Turning Point

Guest (Male): Why do so many people who pursue wealth end up disappointed when they find it? Perhaps they emphasized the gift more than the giver. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah considers the consequences of living apart from God as seen through the eyes of King Solomon in his series Searching for Heaven on Earth. Listen now as David shares today's message, "The Cul-de-Sacs of Life."

Dr. David Jeremiah: Solomon is so brutally honest about the things he's discovered. I'm so glad because without that honesty, we would maybe miss the point he's trying to make: that life without God is vanity. It's just vanity. He reflects upon that in living color. If you read the book and you have a little insight into what the book is all about, you can never recover from Solomon's observations. We're in the midst of that right now, and today we continue our thoughts about money as he reflects upon it in eternal perspective.

We'll get to it in just a moment, but first let me remind you that during the month of February, we want to extend the opportunity to you to study this book not only with us but with others. We have a beautiful book that we are making available during the month. It's available to all of you who will request a copy of it. It is 31 Days to Happiness, 323 pages. It's a softback cover, and you can get this book and it will take you verse by verse all the way through Ecclesiastes.

It's our textbook for the month, and then there's a study guide that goes with it. They go together; they're very helpful one to the other. They cross-reference each other, and they help you stay in focus in this book. If you're going to do a small group, here's what you do: get a copy of the book, get copies of the study guide for everybody in your small group, and if you want to, you can get the CDs and listen ahead of time. You'll be ready to facilitate the discussion and lead your team in a wonderful discovery of the book of Ecclesiastes. Be sure to ask for your copy of 31 Days to Happiness when you send your gift to Turning Point during the month of February.

Now let's open our Bibles again to this Old Testament book and learn more about what it means to be searching for heaven on earth. In chapter six, Solomon is going to continue his discussion in a negative way. He's told us that God is the one who helps us to earn money and he's the one that helps us to enjoy money. Now he's going to show us what happens if we try to do this apart from God. The first cul-de-sac that he wants us to avoid is this one: without God, money cannot bring meaning to your life.

He brings two insights to his journal that will help us. Notice in the first two verses of the sixth chapter with these words: "There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men. A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor, so that he lacks nothing for himself of all that he desires, yet God does not give him the power to eat of it, but a foreigner consumes it. This is vanity, and it is an evil affliction." Most scholars believe that when Solomon writes these first few words in the sixth chapter, he's talking about himself, that he's talking about his own life.

Remember now, Solomon wrote this book at the end of his existence on earth, and he's looking back over his shoulder and he's making some observations about how he had lived. Solomon, as we all know, was one of the wealthiest and wisest men who ever walked on this earth. In fact, he was the wealthiest man who lived before his time, and the Bible says he was the wealthiest man to ever live even after that time. It's hard for us to compute the wealth of Solomon, but perhaps it would be good for us to remember how he came into such riches.

When Solomon was 20 years old, one day the Lord appeared to Solomon while he was presenting a sacrifice to God, and God said to young Solomon, "Solomon, I want you to ask anything you desire of me, and I will give it to you." He said, "Lord God, I want you to give me a hearing heart, so that I might be able to judge this great people Israel fairly and justly." He said, "Lord, I want you to give me the ability to help people and to judge them fairly."

God was so impressed with Solomon's request that in Second Chronicles chapter one, verses 11 and 12, we read these verses. Here's how Solomon got to be so rich. "Then God said to Solomon, because this was in your heart and you have not asked riches or wealth or honor or the life of your enemies, nor even have you asked long life, but have asked wisdom and knowledge for yourself that you may judge my people over whom I have made you king. Wisdom and knowledge are granted to you, Solomon, and I will give you riches and wealth and honor, such as none of the kings have had who were before you, nor shall any after you have the like."

Solomon asked God for the right thing, he got everything he asked for, and he got all the riches that made him the wealthiest man in the world. Now Solomon started out with those riches, and he was honoring God at the beginning of his life. If you read the history of Solomon, you will see that he lived for God. He built the great temple of Solomon that was a place of worship. But God had warned Solomon in the early days of his life that he was not to intermarry with foreign wives.

He was not to go into other cultures and marry the women from these other cultures because God knew that if he did, he would become corrupted by their evil ways, by their idolatry. Solomon was a woman's man. He loved women, and he saw some of the beautiful women from the foreign cultures, and little by little, he began to marry them. As he married these foreign wives, they began to corrupt his life, so that God was put on the side. God was moved out of the center.

