Love Worth Finding

Guest (Male): What does the book of Ecclesiastes say about the character of King Solomon? Listen to Adrian Rogers.

Adrian Rogers: King Solomon had everything. He had power, he had popularity, he had prosperity, he had prestige, he had pleasure, anything his heart could desire. He had it all. And yet it was a washout for him. He was drawing his breath and dying at the same time. And I think that if he’d been living today, somebody might say to him, "Hey man, get a life."

Guest (Male): Welcome to Love Worth Finding, featuring the powerful and biblical lessons of pastor, teacher, and author Adrian Rogers. Ecclesiastes is the journal of King Solomon. It’s a record of the perplexed thoughts he had as well as some of the mistakes he made.

There are three important themes from this book that we need to consider as we view the beauty of the life that we’re given to live by God. If you have your Bible, find the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament as Adrian Rogers encourages us with Part 1 of "It’s Time for You to Get a Life."

Adrian Rogers: Take God’s precious Word and find the book of Ecclesiastes. It’s not all that hard to find. Psalms is just about in the middle. And then if you’ll turn to Psalms and turn right, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. And I want you to take your Bible and leave it open for the entire message because we are going to cover an incredible amount of Scripture.

The title of our study today is "It’s Time for You to Get a Life." Listen to what Solomon said here, by the way, who was the author of this incredible book. Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2: "The words of the preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

The scene is the Rose Bowl in California. University of California and Georgia Tech are both undefeated. What a game it is. Georgia Tech has the ball. It’s late in the second quarter, almost the halftime. Georgia Tech is pressing hard on their own 30. Thomason has the ball, and he charges, and he fumbles. Roy Riegels from California picks up the ball.

He lifts his head. He knows this is his golden moment. And he begins to run with that ball. Yard after yard he is running. He’s pumping his legs. His balance is there. His head is down. He’s got the ball. He’s making the moves. He’s running, running, running, running. The sad thing is that Roy Riegels is running in the wrong direction.

When he picked up the ball, he got confused and he is running in the wrong direction. For 67 yards he runs. The opposing team is leading the interference. Finally, Roy’s teammate catches him on the one-yard line. Can you imagine how he felt? Can you imagine the humiliation as he went back and sat on the bench?

Well, Solomon was something like that. The ball of life had been thrust into his hands, and in his confusion, he begins to run toward the wrong goal and Satan was leading interference for him. Now friend, many of us are like that. Many of us are confused and perplexed and we really do not know what life is all about.

Now, the book of Ecclesiastes is the journal of King Solomon. Now King Solomon had everything. I mean, you talk about a man that had everything. Listen folks, he had it all. He had power, he had popularity, he had prosperity, he had prestige, he had pleasure, anything his heart could desire. He had it all, and yet it was a washout for him.

He learned how to have a living but not a life. He was drawing his breath and dying at the same time. And I think that if he’d been living today, somebody might say to him, "Hey man, get a life." Now what you have here in the book of Ecclesiastes is his journal and his record of some of the perplexities that he had, some of the mistakes that he had.

And we’re going to open the Bible and look today. Somebody said, "You need to learn from the mistakes of others. You don’t have time to make them all yourself." And so what we’re going to do is to look here and see three basic things that are in this book. Now this book has 12 chapters and so we’re just going to dip in and dip out, but we’re going to stay basically in the book of Ecclesiastes.

And I want you to learn now about the life that we need to live, the life that God wants you to live as we’re in this series of messages of a lifestyle for the last days. First of all, I want you to see what I’m going to call the complex mysteries of life, if you will. Again, verses 1 and 2: "The words of the preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

Now why does he say vanity of vanities? For emphasis. When the Bible wants us to know how holy the sacred place was in the tabernacle, what’s he call it? The Holy of Holies. When our Lord wants to emphasize a truth, what does He say? "Verily, verily, I say unto you." When we talk about the majesty of Jesus, we say He is the Lord of Lords.

