The Vanity of Women (Pt 2)

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.

God’s word again this morning and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter two. As you are turning there, we started singing a song a little bit earlier and I was so excited. It’s the song that starts out. Uh, but as for me, I watch and hope for the Lord. I wait for God, my savior, my God will hear me. And I was like, I just read that. That’s from a verse. I was like, I was getting ready to like go look it up in my Bible because I underlined it and it was just like in the last week or so. I was like where was that? And as I was getting ready to turn in my Bible to find it then I remember that the name of the song is Micah 7-7. That’s the name of the song. I was like oh yeah yeah. But I still had read it just in the last week or so whenever that was in that plan that some of us have been doing.

So anyway, that was just something I thought of doesn’t have anything to do with the message. Neither does this. Wednesday night we’re meeting obviously, going to continue on in the Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted series. In fact, Wednesday night we’re going to be talking about epithumology, which is the study of lust.

And I was paying attention this morning, Pastor Z’s message on lust and I know he talked some about lust last week too but I’m gonna try to talk about some other things than he did than just re-preaching his entire sermon so I will try to do that and what does overlap again we’ll trust will will be beneficial reminders to you but anyway what I really wanted to tell you is that Wednesday night I’m bringing out the Rudolph Santa Christmas Tree game, which we’ve played in the past, and I’ve already got the prize ready for the ultimate winner, and it is not Mexican. So I’ve given away my last can of Mexican anyway. The last can of Mexican went out at the corn kick this year. So this is a good prize, kind of Christmasy and fattening all at the same time. So you’ll enjoy that.

We hear not only for the message, but again, if you enjoy the Rudolph Santa Christmas Tree game. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have not quite lived through Christmas time yet, truly. And you’ll have to wait to find out. All right. Well, two weeks ago, we began our study on the vanity of women. And it was around 1201 that I looked up at the clock and said, oh my, how did that happen? I really had anticipated being finished with that entire message, being that it’s only like one part of a verse. I really had anticipated getting through the entirety of that message and then today doing Ecclesiastes 2, 9 through 11 and kind of finishing up that and then maybe on New years giving us some resolutions for not looking for life in all the wrong places, but as it is I’m going to end up needing to finish the vanity of women today.

The vanity of women is a large topic. There is a lot to say about it, as well as the vanity of men. You get the point there. So on January 1st, I’ll see if I can’t do the summation, the conclusion of Solomon in verses 9 through 11 to this entire section and give maybe a few resolutions.

And then the month of January I’m not teaching at all and that’ll be on Sundays or Wednesday nights. I will not be teaching in the month of January so far as so that I can actually have time to prepare for the snow or tree and so that you don’t just get absolutely sick and tired of hearing me those of you who are in high school who are going on the snow or tree kind of builds that anticipation like oh he’s not teaching maybe he’ll have something actually significant to say if he doesn’t teach for a while maybe he can come up with some material that will you know be interesting so I try to do that for your sake as well as for mine in preparation for the snow retreat and so you got me today Wednesday night and then January 1st and then that’ll be it until January 30th night oh the oh six SR well today the vanity of women we continue and And we’re in this section on Solomon’s looking for life in all the wrong places.

Starting back in chapter 1 verse 18, up and through chapter 2 verse 8. We’ve talked about the vanity of looking for life in education, the vanity of looking for life in pleasure in general, the vanity of looking for life in a buzz, that is an alcohol. I mean, Andy made that proclamation this morning that he knows a lot of people like to drink. You know guys go back get that download that message okay that’s really your problem but vanity of life and alcohol the vanity of life in work the vanity of life in stuff money materials possessions the vanity of life and music slash entertainment And we have come then to the very end of chapter 2 verse 8 where he got himself many concubines, the delight of the children of man. I don’t remember exactly how far I got. I think I got through point number one or through most of point number one, his pursuit. And it is right there, again, I just read it. I got many concubines. It’s the end of that sentence there. It’s the same verb that goes along with getting many singers. And so that’s all one sentence. I’ll

make a comment about that a little bit later on this morning, but you could read it if you just take out that first thing that he got for himself. You could read it. I got many concubines. That was his pursuit. We talked about the fact that he was well known for his women, for his ladies. He perhaps was the original ladies man with some 700 wives and 300 concubines. That’s a lot of ladies.