Now as he looks back over his life, most people believe he's writing about his own experience about trying to find meaning in his money without God. If you will follow his logic, you will see how strongly he presents this argument. He has told us already up to this point that the only way you can enjoy your wealth is to allow God to give you the ability to do it. If you have your Bibles, look back over into the fifth chapter, chapter five of Ecclesiastes, and the 19th verse: "As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth and given him the power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor, this is the gift of God."

What is the gift of God? The ability to enjoy what you have, to take what you have earned and make it meaningful in your life. How do you get to do that? God gives it to you as a gift. When God is at the center of your life, he takes everything that you have and he makes it meaningful. When Solomon began to push God to the outer circumference of his life, when he began to sin by intermarrying with the foreign wives, God became a non-player in his walk, and because of that, he began to lose the sense of well-being that he had had at the beginning.

I told you that Solomon feels very strongly about this point because he touches on it several times in this book, but I don't know of any passage that is stronger than this one in terms of how he illustrates the point he's trying to make. He uses two illustrations in verses three through six of the sixth chapter to bring home to us in a very forceful way the danger of looking to our money for meaning. Notice what he says: "If a man begets a hundred children," my, what a thought that is.

"If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with goodness, or indeed he has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better than he. For it comes in vanity and departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness. Though it has not seen the sun or known anything, this has more rest than that man, even if he lives a thousand years twice but has not seen goodness. Do not all go to one place?"

Let's unpack these verses for just a moment and see what God is saying to us through Solomon's illustrations. In order to make his point about the emptiness of wealth without God, Solomon uses two illustrations that are as far apart as they could possibly be. On the one hand, he supposes that there could be a man who lives 2,000 years and has a hundred children. On the other hand, he supposes a child who dies at birth. One person experiences life extended to two millennia, and the other experiences only a few minutes, if even that.

What Solomon is saying here out of the context of the Old Testament is that the two things that symbolized God's blessing upon a Jewish family were longevity and children. A Jewish family was considered blessed by God if the patriarchs in the family lived long and if they had lots and lots of children. Solomon is saying that having wealth and having a large family, both of these things will leave you empty if God is not in it. They will not bring meaning to your life if God is on the outside.

In fact, when he talks about this fictitious man here in the book of Ecclesiastes, he talks about this man as having had no burial. He says in verse three, "If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with goodness or indeed he has no burial." That's a very interesting thing because for a Jewish person not to have a burial was the sign of total disrespect and dishonor.

There is in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah and the 22nd chapter the story of a king by the name of Jehoiakim, who was not buried and was not honored and didn't have a funeral. It's an illustration of the most awful thing that could happen. What Solomon is saying is this: this man has all the money he wants, he lives to be 2,000 years old, he's got a hundred children, but his children don't want anything to do with him when he dies. They don't even come to his funeral.

He doesn't have any relationships with them. His family is in disrepair. What he had hoped to get by getting all of this wealth has been so empty because it doesn't deliver what he had hoped it would deliver. Now King Solomon goes to the other end of the cycle, and he uses a stillborn baby as his illustration. According to Solomon, such a child never sees the light of day, never experiences the disappointments that the rich man has known.

The stillborn baby knows only the shadow of a moment of life. The man in Solomon's story lived two times a thousand years, but both that man and the stillborn child ended up in the grave. Remember, this is what we learned in chapter three, in the third chapter in the 20th verse we read: "All go to one place, all are from the dust, all return to the dust." Solomon's talking about the grave. He's saying a man lived 2,000 years, and he ended up in the same place as the stillborn baby who hardly lived a moment on planet earth.

Here's the point he's trying to make, and don't miss it. This is maybe the hardest passage in Ecclesiastes, but when you really see it, oh is it powerful. Listen to him. The point that Solomon is making in this first paragraph is, he is telling us that the futility of life without God and without meaning is worse than never having been born at all. Whatever you do, don't think if you just have more, you're going to find meaning in life. Solomon says such an existence can be worse than never having lived at all.

First cul-de-sac: don't get on that one. Don't misunderstand what he's saying. He's not saying it's wrong to be wealthy, he's not saying it's wrong to have riches, he's not saying it's wrong to be prosperous. He's saying it is meaningless to have all of it if God isn't in the picture because only God can give you the wisdom to know what to do with what you have. I want to tell you something I've learned in talking to people who have a whole lot more money than I'll ever dream of having. Money for many people is a burden. It is a real burden to know what to do with what has been entrusted to their care.

