I n the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon, the king of Israel, ponders the mystery of life. It’s the only book in the Bible written from the point of view of natural man, written no doubt toward the end of his life.
King Solomon started out well. He asked for wisdom and knowledge and as a reward God gave him wealth as well. He used his wealth and wisdom to build a beautiful temple. He built many other buildings as well as putting together all the things that would give him happiness and fulfillment. He greatly enjoyed using his great wisdom to make everything jut right, and apparently did.
Solomon would look forward to the pleasure he would have sitting on his beautiful throne, enjoying all the things he had spent twenty years working for. It didn’t work out that way. When he was all done he had nothing more to live for. He tried
everything both good and sinful in his attempt to find happiness in life.
Now as we think about this we do see the importance of this particular book so that we fully understand the futility of life apart from God. Solomon himself testified in Ecclesiastes 3:22 and 23: “For what hath man of all his labor, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath labored under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart findeth not rest in the night. This is also vanity”. But the things, both good and bad happened to Solomon largely because of the gifts and talents that God gave him. Can we really blame Solomon?
There had to be a man like Solomon to make the Bible a fully complete book. Here I think we see two things. God is the Great Stage Manager. When we stand on the Sea of Glass we will see that not only is the Bible a perfect and complete book, but that all of history is perfect and complete in every detail. But we also must recognize.that each is fully responsible for his actions and will answer to God regarding his obedience to the divine commands.
To manage a world of people with free will and make the entire story end exactly as planned requires divine intelligence; as in Psalm 147:5: “His understanding is infinite”. Each must decide whither he will be a willing partner in His plan or simply
used of Him. The choice is yours, but all things are going to end up as He pleases.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Doctrine, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.