Ecclesiastes 5

CHAPTER 5Now Solomon tries something else, and this is something that may interest you a great deal. He tries to find satisfaction in religion, and he does not find it. I am going to say several things which may be startling to you, but don’t reject them until you think about them just a little. Did you know that religion has damned more people in this world than anything else has? Take a look at what the pagan religions have done for people in the past and in the present. Look at the condition of India. These people do not have a lower mentality than other peoples of the world. It is their religion that keeps them down. Consider China.

As I write, China is in the grip of a terrible dictatorship, but it has made China a nation to be reckoned with. Their pagan religions did not do even that much for them. The Moslem world is fractured and is in sad condition. South America is as rich in natural resources as North America; yet most of the people remain in a miserable condition, and its religion tries to keep it that way. Look at what liberal protestantism and liberal Romanism have done to this country. When this country began to give up its belief in God and its respect for the Bible, when liberalism came into the pulpits of our nation, then deterioration began in our land. My friend, if you have a religion, I suggest you get rid of it and exchange it for Christ. I personally do not think one can call Christianity a religion. There is no ritual whatsoever given with Christianity. Have you ever stopped to think of that? This is the reason we can have all kinds of churches with different forms of worshipfor instance you can sing the Doxology if you want to, but you don’t have to. Christianity was never given a form to follow. Why? Because Christianity is a Person. To be a Christian means that you trust Christ. Religion has never been very helpful to man.

Ecclesiastes 5:1

SEEKING SATISFACTION IN RELIGIONListen to what Solomon is saying nowthis is terrific! Going to some churches is not only a waste of time; it is wrong. It is wrong to give your approval to a liberal pulpit. It is wrong when you do not give your support to a fundamental pastor who is giving out the Word of God. Solomon tried being religious. He went up to the temple, but he warns, “Have as little to do with it as possible; keep your mouth shut. Go and sit, but for goodness’ sake don’t commit yourself to anything.”

Ecclesiastes 5:2

He is warning, “Do not make any decision under the stress of emotion.” Cry at the movies, but don’t do it in church. Don’t sign a pledge. If you are going to rent an apartment or a house, it’s all right to sign for that, but don’t commit yourself to God in writing. In other words, make it a religion; go through the form but avoid reality. My friend, Solomon is not the only one who tried that. There are a lot of unhappy people in our churches today. They never get involved; they just go through a nice sweet little ritual. There is nothing as deadening as that!

Ecclesiastes 5:3

There are a lot of things being said in church that should not be said.

Ecclesiastes 5:4

Don’t go forward at an invitation unless you are really doing business with God. I recall conducting a service after which I was severely criticized because I would not let young people come forward. It was obvious to me that it would have been merely a display. I felt it was better to let them make a decision for Christ right where they were sitting. Oh, how many folk have come forward in a meeting when it has meant nothing to them at all! “When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it.” Don’t break your vownot to God. You can’t promise God things, fail to make good on them, and then expect to maintain a vital relationship with Him. There is a lot of pious talking and pious promising that is absolutely meaningless because it is never carried out. Do you know that God actually gave a law concerning vows? Read Leviticus 27. I deal with this chapter in the second volume of my book, Learning Through Leviticus. My friend, when you make a vow to God, you had better mean what you say, because God is going to hold you to it. There is many a person who is no longer a missionary, many a preacher who is out of the pulpit, many a Christian who has been put on the shelf because they promised God that which they didn’t mean at all. It is not a religious ceremony when you are dealing with God. You are dealing with a Person who hears you and expects you to keep your promise.

Ecclesiastes 5:5

After making a vow to God, we are not to say, “It was an errorI should never have said it; I didn’t really mean it.” We are dealing with a living God. It seems there are many people who don’t know that. As a result, they stand way out on the fringe of the things of God. God is a reality, and we need to be very careful in our dealings with Him.

Ecclesiastes 5:7

In “dreams and many words there are also divers vanities"that is, all kinds of emptiness. They are no substitute for a personal relationship with God. So many people say, “I have had a dream” or “I have had an experience.” And they are putting their trust in that. There are many people today who use an experience to test the Word of God. It must be the other way around: All experience must be tested by the Word of God. We are instructed to try the spirits to see whether they are of God or not (see 1Jn_4:1). Too many people go out on a tangent of experience and live by that. That is merely religion. That is an appeal to the emotion, an appeal to the aesthetic sense. My friend, does your faith in Christ rest upon experience, or does it rest upon the naked Word of God? Do you have religion, or do you have Christ?

Ecclesiastes 5:8

In our country we have heard much about corruption in the poverty program. There are so many today who are attempting to get rich at the expense of the poor. God will judge that. “For he that is higher than the highest regardeth.” God sees what is going on. I think that any Christian who is in a program in which he sees corruption should get out of the program. If you see corruption in a program, believe me, God sees the corruption in the program, and God will deal with it in judgment. The history of this world bears that out. God watches what governments do to the poor. Governments that have exploited the poor have fallen. An example is the French Revolution. It wasn’t a nice, pretty thing by any means. It was an awful thing. I think it was the judgment of God upon the corruption of a nation in which a few were living at the expense of the many poor. God has much to say about the relief of the poor. When the Lord Jesus comes to reign during the kingdom age which we call the Millennium, then they will find that there is One reigning who really means business when He says that He is going to do something for the poor. There will be justice and righteousness for them. I don’t think that He will put them on any kind of dole system. But each person will make his contribution and will receive justice at His hands. This brings us to a new section in Solomon’s experiments to find satisfaction in life. As we have seen, he tried science, the study of natural laws. He tried wisdom and philosophy, pleasure, and materialism. He tried living for the “now.” He tried fatalism. He tried egoism, living for self. Then, of all things, he tried religion. Now we will see Solomon engage in another experiment. Solomon was in a position to pursue and enjoy wealth better than anyone else. He was probably the richest man who has ever been on this earth. He gave himself over to the accumulation of gold, and he could buy anything that he wanted. The riches of Solomon was the factor that finally brought the downfall of the nation. The greed of the surrounding nations was aroused. They wanted to move in to get some of that wealth. God had put up a wall of protection around Israel, but that wall crumbled, and God allowed the nations to come into Israel and help themselves.

