What Makes Up The Quality Life?

Introduction

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Please indulge me a moment or two with which to express my heartfelt gratitude for your attendance. I’m not unaware of the fact that we live in a terribly intense and busy society, and that there are a lot of things that compete and vie for our time and attention, and yet in the midst of all of those competitive things, you have deliberately chosen to be here with us tonight. And I appreciate that so very, very much. It’s a personal encouragement to me for you to be here. I told someone who asked how things were with me. I said, I feel so good about what I do that I feel like I cheat for getting paid for doing it. But Norma told me a long time ago, don’t say that until you’ve already gotten the check.

She never said that. I made that up. But it is a joy. And what it’s all about is the people. And you are the people. And I love you and appreciate you for what you are and for the stand that you take for truth and piety and holiness. And I want you to know that. And that’s not just a cliche, and it isn’t just some sort of redundancy through which we go from time to time, but a statement from an old West Texas boy’s heart. So thank you so much for coming. Good to see Brother Fred Shoemaker, who led our prayer this morning. We also have Brother Philip Schumacher here and his bride, and is glad I’m glad to see them. They’re Texas people and fine folks and friends of mine.

Thank you for coming. I trust that we will all profit from our time here together. In 1 Kings chapter 3, the Lord appears to the new king that has been anointed. His name is Solomon. He’s the son of David, as you recall. And God tells him, Solomon, I’m going to give you what you ask. And Solomon showed that wisdom was indigenous to his nature, I’m sure because of his genetic association with his father. He said, I am but a youth. The number of the people that I must rule are huge. And he said, Give me the wisdom to rule my people well. And God said to him, Because you did not ask for riches, I will compound your riches. And because you did not ask for repute and power, I will compound your reputation and make your power awesome.

No king will be like you. And because you have asked for wisdom, I will give you a volume of wisdom that has never been possessed by anybody. You will be a king among many kings. You will have a regality about your throne that will never end. We know about him today. Solomon was an interesting sort of fellow. He took life and held it in a test tube. He held it up to the Son of God’s wisdom and the various hues and colors that filtered through what he saw in that beautiful scene. He digested and he stated what life is really all about. I want to talk with you tonight about what Solomon saw. We’ll not have time to discuss the entirety of the book of Ecclesiastes, but we will discuss enough to show what Solomon found to be the quality life.

It’s a good question. What is the quality life? What consists of real quality living? That’s what we’re going to answer tonight. Quality, as you know, is a term that is used to show superiority or a high grade of excellence. And Solomon showed us that. He showed us everything about it. We live in an age where there’s a kind of let yourself go attitude. We live in an age where we have just cast off all sorts and kinds of moral restraints, lying as acceptable in the business world if it means that you can climb the corporate ladder. Ungodliness and filth are found in all kinds of business enterprises in our day and age. Every kind of filth is seen on the television anymore. We have, we are immersed in a cult of youth in this age.

Everything points to being young. If you’re not young, you’re not any good. Everything that we wear is supposed to make us look younger. Everything that we put on our faces, everything that we spray on our hair. This is that kind of let yourself go attitude. It’s that attitude of if it feels good, do it. There’s a pure subjectivism that is rampant in the world today. There is a book called Slouching Towards Gomorrow. And it is a marvelous look at how we are in this day and age. And Judge Bork in this book relates three things that he sees as problematic. I believe them to be scriptural, not just socially true, but scriptural. He said they are subjectivism. He says too much individualism. He says that we have too many things in regard to business enterprises.

1. The Quality Life Is Not Just Living

Those things are really our problems in this day and age. And Solomon saw that many generations ago. I want us to look then for a little while and see this business of the quality life. Let’s begin with Ecclesiastes chapter one. 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? He says, of all his labor which he taketh unto the sun. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. But the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth about toward the south and turneth about toward the north. It whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits.

All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labor. Man cannot utter it. The eye is not filled with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 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. Is there anything whereof it may be said, see? This is new, it hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things, neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those things that shall come after. I want to ask you a question.

What does merely living have to offer? Just existence. If we look around at all the things that are going on around us, is this what life is really all about? Is this what really makes sense in life? Our life, when we are divested from our relationship to God, is a routine. That’s all it is. It is one big fat monotony. It is a bore, this business of living life. If you don’t have God in it, I want you to look at what he says here. And he tells you in no uncertain terms that that’s the case. He says, one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. And I want to ask you a question. Do you know who your great-granduncle was on your mother’s side?

Do you know who your great great grandfather’s first daughter was? Those people, I’m going to tell you, had eyelashes and probably flat feet and hyperacidity, and they lived and worked, and they did everything that you do. Those people lived. And yet we don’t even know who they are one generation because we think we’re so important. It doesn’t take any time at all for somebody to forget your name. It won’t be very long until people will be saying, Elvis who? Or they’ll be saying, Sir Winston, what? Because people’s names do not last. I’m saying to you, it’s just a boring enterprise if that’s all there is. He says the sun also riseth and the sun goeth down and hasteth to the place where he arose. You know what happens in life?

Well, sun comes up and it goes down. It goes down, it comes up, it comes up and goes down, and a day turns into a week. It comes up and goes down and comes up and goes down and comes up and goes down. All of a sudden you’ve spent a month, and then all of a sudden it comes up and goes down and goes up and comes down, and all of a sudden it’s a year, and all of a sudden it does that ten times, and it’s a decade, and all of a sudden it does that a hundred times, and on you go. It’s just one big fat, monotonous bore. It’s just routine, that’s all there is. And he says, furthermore, the sun ariseth, goes to the place where it was, and he said, the wind goeth toward the south and turneth about to the north.

It whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuit. He says the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full, unto the place from which the rivers came, thither they go.

All the way down to Arizona and across back to New Mexico and Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana and down to Florida and all the way from Florida up the coast of North Carolina and all the way to Washington, D.C. and back up to Boston, Massachusetts, and back across to Milwaukee and Detroit and all of that place. And I’m going to tell you what you’ll find everywhere you go. They say the same thing. I’ll tell you one thing, Brother Bone, they said a little differently in Detroit. I tell you one thing, Brother Bone. If you don’t like the weather here, all you have to do is wait around a while and it’ll change. They say the same thing in Seattle, they just don’t say it with the same accent.

I’ll tell you one thing, Brother Bone. If you don’t like the weather here in Seattle, just wait around, it’ll change. And they say that over and over and over again. Everybody says the same thing. And the reason for that is that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is. You ever see the weatherman? Weatherman says, folks, we have a front coming down from the north, trailing a big low pressure system, and it’s hooking down this way, and we have a low pressure system that’s going to be affected by the currents, and the first thing you know, we’re going to have some thunderstorms here on Thursday. But don’t worry too much about it because the high pressure system will be in to fill in the low pressure, and it’ll move it on out to the coast, and we’ll have clear weather again.

But don’t put your umbrella up because we’re going to have another cold front. I’m going to tell you that the difference between the morning, I mean, between the early spring and and the wintertime is that in the summertime it’s a cool front, and in the wintertime it’s a cold front. And what life is all about is one cold front right after the other. That’s all. Is that all there is to life? Is that the way it is? Not only is that the case, we all live close to the Gulf or close to the ocean. We know about that what is called a hydrologic cycle. The hydrologic cycle is just the fact that all kinds of moisture is picked up from the Gulf and it’s put in clouds and it goes back across Colorado, and the clouds there produce the snow, and the snow falls on the mountains, and the spring comes, and the spring melts the snow, and the little streams run into the big streams, and the big streams run into the little rivers, and the little rivers run into the big rivers, and the big river runs into the moisture down at the Gulf Coast, and here it goes, right back up there again.

That’s a hydrologic cycle. That’s the way it works all the time. And what that is, is all that one frontal system right after the other. It’s the same kind of thing. That’s the monotony about which he speaks. Solomon calls the hydrologic circle thousands of years before anybody knew what that term was. But he said that’s how life is without God. And he says, furthermore, all things are full of labor. Man cannot utter it. The eye is not filled with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. Let me ask you a question. Who do you like to hear sing? Did you ever hear all the singing that you wanted by that person? I’ve just discovered Michael Boublet. He’s a great singer. And I can’t get enough of the guy right now.

He’s a combination of Frank Sinatra and Bobby Dare and both. And you just don’t can’t get enough. And even if you get through with him, somebody else is going to come on the scene. You’ve got to hear him. The ear is never satisfied. It never fills all the way up. Do you see that? And the eye is not filled with seeing. Have you ever seen everything that you want to see? Have you seen so much that you’re ready to just shut your eyes and let that be the end of the matter? It is not so. That appetite is never filled. You want to see more and more and more and more. And he says, Is there anything whereof it may be said, see this is new.

It hath been of old time. I want to say something to you, folks. Technology changes. We have upon us the computer age. Technology has introduced us to all kinds of new possibilities in medicine. Information storage has made it possible for us to solve all kinds of what would have been before insurmountable problems. We have all of that thing. Everything is changing in medicine and communication, and it’s changing with the rapidity that somebody said we have had more information discovered in the last hundred years than all the rest of time that we know about put together. I don’t know if that’s a true statement or not, but I’ll tell you what, it is proliferating at a huge rate. But I want to tell you something. When you get through with that, the people are just like they’ve always been.

There’s not any different. The people still haven’t seen everything they want to see. They still want to know more about this and more about that. People are just like they’ve always been. There’s jealousy, there’s envy, there’s power struggles. Wherever you find people, there is politics. It is no uh accident, I suppose, that there’s an etymological uh comparison between people and polity that came from the same word. The fact of the matter is, wherever you have people, you have politics. And it just goes on and on and on and on. So the quality life, in the very outset, is not just living. That isn’t all there is to it. Well, what is it? I, the preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under the sun.

2. I Gave My Heart to Seek by Wisdom

This sore travail hath God given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith. I’ve seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with myself, and said, I have come to great estate, and have gotten all that have been before me in Jerusalem. Yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge, and I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceive that this also is vexation of spirit, for in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increases increaseth sorrow. I I want you to notice first of all a term, a terminology to use.

I gave my heart. He says that twice in this little contextual framework. That simply means that he made a complete and dedicated effort to ascertain what was there. He put it under a microscope, folks. He looked at it in every way you can look at it. He said, I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom, and he had some of it, concerning all things that are done at under heaven. This sword travail hath God given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith. And he says, I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, he said, it is one big gaping vacuity. He said it’s one big gaping hole that cannot be filled up. He said it’s one big vacuum that there’s no way to do anything about.

This included all areas of life social, political, commercial, private, public. He did everything about it. He looked at people like nobody before him had ever seen people. And when he got through with it, he said, It’s just a big fat problem. I can’t solve.

Man has tried to explain himself all these generations by looking at himself. Instead, he needs to be looking at the Creator. But he tries to explain it by looking at all that he is. He says, No amount of figuring, no amount of arithmetic, he says, can ascertain what are the courses of life. He said, What’s crooked?