 12
Wisdom 101:
- A Specific Trade
- You know how to swing a hammer
Wisdom 201
- An Academic Wisdom – a Masters or PHD
- Shrewdness – Political or financial know how
Wisdom 301
- Common Sense
- I heard John Gormaly this week say that common sense is one of our most rare commodities in society today.
Wisdom 401
- The understanding of the fundamental questions about Sin and God
- And the understanding of fear of the Holy God YAHWEH
Old Testament wisdom is a challenge to idolatry, Egyptian and Babylonian values, values that say humans aren’t worth very much; that human beings are merely a commodity.
It is also a challenge to an over simplification of the problems of the world; that the problems of the world are easily to figure out. The world is a much more complicated place than we like it to be.
Knowing briefly about what was considered great wisdom out of ancient Babylon from the story of the Epic of Gilgamesh is there any wonder Solomon said at the end of his life Wisdom is meaningless. The wisdom of Gilgamesh is meaningless.
The University is the center of learning and wisdom in our society today. There are many people who seek meaning by learning. Don’t get me wrong, learning is great thing to do, but if that is your center for meaning in life it will fall short.
Here is two examples of how higher learning has fallen short in just the past few years:
Psychology: Sigmund Freud was once heralded as the grandfather of modern psychology. But now if you read any of the modern text books almost every single thing that he taught and believed has been disproved. If he was a around today we would take away his licence to practice. There were many academics that followed Freud their whole careers.
Or how about biblical theologians. A popular teaching used to be called the JDEP theory. This theory basically states that the Old Testament was written around 200 BC by a group of Jewish scholars who wrote down the oral stories of the Jews. None of the traditional authors of the Old Testament books was correct because the books were all written hundreds of years after they lived.
The basis for this theory was the Old Testament was just too good to be true. There was no way that all the prophecies that were made could possibly have been made before the events happened. The theory goes that these things were written down long after they happed in order to explain events around them.
Personally I call that the Holy Spirit.
The problem is modern archaeology has discovered fragments of the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus from the 8th Century BC on small silver scrolls! That is six hundred years before these scholars claim that it was written.
The JDEP theory is dead, and all those scholars who poured their life’s work into this theory, their iswork relegated to the garbage heap of history.
It is a hard thing to have put all your worth of meaning into either Freud’s teachings or the JDEP theory and to find out at the end of your career that both are now meaningless; mere footnotes in the history of bad teachings. Meaningless, meaningless.
I chose these examples because they went against our world view as Christians and they have now been proven wrong. Here is a serious challenge to all of you here today. What areas in the past have we as Christians been proven wrong in our ideas of what is truth? I will talk about this more later on.
The second section was about trying to find pleasure in doing things in life. Solomon had the best wine and food. He built the grandest houses. He grew gardens and vineyards. He made fountains and pools in a dry arid country. He owned many people. He had large amounts of money. He had professional singers around him when ever he wanted. And he had hundreds of wives and he had a harem of concubines. What ever he wanted he had and what ever he didn’t have he went and took it.
At the end of his life this was all meaningless too.
What are you striving for in life?
As a youth pastor for many years one of my joys has been to talk to young people about what they want to do after high school. Most youth want to go to University so that they can get jobs that make them lots of money.
Solomon called this way of thinking “Life under the sun.” In North America call it the American dream. There is very little difference between the American dream and the Canadian dream.
What is the American Dream?
The American dream is anything is attainable through hard work.
This sounds great doesn’t it? But what is wrong with this way of thinking.
The “scriptural” mandate for the American Dream is “God helps those who help themselves.”
Remember that is not from scripture but the church of North American has fallen for the American Dream so badly that we believe that it is from the Bible. It sounds like something we think we would read in Proverbs. But it is not.
Benjamin Franklin, the Atheist, penned this quote and it has been part of the American culture since. This is the second time in two months that I mentioned Benjamin Franklin’s quote. The reason for that is I believe that this is one of the greatest lies that we as a church in North America believe in. It is not scriptural
SO WHAT
How does this affect us today in 2009 in Waldheim? I have fear and trembling right now because I think Solomon’s wisdom sticks a pin in a lot of our thinking right here in Waldheim.
Speaking to our way of seeking finances as our source of security we are often more disciples of Ben Franklin than followers of scripture.
When students tell me they want to go out into the world and make lots of money I ask them why money is their goal for life. I try and help them think through the consequences of making money their main goal for life.
One of the best examples of this that I dealt with was from about five years ago. I had taken a young man out for lunch. He was in his first year of university. He was in science with the goal of getting into dentistry.
I asked him how school was going. He said great. He had strait A-’s. Impressed I asked him how he liked his classes. He hated them. They were boring.
Next I asked him if was looking forward to getting into dentistry, which was his ultimate goal. He wasn’t at all. He hated teeth and he loathed the idea of staring into people’s dirty smelly mouths for the rest of his working life.
I was really intrigued by now. I asked him then why was he studying to be a dentist then? He said that he researched it and dentists are the highest paid professionals, making on average $300,000 a year and his mom really wanted him to be a dentist.
Changing gears, I then asked him what does he enjoy doing in life? His face lit up. His dad and uncles build fancy stairs in houses together. Since he was 14 years old he has been helping them build and he loved it.