What Solomon is saying is, "Hey, this is king-sized. This is vanity of vanity." And he said, "I can’t figure life out. Life is a puzzle. Life is a mystery. And every thinking person knows that it is. And I want to tell you, if you think you’ve got it figured out, you don’t." Some college students were asked to give a definition of life. Here’s some that won honorable mention.

Life is a joke that isn’t even funny. Life is a jail sentence that we get for the crime of being born. Life is a disease for which the only cure is death. That sounds cynical, doesn’t it? And I’m afraid many college students are just like that. But life is empty. Life is vain apart from God. Now I’m going to tell you a secret: God engineered it that way.

Did you know that God does not want life to make sense to you? That may surprise you, but God, in His infinite wisdom, makes life a mystery. Let me give you a New Testament verse that’ll back up what I’m about to say. Romans chapter 8, put it in your margin, verses 20 and 21: "For the creature," and that literally means the creation, "was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope."

In plain English, God made everything confusing. God took all creation and God said, "There it is, but you’re not going to be able to figure it out." Now He did that not because He doesn’t love us, but because He does love us. And God knows that if you and I, in our wisdom and ingenuity and sagacity, could figure it all out, we would never come to Him if we could find meaning apart from Him.

And so this vanity, this confusion, this mystery is a tool that God uses to draw us to Him. This word vanity appears almost with monotony here in the book of Ecclesiastes, more than 30 times. And what is Solomon saying? Life without God is a dead-end road. You will never, never, never, ever figure it out. I don't care who you are, and every wise person knows that he cannot figure it out.

And yet man has a desire. He wants to know the deepest meaning of life. Go over to chapter 3 and look in verses 10 and 11: "I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made everything beautiful in his time. Also he hath set the world in their heart."

A better translation may be, or at least another translation may be, "He hath set eternity in their heart so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." No one can figure it out. You say you figured it out? You haven’t. God put eternity in our heart. God put something in man’s heart that He did not put into the hearts of other creatures, other animals. God gave us a desire to see life from an eternal perspective because nothing seems to make sense here on this earth.

When Joyce and I took a vacation one time—which I loved it, she didn’t love it that much, she endured it, I loved it—we went to an island down in the Bahamas. We lived in a little cottage. It had no air conditioning. There were no automobiles on that little island. Only, we had a little boat there in front of the island. We could go from place to place in that little boat with an outboard motor. And beautiful beach, hey, it was great.

For recreation, we’d go out and lie on the dock at night and just look up at the stars. Super, man. It was wonderful. Well, get off of that. Anyway, what did we do for recreation? We had an incredible jigsaw puzzle. I mean a big one, king-sized. It was the face of a great big pig. And we worked from time to time just sitting there putting the pieces of that pig saw—pig saw jigsaw—puzzle together, putting it all together.

And anyway, can you imagine the joy to put the last piece in place? Now, I want you to imagine a puzzle like that with the last piece missing, or two or three pieces, or half a dozen pieces missing. Or I want you to imagine a puzzle like that where somebody slips in some pieces from another puzzle and you’re trying to put it together. That’s what life is like. God has life confusing, and friend, it’s very confusing and you’re going to find out that sometimes you think you’ve got it all worked out because everything is going so smoothly. Just wait a while. Just wait a while.

You know, God has a way of putting the good and the bad together. If you’ve noticed that. Look if you will, go over to chapter 7 and look in verse 14: "In the day of prosperity be joyful." Are you having prosperity right now? I’m happy for you. Rejoice. "But in the day of adversity consider. God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him."

What does that mean? You can’t figure it out. I mean God takes good times and then God takes bad times. Now, when everything is working out fine, you say, "Boy, do I have a great philosophy of life. I’ve got it. I’ve got the world by the tail and a downhill pull. It all makes sense to me now, finally got it figured out." And then adversity comes.