Yeah, we read that in 1 Kings 11 verses 1 through 3. We talked about at least a couple of the ways that he got some of the women, one of them was through marrying foreign King’s daughters as signing a deal or a treaty. That was a common thing to do for a king to give the greater king in the contract deal one of his daughters and of course part of the reason for that was you know you figure then as the lesser king if you give the the big tougher king the cool king the I don’t though. If you give the the you know the more powerful king one of your daughters maybe he don’t won’t then come take all your other stuff. Maybe he won’t you know kill you and your people and take your land and plunder your cities and so forth you know so you know that’s seeing your own daughter is pretty valuable at that point and that was a common thing to do and undoubtedly we know that that happened in some of the cases for Solomon that kind of sealed the relationship.

However, that was undoubtedly, you don’t just come up with 700 wives by making 700 contracts with foreign dignitaries with other kings. There was undoubtedly some wife pursuing here that had to do with just his own desires, his own pursuit of pleasure. And we kind of looked at the story back and Esther and I suggested that perhaps Esther chapter 2 verses 2 and 3 and 12 through 14 I suggested that perhaps that was similar to maybe some of the things that Solomon did in maybe even sending out some delegates to find the pretty people and the pleasing ladies in the the country and send them back to the king and send them you know to their cosmetic school but it wasn’t to learn how to give cosmetics to other people, it was their own school of beautification.

For six months, the treatment of oil, what was it? And six months of treatment of something else, you know, learning how to put your pretty face on and how to take it off at night and cleanse the pores and all those kinds of things. You got a whole year of that kind of school.

And then you got, at least in the case of an Esther’s situation, you know, you got one shot. You got basically one night, one day to try to please the king to make him happy. In that case, for then him to make you his wife and maybe he would call you back. And in Solomon’s case, he apparently called 700 of them back and made them his wife and then also called some others back and didn’t make them his wife, didn’t make them, you know, officially related to him as one of his 700 wives, you know, why not just make the 300? Why not just include them in his wives? I mean, when you got 700, is it really that tough to make 300 more your wives instead of them being your concovines? I don’t know. But nevertheless, he got for himself lots of ladies. We talked about the fact last time as well that there are no express commands, no explicit commands in the Old Testament against polygamy, against having more than one wife, though that’s obviously the paradigm that God sets up in Genesis chapter 2, one man and one woman. He

didn’t make Adam and then Eve and Eve’s sister and so on and so forth. I mean it was one man and one woman. We obviously know by the New Testament it becomes very explicit, but Solomon still doesn’t get out of that because there are explicit commands to kings, not to have more than one wife. So even though there are no explicit commands that Solomon could have, you know, Solomon could have argued like a teenager, well, there’s no verse for that. Well, there is in fact a verse for kings, that they were not allowed to have more than one. Deuteronomy chapter 17 verse 17, he had already done some of these other things, so it’s not really a surprise that he includes, you know, breaking this part of the commandment.

In Deuteronomy 17 verse 16 says that the king must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses. Also at the end of verse 17, he shall not acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. We’ve already seen that he pursued those things and so then right there at the beginning of verse 17, he shall not acquire many wives for himself lest his heart turn away. It even includes the reason why, the warning there. And so he was in complete disobedience in looking for life in these women. Now that was kind of the Old Testament context. I then came and talked a little bit about Solomon’s situation and especially if it was anything like in Esther chapter 2, I mean Solomon had the cream of the crop here. And I mentioned three things about Solomon’s situation. He had the cream of the crop. They would have all been trying to impress him and fighting over him and with that number he could have never gotten bored. And I mentioned those three things because not that I think

any of you necessarily are running out trying to find the most pretty person, not that I think most of you will then ever find a person who then is only interested in serving you and trying to impress you and make you happy, nor do I I think most of you will try to play the field at the same time and have, you know, 10 different girlfriends or boyfriends, let alone more than one spouse. But the reason that I mention those things is because I do believe that in your heart you sometimes wish that you could have it like that. And you blame your lack of happiness. You’re testing it out to see if you can get happiness in another person.

