Again, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your mercy. We thank you for the love that gave us not only your son, but your word. We have a book that describes for us how life works, how we can live our lives to the best effect, to the best way, to the best means. Father, I thank you for Solomon, whom we are looking at this morning. We thank you for the folly that his life was. the words that he's given us to avoid that folly father as we pray this morning as we look into his book again I pray for your Holy Spirit's presence guide us guide us into truth give us the power to understand that truth and make it a permanent part of our lives we pray Jesus name well we have been looking at God's wisdom in Solomon's life and as you know Solomon was the richest and the most powerful man in his day. And he was also the wisest. And he put all of his wisdom to the task of finding meaning in life under the sun. And he defines that as life outside of God. And he put all of his energy into finding this meaning, and he failed to find it. And so Solomon in his book as much to tell us about a life with meaning because he spent much of his life pursuing meaningless things. In Ecclesiastes 1.13-14 he said this, He said, And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven, this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. I've seen all the works that are done under the sun and indeed all is vanity and grasping for the wind. In Ecclesiastes 2.1, he said, I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. Well, pleasure is what we've been looking at, and that's one of the major categories of vain and empty things that Solomon speaks of. And it includes, what Solomon includes of in that category pleasure is laughter, and wine, and folly, and amusement, and sex. And so far we've looked at laughter, we've looked at wine, and folly, and we've seen that Solomon saw that laughter was foolish. Foolishness, actually he really called it insanity. Because the laughter that he speaks of is not the healthy laughter of a good joke, but the laughter of cynicism. We've also seen that wine and folly can destroy or degrade or distract us from, again, a life with meaning. And it's not that wine is in itself evil, because it's not. The evil lies in taking a good thing and pushing it to a bad level. And that's especially true of the topic that we're going to be looking at this morning, which is amusements. Our text this morning is taken from Ecclesiastes 2, 1 to 3. Let me just read it to you. Again, this is Solomon. He says, I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, it is mad and a pleasure. What use is it? I search with my heart how to cheer my body with wine, my heart still guiding me with wisdom and how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. And then down at verse 8, he says, I also gathered for myself silver and gold and treasures of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the children of man. Well, here's where we find the amusement part. In verse 8, I got singers, both men and women. See, Solomon speaks of acquiring men and women singers to entertain and to amuse. But again, he concludes that exercise with these words. This is Ecclesiastes 2.10. He says, 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, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done, and the toil I had expended in doing it. And behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. So once again, after a lengthy examination, Solomon's concluding that amusement, even for a man of his resources, that amusement was meaningless. Again, in verse 80, he said, all things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. In other words, amusement itself, even that doesn't satisfy. And you know, Solomon, with all of his wealth and all of his power, he could not come close to the amusement options that a middle class child has in our culture, in our time. I mean, think about it. Solomon only had live entertainment. He said, I had singers, both men and women. He couldn't begin to compare with what we have today to amuse ourselves. Like I said, Solomon had singers. We have PlayStations. Gameboys, and TiVo, and IM, and Blu-ray, and DVDs, and text messaging, and cable, and laptops, and tablets, and Blackberries, and PDAs, and cell phones, and blogs, and Netflix, and HDTV. Need I go on? Never, never in history has a culture been more obsessed with amusement than ours. And folks, that tells you something about our culture. You see, Rome had its bread and circus with free food and gladiators that they brought out to amuse its citizens in the last days. And we are richly entertained as we approach ours. But you know, Rome only had live entertainment. They only had the gladiators and Hey, I can pop in a Blu-ray disc of the movie Gladiator at any time I want to and I can watch it in high-def and 5-channel Dolby Stereo. Now the question is, is that a bad thing? Is the Bible against the very concept of amusement? Well, the answer to that is, that depends. You see, the devices that I just mentioned are just that, they're devices, they're tools. They are morally neutral. I mean, a Game Boy can play Bible Blasters or it can play Grand Theft Auto. A laptop can display a Bible study video or it can display rank pornography. See, the morality, the morality is determined not by the device but by its end use. But what about the idea? What about the idea of amusement itself? Solomon said it too was vanity. You know, even the word itself suggests meaninglessness. You know, if you put the prefix a before a word, it means to negate it. A theist, that's someone who believes in God. An atheist, put that a before it, is someone who doesn't believe in God. Now you take the word muse, and the word muse means, it's a little complicated, it means intellect, it means mind, it means thinking. You take the word muse, and you put the prefix A before it, and you have a muse. Amuse. It means literally to negate the mind. To turn off thinking. To turn off