Down in Merritt Island, we had a tornado come through Merritt Island. There was a lady who lived in a trailer, house trailer, perhaps a block from the church. That house trailer was absolutely devastated. In that house trailer, she had a parakeet. She had no children, she had no other pets. This parakeet was like one of her children. She loved that parakeet. And the house trailer was gone. The tornado took the whole thing and took the bird, gone.

She’s heartbroken. About three or four days later, somebody saw a parakeet sitting in a tree. Would you believe coaxed that bird out of that tree into their hand? And would you believe by fortuitous circumstances they found out this woman had lost this bird and they brought the bird back? Miracle story, miracle story! And then you know what happened? The cat ate it. True story, the cat ate it. I mean, after all this miracle, all this good stuff, then the cat ate it. Figure that out.

That’s what Solomon is saying. You know, the Chinese tell a story about a man who had a prize horse and the horse escaped. And they said, "Oh, how sad." But then the horse went out and began to consort with some other horses and led them back to the corral. They said, "How wonderful! Look!" And then the man’s son tried to train one of the wild horses and broke his leg. They said, "How bad." But then a war came and the boy didn’t have to go off to war. "How good!"

That’s the way life is. God takes the good, God takes the bad, and God puts one against the other. And they both seem to happen at the same time. If you’re having a good time right now, you’ve got a problem right now. If you’re having a problem right now, you’ve got some blessings right now. It’s not like that we have 40 miles of good road and then 40 miles of bad road. It’s like a railroad track: Oh, here’s a good rail, and over here’s a bad rail. That’s the way life is. God just sets the one against the other.

And Solomon says you can’t figure it out. He tries to figure it out. He says, "Where’s the answer?" And he found out it’s not in nature. Go if you look in chapter 1, verses 1 through 7: "The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem, vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away and another generation cometh."

Do you know what’s happening today? Births and funerals. Births and funerals. There's a whole bevy of babies being born today. There's a world full of funerals today. There’s rejoicing in the birth of babies. There’s weeping when others go. And what he’s saying, one generation passeth away and another generation cometh. But the earth abideth forever. Man’s supposed to subdue the earth, the earth stays here and man goes.

And then he says, "The sun ariseth and the sun goeth down and hasteth to its place where it arose. The wind goeth toward the south and turneth unto the north. It whirleth about continually and the wind returneth again unto its circuits." Here it comes, there it goes. Over and over and over again. "All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. Unto the place whence the rivers came, thither they return again."

The rain comes down. The rain runs into rivulets. Rivulets run into streams. The streams run into the ocean. The sun evaporates the water. It goes up to the clouds. It comes down again into the rivulets. Over and over and over again. What’s he saying? Nature doesn’t tell us anything about the meaning of life. "Old Man River, he don’t say nothing, he just keeps rolling along." It’s not in nature.

Look in verse 8. He says here, "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." If we ever had a generation that could prove that? You hear these kids going down the road with these boomboxes and shaking buildings as they go past. Wonder their ears are not bleeding! But they’re not satisfied.

The answer’s not in nature. The answer’s not in history. Look if you will in verses 9 and 10, chapter 1: "The thing that hath been is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun." You say, "Now wait a minute, a lot of new things under the sun. We’ve got pacemakers, we’ve got laptops, we’ve got laser surgery."

Friend, the seven deadly sins are still just as deadly. We still have war, we still have sorrow, we still have grief, we still have immorality, we still have unhappiness, there’s no less dishonesty. I have a treadmill upstairs, and I like to watch the news and get on the treadmill. So I’m running on the treadmill and watching the news. And all these incredible things are happening there in the news. And I’m running, running, running, running, running, and I get off right where I got on.

That’s the way life is. I mean, the news is coming, and we get right back where we got on. There’s nothing new under the sun. The answer’s not in nature, the answer’s not in history, the answer’s not in science.

Look in verses 13 and 14: "I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven." By the way, Solomon was a brilliant man, brilliant, absolutely brilliant, besides the wisdom that God gave him before he backslid. And he said, "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit." You talk about the adventures we have, the things that we have, you don’t understand the meaning of life.