And you find that it’s not really providing you happiness. Let’s say you get that boyfriend or girlfriend. Let’s say you have five boyfriends or girlfriends, whatever it is. You have five and they’re relatively pretty. I still think you would argue, well, maybe if I just found somebody prettier, I would be happy.

Or maybe if I just could have more than one, I would be happy. Or maybe if, you know, I could just find the prettiest person and more than one of them who their whole life is about serving me and trying to impress me, then I would be happy. Again, I think we deceive ourselves into thinking that what we have, if we just had something a little bit better or a little bit more, or they were a little bit different in serving us, not expecting us to serve them, you know, I mean, come on. If we could just find something a little bit more that we don’t have, then we’d be happy. And I’m telling you what, I gave those three things about Solomon.

He had the prettiest people. He had a thousand of them. I suppose maybe not all thousand of them were the prettiest because there could have been some ugly king’s daughters that he got in the deals that he signed. So is this possible? But in the number of them, they all would have been serving him. For goodness sake, he was the king. Literally, he was the king, not just acting like the king, like some guys try to do. He was the king.

And you know, they were going out of their way to try to impress him, to get invited back and just spend time with him. And he says, that is ultimately empty. His experience then here is substantially more than any of you will ever get close to. And in your deceiving yourself and thinking, Well, maybe if I just had, or maybe if I just was able to be with, or maybe I wouldn’t be so bored if I could have a couple, any of those kinds of things, you can’t get close to experiencing what Solomon had. And he said what he had was empty. He said what he had was vanity, not ultimately satisfying. And yet, and yet junior hires and high schoolers and collegians and single people all over, I guess, even married people, I suppose, can have some of these kinds of issues, believe that life is found in finding the right person, that life is found in that relationship, that life is found in that physical pleasure of the relationship anywhere in between, and it is empty.

It is not satisfying. So wish that you could get that now rather than later. Well to finish up his pursuit, just to give you some actual exegesis I get, I guess, when he says I got many concubines. The word concubines is an interesting word. And I suppose it’s possible that some of you don’t know what that word means. And if you had asked me this question personally, I would have said, well, go ask your mom and your dad.

Because basically a concubine was somebody that was really there for one reason. And that was for sex and physical pleasure. There was not really any other reason for a concubine as far as I can tell, other than, you know, showing off to other kings how many you had, but their primary reason why you had them was for yourself. So in this verse, he actually only mentions them. He doesn’t even mention all his wives. He doesn’t mention the 700 wives he had to choose from. He actually talks about getting for himself many concubines. I mean this was as low and as base and as trying to fulfill his fleshly lust as he possibly could. Now some people are not exactly sure that concubines is the best way to translate this phrase. Shadda v’Shaddot is the Hebrew phrase here.

This is the only time it occurs in all of the Old Testament. Shadda v’Shaddot. That sounds kind of cool I guess. Abel, Hebelim, Hakol, Abel. There you go, that’s all the Hebrew I know. But nevertheless, this is the only time it occurs in the Old Testament that’s part of the reason then why people aren’t sure exactly what it means. Some people have suggested this is just kind of interesting because I think it means concubines and hopefully that’ll be apparent. But nevertheless, some people suggest that this word comes from an Aramaic word meaning to pour out. And so they suggest that what Solomon says he got for himself here are male and female cup bearers.

That is like wine tasters. Some people suggest that it’s warm and cold baths. He got for himself many baths. So you got wine tasters and warm and cold baths. Some suggest that it means male and female captives, like he defeated other countries. The problem is there’s no battle that Solomon was a part of during his reign. Some people suggest cooks and confectioners. So cooks making really good meals and confectioners more your candy type sweets. Some suggest special musical compositions, even though he’s already. And the best, that’s kind of close, I suppose, because he just talks about getting for himself male and female singers.

