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Word in the Wild is a one year Bible adventure with friends. Join from anywhere and enjoy a fun, rewarding, and doable 12-month journey through the Bible where you read it from cover to cover and understand it. It’s not a devotional or recap. It’s a guide by your side through God’s Word. With support from a weekly podcast and an online community of fellow travelers, this is the year when you finally explore the Bible in its own words and on its own terms for yourself.
This is Word and the Wild. It's a one year Bible adventure with friends. My name is Owen. I'm your host and your guide, and together we are on this 12 month journey as a podcast plus community where we read the Bible for ourselves, But not by ourselves.
Now, here we are gang in week 23. And so far the last couple of weeks, we have spent our time with a young King Solomon, his energy, his drive, his wisdom have all been entertaining and impressive.
This week, we're moving forward in the story to the middle age and sunset years of Solomon's life. Building projects complete, borders secure, Solomon turns his incredible resources to finding enjoyment and satisfaction in life, and he fails to find the secret to it all until it's too late, for him at least.
So hello and welcome into you, We're rolling through this journey together, and it's a freewheeling walk where we watch the Bible unfold like the epic movie that it is. So subscribe right here on your favorite podcast platform and share it with a friend. I want to say a special welcome to our Word and the Wild Plus community members.
It's their support of this nonprofit endeavor that makes space for all of us here on this Bible reading adventure. As members of the community, they enjoy access to our private, safe online space where no honest question is a dumb question along with weekly live stream Q and A's, bonus content, interactions, live stream, teaching gatherings, and more.
So if all that or any of that sounds like your kind of thing You want to check out the show notes for how to become a member yourself. Get all the details over at word in the wild. com or again, check the show notes. Either way, check us out word and the wild. com. And now let's jump in to the story again this week, as we follow Solomon in the sunset years of his life and the lessons he's learned along the way.
You. Me. You know, normal people. We spend most of our waking hours just neck deep in logistics. We're just fully occupied with all the overwhelming struggles of just trying to handle the next thing on our plate. Just trying to get stuff done. Done. And this kind of a head down, treading water, taking care of business. It keeps us occupied. It can keep us occupied for very long stretches of time, years, even.
I mean, just ask a mom with young kids. When she finally looks up from changing diapers and wiping noses, she realizes the five years have gone by. Who, where, what, when, how. That's what we chase. Those are the answers that we look for.
And then, out of nowhere, here comes wise old King Solomon. Solomon comes along, he scoops up all of those questions, and all the spaghetti bundle of life that's attached to them. He picks them up. He tosses them inside a big old box as big as the universe itself. He clears out all the logistics, all the complications of our crazy lives, all the "what's for dinner" and "when's the meeting" and "who do I have to talk to about this return" and "where's the remote" and "how do I make this work?"
All those questions, King Solomon sweeps them up. Dumps them in a big box and says it's time to talk about the one question you almost never ask yourself. Why? The why question. And he starts this conversation with us. With three little words. Three little words that have some honestly startling implications.
The three words are "everything is meaningless." The opening lines of his autobiography written by a man haunted by the ghosts of what might have been. There's a weariness in his words. There's a regret. And there's this unsettling depth to them. It's a searching, probing question. A statement made by a man who believes he has something not just to say about his own life experiences, but about the nature of life itself.
He feels as though he can comment on all of life, on all of existence. He makes that claim. That he's qualified to take the universe itself, put it in a box, tape the box shut and scrawl "meaningless" on the side of the box. Now, not just anybody can make that kind of claim, but Solomon's not just anybody. And he's the wisest human being to ever live.
He's one of the wealthiest, most powerful, most experienced, most famous individuals to ever walk our planet. His skill at getting what he wants done, his breadth of information, his variety of experiences make him one of the few people in history who are qualified to talk about "everything."
This autobiography written by King Solomon, it's a book we have come to know as Ecclesiastes.
And the name of the book, that title, comes from the title Solomon gives himself at the beginning of the book. He simply calls himself the teacher. And trust me, Solomon has more than a few lessons to dish out in his autobiographical meanderings through the meaning of life.
When a man like Solomon, you have a man who's enjoyed, done, thought, experienced just about everything offers up this, this, this, this wisdom of a lifetime of experiences, man, we do well to take note.
So this is where we find him now. This is Solomon. He's not the young, naive Solomon. He's not the middle aged, busy, and ambitious Solomon. Now here he is. He's the old, experienced Solomon. Gray beard, shaky voice, regretful, humbled, disillusioned. And his great capacity And the great successes all lead him into this state of mind and heart being greatly angry, greatly pessimistic, and, and greatly depressed.
