Introduction to Ecclesiastes (Pt 1)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, go ahead and take your copy of God’s word and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter one. And then you die. Some of you may be old enough. Obviously some of the staff probably are old enough. Some of you may be at such a point in high school where you’re old enough to say this as well. I’ll find out here in a moment. But some of you are probably old enough to have been assigned on Walden Pond. Anybody on Walden Pond? One person. One person on Walden Pond. Henry David Thoreau. Okay, so we got another. I see that hand. All right. Good. Some of you are old enough to have been assigned on Walden Pond by a guy named Henry David Thoreau in an English class.

And of course, I’m the first to admit that I did not complete very many of those assignments myself in English class when it came to reading assignments of like books and things like that. Nor have I gone back since high school to complete my reading of On Walden Pond by Thoreau. But I did at least touch. I held, you know, On Walden Pond in my hand and I do remember at least reading through sections and parts of it. I did not read through the Cliffs Notes but I did at least read some of it myself. And I was thinking yesterday in preparation for this sermon, I was thinking yesterday about one of the sentences that’s found in that work.

Thoreau said this, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach. and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived. And what On Walden Pond is a description of is how he left his busy life and went away to Walden Pond. And I think it was for a year, is that correct? He went there for a year. Conveniently, since none of you know, I can basically say whatever I want about it. I think he went there for a year or so And he wanted to get away from all the distractions and all the chaos and all the busyness of life and learn if he could to confront the most essential things to life, the bare essentials, so that he would not come to the end of his life and realize that he had actually not lived to begin with.

Here was a man who was, here was a man with a plan to find significance in the simple life, and not the simple life of What’s Her Head. Paris Hilton and Nicky, Nicole Richie, thank you. They have that show, The Simple Life. I will not say into the microphone to record for posterity or prosperity.

Who said, who gave us that information? about it being Nicole Richie Ray Ray. But Thoreau’s aim again was to get away from the distractions of life. Maybe we would say he was searching for meaning by at least attempting to get away from the meaningless, at least as he determined the meaningless. And I don’t know if he found what he was looking for. I don’t know if by getting away to Walden Pond he actually accomplished his goal.

his desire. But I know that that statement, to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, to see if we could learn what life had to teach and so that when we come to die, realize that we had not failed to live. That kind of idea, that sentence strikes a chord in my own heart over 150 years after Thoreau wrote his work. I don’t know about you, but I often look back at the end of one of my days and I count the many meaningless minutes, the minutes that at least seem to have been spent in meaningless or empty pursuits, I’m guessing that I’m probably not alone in that feeling and there are probably too many of us who are not living deliberately and we are not engaging only the essential facts of life. But I’ll tell you what, for us we don’t need to go to the woods to find that. We need to go to God, right? We don’t know it need to go to some lake or some ocean or the pond. We don’t need to go to the woods to get away from the busyness and chaos of life. We need to go to God,

whether it’s in the midst of the busyness or outside of it, God is the one who provides that meaning and that significance. You know what the author of Ecclesiastes instructs us, that life is meaningless and empty and vain no matter what you do and what you try to accomplish or what you actually do accomplish, no matter how much pleasure you think you’re getting, no matter how much stuff you accumulate for yourself, life is empty, life is meaningless, all is vanity without God. That’s the message of Ecclesiastes.

And unlike Thoreau, who sought to get away from all the chaos and the busyness of life, the author of Ecclesiastes thought he would find significance and meaning in life by throwing himself into the mix of life. And unlike again Thoreau getting away from the distractions, the author of Ecclesiastes accumulated a ridiculous number of distractions into his life, thinking that by having the stuff or by having the people around him, that he would get significance and satisfaction. But again, his message was Ecclesiastes 2.25, apart from him, That being God, who can eat or drink and have enjoyment. The point is, without God you can’t have any of that. Like Thoreau, we, I believe, should resolve to learn the facts of life, but these facts are not something that we’re going to learn by secluding ourselves in creation somewhere, they are instead learned from seeking the Creator Himself. And that’s the message and the theme and the thrust of Ecclesiastes is that life is empty under the sun without God. God’s the only one who can give you meaning.

