Good evening! Lord willing, I am between Singapore and Saigon in the air right now. My blog tonight is again by my friend, Warren Baldwin. Keep me in your prayers!
Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”
The man who wrote this, Solomon, tried very hard to find something new. Solomon was the king of Israel, and was a very wealthy and powerful man. He used his wealth and power to accumulate things that he thought would make him happy.
For example, God wanted one man and one woman to get married. But, Solomon couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be happy with one wife. He kept looking for a new wife, and then another new wife, until he eventually had 1,000 wives.
But it didn’t stop there. Solomon not only wanted new people, he wanted new things. In Ecclesiastes 2:4 Solomon said, “I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made my self pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.”
Solomon had many new wives. Solomon had many new houses and gardens and other objects of beauty around him. But did all this satisfy him? Apparently not, because he also pursued all kinds of new pleasures. He wrote, “I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil.”
New people, now houses and possessions, new pleasures. But in the end, did all of this new stuff make Solomon happy? No, because he says in Ecclesiastes 2:11, “All was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” Sadly, Solomon sums up the effect of all his pursuit of new things and concludes, it was just chasing after wind. There was no substance to it, no lasting happiness.
Maybe what Solomon means in chapter one and verse nine when he says that “there is nothing new under the sun” is that man has always lived his life in pursuit of the next possession, the next pleasure, the next relationship, without really appreciating what he already has. Men are constantly in search of the new, but there really isn’t anything new. Oh, there might be a new toy, or a new way of doing something, but the principle is still the same: we are all looking for something new and exciting, and in that, there is nothing new.
But Solomon lived before the day of Jesus. Solomon didn’t know about Christ and the life he brings. If Solomon could have known Christ he might have said something a bit different. He might have said, “There is one new thing under the sun. And this one new thing is the only thing that really gives us any lasting joy, happiness and satisfaction. This one new thing is life in Christ.”
Romans 6:4 says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
Today, there is something new under the sun, something that wasn’t available to Solomon. It is new life in Christ, something I hope all of us will set our hearts on.
Warren Baldwin
God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
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