that whole process where we engage our minds. Now, is that wrong? Well, again, I think the answer is that depends. From the very beginning, God instituted Sabbaths as periods of rest, and regeneration, and we need rest in every single area of our life, including our minds. But how much? How much do we really need? You know, I can testify from experience that in preparing a sermon, the hardest part by far is the thinking part. The part where you literally have to engage your mind. You know, sometimes it feels for me like smoke's coming out of my ears. It just gets very, very exhausting because thinking is very, it's very hard work. Now, I was reading just before about a test that they're giving to Alzheimer's patients, and one of the best things that they give is they say, start at 100 and count backwards by sevens. I thought, well, that's not so easy. That involves thinking. We don't want to do that. I'd rather watch a video. And that's just a tiny example of just engaging your mind and thinking is difficult work. It's something we don't like to do unless we have to. And so instead of using the muse or our minds, we amuse ourselves. And whether it is right or wrong is really a matter of degree. You know, 20 years ago, Neil Postman wrote a book, and Neil Postman, I don't even think he was a Christian, he wrote a marvelous book entitled Amusing Ourselves to Death. And in the introduction, Postman compared two very different visions of the future, all that were captured by very popular books. On the one hand, there was the dark political oppression of George Orwell's 1984, where government controls absolutely everything. And he compared that to A Brave New World, all this Huxley's novel where pleasure and autonomy rules, where all that matters is me, myself, and I. He compared two of these visions of the future. And Postman saw a showdown between Orwell's vision of a government-controlled future and Huxley's where pleasure ruled. And this is what he wrote in the introduction to his book about the future. This is what he said, quote, what Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture. Orwell in 1984 said people will be controlled by inflicting pain. Huxley in Brave New World said they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley and not Orwell was right. And Huxley was exactly right. This is a brave new world and much of it stems from our relationship with amusement. So what does the scripture have to say about amusement in 21st century America? We know Solomon in his day said it was ultimately meaningless. How can a book that's thousands and thousands of years old give us guidance on how we handle amusement today? Once again, I'm drawn back to Hebrews 12, which I spoke of last week. Hebrews 12 gives us a very clear-cut mandate. This is what it says, Hebrews 12, 1-3. It says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. Allow me to add, overly amused. So first, let us fix our eyes on Jesus and the cross, remembering that glorifying His Father by rescuing His sheep was the joy, the joy that Jesus willingly died for. It is the source, it is the substance of meaning for our lives. Just to consider, we were the joy that Jesus died for. And second, let us throw off everything that hinders or entangles that vision. Now, I can think of at least three areas in which amusement wreaks havoc on that vision. One is our communication with God. Another is our convictions about God. And still another is our commitment to God. So first, let's look at our communication with God and what amusement has to do with that. Of course, the first question I would ask is, how do you communicate with God? Well, the answer is prayer. I've said many, many times that prayer is hard, hard work. Quite possibly the hardest work we do. I've often said, if I ask for volunteers to take two hours and scrub toilets with toothbrushes or spend two hours in solid prayer, I know where most of the volunteers would line up. We have very clean toilets, I guarantee you that. And one of the reasons why prayer is so difficult is because it is one of the few things that the devil truly, truly fears. And he will do whatever he can to stop it. And God tells us in Romans 8, 26, that prayer is so important, so crucial that he sends the Holy Spirit to us to help us to do it. He knows how bad we are at it, and he knows how desperately important it is. So in Romans 8 26 it says likewise the spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words and he who searches hearts knows what is in the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. I said before In the area of prayer, this is another message, I said there are three things that you really need for prayer to be effective. You need stillness, you need solitude, and you need a schedule. I realize that these are not carved in stone. You can pray anywhere, anyhow, anytime, but by and large, prayer needs stillness and it needs solitude to be effective. That's why Jesus said in Matthew 6, 6, when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you. So I guess my first question this morning is do we ever do that? Do you ever get absolutely alone with God? Do you find a place of silence to pray or does silence in some ways kind of creep you out. You ever noticed how addicted we become to amusing the silence and solitude out of our lives? I mean, how many times do we walk into a room and flip on the TV or the radio or the iPad, any iPod, anything to fill in the silence? How many times do we get in the car, pop in a CD, turn on the radio, Have you ever noticed that everywhere we go, we are accompanied by a wall of sound surrounding us? Just last week, my girls talked me into going to Planet Fitness, and I really enjoyed it. I did. I really did. The reason why I liked it, though, I thought about it, and the reason why I really liked it was because I realized nobody, nobody in there notices anybody else. I mean, you could go in there dressed like Ronald McDonald, and nobody's going to look at you. Nobody cares