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South Bay SDA Church

Jeremy Arnall

Happiness By Faith

For 4 years, I attended Mount Pisgah Academy, as I've shared, and my twin brother and I worked in a nursing home.

My wife and I, I mean, not my wife then, but Tina and Tanya also worked there as twins.

And we also had twins that were older named Anis and Janis.

And what's, this is just a side thing, but what's interesting is that half the twins, you know what I mean, If you split the twins down the middle, half the twins worked on 200 wing, half the twins worked on 100 wing.

So those poor residents must have thought they were losing their minds at times.

Jamie and I, my twins, started out in the kitchen working there for a year.

Messy job, but we acquired in our sophomore summer a license to be certified nursing assistants, CNAs we called them, and Tina and Tanya did too.

Jamie and Tanya worked on 200, Tina and I worked on 100.

And in that job we would of course assist with feeding, with bathing, dressing, basically the whole whole deal.

I remember feeding a resident 1 night and as I was feeding her across the way there was a little lady named Sarah.

Sarah, I don't know her story, I just know that Sarah was having a dispute with her roommate.

And in the midst of the argument, which sounded as though it was pretty much one-sided, Sarah doing all the talking.

And I really don't remember what else she said.

But to hear this little lady who was, I don't know, maybe in her 80s, with just her meager belongings in this little corner of a room, to hear her cry out in frustration, I have no family.

Even though I was young with all my future ahead of me.

It was sobering to say the least and heart-wrenching.

They say that she modeled coats, you know, like it's like fur coats and so forth on the runway in New York City.

You see, Gladys only had 1 leg now and was dependent on us for her care.

After graduation in 95, I took a job in Ohio during my freshman year in college.

I went on to serve as a caretaker for a 92-year-old Jewish gentleman named John.

I remember sitting with him in his high-rise apartment.

He had plenty of money, so I thought anyway.

He was a retired lawyer, practiced into his early 80s, said he had to step out because he couldn't argue with a woman.

Had earned a reputation in the community, he had a family, a beautiful family, sweet, sweet family, but he had lost his wife Sylvia.

All of this and yet his life as it was drawing to a close, he seemed depressed and somewhat unhappy at times.

In my young mind, I thought, well, if money, beautiful family, a lovely wife, though gone, still a wife, traveled the world, or so it sounded, and he still wasn't really happy, What's left?

This morning, I'd like to invite you to join me to look at a message from a preacher that lived a long time ago.

He calls himself a preacher anyways, though most of us know him more as a king.

This preacher king takes a few pages to write out a memoir, some reflection on his experience, and in the process gives counsel to people like you and me.

You can almost sense in his words this sense of anguish, of sorrow, of being on the other side of this story and realizing that the pages are few that are left in his and feeling a sense of remorse, of shame, And perhaps if someone will listen to his story, they can avoid the same traps that he fell into.

Of course, if you haven't figured it out, I'm speaking of the wise man Solomon, who wrote 3 of our Bible books, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

A book on love, a book on life, and a book on wisdom.

Today we want to look at his third work, or at least what we understand to be his last work, which was Ecclesiastes.

We can't be certain as to when Proverbs was written and we think of Saga Solomon, the way it reads, as something that probably came early in his reign.

But we understand that the book of Ecclesiastes was likely near the end.

A lot has happened during these 40 years of his reign.

During this period, he was given wealth, he was given wisdom, yet he still desired more.

He gathered unto himself more wealth, though God had warned about such behaviors.

He gathered numerous women unto himself for his pleasure as well as for political means, yet we know that sadly backfired.

He taxed the people to help pay for his lavish lifestyle which he had created and yet this also caused much trouble.

Somewhere along the line he realizes he gets his folly, you know, and as we gather from the book of Ecclesiastes he repents and turns back to God.

If there was ever a man who did it all, who had it all, Solomon would fit the bill.

Prior to his death, this experienced king writes these words to you and to me in hopes that we will learn from his failure.

The title of the message this morning, hear it carefully, Happiness by Faith.

Dear Lord, I pray that you speak to our hearts.

May we listen to this wise preacher who once lived such a lavish lifestyle, who had what seemed to be everything, and knowing that you gave him wisdom, Lord, that you've protected this book, this work, this memoir of sorts to be here in our Bible today.

Well, we take that as a directive from you that these words contain wisdom for us.

Would you help us to comprehend them, and more importantly, to apply them by the presence of your Holy Spirit, we ask in Jesus' name.

The word Ecclesiastes is actually Greek in its origin.

In Proverbs, Solomon is the wise counselor.

In Song of Songs, he's the romantic lover.

And in Ecclesiastes, he's the aged preacher.

He refers to himself as a preacher from the onset in verse 1.

Notice with me how the book reads, open your Bibles to Ecclesiastes.

It's nestled between his 2 other works, Proverbs and Song of Solomon.

And I want you to notice how he begins his work there in verse 1.

The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

What prophet has a man, he writes, from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?

So at the very outset, he writes what appears to be the most bleak and dismal reflection on life that we could conceive of.

All, not some, not what comes later in life, not what's early, all is vanity.

This term vanity is used 37 times in the book.

The phrase is referred to when talking about life under the sun.

And when it's used to refer to life under the sun, it's used 29 times.

When he says vanity of vanities, he's emphasizing his point.

You know, in the Old Testament, this was common fare.

We would say the holy of holies to refer to the holiest of places.

We would say king of kings to refer to the supreme king, or song of songs to refer to the greatest song known to man.

Hence today we are looking at what Solomon calls vanity of vanities, that is, life under the sun.

The term in Hebrew can be translated as vapor, breath, or futility.

We might say meaninglessness, as some of your translations do.

Vapor, or could we just simply say smoke.

If you were to try to reach out and grab a handful of smoke, you would find it, while it would seem to make sense that such could happen, you realize it cannot be contained.

Try as you might, it slips through your fingers.

We might say that, we might ask, I should say, that how is it that this preacher who's saying that life is meaningless could find his way into Scripture?

How can such a book be a part of such a holy canon?

Such sentiments are hardly Christian, right?

Some would argue that such writing is merely the philosophies of an aged king.

After all, he appears to be giving his views on life.

The whole text at some level can seem somewhat secular, like something you might pick up in the self-help section of Barnes & Noble.

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Happiness By Faith

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