Satisfaction will provide significance to your life. Now my encouragement, if you were not here last Sunday morning, would be for you to go to the website and download the mp3 of last Sunday morning’s message you could actually listen to the mp3 while watching the keynote slide on the front page and then would go together I’m not quite as significant yet to have like a downloadable movie where you can listen to it and watch the slideshow click through at the right time I know that’s possible and I don’t have that much time to make that happen just yet but maybe someday in the future we’ll see about that, but you can at least do that for yourself just going through. By the way, I mentioned this to Tony. He’s the only one that I’ve told so far, but when you’re watching that side, you know last Sunday morning there was some Hebrew words that we learned. Koheleth, the preacher, and Hebel. By the way, Psalm 39, I was reading in Hebrew this morning as Pastor Z was reading Psalm 39, Hebel used three or four times. I was like, cool. Habel meaning vanity or uselessness or smoke or breath

or whatever vapor. And then Bahur meaning young men. We talked about that before. By the way, when you’re looking at the slides on the Internet, all the Hebrew is backwards. Most of you have no idea about that, so it doesn’t really matter, but I know that. Because Hebrew is written from right to left, and for some reason when I exported it into the flash file, it turned all the letters around to go from left to right, and so it’s ra’chab instead of bakur and labe instead of hebel and so on and so forth. Anyway, just be aware of that in case you’re wanting to take like your Jewish friends to the webpage and show them that there’s Hebrew on it, then be like, duh, that’s not even real Hebrew. So just so you know, but I would encourage you again, last Sunday morning we looked at reasons why to study Ecclesiastes. And that was kind of the intro to the intro of Ecclesiastes. This morning we get into the intro proper, and really we’re just going to cover one introduction or background question this morning, and that is the question of who.

Who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes? Now for those of you living by the bookers out there, living by the book is a great English study tool on how to study and read the Bible. I take my ninth grade Bible classes through it, living by the book. This will come in the chapter on reading selectively, I believe, reading selectively. And he talks about six lures that you can use in any passage to kind of get some of the background or the setting or the context and maybe then grasp some of the significance of the passage itself. The six lures are who, what, when, where, why, and wherefore, as he gives them in Living by the Book.

Obviously, we know who, what, when, where, how, and why as our six questions. So this morning we’re just going to cover one of those and that is the who, and specifically the who wrote it. And we’re going to see that that is the person of Solomon. I do believe that the author of the book of Ecclesiastes is Solomon. And I got to tell you what, knowing that Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes actually explains a lot of things about Ecclesiastes. I heard that some of you actually last Sunday went home in the afternoon and read through the book of Ecclesiastes. And your conclusion when you came back for Sunday evening service was, there’s a lot of weird things in there.

And that’s very true. There’s some weird things, some hard to understand things. I mentioned that last Sunday morning as well. And knowing that it’s Solomon will help to explain some of those things. And we’ll talk about some of that this morning and some of that as we go through the book. Now I don’t have quite as fancy of a presentation for this morning, but I at least have the major outline points for you so that as I read through you can write them down.

There’s four main things I want to talk about this morning. Number one is the proof of Solomonic Isidism-izationology. No, just Solomonic authorship. Solomonic authorship.