at all. And I realized the reason why that is. That is virtually everybody in there is tethered to some kind of electronic device that's pumping music into their heads. And nobody speaks to anybody else because everybody's enveloped in their own little world as defined by their earbuds. Now again, we ask the question, is that wrong? I would say it's unfortunate rather than saying it's wrong, because people are not only cut off from God, they're cut off from each other. And the noise makes it almost impossible to hear God if He's going to speak to you. Psalm 46.10 says, Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 37.7 says, Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. We know that God spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice. Those voices don't compete with iPods. And are we not telling God by surrounding ourselves with these oceans of noise that if he has anything to say to us, well, he'd better shout it. See, our addiction to amusement can hinder or entangle our communication with God. You know, the silence that once was an integral part of life before electricity is now so non-existent in our lives that we find it completely unnerving when we encounter it. Could it be that we are unnerved by even the possibility of encountering God in that silence? And we use that wall of sound to shut him out. You know, the next time that you encounter silence, Even if you stumble on it, just stop for a moment and see if you catch yourself flipping a switch to fill up the silence with noise. And when you do that, just stop yourself for a second and just say these words. Say, Hi God, it's me. You just may find that you haven't really spoken to God for quite a while. You also may find that the silence itself takes getting used to now. Now, I love, I love the silence because I know that God inhabits it. That's one of the reasons that I love to walk without an iPod. Next time you're in your car alone, just try leaving off all of the noise and just talk directly to God. You may be very, very pleasantly surprised. Now, the next area in which amusement hinders us is in the area of convictions. You see, amusement can hinder what we know about God. Then the question is, really, do you know who and what you believe? We all say, hey, I believe in Jesus. So do Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian scientists. At least they say they do. But all three of those groups deny that Jesus Christ was fully God incarnate. Now, do you know why or how they deny that? And does it matter? Well, it certainly mattered to the Apostle Paul, and this is what he said in Galatians 1.6. He said, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we Or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you. Let him be accursed. As we've said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. Here's the problem. See, the problem is we won't know what the gospel is unless we know and understand that dirty word known as doctrine. And in a culture that worships amusement, doctrine has become, like I said, a dirty word. Just like Paul predicted in 2 Timothy 4.3. This is what he said. He said, For a time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. Okay, so you say, well, right, well, what does amusement have to do with doctrine? Well, let's look at our number one amusement. That's obviously television. What does our number one amusement have to do with doctrine? Again, I want to go back to Neil Postman and his book. And in his book, he describes how technology fundamentally alters a society. And he describes one such process that took place many, many years ago in Europe. And this is what he said, quote, put printing presses into 15th century Europe and 50 years later you don't have Europe plus printing presses. You have a fundamentally different Europe. Everything changes. The political system, the cultural system, the religious system, it all changes. Now, in 1946, television entered into America. And 65 years later, it's not America plus TV. It is a fundamentally different America. Our politics, our culture, our education, our religion, and yes, our doctrine has been fundamentally changed by television. You see, we've gone from an oral tradition to a written tradition to now we have a tele-visual tradition. And the problem is, is ideas are far more complex than the ideas that television is able to produce. Television is terrific for cartoon and sports. But ideas beyond that are not served well by television. You know, today we often speak of bandwidth. And bandwidth is the ability of a medium to carry information. Most of you know the difference between dial-up and cable. We all started out on dial-up and we switched to cable because it's got more bandwidth, can carry more information. Neil Postman speaks of the importance of bandwidth in describing it this way. He said, imagine trying to carry on a philosophical discussion via smoke signal. You just can't do it. There's not enough bandwidth. There's not enough information in smoke signals. Well, TV has the exact same problem. You see, in TV, you can't pause TV like you can a regular conversation, at least live TV. You can't reflect like you can in a discussion or an argument. You can't review like you can in a book. Everything in television has an immediate span of about three seconds, which is as long as a TV image lasts. And so the result is that TV has no place for pause or reflection, for review, for restatement. Like I said, it's great for sports. Because it can only show you the right now that sports consists of. But it's terrible. It's terrible for anything that requires thought and reflection. Like ideas. Or philosophy. Or faith. Or doctrine. See, those ideas get reduced to sound bites by television. And since we've been raised on those soundbites for 65 years now, we've pretty much lost the appetite for any other form of mental nourishment. And so the core values of Christianity, like regeneration and justification and sanctification, they are too rich, they are