Solomon - Wealth, Wisdom & A Worthless Life Series

Solomon – Wealth, Wisdom & a Worthless Life

1 Kings 9:1-9; 11:1-6

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Intro

Good Evening/Morning.

We are glad you are here and I am happy to once again be back up here preaching. I hope you were as blessed as I was from hearing from our elders and staff during July. We are so blessed as a church to have the leaders that we do. I praise God for each person that God is using to help lead this church and minister to this community.

The Question

I want to begin today with a question? It is a question that I asked people to respond to on Facebook this week.

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When you stop and think about your life, what is the one thing that you think if you had (or had more of), would make your life better?

Now, I think there are a lot of people who know the answer for them personally in their head. I don’t think they have to think about it too long.

And as I posted that question, I received many, many responses. I received may that were similar and a few that were unique. One person wanted a better singing voice, a few others wanted to be more patient, one person said bacon. He may have been joking, but there are a few people, and I might be one of them, that think bacon does make a lot of things better.

But the overwhelming responses were in these areas.

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Money, time, health, good or better relationships.

But when you stop and think about it, all of these responses can be boiled down to I think, the same thing, which is less stress, which was also a response.

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If we had more money, we wouldn’t have to stress about the bills

If we had more time, we would not have to stress about fitting everything in.

If we had better relationships, we would not have the stress over awkward encounters

If we had better health, we would not have to stress over the future and what that held.

But really what we are saying when we want less stress or any of those things so our lives will be less stressful is that we want

More Contentment

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And we think those things will help us be more content.

Now to be fair, in my facebook post, I did not allow people to say more of Jesus, because I did not want people to give the easy and obvious Sunday School answer, but to really think about the tangible things that much of society and in reality, much of Christianity, believes will make our life better, less stressful and more content.

Now I grant that many of these things will make our life easier but not necessarily better, except maybe bacon.

But seriously, easier is not always better and sometimes easier can lead us on a path toward a worthless and meaningless life rather than the meaningful life we all long for.

So where is your hope for meaning and contentment, for a better life? Do you think it is one of these things listed that will give you that elusive contentment and meaning?

If it is, then today, I want to dash your hopes, because the hope you have is only an illusion, it will never provide what we are looking for.

But while I want to dash your hopes that are an illusion, I want to give you hope, hope that is sure, hope to truly live by and flourish in, a hope that can help us to enjoy the blessings of time and of health and of money and of relationships, without leading us astray.

We are going to do that by examining the life of a man who had it all and yet had nothing. That man is Solomon.

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Turn with me to 1 Kings 9:1-9.

We are returning to a series that we had paused in called God’s story through God’s people. As we continue on in this series, it is my hope that you will see how God has used His people, real people with their flaws and problems, and give you hope and encouragement that God can use you in the midst of whatever you are going through, and on top of that, it is my hope that this series gives you an overview of much of the Old Testament as well.

So let’s see what we can find out about Solomon and how we can avoid getting everything we want, and yet have nothing of value.

1 Kings 9:1-9

9 When Solomon had finished building the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had achieved all he had desired to do, 2 the Lord appeared to him a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 The Lord said to him: