Praise the Lord for this last Friday of January. It has been bitterly cold here but, praise the Lord, the heat wave is moving in by next week. Spring is not far away. Please join us in fervent prayer for Audrey, a sweet servant of Jesus our Lord, who had a major surgery. We are praying for a mighty miracle from the Lord that her health be restored to fullness and wellness. It is no secret what our Lord can do. We praise the Lord in advance for mercy and compassion for Audrey.
We are excited about this
weekend serving and worshipping the Lord. Plan to be in the house of the Lord
wherever you might be. Pray for our Friday night TV outreach this evening at 7
PM on Time Warner Cable ch 4. We will have a Saturday Evening gathering at the
Historic First United Methodist Church, Endicott at 5:30PM. It will a great time
of fellowship, feasting, and Worship. We will gather for Worship on Sunday at
8:30 and 11:00 Am at Union Center and at 9:30 AM at Wesley. May Jesus Christ be
praised.
The Greek philosopher
Aristotle (384-322 BC) once said, “Consider pleasures as they depart, not as
they come.” Aristotle wanted his students to consider the value and usefulness
of pleasure after it had been enjoyed. Interestingly, that is what the writer of
Ecclesiastes did. The writer of Ecclesiastes, also known as “the Preacher”,
wanted to know how to live a meaningful life. He explored several areas of life
in order to find the meaning to life. the Preacher explored pleasure and
self-indulgence to see if that could provide one with a meaningful life, but he
discovered the vanity of self-indulgence. The Preacher’s theme is that everything
in life is meaningless. However, the Preacher eventually gave a corrective. He
said that everything in life is meaningless without God. His ultimate purpose
was to show that we can live a meaningful life only when we live it in a right
relationship to God. If we don’t live our lives in a right relationship to God,
then indeed everything in life is meaningless. However, if we do live our lives
in a right relationship to God, then everything in life is meaningful. We can
have right relationship with God only in and through Jesus Christ , who is the
Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The Preacher explored several areas of life to demonstrate that all is vanity, that everything in life is meaningless without God. He explored pleasure and self-indulgence (2:1-11). He tested it to see what depths of meaning he could find in self-indulgence. He put himself in Solomon’s place, mindful that no one else in Israel’s long history had greater power, wealth, and leisure to give the search for pleasure its full play. The Preacher said in Ecclesiastes 2:1a, “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’” This tells us what he tested. Interestingly, he immediately revealed the result. He said in verse 1b, “But behold, this also was vanity.” The Preacher summarized his conclusion at the start. He then went on to tell us all the different areas of self-indulgence he tested to see if any one of them provides a meaningful life. J. I. Packer once said, “Pleasure seeking, as we learn from experience, is a barren business; happiness is never found until we have the grace to stop looking for it and to give our attention to persons and matters external to ourselves.” Commentator Philip G. Ryken said, “Pleasure, pursued for its own sake, does not and cannot satisfy the soul.” We need to learn this lesson from the Preacher, or else learn it from personal experience, like the woman whom Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote about in his book titled, "When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough". She married a successful corporate executive and bought her dream house in the suburbs. But now she “cannot understand why she goes around every morning saying to herself, ‘Is this all there is to life?’” The Preacher’s conclusion is that apart from God, we will not gain anything from self-indulgence. God is not a spoilsport. He is not trying to take pleasure away from us but to give it to us. Once we learn how to find satisfaction in God himself, then all of his other gifts become the best and truest pleasures. Happily, we do not need to be as rich as the Preacher in order to live a meaningful life. We simply have to look at the world around us and know that this is our Father’s world, and that everything comes to us as a gift from God.
A wonderful example of knowing the pleasure of God comes from the testimony of a poor Christian woman, her name long forgotten, known only to God. Sometime in the eighteenth century she wrote these words of contentment:
"I do not know when I have had happier times in my soul than when I have been sitting at work, with nothing before me but a candle and a white cloth, and hearing no sound but that of my own breath, with God in my soul and heaven in my eye. I rejoice in being exactly what I am—a creature capable of loving God, and who, as long as God lives, must be happy. I get up and look a while out the window. I gaze at the moon and stars, the work of an Almighty Hand. I think of the grandeur of the universe and then sit down and think myself one of the happiest beings in it."
Like that godly woman, we were made with the capacity to be one of the happiest beings in the universe, but we will never find it by living for our own pleasure. We will only find it when we learn to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
The Preacher explored several areas of life to demonstrate that all is vanity, that everything in life is meaningless without God. He explored pleasure and self-indulgence (2:1-11). He tested it to see what depths of meaning he could find in self-indulgence. He put himself in Solomon’s place, mindful that no one else in Israel’s long history had greater power, wealth, and leisure to give the search for pleasure its full play. The Preacher said in Ecclesiastes 2:1a, “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’” This tells us what he tested. Interestingly, he immediately revealed the result. He said in verse 1b, “But behold, this also was vanity.” The Preacher summarized his conclusion at the start. He then went on to tell us all the different areas of self-indulgence he tested to see if any one of them provides a meaningful life. J. I. Packer once said, “Pleasure seeking, as we learn from experience, is a barren business; happiness is never found until we have the grace to stop looking for it and to give our attention to persons and matters external to ourselves.” Commentator Philip G. Ryken said, “Pleasure, pursued for its own sake, does not and cannot satisfy the soul.” We need to learn this lesson from the Preacher, or else learn it from personal experience, like the woman whom Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote about in his book titled, "When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough". She married a successful corporate executive and bought her dream house in the suburbs. But now she “cannot understand why she goes around every morning saying to herself, ‘Is this all there is to life?’” The Preacher’s conclusion is that apart from God, we will not gain anything from self-indulgence. God is not a spoilsport. He is not trying to take pleasure away from us but to give it to us. Once we learn how to find satisfaction in God himself, then all of his other gifts become the best and truest pleasures. Happily, we do not need to be as rich as the Preacher in order to live a meaningful life. We simply have to look at the world around us and know that this is our Father’s world, and that everything comes to us as a gift from God.
A wonderful example of knowing the pleasure of God comes from the testimony of a poor Christian woman, her name long forgotten, known only to God. Sometime in the eighteenth century she wrote these words of contentment:
"I do not know when I have had happier times in my soul than when I have been sitting at work, with nothing before me but a candle and a white cloth, and hearing no sound but that of my own breath, with God in my soul and heaven in my eye. I rejoice in being exactly what I am—a creature capable of loving God, and who, as long as God lives, must be happy. I get up and look a while out the window. I gaze at the moon and stars, the work of an Almighty Hand. I think of the grandeur of the universe and then sit down and think myself one of the happiest beings in it."
Like that godly woman, we were made with the capacity to be one of the happiest beings in the universe, but we will never find it by living for our own pleasure. We will only find it when we learn to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
In Christ,
Brown