too complex for television. But television has so shaped our appetites that learning these ideas is no longer attractive compared to amusements. And so the result is this profound ignorance about what is basic Christianity. Let me give you just one very practical example. That is the controversy that surrounds the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney. I've heard pundit after pundit decry the fact that some people actually had the gall to question whether or not Mr. Romney is a Christian. Mr. Romney is a confessing Mormon. Now Mormons believe that Jesus Christ and Satan were brothers. They believe that they were both sons of God, and that Jesus agreed to God's plan, but Satan didn't. They believe that Jesus was not eternally co-equal with the Father, and that he progressively became a god. They believe that only after the resurrection did Jesus fully become God, and they also believe that we have the exact same capacity to become gods that Jesus had. That's not Orthodox Christianity. Now, I may think that Mr. Romney is a fine public servant. I might even vote for him. But the fact is, Mr. Romney is not a Christian. His ideas of regeneration and justification and sanctification as a Mormon put him way, way off the reservation as a Christian. But you know the reason why the pundits are so upset with people saying Mr. Romney's not a Christian is because they say he's a decent moral man. He's led a decent moral life. And all of that is true. But here's the shocker. That doesn't make you a Christian. John 3.36 says this, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. You see, believing in the Son means I believe he was very God in the flesh, come down to earth to pay the penalty of death my sin deserved. It is also a belief that the one who gave his life for mine is one worthy to be loved, honored, and obeyed. That's doctrine. And doctrinally, you can be a Mormon. You can be a Christian. You just can't be both. See, doctrine is absolutely crucial to faith. Regeneration tells me that only the Holy Spirit can open up my spiritually dead heart to even understand what it means to give my life to Christ. Justification tells me that Jesus' finished work on the cross fully paid the debt of my sin, that I stand before God now as a perfected, adopted son. Sanctification tells me that God now causes all things to work together for good for the purpose of shaping and molding me into the very image of His Son, Jesus Christ. These are all doctrinal issues. They are convictions crucial to understanding the Gospel, but they are no longer fully grasped by the vast majority of so-called Christians. Quote, for a time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. Furthermore, God says sound teaching is the responsibility of all of His people. In 1 Peter 3.15, He says, But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. Now, can you give someone that kind of an account? That's crucial. That's a command of God to us. You know, I quoted Sam Harris, who wrote a book called Letter to a Christian Nation. I quoted him before, Mr. Harris. He's a militant atheist. He is appalled that our culture even tolerates Christianity. In fact, he actually wants the teaching of doctrine to children forbidden because he thinks it's child abuse. In his mind, it is vile and filthy. Like I said, he says it borders on child abuse to teach your children about the Bible. And his book and his movement have grown very, very popular. And a Christian culture addicted to amusement doesn't really know how to answer him. Now, Sam Harris wants to know, where was God during the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina? Well, you know, our answers as Christians involve doctrine. In this case, the doctrine is the sovereignty of God. And we say that God was on His throne, in charge and responsible for both the tsunami and Katrina. And that is not an easy answer to give. We acknowledge that it is God who said in Isaiah 45, 7, I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things. I will be the very first to tell you that I don't know why God allows such devastation for believers and for non-believers alike. But I do know this, if God had a separate set of rules for believers and unbelievers, we'd all be believers because we'd all see the opportunity and the advantage in it. I mean, that's why folks used to offer up sacrifices to the gods. It wasn't out of love. It was to curry favor from the gods. As a Christian, I already know I have the love of God. I know this same God demonstrated his love for us by becoming one of us, by living a perfect life, and by offering himself as a substitute for us on a Roman cross. And therefore, I trust what I don't know about the tsunami and about Katrina to what I do know about the cross of Christ. Sam Harris is a materialist, naturalist, atheistic evolutionist. It's a lot of titles. But you know, in some way he represents the modern equivalent of Solomon in his quest to understand life under the sun. That is, life with no influence of God whatsoever. And whereabouts Solomon was brought to absolute despair by the meaninglessness of life, Sam Harris, he's just ticked off. I mean, he's truly angry. And the Sam Harris's of this world, they still want answers from a God they claim doesn't exist. You know, according to Sam, we're just a bag of chemicals put here by chance and time, lots and lots and lots of time. You know, if that is true, then why complain to God? Why complain to me? Why complain to anybody else about anything? I mean, we all know stuff happens. That's cleaning up the bumper sticker. You know what I mean. Stuff happens. And it happens according to Sam by time and chance alone. And when it happens, then it just happens. It's not good. It's not bad. It just is. You see, you cannot complain to a God who doesn't exist that He doesn't perform the way you like. And if Sam really believes what he says he believes, then a tsunami or a Katrina are moral non-events. If some people die, so what? I mean, it's