There is actually a significant amount of debate among people today as to who the author of Ecclesiastes is. Now I’m going to go through some of these things because, you know, almost anywhere you go, there’s a questioning of the traditional person that Christians think wrote books of the Bible. Anywhere you go, you guys, you know, go to another church and listen to another sermon. You may very possibly hear the preacher say that who you thought wrote some book of of the Bible didn’t actually write that book. And Ecclesiastes is no exception to that. Many people don’t think that King Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. I think that’s ludicrous and crazy. So I want to actually give you some of the reasons why we believe that. It’s not just because, you know, we heard that somewhere a long time ago and we don’t know where we heard it or why we believe that. There are some actually some pretty good reasons to believe that Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, so I want to go through that. One of the things I just want

to highlight to you, kind of as a footnote or a parenthesis, is that most of the time people who deny the traditional author of a book of the Bible are also people who deny that God inspired the Bible. Now I don’t really ever understand why those people study the Bible then, but there are actually a lot of people who deny that God inspired the books of the Bible, and yet they spend their lives studying it. Again, I don’t get that, but they do that, and those kind of people are the ones who deny typically things that we have believed about the Bible and about books of the Bible and who wrote books of the Bible. Those are the kind of people who make the arguments against it. And the same is the case for the book of Ecclesiastes. Most of the people who deny that Solomon is the author also would deny that the Bible is inspired and deny a bunch of other things about the Bible that we would disagree with them as well. What’s interesting is that most of these people who disagree that Solomon wrote the book

of Ecclesiastes agree, they disagree that Solomon wrote it, but they do agree that the book seems like Solomon wrote it. They also agree that the book itself says that Solomon wrote it, yet they still disagree that Solomon himself wrote it, though Ecclesiastes itself says that Solomon wrote it, and here’s what they say instead. They say that the author does not really claim to be Solomon, but places his words in Solomon’s mouth. And so the person who wrote Ecclesiastes is not Solomon, it’s someone acting like they were Solomon. And they were acting like they were Solomon maybe for various reasons, but basically it wasn’t Solomon, it was somebody pretending to be Solomon as a literary device. One commentator went so far as to call the notion of Solomonic authorship quote-unquote unthinkable, meaning that there’s absolutely no possible way, no good reasons whatsoever for believing that Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes, and I say to that, poppy-cosh. The chief argument against Solomon’s

authorship of the Book of Ecclesiastes is based on linguistic information. That is, certain elements of vocabulary and style of the language used in Ecclesiastes. And the reason that they give for this is that there are words in Ecclesiastes, and there are sentence structures in the Book of Ecclesiastes, that they say, in no way, shape, or form could be found in the 10th century BC, when Solomon lived. And that obviously is starting to answer the when, but we’ll come back to that in the second part of our introduction next week. But likely, the 10th century BC, that’s the 900th BC, I think. 10th century BC is when Solomon lived. And what these people say is that there some vocabulary words and there’s some sentence structure that can’t fit with Hebrew as we know it in the 10th century BC, and they instead say that it actually fits more with Hebrew from the 5th century BC, and therefore Solomon could not have been their author, and therefore must have been somebody posing as Solomon who wrote it. Now that’s their chief argument. Now some of the

smaller arguments would be that the New Testament makes no clear reference to Ecclesiastes. There are couple places where maybe Ecclesiastes is alluded to, but there’s no clear mention of Ecclesiastes in the New Testament, as well as the fact that there are some third-person kind of references, like look over at chapter 12, just for a moment. Chapter 12, verse 8, there’s a few of these, but like Vanity of Annies says, the preacher, all is vanity, verse 9, besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many Proverbs with great care, the preacher sought to find words of delight and uprightly he wrote words of truth. And so they say that because that’s in the third person here Solomon wouldn’t have been writing about himself like that. In that a Seinfeld episode where the guy is always talking about himself in third person, right, and so they’re saying you wouldn’t write about yourself in third person. Solomon’s not sitting there going the preacher, and

I’m the preacher, but the preacher did all this and that. They think that that means that Solomon was not the author and so therefore there was this editor. So like the beginning of the book and the end of the book are actually the words of the the editor himself. Then in the middle of the book the editor is claiming to be Solomon and I got to tell you that’s baloney. Just baloney. Papi Kosh Bologna, you name it, it’s no good. First of all, let me just give a couple of comments about how ridiculous that is. First of all, if this is an editor claiming to be Solomon, a later person writing and putting his words in Solomon’s mouth, that’s what we know as a forgery.