Number two, you won't find joy in your job. You say, "Pastor, boy, I give a second to that one. I don't have any joy in my job." Well, he's not saying here that you can't find meaning in your work, but he's saying you can't find ultimate joy in your career. What a modern contemporary instruction this is for all of us. Notice verse seven, he says your job can't satisfy your soul. "All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied." You know anybody like that? They're out all the time, their career is number one, they just go like crazy.

I ask the men of our church, why aren't you in church? Why aren't you in Bible study? "Oh man, I gotta get my career right. This is the most important time in my career. I've got to do this or I'm not going to make it." But what Solomon is saying is, yes, you might have to put in some extra hours to get your career started, but if you let your career become the focus of your life, it will never satisfy you. It can't satisfy your soul. We're going to find out in a few moments why, but it never will.

Man works to satisfy his insatiable desire for pleasure, and he wants a sense of well-being, and yet he seems to always fall short. No matter whether he is wise or poor, he can't satisfy his desire on his own. And here's the thing we need to understand from the book of Ecclesiastes: God has so wired us that without him, we don't work. He's the manufacturer, he's the creator. He's wired us so that without him, we don't work right. We can go through the motions, we can look like we're working right, but we won't work right.

That's what Solomon is trying to say. There's nothing wrong with wealth, there's nothing wrong with a good career, but don't do it without God because if you do, you will end up at the end of your life with a sense of frustration and despair, and it won't give you what you hoped it would give. He goes on to say your job can't satisfy your soul, and your mind can't replace your heart. Notice: "For what more has the wise man than the fool? What does the poor man have who knows how to walk before the living?"

You may have the greatest education in the world, Solomon says, but if you don't know God, you're on the same level as a fool. A fool and a wise man are exactly the same when they stand before almighty God. When you stand before God someday, he's not going to ask to see your diploma. He's not going to want to know what your degrees are. He's not going to care about your continuing education program. All he's going to care about is do you know him? And Solomon is saying whatever you do in your career climb, don't let your mind replace your heart.

Thirdly, he says don't let your dreams replace reality. Verse nine says: "Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire." That's an interesting little phrase. You know what it really is? It's Solomon's rendition of a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. He's saying here there's nothing wrong with dreaming and dreaming big, but he is warning us not to live in a fantasy world of unreality. Don't sit around waiting for things to get better before you start enjoying your life.

Does anybody ever do that? "Well, when we get this done, we'll get in that house. And when we get that done, we'll get a condo. And when we get that done, then we'll get a boat. And when we get that done, then we'll do this." We're always saying when we retire, we'll do this. And how many of you have noticed that people keep planning for the future and planning for the future? They never live here, they always want to live out there, and by the time they get out there, they die. Don't laugh about that; that ain't funny.

People just live their whole life hoping that someday they're going to get it together so they can really enjoy life. They finally get there, and they don't have anything left. Solomon is saying something so carefully to us, and he says it over and over again in this book. What are you supposed to do between now and when you get to heaven? Enjoy what God has given you. Don't be so caught up in earning money and building a career that you don't have time to enjoy your life as it is today.

Take your children out, give them a hug, take your grandchildren some place that you didn't intend to take them. Go some place and do something with your partner. Take that trip that you thought you might take someday; take it now. Don't wait until it's too late. Don't let your fantasies replace your reality. That's what he's saying. You won't find meaning in your career. Now as we come to the end, we've talked about the fact that you won't find meaning in money and you won't find joy in your job.

Here's the last thing: you won't find answers with your arguments. Solomon here anticipates that when a person is presented with this truth that in order for life to work God has to be at the center, they're not going to understand that and probably they're going to want to argue about it. Why is it that way? So he gives us four truths. They're not necessarily parallel but they're kind of sequential. First of all, he wants us to understand that God has ordained life as he desires it to be.

Notice in verse 10: "Whatever one has, he has been named already, for is known that he is man." Why can't I find meaning without God? Why is it impossible for me? If I work hard in my career, if I build a strong dynasty financially, why can I not find meaning in that? Why do my accomplishments leave me empty when I work so hard to achieve them? The reason that riches fail to bring happiness rests in the ordinance of God. The ordinance of God dictates the incapacity of worldly things to bring meaning and enjoyment to our life.

Let me just ask you this question hypothetically: Do you think that almighty God could have designed a world in such a way that real meaning came with the accumulation of money? Could he have done that? Surely he could. Suppose he could have designed a world that would have worked on this basis: the farther you climb the corporate ladder, the more meaning you find in life. Could he have done that? Absolutely. He chose specifically not to do that. He chose specifically to design us in such a way that while those things are important, they can't really fill the void in our life.

