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Episode 583: In this episode, we delve into a discussion about the life of King Solomon, particularly focusing on his reflections in the book of Ecclesiastes. We explore the paradox of wisdom and the choices Solomon made, questioning why someone so wise could make such poor decisions. I emphasize that wisdom does not guarantee right choices, and we discuss the consequences of Solomon's actions, including the judgment he faced and the eventual loss of his kingdom.
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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Okay, well, Merry Christmas, Wesley. Yes, it is Christmas Day, ding ding Ding is the most wonderful time. Of the year. It's a great day. Okay. Well, I'm hoping you're having an amazing Christmas Day. And of course we're recording this a few days before Christmas, but it. Will be awesome. I hope when you listen to this episode at home, it's the most amazing day of the year. So before we jump into today's message or today's passage, Desire wants us to share some of our most memorable Christmas memories. Memorable Chris, memorable Christmas memories isn't memorable and memories that's kind of a redundant memorable memories as opposed to those unmemorable memories. Then they're not memories anymore, which means they weren't memorable. Okay, Anyways, I'm a little confused. So I got a funny one. Jeff's So, I grew up in Detroit, moved you know, into the suburbs a while back. So during this is like Christmas maybe not Christmas Eve. Day before Christmas Eve. So I go to the Kroger who might have been admire and I noticed something odd. There were no cinnamon. Rolls, no cinnamon rolls, none whatsoever. I'm like, okay, this is interesting. I went over to the Hash Browns. No hash Browns at the entire store. I'm like, is there something I don't know about with hash Browns and cinnamon roles. So I just had a funny moment there where like you can find cinnamon rolls anytime. Yeah. No, it's all these people who normally don't fix breakfast at home, but now they've got the other family and so they're buying hash Browns by the pound. Yeah, you know, three hundred bags of hash Browns and then yeah, Cem there was literally like no, so they were gone. Yeah yeah, all these crazy suburban people in over world. There's a run on a hash brown cinnamon rolls on the phone. Hey, honeys, that's right. Okay. Well, so a memorable Christmas for me. I can remember as a kid, I really loved and I think I've mentioned this before, but I really loved Star Wars as a kid, and I can remember getting the land Speeder right from the original Star Wars and I got, uh, was it like a could you like roll it? Or yeah? Yeah it was. It was the one that the figurines would fit in, you know. So so I had several of the figurines and then I got that, and I got them the I got a tie Fighter that's the bad guys thing, and an X Wing Fighter CHRISTI I know that that was huge because I mean, we didn't have a lot of money. We grew up pretty poor, so that was a really crazy thing. I just it was all my wildest dreams came true with that Christmas. Yeah. So I mentioned that several years ago and then you know, I'm in my fifties now. We go over my mom and Dad's for Christmas and my mom had a big presentation for me, and she gave me die cast little hot wheels, oh versions of all three of those of all three of those vehicles, and she said, hey, I know you don't have them anymore, but you know, so she heard me mention that that was like a highlight Christmas. Cool. So they sit at my desk now and off my grandson comes in and plays with them all the time. You know, I'm like, hey, don't touch on that's right. No, he could play with them all that as it. Do you have any others, any other memorable memories? So I do have one. We had a cousin who was just a blessing to our family. So my dad used to work at Ford in the eighties, and if you lived in the Midwest, you know that the aut old companies weren't doing well right late seventies, early eighties, things like that. So my dad got laid off from four and we had like virtually no money, and we had a cousin who bought me and my sister a ton of gifts. So we thought, like Christmas, we were already prepped mentally, like there's going to be nothing under the tree, we just know. And we got up Christmas Day and there was like a ton of stuff and it's like blown away. They mortgaged the house. It took him years to pay that off. Oh cousin, cousin, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I bought those items for us. That's fantastic. That was really nice. That's wonderful. It's really cool when you get to do fun things for a family like that. Yeah. My other great memory is the house I grew up in from the time I was five years old till I graduated from high school. Was about eight hundred square feet. Oh man, but my mom, we're living in the house, well, my mom and dad and me and then my brother Mark and then sometimes one of my. Sisters in eight hundred square feet. Yeah yeah, yeah. So my bedroom you could touch. I could touch both walls standing up stretching my arms out right, which I stress almost seven right at seven feet yeah. Uh so a small room. It was out on a porch. My dad made this little room on our porch for me. It worked out really good. So anyways, so we had this this small house. But my mom is like this amazing hostess, so she just is never happier than when she has a bunch of people over. She's a really good cook, all that kind of stuff. So I have six older sisters and then my brother Mark, and most of my sisters at the time were married, so their husbands and then some of their children would come along, and then my my aunt and uncle and their two sons would come over, and then usually my other my mom's brothers would stop by with their wives at some point, so we'd have twenty five people in this little eight hundred sqa shoulder. Yeah, well you just found your spot and stayed right. That was it. And then it just passed the stuff around and and I just remember how much fun that was. Right, You'd have to open the windows. It'd be so hot in