And we actually call that lying and deception. That’s not truthful speaking. That’s not acceptable in any nonfiction form of writing. You can’t do that for a newspaper. You can’t do that in a nonfiction book. You can’t do that. You can make that up. It can be a fictional thing, but it can’t be a nonfiction true thing by claiming to be somebody else and have their words be what you’re saying. I mean, that’s a forgery. That’s lying. deception, not to mention the fact that if we accept this argument for the book of Ecclesiastes, then we’re gonna have to listen to that argument for almost every other book of the Bible. We’re gonna have no reason to really believe that Jeremiah wrote Jeremiah, that Paul wrote any of the letters he did, that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew, so on and so forth. If it’s okay for somebody later to come in and claim to be that person in their writing, then I I mean, we’re going to have to listen to that argument for every other book of the Bible as well.

Also, just so you know, there are good men, good conservative Bible scholars who disagree about these comments saying that the Hebrew in Ecclesiastes is more like fifth century Hebrew than 10th century BC Hebrew. There are actually significant Hebrew scholars who disagree with that claim anyway.

no question that some of the words and the grammar in Ecclesiastes are different. But you know what, they’re different than every other book in the Old Testament. They’re different from the books written close to the 10th century BC, and they’re different from the books written close to the 5th century BC. So I mean, Ecclesiastes doesn’t really fit anywhere. It’s not like it just doesn’t Hebrew-wise in the 10th century, it also doesn’t fit in the 5th century. Ecclesiastes is different than all the other Old Testament books, but that has to do with its type of writing, not its time of writing. And we’ll talk about its type of writing more next week. One of their other arguments is about how the New Testament doesn’t really reference Ecclesiastes. Well, I mean, that argument really bears weight if the New Testament says, hey, reject Ecclesiastes, or forget about it, or Ecclesiastes is no good, run away.

I mean, the message of Ecclesiastes doesn’t really fit with any message of any New Testament book, does it? It doesn’t fit with the Gospels, it doesn’t fit with Acts in the beginning of the church, it doesn’t fit with the letters to the churches, it doesn’t fit with the final revelation Jesus’ return. It doesn’t really fit. There’s no need for the New Testament writers to reference Ecclesiastes because the message of Ecclesiastes is different than the message they’re trying to communicate. That doesn’t mean they rejected it. So again, that’s a bad reason. And finally, there’s just some good evidence that Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. That’s what I really want to give you this morning. First of all, there’s some external evidence. External evidence is evidence that’s outside of the Bible, that’s outside of Ecclesiastes itself and outside of other parts in the Bible.

External evidence is something that we oftentimes talk about for people who don’t like using arguments from the Bible. They say, well, if you use an argument about the Bible from the Bible, that’s circular reasoning. And so they look to this external evidence and just a couple things. First of all, Jewish tradition has always attributed the book of Ecclesiastes to Solomon. That’s just how it’s always been. Don’t let somebody tell you that it’s different than that. Jewish scholars have always thought Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon. Early Jewish historians like Josephus and Origen and Jerome mention Ecclesiastes explicitly as part of the canon, as part of the Old Testament group of books that belong to the Bible. Not to mention the fact that historically Christian scholars and historians have also taught and believed and written that Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon. But for as much as that external evidence might be helpful, I think some of the internal evidence from the book of Solomon itself is even better. And let me give you just a few things again

for Solomonic authorship. First of all, the claims of the author, the claims of the author. Look in chapter 1 verse 1. The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Now I don’t know about you, but there’s only a couple people that that could possibly even go with. David only had 10 sons and only one of his sons became king and that was Solomon. The words themselves naturally point to Solomon, the biological son of King David who ruled the the kingdom of Israel after his father King David in the 10th century BC. The book claims to to be written the words of this guy, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Look down in verse 12. I, the preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. I mean, duh. It really is difficult to make that out to be anybody else unless you say, oh, that’s just somebody later acting like they were Solomon. And again, I think that’s a forgery, that’s deception, and that’s lying. I think we should reject that. It’s pretty clearly pointing to Solomon himself, but it’s not only the claims of the author, but there are some descriptions of the author that really make it necessary to look to it being Solomon as the author. For example, look in chapter 1 verse 16. I said in my heart, I have acquired great wisdom surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me.”