So now he’s getting, you know, the great songwriters. I don’t know, but some people suggest that. Some people suggest that it means chests or sedan chairs like, you know, good furniture. I’m serious, these are like real suggestions in the different commentaries that I read. People suggested it. And I’ll tell you the biggest reason why I don’t think it’s wine tasters or baths or captives or cooks and confectioners or musical compositions because nobody has ever called a wine taster a delight of the children of man. Somebody tasting your wine for you is not somebody who like everybody wishes they could have one. You know, on their Christmas list, oh, I could just have a wine taster this Christmas.

You know, that kind of, that doesn’t really go along. Good furniture, I mean, I suppose everybody likes their good, you know, like, you know, good chair. Their good, lazy boy chair. If you’re the king, you should have a good chair, a kingly chair. You should have multiple good kingly chairs for different kinds of things. for judging and ruling and for taking a nap and for listening to your music and counting your money and all those kinds of things. You have chairs for all those things, yes. You probably wouldn’t call them the delights of the children of man. Good meal, yeah. Somebody who can make you sweets and candy, okay.

Not the delights of the children of man. Probably wouldn’t go that far in any of those description. I think context really forces us to recognize that cup bearers are not the highest human pleasure, and it comes back to then concubines, and those were ladies there for the one reason. His motive, okay, we finally get through point one. That only took me somewhere around 70 minutes between two sermons to get through point number one. That’s good. Point number two, his motive. The next three are, I should be able to do them quicker than 70 minutes a piece. His motive is the same as it has been all along himself. It just kind of follows the pattern that we’ve seen.

His motive is self. Remember I said that as this is the same sentence, I got singers, both men and women, and many concubites, the delight of the children of man. I’m disappointed in the ESV here because the Hebrew does have for myself. So same sentence, same little phrase is included there in the Hebrew verse, verse 8, I got for myself. His motive was self. And you know what? You don’t get concubines for any other reason than self. with the music you could argue for, you know, the nation’s art and for expression of, you know, culture and those kinds of things. But not concubines. There’s nothing about culture or society or the arts in concubines.

It was purely for himself. myself this was all about gratification of his flesh and trying to make himself happy. Point number three. How quick was that? Point number three, his delusion. This is added in. The other ones have primarily had his pursuit, his motive, and his conclusion. This one gets added in. His delusion is in that last phrase, the delight of the children of man. The term delight, in fact, could be translated the word pleasure. Solomon uses the same exact word in Song of Solomon, chapter 7 verse 6, how beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights, with all your pleasurableness. You are pleasant. You are delightful. Now at least in Song of Solomon he is talking about one, as opposed to concubines, but nevertheless he uses the same words, and he calls them the delight of the children of man. And honestly I think that’s just a tad bit sarcastic.

He’s describing for us his pursuit. He’s describing for us where he was looking for life, And I think this final phrase is thrown in there to just say, you know what, I got it. I’ve been there and done that and I had the delights of the children of man. And what he’s describing is that he believed the myth. He believed the advertisements, not necessarily in commercials, but believed the human myth that life and meaning and satisfaction can come in another person, can come in sex. He apparently had believed that. He listened to that marketing campaign that that’s delightful, that’s pleasurable. Everybody loves that. It’s the delight of the children of men. And yet, he was deluded. I’ll tell you why because these delights were at best temporary and incomplete.

At best the delights of the children of man are temporary. They do not last. It’s not ongoing and they are incomplete. It’s shallow not deep deluded. And finally then his conclusion, his conclusion is the same as it has been for the entire section that it’s empty, vanity, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. This is just as much included in that all is vanity as all of the other things. Vanity, emptiness. A couple weeks from now when we look specifically at verses 9 through 11 we’ll see he did not keep himself from anything his eyes desired, women or otherwise. Everything he saw he wanted that he thought could make him happy, he got for himself.

And he says it was all empty. Not satisfying. Not providing meaning. It was vanity. Now of course for Solomon it was worse. Worse than just finding that all of these women were empty and and it was vanity to pursue it. Look at 1 Kings chapter 11. We read the beginning part of 1 Kings 11 verse 1. You know this story but I just wanted to show it to you specifically. It was worse in Solomon’s case than just finding out that this was fruitless. This was idolatrous. 1 Kings chapter 11 verse 3, he had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart.