there, and everybody crammed in and just trash in the house with presents and everything. But it was so much fun, right it was. It was a lot of fun. And those are great memories. It was like that for my My grandmother's house was like ground central for every family event. So for Christmas, you went over there July fourth, you went over like that was just ground zero. And I remember that as a kid, where there would be people upstairs, downstairs. Some of the bodies in the kitchen. Yeah, those were some good times. Yeah, it was. It was fun. It's good times, man. So anyways, Christmas is is having a great Christmas, And I hope you can move through the house. Yes, and I crammed in shoulders should a bunch of startines. But if you are, hey, make the best of it. It's tons of fun. Yeah, you get to know your family members again. Yes, So Solomon has had a really difficult time as a results of some of his own choices, which is crazy because he's so wise. We've had a lot of people ask us in through social media on like YouTube or whatever. People in comments lead comments asking if Solomon was so wise, why did he make bad choices like this. Wisdom doesn't guarantee just because you are wise and you know the white things, it doesn't mean you're going to do it. There's still a choice, right, and so thank God for that choice. That choice comes as a double edged sword, but thank God that we're not all robots, and he gives us free will in a free choice. That's right, that's you're exactly right. It's a blessing. So you know he's wise, he knows what to do. But just because you're wise doesn't always mean you do the right thing. And so for Solomon, he got we talked about this the other day. He got more clever than wise and decided he's going to marry all these women. The women wind up taking him to worship their gods, and what he started, you can imagine how it happened. Women come in, you know, they're from other places. They're crying, they want to go home. I need a temple for my goddesses or my gods or whatever. Okay, I'll build a temple. I'm rich. I'll build you a little temple. We just put it over here on this hill over here or whatever. And the next thing you know, he kind of starts getting pulled into their belief systems. He starts trying to blend their belief systems with God's ways, and God brings judgment on him. So then all of a sudden he starts having some problems with some of the surrounding nations, start causing trouble, and then even internally, God raises up Jeroboam as the new successor to most of Solomon's kingdom. So Solomon's struggling. Now, after all I've done, Really, this is it? And so the book of Ecclesiastes is Solomon kind of confronting a wasted life, right, And so here's what it says in Ecclesiastes chapter one. These are the words of the teacher, King David's son, who ruled in Jerusalem. Everything is meaningless, says the teacher, Completely meaningless. What do people get for all their hard work? Under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. The sun rises and the sun sets and then hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south and then turns north. Around and around, it goes blowing in circles. Rivers run into the sea, but the sea's never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we're never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content. History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. Sometimes people say here's something new, but actually it's old. Nothing is ever truly new. We don't remember what happened in the past, and in future generations no one will remember what we are doing now. I the Teacher, was King of Israel, and I lived in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to search for understanding and to explore by wisdom everything being done under heaven. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. I observed everything going on under the sun, and really it is all meaningless, Like chasing the wind. What is wrong cannot be made right, and what is missing cannot be recovered. I said to myself. Look, I am wiser than any of the kings who ruled in Jerusalem before me. I have greater wisdom knowledge than any of them. So I set out to learn everything from wisdom, from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind. The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief. The increase to increase knowledge only increases sorrow. He's having a rough day. That's a rough day. I'm like, man, I am miserable. But it just starts off. Everything is meaningless. That's right, that's literally how it starts. There's no point. Yeah, I'm just done. So for those of you, this is a day after Christmas. Merry Christmas. Yeah, there you go. That's our gift to you. There you go. Yeah, this is no, this is Christmas. This is Christmas Day. Oh yeah yeah yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. No, I'm want to go to verse eight. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. That's a good message for Christmas. Yeah. I think about that like how he can get whatever it is. So I think of it like neighbors. You live next to someone and maybe they get a snowboll bill. Yeah, and maybe they get an RV, or they get a place up north, they get a boat. You never even want it an RV. But now that you heard that they have an RV, I kind of need an RV. Yeah, yeah, I need one. Yeah. It's like we as human beings, are never satisfied with what we have. Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting more, but there is something wrong with never being content. I think there's a difference there. It's nothing wrong with pursuing more, but you need to have contentment. There's nothing wrong with working to improve your life. Yeah. World, So Solomon writes all through the Book of Proverbs about the fact that hard work should improve your life. Yeah. Right, So it's not inappropriate as long as just having a better life isn't your only purpose in life goal more money. This is what he's saying is I've built i have everything. I have all the women, I have all the money, i have, all the wisdom, i have all the peace. I've got a prosperous nation. I've got everything I could possibly want, and I'm miserable. Yeah, and there are a lot of people like that. Jeff, I got the car, I got the house, in the suburbs. I've got the three four cargo, I've got all the stuff, and I'm still empty on the inside. So a lot of people can, I'm sure, relate to this. So in the Life Application Study Bible, which I'm always a big advocate, get yourself a good study Bible, I love the Life Application Study Bible by published by Tyndale. And in there's a note here at the bottom, and it says Solomon had a purpose for writing skeptically and pessimistically near the end of his life, looking back on everything he had done, he saw that most of it seemed meaningless. A common belief was that good people prospered and the wicked suffered, but that hadn't proven true in Solomon's experience. Solomon wrote this book after he had tried everything and achieved much, only to find that, apart from God made him happy. He wanted his readers to avoid these same senseless pursuits. If we try to find meaning in our accomplishments rather than in God, we will never be satisfied, and everything we pursue will become meaningless. I wonder if this book isn't right there at the end of his life, after he finds out his family's going to lose the kingdom, realizing I literally gave the kingdom away trying to gain the kingdom. Right, Jesus said, what is a man gain if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? So Solomon, through all these marriages, through trying to appease his wives, builds these temples, begins to blend the religions, trying to appease them so that he could have peace in his nation. He's justified, it very likely justified these decisions not as rejecting God but building peace for God's people. Right, And now he's saying, everything I've done apart from God was pointless to spin points. Yeah, I've lost the kingdom. What was the point? And so there is this sense then of man alive. Only what's got done for God will last. Yeah, And I think that's what he's struggling with here, is I've made some really dumb choices, and. I think as human beings we need to wrestle with that, you know, kind of like Solomon, like all the things that you're pursuing and doing in your life, what are you doing those things for? Are you doing all of that hard work and working more over time and all those things just to get another new, shiny item, To get a bigger house. You already have a house, so to get a bigger car. You already have a couple of cars. You know, why are we doing what we do? And when we look back on our life at the very end, was all of that worth it? Yeah? Pursuing all the things, and oftentimes, Jeff, we're pursuing things that we don't necessarily want, but we pursue those things because we believe it give us a good image amongst other people. Yeah, that's kind of like why we pursue the things. This is a thing for me, it's funny. I am a fairly content person. My kids and I, so we just bought a new house. It was time to upgrade, and we had some reasons why we wanted to do this, so we bought a new house. But my kids were laughing because I said, you know, this is really a gift to your mom. Bonnie has waited a long time and you know, finally got her dream house, all these things, So merry Christmas, Bonnie. But I was laughing, saying, Hey, if I just had a really nice camper, I'd be happy if I'd pull it up back behind the church. I'd use my office, use my office in my living room home. I'd shower in the showers backstage at the office, and I'd be happy living in a camper. I'm a pretty content person, but it's funny to me as content as I feel about life, like, I'm not always thinking I need another shirt, I need another thing. I'm not really a shopper per se. But if you ask me right now, I could give you five things that in the back of my mind i'd like to have, and I'm watching little YouTube videos about them and stuff, and I promise you two months from now it won't be the same five things. Yeah, but there's always a new thing that catches my fancy and I like to have one of those. I learn all about it, and then everyone's I wind up getting one, and then it goes on the shelf after I do a few times. Right right now, I'm looking at electric bikes. I want electric bike. This, okay, right, So I'm looking at rad rovers. That is what I want. So I'm looking at these electric bicycles and they're certainly expensive, and I'm thinking I'm going to exercise on them. And I'm not gonna, but I'm gonna. I want one, right, so I always have another thing I want. And I think that's what Solomon is saying, is there's always one more thing to get, Even with all the things you have, there's always one more thing to get. Yeah, I'm ashamed to say that. I went through that phase with the electric bike, and my wife bought me a kit so you can buy regular bike, have the kit. You have a little thing on the back, put the batteries and all that stuff. Never even took out of the box. Oh no, it is sitting in the garage right now. Well, you need to do it. You need to do it. So the other one was I think that really stands out is Solomon saying history just keeps repeating itself and over again. And it does. This is one of the reasons, you know, our founding fathers made a big deal about that we needed to study history or will repeat history? And what causes revolutions, what causes the people to be oppressed, what causes tyrants to rise It's the same over and over and over again. What rose you know, what caused the kings in France to rise up? What caused Napoleon to rise up and become worse of a dictator than the other kings whatever, all these emperors. What caused all this stuff to happen over and over and over again is because every generation thinks that their circumstances are different than the previous generation. But you know, do you remember when it's it's funny how music from the eighties went out of stylins is coming back into style. Closed from the seventies went out of styles is coming back into style, right. Yeah, we do with that all the time. My daughter will hear a song and then I'll start singing it and she's like, Dad, how do you know that