It's by the ordination of God that life is the way it is. We didn't do that; it's not a church thing, it's a God thing. God says, here's how life works, and I'm not going to change it for you. This is the way it is. Now Solomon then says, that being true, arguing with God is an exercise in futility. Notice verse 10 again: "He cannot contend with him who is mightier than he, since there are many things that increase vanity." Solomon is saying, you might want to argue with God about why things are the way they are.

Maybe you think you're having such a neat time right now in your career and you'd really like it to be that. He says don't do it; he's mightier than you. Over in the book of Romans, we read these words: "But indeed, oh man, who are you who reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him that formed it, why have you made me like this? Does the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?" In other words, you're the creature, he's the creator.

He's put life together this way. You can argue with him all you want to, but it's futile. You're not going to get anywhere with it. So why don't you just accept the fact? If you want to know meaning in your life, here it is: find God, get a relationship with him through Jesus Christ and you will begin to discover that what he promised he will deliver. He said, "I have come that you might have life, that you might have it more abundantly." Where does that abundant meaningful life come from? It comes from almighty God.

It's not available anywhere else. You can't get it any place else. You say, "Well, I don't think that's fair." That's not a problem; you can think whatever you want. God put it that way, and Solomon says don't argue with God. And then the third thing he wants us to know is that God is willing to bring meaning to your life. Notice: "For who knows what is good for man in life, all the days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow?" Well, that's a rhetorical question. Who knows?

The only one who knows is the one who created us, and that's God. If you want to find meaning in life, you gotta get to God. You won't find it anywhere else; I don't know how to say that in any different way. Meaning in life is found in God. And then the last question he asks is, "Who can tell a man what will happen to him under the sun?" God alone is in charge of your future. Now watch carefully how logically Solomon creates this. He says the reason life is the way it is because God ordained it that way.

Don't spend any time arguing with him because you won't win. If you want meaning in your life, God is the answer. If you want to know your future, God's the one who's in charge. So he just brings us all the way through this whole argument and he brings us back down to where we are right now. Do you want to know meaning in life? It's found only in God. Do you need a career? Yes. Be successful as you can be. Do you need money? Absolutely.

We've found out that when people have resources and God is in control in their life, they give up their resources to help people who are hurting. Wouldn't it be awful if we didn't have folks who could do that? There's not anything wrong with being wealthy; there's certainly not anything wrong with being successful. But there is something wrong with looking to wealth or success to find the ultimate meaning in your life, because that meaning is found only in God.

Have you ever heard people say, how in the world would somebody go through this if they didn't have God? You know what? Don't experiment. Don't try. Get God now. Find Jesus Christ as your personal savior at this very moment. You don't know what the future holds; one thing you do know, if you have God in your life, he's enough to get you through anything you will ever face. Because if he's going to give you eternity, don't you think he can handle this life too? Amen, he can.

He's the qualitative difference; he's the missing ingredient. You say, how do I get to God? Well, you get to God through Jesus Christ because this is what he said. Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me." So to get to God and get God in your life, you have to accept Jesus Christ into your heart, and you do that by prayer. I hope you will do that.

We've been encouraging you through this series to make sure you're related to God through Jesus Christ. Jesus said it this way: "No man comes to the Father except through me." If you don't know Jesus Christ, you can't go to heaven. If you don't know Jesus Christ, you don't know God, because Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. He came to help us understand how we could know God in a personal way, and if you've never invited him into your life, I encourage you to do it now.

Simply pray the prayer to invite Christ into your life: tell him you're a sinner, tell him you know that you have broken his law and you want to be forgiven, and ask him to come and live in your heart and be your savior, and he will do it. I promise it'll be the most important day in your life, and you will look back to it as a point when God changed everything. What a wonderful privilege is mine to share that good news with you.

I'll be back again tomorrow for the next edition of Turning Point, and I hope you'll join me then right here on this good station. We meet every day right here at the same time, and thanks for being a part.

David Michael Jeremiah: The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Your notes of encouragement mean so much. We invite you to write to us at Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org/radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's book, 31 Days to Happiness. It's filled with Solomon's wisdom, and it's yours for a gift of any amount.

You can also stream more than 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's messages on demand on any screen with our streaming service Turning Point Plus for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit turningpointplus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue Searching for Heaven on Earth on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.