verses, we're going to learn that a man controlled by covetousness brings himself into sad isolation and abandonment of friends. This destroys any true social life, causes embitterment, and robs him of joy. Or, we have a man who is friendless, has no close relatives, but immerses himself in his work, amassing more and more possessions with no real end or goal. In other words, these folks tend not to be social in their life, and there's some things that are going on here with this person that isn't exactly exciting. He says, then I returned and I saw vanity under the sun. With every observation, every new look that the preacher makes, he goes back and looks again and every assessment has the same conclusion. Every time he assesses a situation or a position or a way of life, he comes to the same conclusion and the conclusion is, Vanity, emptiness, worthless. It doesn't amount to even a hill of beans. Now, if we were hungry, we'd want a hill of beans, wouldn't we? We'd have something to eat. But it doesn't even equal that. He refers to grasping at air. He looks around and it just doesn't anything. I almost sense the intense desire in the preacher, in all of us looking at everything under the sun. He's hoping he could find something, even one little thing that he could say, ah, here it is. This is exciting. This will bring satisfaction and happiness in life. But everywhere he looks, he gets vanity, emptiness. It doesn't come to anything. This is problematic to him. The preacher finds, to find something or anything that might bring some lasting purpose in this life under the sun. Yet as desperate as he seems to be, the result is still vanity. When you read through the book of Ecclesiastes and you understand what he's looking at as far as that which is under the sun, Not a spiritual look, but a look upon the earth. I can see why there's so much despair. Does it make sense to you that a person can actually despair of this life because of what they can observe around them? It just seems like that would be a natural result of taking a good, honest, sincere look at the world. If you don't find purpose in your life, a reason for even doing something, then, you know, Warren Worsby or whatever his name is, wrote a book called The Purpose-Driven Life. Now, I don't recommend this fella, and I don't recommend that book, but a life has to have purpose, and if we don't somehow find purpose, We just won't go on. It's just that simple. He says, there's one alone, and there's not a second, yea, he hath neither child nor brother. Now this sounds like a person who is definitely alone. He doesn't have a wife, be he a man or a woman, he either doesn't have a husband, or she doesn't have a husband, and he doesn't have a wife, he is alone. No siblings to care for, no children, he appears to be childless. Now he either had children and doesn't have them now, For instance, he may have been divorced and doing the things that he's doing just self-absorbed. He had no time for his wife. He lost his wife. He lost his children. Maybe he's alienated his family altogether. You've never known anybody ever to do that, have you? We know people in our own lives who alienate others around them and they burn their bridges. We've heard this term, burn their bridges. In other words, they can't go back to those who they had once had associations with. So he says, this child, he has no friends, he has no companion. He may have acquaintances, yes, but no friends. We might say he has isolated himself. He's by himself and he has nobody really to rely on. Alone and in the world focusing, they're focusing on their career, making plenty of money, not really having anyone to spend it on because if they don't have a brother and they don't have sisters and they don't have children, don't have a wife, don't have friends, who they gonna spend their money on? Themselves? Yeah, but we're going to find out something about this guy. These people, they seem to be miserly as well. And they add to their own misery. So we've got these people that are so busy, and they have nobody to spend their money on, and they just are self-absorbed. And it says, yet there is no end of all their labor. They keep working. They keep going. When do you have enough money? You never have enough money, right? That's the whole thing. Work, work, work, work. Takes no time for enjoyment. And all that labor and the fruit of their labor and the increase of riches, that's not a good place. Because what does it say? It says their eye, Let me get over there. Their eye is not satisfied. Is that what it says there? Neither is his eye satisfied with riches. Neither saith he for whom do I labor and breathe my soul of good. So his eye isn't satisfied with what he sees. Again, the accumulation of wealth is his goal, yet there's no satisfaction in it because he always wants More. What he has isn't enough. He isn't ready to retire, lay back, and just enjoy his riches. Proverbs 27 20 says, Hell and destruction are never full, so the eyes of men are never satisfied. The eyes of men or mankind are never satisfied. What they have, they want more. What they see, they want more. Is that not the heart of covetousness? And you're desiring, one of the things about