For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God. Let’s saw some of them in verse 5, look down in verse 6, so Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord as David his father had done. Then he actually goes and makes offering places for some of the gods. Verse 8, and so he did for all his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods. And the Lord was angry with Solomon. The Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods, but he did not keep what the Lord commanded. And the result was idolatry, and the result of the idolatry was the Lord actually taking away from Solomon the kingdom. There were consequences to his actions and to his pursuits, not only just in finding that they were empty, but there were actually some other pretty

significant and serious consequences that followed for him as well. I probably might say that Solomon’s pursuit of women was idolatrous. Not only did it lead him into other idolatry in actually serving other gods with other names, Solomon’s pursuit of women was idolatry in and of itself, and putting women and his wives and his concubines and his pleasure in place of God. Not only did it turn him to idolatry, again perhaps it was idolatrous in and of itself. Let me say another thing about the verse and I want to try to be careful here, but do you notice a connection between music and women in verse 8? Well you should if you don’t because it’s the same sentence.

And I think that’s interesting that he includes at the same time I got for myself one verb, two objects. I got male and female singers and many concubines. Same sentence there is a connection, at least grammatically, is there a connection beyond that? Is there a connection between music and women beyond just being in the same sentence here? And I’m going to say yes. I’m going to say yes. There obviously can be an explicit connection between music and women, and it takes about five seconds of any modern video to put that together. Takes about five seconds of any, you turn on MTV or VH1, takes about five seconds of most videos to see that there is a pretty obvious connection between the sensuality of music and the sensuality of women and putting them together.

is definitely an explicit connection many times between music and relationships. But more than that, I don’t think that that’s why he includes it here. I don’t think that Solomon had in mind music videos, right? Though it might have been live, at least the the female singers might have been doing some dancing while they were singing and whereas the boy band singers might not have you know been as much the temptation for him they might have still laid down some choreography that’s possible but again it is possible that there was some explicit connection in his mind between the ladies who were singing and dancing and so on and so forth but I think the reason that he includes them together here is more of an implicit connection and that is self serving self. There is a pattern in seeking entertainment which is what we talked about music as being mentioned here that that’s what it’s for its entertainment. There’s a pattern in entertainment of focusing on self and feeding your flesh right. We talked about that substantially in that

message. Entertainment is never for somebody else. You seek entertainment for yourself. The gratification of yourself, your flesh, your laziness, your amusement, whatever it might be.

And you know what? Don’t think that you can be out of control in seeking entertainment for your flesh and think that that won’t spill over onto maybe other ways you can seek entertainment for your flesh. The implicit connection then is self. Your lack of self-control will eventually spill over into everything and here it is. If you cannot control your entertainment choices, if pleasure and fun is your life, if pleasure and fun is what it’s all about when it comes to your music and movies and media, it will not be long before those don’t entertain you anymore and you’ll seek to find entertainment in something else maybe in a person. The implicit connection is serving self and if your life is about serving yourself in any one area of your life you might not be able to contain it just in that area. And if you make your habits and your choices consistently, if your habit is doing what makes you happy, then why would you not do what makes you happy in a relationship? Obviously you would. If you can’t control your sleep,

then you may not be able to control your hands. If you can’t control your need for fun and amusement, then why do you think you’re going to be able to control your lust for somebody else? I got for myself male and female singers and many concubines. It was just a spillover of his pursuit of me. As I said, Solomon’s pursuits were more extensive than any of us will ever attempt and yet we live in in a world where sex and relationships is normal and more than normal, it’s available. And more than available, it’s not restricted other than by parents and by conscience, most people don’t have, or at least not a very strong set of parents or a very strong conscience.

Now for most of you, I anticipate that the issue is not sex yet. For some of you it may be, maybe not yet. For some of you, a relationship is more about the relationship than the physical. I’ll do my part to talk about that on Wednesday night. But, Ian’s getting ready to write. He knows that this is the good, this is the juice coming right here. The juice is good. You can still be an idolater without being a fornicator or adulterer. Do you realize that? You can still be an idolater without being a fornicator or an adulterer. You don’t need to be physically impure with someone to be impure. In fact, you don’t need to have thoughts about being impure with someone to still be impure in the sense of not loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

If you have divided loves, you are impure. Whether or not you have lust for physical consummation in any way, or then seek to have that satisfied. You can be just as impure in having divided loves, let alone going further again in the fleshly lusts. We are taught from the beginning of life, that real life, that meaningful life is found when you find the right person.