I asked him then why wasn’t he in Community College taking carpentry? He said he really did not know, he just thought he was suppose to strive towards making the most money.
There is a happy ending with this story. He left the sciences in University and transferred into business. He finished towards the top of his class and now he is helping run the company that his dad and uncles own. Due to his good management skills and his love of building that company is thriving.
This young man now has time to lead a worship team, he is a Sunday School teacher and he has even begun writing church music, some of which was sung in last year’s Good Friday service in Elmwood.
I have had many good Christian parents over the years tell me to stop filling kids heads with the idea of going to Bible College like Bethany College or Capenway. They say that are to expensive and a waist of their kid’s time after high school.
My response is that did you know that over half of students that attend the first year of university, drop out? This often happens because they don’t know what they are doing there. Because of this they often fall into the party scene. That is a waist of a year.
A year in Bible College is a waist? Since when is being coming scripturally literate a waist of time? Why is it that in our church being discipled and learning about Christ is considered a waist of time?
What is the greatest problem that we are facing in our MB churches in Canada? We are facing an epidemic shortage of pastors and at the same time our Bible School enrolment is dropping!
And then there is the idol of materialism: the sacred cow of today is the “new custom built house”. Everyone wants a huge new house. We have been sold the dream that a new house will solve all of our problems in life. Buy a new house will not have to pay as much for heating. You won’t have to do as much work on it because it is all new. It will cost less because we will not be paying money for renovations.
These are all lies.
With a new house your work is never done it seems. There is always finishing work to do. There is the basement to finish out. There is the yard to landscape. There is the garage to insulate. Heating cost as much because the new houses are twice as big as the old one. So it may have better windows and doors but you are heating twice as much area. And the biggest lie is the cost. All new homes go way over budget. The mortgages are huge and are restrictive.
How many people have stopped giving to church and mission work because they have sunk all their money into a house? How many people have stopped volunteering in church because they are spending all of their spare time working on their new house?
Are we simply just greedy for more and more?
Is enough is ever enough?
You may be sitting and squirming thinking I am talking about you. I am talking about me too. This is a battle that I am facing too. House and money are the idols that I deal with every day in my own life.
I yearn for the simple life but yet I cannot seem to find it because I pack to much stuff into it. Ecclesiastes teaches me that it is meaningless in the end.
Let’s talk about wisdom. As Christians we need to take a step back and look at wisdom with a lot more humility than we have all too often done in the past.
We don’t have to look very far back in our own Mennonite history where we have been wrong. It wasn’t very long ago that I would not have been aloud to be a member here much less a pastor because I was not immersed when I was baptized. I grew up in the General Conference and at the age of 17 I was baptized on confession of faith and I was poured on.
In the Elm Creek MB church one of the elders told me about how at the age of 20 he was excommunicated because he was dating a woman who was not yet a believer and they went to see a movie. She did eventually profess Jesus as her saviour and they did get married and they have now been married for almost 60 years. His excommunication has never been lifted; they just simply chose to forget about it.
Are there any things we are doing right now that are the same? I hope not, but it is much harder to see when we are in it.
Perrier Gilbert’s chart on Wisdom that we looked at earlier on is a huge help to me. It also takes a lot of humility to follow real wisdom.
Look at the overhead that I purposely left up during for the last five minutes.
Wisdom 101:
- A Specific Trade: is the most basic of Wisdom
Wisdom 201
- An Academic Wisdom – a Masters or PHD
- Shrewdness – Political or financial know how
Wisdom 301
- Common Sense
Wisdom 401
- The scriptural understanding of Sin and God
- And the understanding of the fear of the Holy God
Of all those types of Wisdom only the fourth, wisdom 401 takes humility. When you understand your sin, that God is a Holy God, it forces you to be humble.
Here is the other wonderful part about Wisdom 401; the smartest people on earth and the slowest people one earth have both the same equal capacity to be truly wise. True wisdom is not about IQ, it is about humbly accepting God’s truth.
I want to leave you with a quote from the last article my hero in youth ministry wrote. He was a youth pastor for almost 50 years when he was killed in a car accident weeks after writing this. Mike had a humble and real understanding of true wisdom.
When I was 20, I knew everything about Jesus. I swaggered into high schools afraid of no one’s arguments. The Bible was true; Jesus was God; and we all needed Him. I still believe those things, but the swagger became a more appropriate limp.
I know Jesus, but I don’t know much about Him. I love the Bible—it’s even more true to me today than it was 40 years ago—but the truth I see now is much more complicated and mysterious.
Jesus is very real to me, but He’s also very elusive. Sometimes I wonder if I’m following Him or if He’s following me.
Life has left its scars on me. My soul is thick and leathery, faded and torn; it’s been knocked around a lot. I’m not as sure about things as I used to be.
Yet here’s the amazing part, the one absolute I cannot shake: Jesus.
As many times as I have disappointed Him, as often as I have run from Him, He hasn’t given up on me. Every time I turn around, He’s there. Every time I run from Him, He’s there.
I don’t know as much about Jesus as I used to, but I do know one truth for sure: He’s closer.
Ecclesiastes simply teaches us this week that we need to humbly seek after pleasing God.
