New Series: Work: Thoughts in Ecclesiastes

  • Ryan Baitzel
  • Mar 28, 2008

A good friend of mine moved to Minnesota a few years back.  I had an opportunity to catch up with him the other day and I asked him, “what was the biggest difference he saw between North Jersey and Minnesota.”  He said, “that’s easy, in Minnesota people work to live, in North Jersey people live to work”.  Have you noticed that about North Jersey, the pace, the cost, the career path?  It can be relentless, dangerously seductive, but also when done right extremely fulfilling. 

 

I think if any guy in the bible gets North Jersey, it would be Solomon.  After a forty year reign as king, David, on his death bed, appointed his son Solomon king.  David commanded his son as king to walk with God (I Kings 2:1-4). God granted Solomon one wish for anything he desired, and Solomon chose wisdom, which so pleased God that he gave Solomon a forty year reign as the richest, wisest, and most powerful man in the history of the earth.  Still early in life Solomon turned his back on God, and embraced everything he could get his hands on from women, to pleasure, to partying, religion, philosophy, even workaholism he tried it all. Bored and burned out at the end of a crooked life with a head full of insight and heart full of sadness, Solomon sat down to write Ecclesiastes as repentance to God and a warning to us. 

 

Join us over the next 5 (4.6.08 – 5.4.08) weeks together as we study some of Solomon’s incredible insights on the balance of wisdom, work, and the meaning of life…