Who was the most wise person that God says ever lived? Other than his son Jesus Christ, the wisest person God says who ever lived, Solomon. To make this claim to have great wisdom more than any who ruled over Jerusalem before him would have been a ridiculous claim if it was not Solomon himself. Unrivaled wisdom is one of the descriptions of the author that points us to Solomon in chapter 2 Verses 1 through 3 his description of his own pursuit of pleasure in Verses 4 through 6 where he says I made great works I built houses planted vineyards blah blah blah gardens and pools and all those kinds of things his building projects Verse 7, all of his servants, and verse 8, all of his wealth, gathered for myself silver and gold and treasures of kings and provinces.

I mean, his exploration of pleasure, his extensive building projects, his large number of servants, his unsurpassed wealth, nobody else in the Bible fits that description other than Solomon. Nobody had that kind of wisdom, nobody had that kind of money, nobody made that kind of pursuit of pleasure, Nobody built that kind of those many buildings. All of that refers to Solomon. And then as we just looked at chapter 12 verse 9, besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. Well, who was that? Solomon. Again, so we have the claims of the author himself, descriptions of the author. And then lastly, just as one more thing, the moral journey of the author.

The whole book of Ecclesiastes gives a chronicle of this life of having everything, pursuing all kinds of pleasure, getting no satisfaction out of it. And we know in 1 Kings chapters 2 through 11 that describes the person of Solomon. So the traditional view of the Jews and of Christian scholars is that the author of the book of Ecclesiastes is Solomon’s son of David, king in Jerusalem. The claims of the author is that he is Solomon’s son of David, king in Jerusalem. The descriptions of the author only fit Solomon’s son of David, king in Jerusalem, and the description of his moral journey also can only describe Solomon, son of David, king in Jerusalem, and then he died.

It was not even until the 19th century that anybody questioned the author of Ecclesiastes as being Solomon, the proof of Solomonic authorship. Secondly, the profile of Solomon’s life. Solomon is a well-known Bible character, but I do think it would be helpful for us just to remember a few significant things about him this morning. First of all, a little bit about his family background. As I mentioned already, Solomon was the 10th son of King David. He was the second son of King David with what woman? Bathsheba, the first son of David with Bathsheba. What happened to him? He died before he was circumcised. That was part of God’s judgment on David and Bathsheba for their sin of adultery and specifically then on David’s sin of murder as well.

Now as we consider Solomon’s background, understand just to get a picture of him that he grew up with the greatest king, at least up to that point Israel had ever had, King David as his father. I mean David was somebody that the scripture describes as being a man after God’s own heart. For all of his sin and the heinousness of, especially a couple acts of sin that David committed, God described David as a man after his own heart. That was Solomon’s father. Now Solomon’s mother, as we just said, was Bathsheba. Here was a woman who had probably gleaned a lot of wisdom from learning things the hard way. I mean, here was a woman who, you know, got called upon by the king.

The king killed her husband. She had kids with this guy. I mean, she had probably become pretty shrewd and pretty discerning about a lot of things learning the hard way. So David as his father, Bathsheba as his mother, the prophet Nathan was probably his tutor. We know Nathan was the one who came and confronted David about his sin of adultery. Nathan was a wise prophet, a godly prophet. Nathan was probably always hanging around the palace with David and his family. And so Solomon had all kinds of positive inputs into his life and into his family upbringing. For all of that said, for all the positive influences in Solomon’s life, there were also some negative influences.