The depth of his intellect, the refinement of his skill at maneuvering through life to get his way. It all merely adds to Solomon's deep disillusionment. Listen to what he says in the opening lines of his book.
The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief to increase knowledge only increases sorrow. It's Ecclesiastes chapter one, verse 18.
Solomon's original words in the Hebrew are even more stark and tense. It simply says in the Hebrew, much wisdom, much anger, heaps of knowledge, heaps of pain. The man who has it all and did it all finds that it all means nothing.
God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. He says in Ecclesiastes 1 :13.
I mean, a tragedy, right? A story with some measure of hope or aspiration in the beginning that turns into this tale of sorrow and suffering. That's how Solomon describes his, his life. Yeah. Solomon. Solomon feels his life. You know, the one where he built the temple. And a legendary palace. The one where he gets to eat off of solid gold plates, because silver is so plentiful that it has no value.
The one who has sex with a different, beautiful woman anytime he wants. The one who drew visitors from all over the world. The one who snaps his fingers and cities are built. The one who neighboring countries fear and send expensive gifts to appease. This man. This This life, Solomon feels this life is a tragic story? Unbelievable.
And despite his best efforts to discover joy, delight, and purpose for his existence, this aging King Solomon sits bitter, nihilistic, depressed.
And don't think for a second that Solomon did not put in the effort of his pursuit of pleasure and meaning pushed him to the extremes of, of sanity itself. I mean, Solomon goes through and reminisces about all he's done.
Listen to the things he describes. I said to myself, he writes, come on, let's try pleasure. Let's look for the good things in life. But I found that this too was meaningless. I decided to cheer myself with wine. I tried to experience the only happiness most people find during this brief life in this world.
I also tried to find meeting my I also tried to find meaning by building huge homes for myself and planting beautiful vineyards. I made gardens and parks, filling them with all kinds of fruit trees. Solomon writes, I built reservoirs to collect the water and irrigate my many flourishing groves. I bought slaves.
Men and women. I collected great sums of silver and gold, the treasure of many kings and provinces. I hired wonderful singers, both men and women, and had many beautiful concubines. I had everything a man could desire, Solomon says. Anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure. Solomon says, but as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless, like, like chasing the wind.
There is nothing really worthwhile anywhere. Solomon concludes. That's Ecclesiastes chapter 2 verses 1 through 11. Solomon Is a man who got almost everything he wanted, almost, but for the man whose name means peace, satisfaction remains beyond his grasp. Even here near the end of his life in his mind and heart, meaning and purpose slips through his fingers, leaving him with nothing but fistfuls of air chasing the wind around him.
Israel's age old enemies are gnawing at his expansive borders, unrest builds among his people. All he has built and schemed to own and achieve will not last as Solomon sits and reflects. His glorious palace feels to him like lonely ruins. A monument to ambition he knows all too well will one day disappear.
He ran as hard and fast to catch up with meaning and purpose and enjoyment as anyone ever has, but now his strength is gone. The chase is over. And the satisfaction of knowing that all his work meant something, well, it drifts away as he watches the sun set. It disappears over a horizon he will never reach for all his successes and all his experiences.
Yeah, Solomon is right. Solomon's life really is a tragedy. A few of us can match Solomon's resources, but many of us, we share his resolve. We're determined to find something to chase, to achieve, to feel even something to pull us forward through the day, pull us forward through the years, who, when, how, where, what, the search goes on, all when there is a three letter word.
That can snap us free from a mindless grind, a meaningless existence. It's like a stick of dynamite. It just waits for us to light the fuse that dangles from it in the shape of a question mark. The three letter word is "Why." And for Solomon's story, perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that it never had to be this way.
The one thing that, that could bend that endless circle of life, the spiral of chasing satisfaction and meaning, the one thing that could bend that circle of life and, and bend it into a line of purpose and direction, that one missing piece. It's the one path Solomon did not explore. All this chasing the wind and And the secret to satisfaction that was never more than a breath away.
It's the answer to the why. Asking the why. And the answer, Solomon concludes, the answer is friendship with his creator. It kind of reminds me Solomon's story a little bit like the, the, the wilderness. Remember this, of course you do the Israelites, you know, they were rescued by God from enslavement in Egypt.
They were brought to Sinai to enter into a covenant relationship with God. And then not long after they stood on the border of the promised land and right when they were about to enter, instead, they were They turned their back on it. And so they wandered, they walked in a circle for 40 long years until the people were prepared for what God had prepared for them.