I mentioned that a couple of Wednesdays ago. That is the moral of the story in Cinderella. It is. And Snow White and blah, blah, blah. And ah, the moral of the story is you will be really happy when you find, you know, Mr. Perfect. Or Miss, you know, Miss Pretty. I was trying to think of a good name for the woman there. And I’ll tell you what, I will go so far as to make the claim this morning that you are not going to give up looking for life in love. Uh, let’s see. It took me a little while to realize that. But it wasn’t too long into being a youth pastor until I basically resigned myself to realize you are not going, none of you in here, none of you in here are going to give up looking for life in love.

You won’t. You will do it and you won’t give it up. I know. Period. I know. I know that. I know. I know the junior high high school environment. I know the junior high high school conversations. I know the junior high high school note writing while on doodling.

I know the junior high high school instant messaging and emailing. I know the MySpace interests and pursuits. I know the TV shows and the movies and the music and the magazines that you read and fill your minds with. I know loneliness. I know that. I know what it is to be lonely and to think that somebody else might make that better. In fact, I know the God-given desire that He gives to most people, as Pastor Z mentioned, a good desire. He’s the one who said it’s not good for a man to be alone. That’s why He created the woman. I know the God-given desire. I know the deceitfulness of the heart that keeps trying to find life in something under the sun here rather than in God.

But you will never give up looking for life in love unless you make your life about loving God. There’s the answer. Falling on deaf ears all throughout the room. You will never give up looking for life in love unless you make your life about loving God. Hmm, abounding love, perhaps. It is no surprise when you look for life in another person, because most of you, that’s all you think about. And so, duh, if you’re thinking about that all the time, that is what you are going to naturally pursue. When you fill your mind with categories of beauty, like if your definition, your categories of beauty are things like hair and figure and toenails, etc., etc., that’s what you’re going to look for, right?

If you are constantly evaluating others by your standard of beauty and your standard of beauty is what I just described. You’re going to spend your time evaluating and trying to discern the desirable. And again, I know that most of you spend your time trying to discern who is most desirable and who you think if you could be with you’d have meaning and satisfaction in your life. And I tell you what, if that is as far as your standards of desirability goes, if that’s as far as your categories of beauty go, you are deluded. And you know what? I beg you to stop putting yourself in the path of those allurements. Stop putting yourself and your mind and your thoughts in the path of those kind of beautiful things and start putting yourself in the path of the allurements of God. Let God be the mind-blowing standard of beauty. Nobody’s hair, okay, nobody that you ever date will have such nice hair you don’t need anything else. Nobody’s lack of acne for yourself or in your date will ever provide you with a satisfied heart. It’s not gonna happen.

Let God be the mind-blowing standard of beauty and we sing things like, you are beautiful beyond description and for most of us we’re like okay cool and then we don’t worry about trying to describe it. Too marvelous for words. Guess I shouldn’t try. I tell you what, give it a shot. Instead of making all of your standards about beauty and desirability in the standards of what other people look like, learn about God and how beautiful and how desirable He is and try to describe it and try to come up with words for it and let that dominate your mind and you know what you will realize that loving somebody else just doesn’t compare with loving God because no matter how pretty they are they are not as beautiful as this God who is beyond description in his beauty you will not give up looking for life in love until you realize that God is the love that ought to consume you put yourself in the way of his allurements, which is one of the reasons why we talk about your Bible reading. Huh?