You see these kids today with cell phones? Man, I used to think that’s the ultimate. Listen, you’re no one if you don’t have a cell phone today, isn’t that right? I mean, and these kids in the mall or wherever they are, they’re walking around with a cell phone, you know, "Hey man, what’s up?" He doesn’t know what’s up and he doesn’t know what’s up! They don’t have a clue! They’ve got a phone, but they don’t know what’s up. They do not know what’s up.

History may tell us what, science may tell us how, but neither tells us why. Now what I’m trying to say is that the answer, friend, is not in these things. The more a man learns, the more he realizes he doesn’t understand. Bertrand Russell said philosophy proved a washout for me. You see, apart from God, God has engineered that your life is going to be meaningless.

Look now in chapter 2, verse 14: "The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walketh in darkness." Now it’s much better to be wise than it is to be a fool. "And I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all." Now here’s a man who looks where he’s going, here’s a man who lives with sagacity and perspective, here’s a fool, happy-go-lucky, but notice: "I perceived also that one event happeneth to them all."

"Then said I in my heart, as happeneth to the fool, so happeneth even to me. And why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that also is vanity. For there's no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever, seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? As a fool."

Here’s a man, goes off to school. He studies and studies and studies and studies and studies. He gets a PhD, he learns all of these things. He walks this way, his eyes are in his head. Here’s another guy, he could care less, he doesn’t do anything, and they both somehow get through life, they die, they go to the ground, and they’re both gone. Solomon says, "What happened to all this knowledge? Down into the dirt, it’s gone, gone, gone."

On another vacation, my kids and I were on the beach—you can tell I love the beach—and we made a sand alligator, incredibly beautiful, about eight feet long. And we crafted that out of sand and we worked on it all morning long. It was great. We just could hardly wait for people walking down the beach to come see our alligator. We went off to do something and came back. You know what had happened? The sand was perfectly smooth. The water had come up and taken our sand alligator away, and it’s like it had never been there. That’s what Solomon is saying.

Listen, he’s saying apart from God, wisdom is meaningless. He’s saying apart from God, wealth is meaningless. Look in chapter 6, verses 1 and 2: "There is an evil which I've seen under the sun and it is common among men. A man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honor, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all he desireth. Yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it. This is vanity, it’s an evil disease."

Remember when you were young? You couldn’t afford anything but beans and rice, but you had a cast iron stomach? And now you can eat prime rib, but the doctor won’t let you! Isn’t that amazing? That’s what Solomon is saying. And so somebody else eats the things that you have worked for.

He’s saying apart from God, wisdom is meaningless. Apart from God, wealth is meaningless. Apart from God, work is meaningless. Look in chapter 9, verse 11: "I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all."

Guest (Male): Apart from God, wisdom, wealth, and work are meaningless. What a powerful truth for us today. Now, how are we to proceed with the adventures of life? How are we to live in the good seasons and in the bad? Tomorrow we’ll hear Part 2 of this message, "It’s Time to Get a Life."

But maybe today you have questions about who Jesus is or what He means to you. Go to our Discover Jesus page at lwf.org/radio. You’ll find resources and materials that can answer questions you may have about your faith. Again, click Discover Jesus when you go to lwf.org/radio.

Cary Vaughn: Hi, this is Cary Vaughn. And this program has been brought to you by Love Worth Finding, a non-profit ministry showcasing the powerful preaching and teaching of Pastor Adrian Rogers. We operate solely through the generous gifts of individual supporters just like you. To give a gift today, call 1-877-LOVEGOD, that’s 1-877-LOVEGOD. Or write to us at Love Worth Finding, Box 38-600, Memphis, Tennessee 38183. You can also connect with us online by going to lwf.org/radio.

There we offer helpful resources inspired by the timeless teachings of Pastor Adrian Rogers. Additionally, you can sign up for daily emails, donate to the ministry, and learn more about how to become an ambassador of the Word. Thank you so much for listening today. Be sure to join us next time for more profound truth simply stated right here on Love Worth Finding.

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