covetousness is desiring that which doesn't belong to you. Can you covet another man's wife? She doesn't lawfully belong to you. Shame on you, right? That's a sin. Or coveting anything that another man has is a sin. The Bible makes that clear. Hell and destruction are never full. The eyes of men or man is never satisfied. Once lust is entertained and indulged in, it will only lead you into further depravity. We have something we see, we want, we indulge and go after it. And you know what? You just don't get in a little bit. Because you get in a little bit, and then a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper, because the I is never satisfied. You can never get enough. And so it may be incremental, but there's that increasing, going beyond. You may have set personal boundaries, but guess what? It won't be long, you'll be beyond those boundaries. Guess what? You'll reset the goalpost beyond to where, well, I can't go any further than this. And guess what? Before you know it, you go beyond it, you reset the goalpost. Because the eye is never satisfied, there's always the desire for more. Doesn't matter what you set your heart on or what you lust after, you'll never get enough. You keep going and keep going. In Proverbs 5, 10, it says, he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase. We just want more. We just want more because what we have just isn't enough. Why do you think that is common with men under the sun, that there's this desire for increase all the time, not a satisfaction, no contentment? Anyone have any ideas why that might be? No one? No speculations here? Okay. Okay. How about, and to go along with that would be the excitement. You got that excitement of hitting something, then after a while, it's like those, People like to ride those scary rides. Thrill seekers. You know, you get on one and I've ridden that thing a dozen times. Let's find something a little more scary, a little more dangerous to do. Pretty soon you're bungee jumping off a bridge or something. And I don't know. Did you hear about, remember the guy that jumped out of the, Red Bull guy jumped, he was 20 miles up in the sky and he jumped out and landed somewhere in Texas or, yeah, he broke the sound barrier. He just died this week. He crashed into a pool. Another stunt. You do another stunt. Well, he was 53 and he died this week. Didn't have enough thrills. He had to find a new thrill. And it wasn't enough. So we've got the excitement. You're excited enough, then it becomes boring. Well, you've got to go to the next step. And we've got the joy, the loss of joy. What else might be involved in this pursuit of not having enough and wanting more? Okay, ungratefulness. But who are they to be grateful to? Well, you know who they ought to be grateful to, right? They ought to be grateful to God, They're only grateful to themselves. Okay, so there's, yeah, that's who, and there's that, a lack of gratitude and a lack of being satisfied with their station in life. They just want to keep going, keep going, keep going. Anything else? They wanted the bigger, the better, the richer. So there's status then. Okay. So they compare to another and they say, well, I want to be better than that. And so they strive to be better than their competitor. So there's always a higher mountain that you got to climb. The keeping up with the Joneses thing, right? Yeah, they saw a commercial. And what is the purpose of the commercial? The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Every commercial hits on all those points, right? Yeah. And then there's the other aspect is that they have nothing more in this life. They must just keep going. because there's nothing else out there. So why not just keep going? So we've got this never being satisfied. Neither saith he, for whom do I labor? When I get up in the morning and go to work, because remember, this guy doesn't have a family. He's not supporting anybody. It doesn't appear that he's involved in any charities. He's just, he's doing it on his own. He says, neither saith he, for whom do I labor? The thought never enters his mind. Why am I even getting up and going to work today? Doesn't matter. He just gets up and he does it. For whom do I labor? It's because his labor is for himself alone. He does it for himself. He does not labor for anyone else. And his labor is because of covetousness. He covets more. And so he labors more, works hard to get more. And when he gets more, not satisfied with that, he wants even more. And that's the way this person seems to be. He desires and obtains, yet he finds himself wanting more. He doesn't lack anything. He's not wanting, but he's desiring more and more. He gathers all this wealth, but then the next question is, to whom does it go to after he dies? He's got no control over that. He may be able to set up a will and designate it, but then on the other hand, this man doesn't have siblings, children, wife. Doesn't have any of these things. And what good are the richest to him when he's dead? You're dead. Naked came I forth into the world, and naked you're gonna return. You're just gonna die and that's gonna be it. Well, under the sun. So, will he be wise or a fool in his wealth? Well, it seems to be he's a fool. And then it goes on, it says, and bereaved my soul of good. The worst of all, not only does he have all these riches and things, this particular person, the covetous person, is a miser. He won't spend his money even for his own comfort. Do we know anybody that was portrayed like that on television? Old, old movie. Ebenezer Scrooge, that's exactly what I thought of when I saw this. Such a miser, and he was a wealthy man, but he wouldn't even allow coal to be on, you know, one piece of coal for a little bit of heat for poor old, what's his, his helper, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter. What? Oh, I thought something. Cratchit, yeah, Bob Cratchit. Here we got Scrooge. And he's so miserly in all of this. And he's bereaved his soul of good. He won't even do good to himself because he doesn't want to spend it on himself. Now, there are people who aren't afraid to spend it. They'll give to charities. They'll live in opulence, but they're not afraid to give money away. We read a lot of times about celebrities who have given away large portions of wealth and things like that. They don't usually have this problem that this man has, but this man is covetous. Remember, that's his heart. It is a heart of covetousness, and it's led him to just pushing everybody away, being by himself. And then be miserly even in the life that he lives. He won't spend anything on himself. He's just Mr. Scrooge. And then it says in our text, this is vanity, yea, it is sore travail. In other words, it is just emptiness and it is so It's offensive, let's put it that way. Sore travail, of course, sore travail usually refers to labor, hard labor, but in this case, it's just like, this seems like the dumbest life to live, doesn't it? Even under the sun, to have all that money and just waste it like that. No. We're talking about a covetous man here. It's his to do with what he wants. A rich man, in this case, has the power to do with what he wants of his money, but we're talking about a man who is so covetous that he focuses on making more money for himself. Money and the making of money is his god. That's his idol. That's what he lives for. And to have more and more and more of it is his desire. He'll even deny himself pleasures in this life so that he can accumulate more money. So this heart is set on his money. His heart is focused on what he has and how he can get more of it. So there's nothing wrong with having money. Yes. And does not also the scripture say that the love of money is the root of all evil? It's not money itself. It's not having money that's the root of evil. It's the love of money. It's that desire to have more of it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yes. He lives as a miserable wretch. I was going to say old man, but no one said it had to be old to do that. A miserable wretch. Someone who, in fact, you don't want to be a friend of his because he He has no social life. He's not interested in making friends, because in his mind, if he has a friend, they're just out to mooch off of him. You see, that's the mentality. He's just a moocher. He's going to want my money. So he puts everybody away from him. He doesn't want to have anything to do with him. And this is the worst kind of covetousness. It's cruel and it's unnatural. This man is absolutely unnatural. And we see a sharp contrast here. This is the worst kind that there can be. And just to make note, this kind of covetousness isn't just unique to very rich people or to people who are trying to get their riches. There are people who aren't rich yet who are striving and just sacrifice their whole life, their family, everything to obtain riches. But what about the man or the woman down on Skid Row or whatever that pushes a cart and all of his possessions are in that cart? Do you know that they could be just as covetous as the man up there on Wall Street? They have their possessions. Of course, in their case, it might be a matter of survival. But you know what? It's as much a survival to them as to the man on Wall Street, because to him, survival is getting more money. And so even down In the poorest parts of town, people will kill each other over something stupid. But in their mind, it isn't stupid. And they're covetous about that. So we can apply this to many classes in life. He's just giving the rich as an example because it's probably seen more among these people that are focused on this kind of getting. And it's very selfish. It's absolute selfishness. And do you see more selfishness these days? Seems like there's selfishness and self-centeredness everywhere. Without exception, it's just there everywhere you go. You see it more and more among the young people. Stab myself. It is an evil mind that desires to have what others possess, and covetousness is a desire to obtain what rightfully belongs to another. Covetousness will often lead you to get something by immoral or illegal means, because you desire to have it. All right, then it says in verse nine, any questions, any comments on that last section we just went through? Yeah? Solomon, did he not have a big pile of gold? It says there's a heap. Could Solomon spend all the money he had? He tried to, it seems like, but you know