And Solomon's story reminds me of that wilderness wandering in a way, I mean, early in his life, God came to him with an offer of friendship, but it wasn't long before Solomon turned his back on that friendship and walked away. He chose instead to walk in circles, chasing the wind in a spiritual and emotional desert here at the end of his life.
Now, Solomon acknowledges this fact and as the story of Ecclesiastes unfolds, Solomon uses his wealth of his wealth of wisdom and experience to get to the bottom of what life is all about. He can't help but continue to dig and probe and explore. And here's what he ends up saying. Listen to this from Solomon.
He says, I discovered. After looking at the matter from every possible angle, I discovered this. Though I have searched repeatedly, I have not found what I was looking for. But I did find this. God created people to be virtuous. But they have each turned to follow their own downward path. It's Ecclesiastes 7, 27 through 29.
For Solomon, the answer for satisfaction, the key to meaning and purpose in life, all it was not something new, new experiences, new projects, new income, new lovers, new influence. No, it was something old. It was something familiar. Something that he had always known and chosen to ignore. Simply that God is his creator.
God created him with a purpose. That purpose is to live a good life. And to live a good life, we must be good. And for us to be good, we must live a life in good. standing with God. Friendship with God, that's life's purpose. And in that purpose comes life's meaning. It's a relationship with God in good standing.
That's what bends the circle of life into a line of direction. A relationship with God in good standing. That is the why. Now imagine Imagine Solomon's deep, deep regret. He discovers the answer, yes, but he discovers it too late. His story is mostly written. His fate is pretty much sealed. He's got one small consolation and it's this final conversation with us.
He can offer up his wisdom and experience to help us consider our path before it's too late. before the silver cord of life snaps as Solomon describes it. And the golden bowl is broken. He said, he says, don't wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well. For then the dust will return to the earth and the spirit will return to the God who gave it.
Solomon says before all of that, before all of that, Let me pull you in close. I'm grabbing you by my, your shoulders to tell you, remember your creator. Now that's what he says in Ecclesiastes 12, six, and seven in all the, the where and who, and when, and how, ah, don't forget the, why you have been created by God.
For a good life in good standing with him. If you miss that Solomon wants to tell us, then everything is meaningless. And wise old King Solomon doesn't call for a joyless life. He suggests a thoughtful one. Listen to some of these final words in his autobiography that we call Ecclesiastes. He says, young people, You know, when you're old, everybody's young, right?
Young people. It's wonderful to be young. Enjoy every minute of it. Do everything you want to do. Take it all in. But remember that you must give an account to God for everything you do. That's Ecclesiastes 11, nine, couple of verses later, he says, don't let the excitement of youth. Cause you to forget your creator, Ecclesiastes 12 one.
And then there's this thing. It's his very last statement in a lot of ways. It serves as his, his epitaph before we leave old King Solomon alone in his palace, as the sun sets he offers up some advice so that his regret can become a reminder. Here is my final conclusion, Solomon says, fear God and obey his commandments for this is everyone's duty.
God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad.
Solomon, brilliant Solomon. His intellect shines, his palace gleams of gold, his international reputation is sterling, but his brilliance has had a dark side, hasn't it? Solomon won every negotiation, every encounter, every argument. He was never wrong, but he was on the wrong path all along. He forgot his purpose.
He enriched himself at great cost. He bankrupted his people's future and his own relationship with God. It's no wonder that the explosive and dangerous why question is so important to Solomon and so important to the big story of the Bible on the whole. Much, much later in our story, we're going to encounter another teacher, and this teacher will summarize Solomon's angst with a few wise words of his own.
What do you benefit if you gain the whole world, but lose your own soul?
And with that, my friend, we are out. Grateful for the opportunity to walk the trail with you this week. If you're loving it, like I am, Hey, why not share it with someone, you know, invite them into the journey and make sure you have subscribed to this podcast. All you word and the wild plus community members just to once again.
Special thanks to you for your support of this nonprofit endeavor, keeping us all here on the trail. I'll be seeing you in the wild, our online private community space next week. So all week long rather. So check it out there. Everybody else find us on Facebook and interact there with us too. Word and the wild is a line house community is part of the line house community network.
That's a nonprofit organization with the mission to bring neighbors together to promote awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the Bible because friendship and God's word change lives and change cities. Word and the wild is presented by the Lumavoz podcast network. Many thanks Lumavoz. And with that.
Once again, we're out. My name is Owen, your host and your guide. Until next time, I'll be looking for you out there on the trail, in the word and the wild. You have a great week.