I am not gonna be able to put that on the mp3 because that’s where we find out about the beauty of God. Not only in his word, just take a walk and look around. If you sow God in your life, you will reap his joy. If you sow the desires of your flesh you’re gonna reap the consequences of that. I still have another page of notes okay so here we go. In a conclusion this morning let me just remind you of two things. One, there is a proper place for love and sex. It is a gift. It is a marriage gift and a marriage gift alone. That is the only place where love and sex is actually pleasant and a gift in a more than temporary kind of way. You can read Ecclesiastes 9-9 which says, I mean it’s Solomon himself saying, enjoy life with the wife whom you love. Solomon says that enjoy her all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the son. I mean at least in this vain life, enjoy your wife and there’s a place for that. Proverbs 5 18 also which Solomon wrote said let your fountain be blessed

and rejoice in the wife of your youth a lovely deer a graceful doe. I can’t imagine any culture we’re calling a woman a deer is acceptable but apparently it was. And he says let her breasts fill you at all times with delight be intoxicated always in her love. There is a place for that and it is with your wife.

By the way, he does put limitations on the pleasure in those passages, namely that it’s with one other person and that that other person is your wife. In both Ecclesiastes 9 and Proverbs 5 8, it’s one wife. We handle this without it being too cheesy. True love is terrific. Finally, though, The problem with women, and I’m only gonna talk about one, so I’ll be soon, done soon. The problem with women is when you’re looking for love to fill the void in your heart, and that’s just not gonna happen. Your eventual spouse, even once you get married, your spouse is not going to be able to fill the God-shaped hole in your heart. Even your spouse is not gonna do that. Some of you think, well I’m single, if I just get my spouse that’ll do it. Then when you get your spouse you’re like, oh. I mean it’s the same way with pastor Z’s principle on adding a person with a lust problem to marriage is then a marriage with a person with a lust problem.

Right? It’s the same way here. If you are looking for life anywhere other than God, if you’re looking for life in love before being married, get married and look for life in love in that marriage, you’re still not going to have it any more than you could have beforehand. Even the best marriage is still a relationship that takes place under the sun. The best one is still under the sun. It all comes back to your heart. Where you are looking for life, even God ordained temporal things can bring pleasure, but only if you’re actually seeking life in God, not in his gifts.

Go ahead and bow your heads. And as I get ready to pray and finish this morning, can I remind you, we’ve kind of focused the last two messages and even the Trespasser series somewhat, we’ve kind of focused this on you. And that’s appropriate. It’s you that I’m talking to, but you realize this is actually a bigger issue than you. This is ultimately a reflection on God. And you’re looking for life, the object that you seek, the object you think will give you your life, is really, truly what you’re glorifying. Whatever it is that you’re pursuing that you think is gonna give you satisfaction and provide meaning in your life, That is what you’re worshiping.

And you know what? God does not take people worshiping other things, other gods lightly. If your life is a constant pursuit of a relationship, thinking that that is where you’re truly gonna find happiness, not only is that empty, that’s sin, that’s dishonoring God. Even without the lust, without premarital sex or physical things and impurities, without any of those you can still be just as sinful if what you are seeking for joy and meaning in life is not God himself. This is an area of your life that reflects what you think about God, whether you think he is great or whether you think he’s not as great as some girl.

Maybe some of you don’t actually know God. Maybe the reason you’re stuck serving a relationship or the idea of a relationship is because you don’t actually know God and you haven’t seen his beauty. It’s available for you today to know him if you repent from your sin and trust in him and look to him to provide that meaning. And Father, that is what I pray for each one of these students and even for our staff, who aren’t married and for the staff who are married that we would never be so deceived by the constant marketing campaign of this world and even the the deceitfulness in our own hearts that says we can find better happiness in a person, better pleasure from another and we can find in you.

And we’re not gonna give up those other loves until we see your beauty and greatness, see and know it and delight in it. So Father, cause our love to abound in an otherworldly way for you. We’ll pray this in Christ’s name, amen. You know, that’s why Pastor Z mentioned Psalm 119, nine through 11.

That’s why I mentioned Romans 12 too. Feeding your mind with the beauty and greatness of God and his commands for us, or feeding your mind with junk. Garbage in, garbage in. That actually, not only is garbage out, but you put garbage in. You know what? You’ve got garbage in. You put the world standards of beauty-ness and desirability into your head over and over and over again, that is going to be what you think about beauty and desirability. And it is no wonder that most of us get stuck seeking that instead of seeing the beauty and desirability of God. Well, I already preached that message, so I won’t do it any longer.