what? They kept going to Ophir and getting gold, and people kept giving them. I mean, when people came in, they brought beautiful presents to him. It just got larger and larger and larger, but he also spent a good deal of it, too. I don't think we see the covetousness in his heart, except for he did covet something. What did he covet? Yeah. Everything. How about wives? Wives and concubines. Yes. I mean, what would any man do with a thousand women? I have no idea. I have a hard enough time figuring out what to do with one. I'll wear something really hard when I get home. I know. Just can you imagine how much it costs just to maintain them? Yeah, there you go. Who are you? Oh, I'm your 900th wife. And it's like, oh, really? OK. Maintaining them, right? Oh, my goodness. Talk about high-maintenance women, because they belong to the king. They got to have the best of everything. Yeah, and many of them were foreign, and what did they do? They led them away from the service of the Lord, didn't they? He even set up places for them to worship their gods. They seduced them to the dark side. Anyways, the Lord had to deal with Solomon about that, didn't he? All right. Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. If they fall, the one can lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat, but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Well, here's a good purpose for socializing. Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. In the previous verse, we have one who is alone, absolutely alone. No friends, no family, no brothers, no sisters, no wife, no children, nothing. But here we have two, and the advantages that he has over the one alone is superior, far superior than the person that's all by himself. But better than two would be three, and we'll see that when we get down to verse 12. So if anyone, it says, if anyone prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. That's in verse 12. There are great advantages to having a social life. Why, and us older folk, why do you think they have senior centers? Senior centers. Places where older folk can go to socialize, right? And have friends and meet people and have get-togethers. I couldn't stand to go to a senior place. You say, why is that? Because this is my place right here. I'll come and socialize with God's people. The senior center, not so much. I'm not too interested in sitting around playing bingo or whatever they do. Or what, operations? The only thing old people do is sit around and talk about what's wrong with them. You know, I went to the doctor last week, and they said, I'm barely getting along, but you know, we're going to do that. You get a bunch of old people, and they only talk about what's wrong with them. And it's funny, because I'm there now. It's almost a joke, but it's true. There are places for younger people to go and socialize. So socialization is a good thing as far as God's people are concerned. Christ established his church for us to socialize and we can do that together in love and unity together and have a great time and enjoy each other. But socialization is important in our life. Let me see here. I lost my place. Which is not surprising. Yeah, I know, but I mean in my notes. If I just brush this, it just turns the page. It's like, all right, where's my notes? All right, two better, there we go. Believe it or not, there are great advantages to social life, and a social life is necessary to an orderly society. And it's what God ordained. In Genesis 2.18, sometimes we don't think of this as a social life, but he says, and the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a healthy for him. So we see that man wasn't complete without his woman. And that completed his life, and so we see that this socialization was a necessary thing according to God. And my heart aches for so many older adults, and I don't understand it. They've got no family, no children, no one that cares enough to watch over them or support them. We had a neighbor. She had a sister. That's all she had. She never married. She didn't have any children. She didn't have a husband. She's a little younger than us, but she had some serious physical problems that nearly killed her. And the only one to take care of her is her sister. And her sister was a sweetheart. I'm joking. I never heard somebody complain so much about anything. Even when she was, even when I was helping her, she complained. And it's like, I would not want to live a day under that woman's roof for nothing. Oh, she, yes, her sister would not help her unless she paid her to help her. That's awful. That's terrible. So, helping her move meant that the woman had to pay her sister to help her move. And that's a terrible thing. But I see, I read of adults who, you know, their whole life was their career. Everything they did was to make money and then they get older, they have no wife, no husband, and they sit at home absolutely alone. Nobody, nobody cares because they didn't do anything in their own personal life to expand their social circle. They didn't have family. Family is important. God ordained family. And the people and folk, unless, you know, there are people that God has purposed not to be married. But most, it's ordained to