And it’s probably the case with every kingdom and every palace, but there was a lot of intrigue and jealousy and murder and hate and envy and bitterness that took place inside that palace. Before Solomon had grown to maturity, he had seen several of his half-brothers die violently and one of his sisters raped. Again, growing up, that’s what he would have gotten so far as the negative side. Ultimately, one of David’s own sons tried to overtake the throne, trying to kill, excuse me, trying to kill David so that he could be the heir to the throne and Solomon killed that brother. So I mean this was a guy with a lot of experience both good and bad. Let’s talk about his rise to the throne just for a minute or so. History would show that Solomon would not learn a whole lot from as dysfunctional as his family was. He created his own dysfunctional family of many women and the problems that undoubtedly came along with that. But turn to 1 Kings chapter 3. Again, 1 Kings chapters 2 through 11 really are the the Chronicle of Solomon’s life. And Solomon becomes

king. And you probably remember this story in 1 Kings chapter 3 verse 3. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father only. He sacrificed and made offerings at the high places. That was not a good thing. But verse 4, and the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the high place Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon a dream by night and God said, Ask what I shall give you. Now can you imagine that? That your king, which is probably a pretty good place to be anyway, your king and God comes in a dream and says, whatever you want, I’ll give you. I mean, what would you ask for? Most of us probably would not have asked what Solomon asked for. Solomon said, verse 6, you have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David, my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart towards you. And you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in and your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen a great people too many to be numbered accounted for the multitude. Give your servant therefore

an understanding mind to govern your people that I may discern between good and evil for who is able to govern this your great people. First hand, please the Lord that Solomon had asked this and God said to him, because you’ve asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right. Behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind so that none like you has been before you, and none like you shall arise after you. And by the way, since you answered correctly, I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you all your days.”

That was just thrown in. Here you go. All the riches you can imagine and being the best king ever. So that was Solomon’s request there in chapter 3, verses 4 through 15. Solomon immediately begins to show off his wisdom in chapter 3, verse 16 through verse You remember the story of the two women coming and claiming that this live child was both theirs. There had been a baby that died and a baby that lived and both mothers claimed that it was the other mother, the other brother mother from another mother. The other baby’s mother was the one who had the dead baby. Each one of them claimed that. And you remember what Solomon did?

and listened to both sides, and then he said, okay, bring me a sword. I can just imagine this, the ACLU going crazy, you know, today, but bring me a sword. We’ll cut the baby in half and you can both have half. And what happened? The genuine mother stood up and said, no, give the baby to the other woman rather than take the baby’s life.

Solomon said only the mother of the child would have wanted the child’s life more. And so by going through that he discerned who was the actual baby’s mother. That’s unique but wise. The rest of chapters 4 through 11 describe all Solomon did. Look over in chapter 4. Verse 26, Solomon also had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots and 12,000 horsemen. By the way, that’s a lot. Verse 29, God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure and breath of mind like the sand on the seashore so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people in the east. Look down at verse 32. He also spoke 3,000 Proverbs and his songs were 1005. He spoke of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. By the way, that would be knowledge of botany. More than that, he spoke of beasts and of birds and of reptiles and of fish. That would be zoology. And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon and from all the kings of the earth who had heard of

of his wisdom. Kings came to listen to his wisdom. Amazing amount of stuff. Look over at chapter 10. After the queen of Sheba comes to visit him, and then we finish with that story in chapter 10, verse 13. Look at verse 14. Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold. As far as my calculation is correct, In one year, he gleaned 41 tons of gold. I don’t know about you, but you could buy a lot of bubble gum and candy with 41 tons of stinking gold. That’s a lot of stuff. He had all the wisdom. He had all the knowledge of particular things, government and botany and zoology and those kinds of things.

He had all kinds of money, didn’t know what to do with it. He built amazing buildings. Solomon was responsible for building the what? The temple. He had started gathering and collecting those things while David was still alive.