song? Because that song's forty years old, or at least the beat to that song. Yeah, somebody remixes and a new song, right right, Yeah, it's so funny. I went into a music score store a few years ago and I look over, and you know, there's all these guys testing out guitars. So I look over. There's this like fifteen year old kid and he's dun dun, dun, dun, right, and they come up with, hey, we don't allow that song in here. Every fifteen year old wants to play smoke on the water or whatever. Right, So it's really funny. And then it was amazing as we were in there, we were looking for other things, but guitar players, young guitar players all throughout the whole store, we're playing eighties rock music. Right, they're trying to play play like guns n' roses, They're trying to play like it was. It was the funniest thing that every generation this was cool and new to them, but it's already been done before. It's that way with clothes, it's that way with philosophies, it's that way with I would say this. You know, the civil unrests that we've had over the last maybe five years here in the US. These are the grandchildren of the baby boomers who did the same thing in the same places. They also burned down their colleges, right, They also fought in the streets and rioted in the cities. They also were contemplating maybe some of the benefits of communism back in that day. Sex, drugs and rock and roll, the sexual revolution, all these things. And then we come into the last five years and its sexuality is being questioned, drugs being legalized, burning down our cities, fighting on our campuses, contemplating that communism might be a reasonable or some kind of socialism might be a better way, questioning the integrity of our government, angry at the way that. Right, it's the same, and it's almost identically the same, just maybe even a little harsher than it was back in the sixties. Right, It's about every two generations, two or three generations, we go back and do the thing that was done before, and if we don't learn from it previously, then it winds up moving further to a bad place. So yeah, so Solomon saying, man, I'm frustrated. It feels like life is just life, and it just keeps going on and what was yesterday is going to be again tomorrow kind of thing. And then you know, really struggling here. But he's really what you're going to find through this book is at the same time that he's struggling with the futility of life, he's also trying to find so what really matters? And so one of my favorite Christian heroes, you know, I love missions. I love taking the Gospel around the world, and it's a big part of my life. And so there was a missionary from the eighteen hundreds into the early nineteen hundreds, So this is those Great Explorer years too, from eighteen sixty to nineteen thirty one. There's a guy his name was ct stud and he was one of the most famous people in the world. He was a world famous cricketer back when you know, the son never sat on the British Empire, and he was he was the most He was the Michael Jordan of his day. And then he became a Christian and he became a missionary, and he began really laying it on the line, risking his life all over the world in impossible circumstances, going to places that had not yet been mapped, and going to people who had no idea that there was anything outside of their village, right, that can be a good way to get killed, yes, and so it was, and disease and all these things. And he was just a hard, strong man, and he began to get frustrated by what he perceived to be weak Christians. And late in his life he wrote a book called The Chocolate Soldiers, and he talked about how, you know, people at that time liked to collect tin soldiers and pretend like they're setting up a war scene and kind of like people do with trains now or whatever. It was a little tin soldiers. But you could also go to candy shops and they would have foil wrapped chocolate soldiers. Yeah, and if you stick that chocolate soldier under the light, he looks just like the other metal soldier, except he'll melt under the heat. Right, That was his ideas. There was a lot of weak people. They look the part, but they don't actually pull it off well. He wrote a poem that turned into a song, and the poem says, only what's done for Christ will last. Bidding me selfish aims to leave, and to God's holy will to cleave, only one life twill soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last only one life, a few brief years, each with its burdens, hopes, and fears. When this bright world would tempt me sore, when Satan would a victory score, when self would seek to have its way, then help me Lord with joy, to say, give me Father a purpose deep in enjoy or sorrow, Thy word to keep faithful and true, whate'er the strife, pleasing thee in my daily life. O let my love with fervor burn, and from the world. Now let me turn living for THEE and THEE alone, bringing the pleasure in on night throne. Only one life, yes, only one. Now, let me say thy will be done. And when at last I'll hear the call I know, I'll say twas worth it all. Yeah, isn't that great? Yeah? So here's he wrote that as an old man at that point, saying I've done everything I can do and now my body is coming apart. But God, I'll do whatever you want me to do, and help me to have lived my life in a way that mattered. It's only one life, and soon it's going to be passed. Only what's done for Christ the last. And this is essentially the same thing Solomon's right, only from exactly the opposite life. Ct Studd had lived his life for God and laid it all in line, did everything he could. Solomon had kind of walked away from God. And so you read ct stud and there's kind of this joy the fact that man, it's worth it, and you're reading Solomon exactly the opposite. I wasted a big chunk of my life. Why did I do this? Right? So this is what we're talking about. Over the next few days. We'll spend a little bit of time in the Book of Ecclesiastes. So thank you for joining us today and I hope you have a very married Christmas and happy New Year. And hopefully we'll see you tomorrow on the Bible guys, mhm m m