be so. And in doing so, we have family, we have children, we have people who will look over us, people that love us. And so this is part of an important part of life. But here we've got these very lonely people whose only social interaction, then we have those people whose only interaction is their cell phone. Cell phones, social media is not social. We ought to be yanking these cell phones probably out of our own hands, but out of the hands of our kids and grandkids. We do them no favors by letting them spend that time on their cell phones. Most of us, at least older folk, went out and played. We played with our neighbors. You know, if we weren't friends with the neighbor boy or neighbor girl, we became friends with the neighbor boy and the neighbor girl. And we went off and played together. We played outdoors all the time. And sometimes we got in trouble together. That's social life, isn't it? But spending all the time on your phone, that's not socializing. And by the way, nobody on Facebook is your friend. Unless they're your real friend and have personal contact with them, they aren't even an acquaintance. They don't even qualify as an acquaintance. They're just somebody's, I'm gonna friend this person. Have you friended anybody, befriended anybody? Do we even know what a friend is these days? What does scripture say? Friends sticketh closer than a brother. Right? True social interactions are between people. Face to face. True interaction. In personal interactions. Why are people socially awkward? Because the only interaction they have is on a cell phone. So they don't know how to interact socially with others. They don't know what is acceptable behavior. By the way, going back to family, remember what the Lord's, I know that we're going to go beyond under the sun and just kind of go above the clouds a bit here. For believers. What did Jesus tell those who would forsake all, that upon this earth that they would have mothers, fathers, children, lands, houses, because they have given it all up to the Lord, the Lord will supply them all of these things, and we see this in a church family. We have mothers and fathers, though we aren't blood-related, yet we have them in Christ Jesus, and brothers and sisters, and houses and lands. Says, well, wait a minute, preacher, you don't even have a house. You got the parsonage. I have your house because I know that if something happens, say that building burns down over there, I have no question that folk will say, open their door and say, preacher, you come stay with us until things get straightened out here. Lord takes care of his people. He takes care of you. And we'll do the same. You know, we don't just turn our brothers and sisters out. James talks about that, doesn't he? Says your brother, sister, or somebody comes to you and says, you know, I'm cold, I'm hungry. And you turn around and say, be warmed and filled. Bless the Lord. On your way now. That isn't quite right, is it? That's not among the people of God. So there's no such thing as Facebook friends. And let's see, we don't even call anyone anymore. We send a text. Nothing messes things up more than a text. You know why? How many of you express your emotions on a text? Oh, emojis, right? Or we go LOL. I thought it was lots of laughs. My wife says, no, it's laugh out loud. You see how behind the time, I thought LOL man, laugh out loud, what did I say? Lots of laughs. Isn't that the same thing though? Laugh out loud and lots of laughs, still LOL. You know, people send text and it's just, it's like I have no idea what they just said because they use all these shortcuts. I don't know. We used to call each other on the phone. When a boy would call the girl, nervous as could be, he had to dial the number, a rotary dial. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And he's getting nervous all along the way. He's starting to pour sweat out of his head, you know. We used to talk to each other. And by talking, you can express emotion. When you're face-to-face, you can use hand gestures along with that, and you're able to communicate. But when we text, we're so short in the way that we text, we don't express, we don't know how to express how we really feel about it. And then it's based upon the interpretation of the person who gets the text. And he reads that and says, he's calling me an idiot. And you didn't do that at all. I didn't, you know, I tried to understand why people would do things in big capital letters. Then I understand when they do that, they mean that they're yelling at you. I always thought you're just emphasizing a point. So when I do it in capital letters, people say, oh, he's yelling at me. See, I'm kind of dumb about that. Talking to somebody is always better. We've used up our time, but next week we're going to look at three examples of the advantage of social networking. People living, socializing, and the cordial cooperation with one another. There's three examples given us here in the scripture. So we'll pick that up next week. Let's pray and then be dismissed. Father, you're good to us. We thank you for that. Help us to understand your ways and then also understand the ways of men and why things are the way that they are. So sad, so sad.