But God didn’t want David to build the temple because David had shed too much blood with his hands. And so Solomon’s rule and reign was marked by prosperity, money, stuff, new buildings. Solomon built all kinds of buildings in Jerusalem, not only the temple, but a huge palace, major architectural things that he built there in Jerusalem. And again, as I mentioned, the people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon and from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom. The problem was he had all of that and he still missed the point. Look over at 1st Kings chapter 9. At the dedication of the temple, God gives him a warning and we’ll have to finish the rest of this next Sunday morning. But 1st Kings chapter 9, dedication of the temple, as soon as Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the King’s house and all that Solomon desired to build, the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.

We read that in chapter three. And the Lord said to him, I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, and with integrity of heart and uprightness doing according to all that I have commanded you in keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever as I promised David your father, saying you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel. But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments in my statutes that I have said before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, why has the Lord done this to the land and to this house, then they will say, because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore, the Lord has brought all this disaster on them.” And I want you to know that Solomon was the last king to rule over a united Israel because he did turn to follow other gods. And he did not heed and listen to all the commandments that the Lord had given him.

Here’s a pretty clear warning. He had all this stuff. If he just would have obeyed God, his throne would have gone on forever. But he didn’t obey. And that will actually lead us to next week the problem of Solomon’s folly. I mean, the question is, if he was so wise, if he was all that in a bag of chips, did he not obey God? I mean if he had all this wisdom, why did he commit such moral failures? And in light of the fact that he committed so many sinful things, how could then we listen to the message of Ecclesiastes? I mean why listen to this guy? Oh yeah, he had all the wisdom, but now he’s gonna tell us about how to really live? I mean the guy blew it. Why should we pay attention to him at all?

Well next week we’ll look at the problem of Solomon’s folly, and I think that that’s going to end up leading to the power of Solomon’s message. It is actually out of the folly that he comes. I believe Ecclesiastes was written at the end of his life after all those empty pursuits and the folly of his sin and with a at least somewhat repentant heart giving us wisdom so that we would avoid making the mistakes that he made. Again the power of Solomon’s message will actually come from the folly of his life. Well in conclusion this morning if you’re like me you always want to know a little bit about the speaker. You know we go down to Shepherd’s Conference and you know we listen to guys like R.C. Sproul or Al Mohler or John MacArthur and you’re like boom yeah that’s what I’m talking about because you know these are guys who have paid their debt. They paid their dues. They put the time in. They fought the battles. That’s the kind of person that you want to listen to. You know anytime you come across a new speaker you’re always like well who’s this

punk. What makes him special? Why should I listen to him? And I tell you what, knowing that Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes gives us absolutely multiple and magnificent reason to listen. This was no punk pundit. This was the wisest guy who ever lived. Not just a wise guy, but a wise man. And he’s got a message for us that’s beneficial to A guy who had been there, done that, fought the battles, pursued the emptiness, and realized that life really could only be significant with God. The divine commentary on this man was that he was the wisest person to ever live. We ought to listen to him. And by the way, the conclusion at the end of his message is pretty simple.

All of us in this room will have decisions make this week. We’ll get wrapped up in the busyness and the chaos and the pursuits of life. Some are good and right and responsibilities you’ve given to us to fulfill, be stewards of, many others that are purely empty, vain, and worthless. Father, give us all wisdom. Give us wisdom to know what matters. Give us wisdom to focus on you who are the one who gives meaning to the things that we do. Help us to fear you and to obey you, to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Help us to avoid the mistakes that Solomon made to live for you all of our lives. And we pray this in Christ’s name, Amen.

All of us in this room will have decisions make this week. We’ll get wrapped up in the busyness and the chaos and the pursuits of life. Some are good and right and responsibilities you’ve given to us to fulfill, be stewards of, many others that are purely empty, vain, and worthless. Father, give us all wisdom. Give us wisdom to know what matters. Give us wisdom to focus on you who are the one who gives meaning to the things that we do. Help us to fear you and to obey you, to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Help us to avoid the mistakes that Solomon made to live for you all of our lives.