Ecclesiastes 5:10

SEEKING SATISFACTION IN PURSUITAND ENJOYMENT OF WEALTHThe president of a great corporation comes to the end of the year and sees a tremendous profit, but that actually does not satisfy him. A man may have a big bank account, which offers him some measure of security, but it will not really satisfy him. Wealth will not bring satisfaction in life. Wealth is not wrong in itself. The Scripture never condemns wealth. It condemns the love of money. Not the money itself, but the love of money is a root of all evil (see 1Ti_6:10). To accumulate wealth for wealth’s sake is wrong. The miser thinks dollars are flat so they can be stacked; the spendthrift thinks they are round so they can be rolled. Both are entirely wrong. Man’s attitude toward money is the issue. There is nothing wrong with our profit system itself. The wrong is in the people who are in it. It is the love of money which is wrong. The love of money makes people try to get rich for riches’ sake. We see men who are held together, bound together in an arrangement just to make money for money’s sake. I was interested in hearing a comedian tell about a play he had a part in producing. He was thanking all those who had participated and was telling how they had all cooperated. It was a very lovely speech with no trace of humor in it. When he got to the end, he said, “And we have all been held together in this endeavor by one thing"he paused a moment"greed!” Yes, greed was the ingredient that held them together to make the production. That is the ingredient that holds big business together. It holds the Mafia together. It holds a great many organizations together. I must confess that I believe it is wrong for one man or one organization to accumulate so much money when others are in poverty and need. This may sound radical, but I do believe that eventually something must be done about that. Look at India for an example. The maharaja has become immensely wealthy while the masses are poverty-stricken. God condemns that kind of thing. He condemns it because of the love of money and the use which is made of it.

In our own country greed is the thing that is wrong with godless capitalism and godless labor. Greedthe love of money. It would be so wonderful if man would make money for the glory of God. It would be wonderful if man labored for money for the glory of God. It would be so wonderful if money were put to its proper use. The only cure for greed, of course, is to have Christ in the heart!

Ecclesiastes 5:11

Growth just for the sake of growth is no good at all. This is true of a business or even of a Christian organization or church. I have learned it by personal experience. For years I was the pastor of a large church. Just to grow for the sake of growing so one can have a big church is nothing in the world but a big headache. There is no fun in it. There is no joy in it. The Lord taught me that to grow for the glory of God is to be my one purpose in life. I keep this goal before me: Vernon McGee, you do this one thing, get out the Word of God.

Ecclesiastes 5:12

The laboring man may not have too much to eat. That keeps him from being a glutton, and he probably sleeps a lot better by not overeating. The rich man has an abundance. In fact, he has gourmet food all the time, and he gets pretty tired of it. He loses his appetite for it. Besides that, he has to worry about his riches, which keeps him awake at night.

When we were in Hawaii with one of our tours, we were permitted to stay in a lovely hotel because of the size of our tour. I noticed how unhappy the people in the hotel seemed to be. They were people who had come to Hawaii to have a good time, but they were always worrying about their things. One woman spent thirty minutes getting her jewels in a safe-deposit box. When I got to the desk, the girl said, “She’s been here before and she’ll be back a dozen times to check on them or take out a piece to wear and bring it back again.” You know, I was glad my wife didn’t have that kind of problem. That rich woman had a real problemprobably one hundred thousand dollars worth of jewels to worry about.

Riches multiply anxieties. Maybe that is one reason the Lord didn’t let me become rich!

Ecclesiastes 5:13

Riches actually hurt rather than help a great many people. Sometimes the poor man is happier than the rich man. However, the apostle Paul said that he knew both how to abound and how to be abased (see Php_4:12). Frankly, I’d like to try both.

Ecclesiastes 5:14

He is saying that a man can accumulate a fortune and leave it to a son, and the boy will run through ithe will spend it all. Today men have become pretty wise about that. A man doesn’t leave the money to his son directly, but in a trusteeship so that someone else doles out the money to the boy in small amounts to preserve the family fortune. There are a lot of prominent men today who never made a dime in their lives. The reason they are rich is because they inherited it. They lack discernment in the use of the money; yet they are in positions of influence. This is one of our problems today. I think that eventually there will be a division in our nation which will not be between races, but will narrow down to the rich and the poor. That has always been the line of demarcation. I believe many rich people sense this, which explains why so many of the wealthy are politically liberal in their thinking. They already have their money, and no one can touch it; so they are willing to bring in liberal programs which will be supported by the taxes that you and I pay. The wealthy do not pay for those programs. That is a real problem. Solomon understood and spoke into that kind of situation. Solomon learned that wealth does not satisfy, nor is it the solution to the problems of life.