no different than a spring storm that wipes out a flock of birds or a red tide that destroys a school of fish. I mean, a bird, a fish, a person. We're all just accidents of time and chance. We're all just bags of chemicals, according to Sam. So what's the big deal? We see, at least we Christians have a God to pour our sorrow out to during a tsunami and a Katrina. Sam's got no one but Sam. However, the reason that Sam and his ilk are growing in popularity is because Christians are not prepared to give an account that challenges their position. And we're not prepared because we don't read. And we are definitely not going to find those answers on television. As Neil Postman says, we are amusing ourselves to death. Amusement can hinder and entangle conversation with God by driving out the stillness and solitude that God speaks in. It can also hinder and entangle conviction about God by reducing our faith and our doctrine to soundbites and cartoons. It was John MacArthur who lamented the fact that in his opinion, sermons by and large have become sermonettes. And as he puts it, sermonettes have the habit of producing Christianettes. And that's really true. Real sermons take work to produce, and they take work to listen to. And amusement and work, they don't go together. Amusement can destroy our communication with God, our communications about God, and finally, amusement can hinder and entangle our commitment to God. Ephesians 5.15 says, Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Do you know that the average person, by the time he is 60 years old, has spent more than 10 full years of his life sitting in front of a television? That's 10 full years spent 24-7, 365, sitting in front of a television. I mean, if you just do the math, you'll see. The average person watches four hours of TV a day. That's one sixth of a day. One-sixth of 60 years is 10 years spent just amusing ourselves, passively watching glowing dots on a screen. You know, I once heard a man describe what it was like to go door-to-door in a high-rise apartment. He was taking surveys at night, and he said he knocked on hundreds and hundreds of apartments, and every one he walked in was exactly the same. They all had a dark room with a flickering screen and all people sitting around it in silence. He said he started thinking about it and at first he pictured dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of these images all in the same setting. I kind of get the sense of it if you ever go into Walmart or Best Buy and you see they got like 50 of these same images on the screen at the time and they're all moving in sync. Then he realized it wasn't just thousands, there were not just millions, there were hundreds of millions. of those images, all doing the exact same thing, all at the exact same time. We were all amusing ourselves to death every night in the exact same way. 10 to 15 full years of our life spent watching TV. Now, Jesus says we're going to give an account of every single idle word we say. Well, if that's the case, how are we going to give an account for 88,000 hours of TV watching? And what is so amazing is that because TV is televisual, it's not spoken, it's not written, we've forgotten 99% of everything we've ever seen on television. And that's probably a good thing. Because the vast majority of TV programming is anti-God and certainly anti-Bible. Philippians 4.8 says this, It says, finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Just imagine if that was a permanent crawl that went across the bottom of all of our TV screens all the time. Or maybe a plaque on top of the TV. And the question is, would we or could we still watch whatever it is we watch? See, amusement has stolen the silence and solitude that God speaks in. It also has so dumbed down our thinking that it has stolen our ability to understand what makes Christians Christian. And as subtle and its unrelenting attack on God and his kingdom has made the hours we give to it overwhelmingly unredeemable. And the quantity that we give to it is enormous. And the quality of the product it gives back to us is often revolting. And worse yet, it is steadily deteriorating. You know, what was unthinkable 10 years ago is commonplace today, and the pressure to push the envelope is unrelenting. I could give you example after example, but you have TVs, you know what I'm talking about. So what do we do? Well, one communications professor made her class go on an e-fast and made them spend one whole day, 24 hours, with no electronic media whatsoever. And if you slipped up even in the slightest, you had to start all over again. She made each student write a paper about the experience, and some described it as the worst day of my life. Others said it was the best experience I've ever had. But you know, no one treated the assignment as insignificant. It just goes to show you how important amusement has become to us. It shows you how much a part of the media rat race we are part of. You see, for many of us, amusement has gone from a change of pace to a way of life. And we don't even realize it. Now, a media fast might seem like a drastic solution to some, but there are plenty of other steps that we can take to break the hold that amusement has on us. You know, you can cut your TV viewing time by one-seventh by simply coming to a Wednesday night prayer meeting and Bible study. Hint, hint, hint. I've been doing that for almost 20 years. And I can look back at that time with pleasure. I mean, that's 2,000 hours that the TV was not able to steal from me. I had 2,000 hours of growing and learning about the kingdom. You could also vary your media. You could change from TV to radio, even to Christian radio. You could read a novel. You could read a non-fiction book. You could join or start a Bible study. Again, hint, hint. You could change your schedule so that you can eliminate a lot of the time that you normally spend watching TV. I read that R.C. Sproul changed his schedule so that he now goes to bed at 9 o'clock. He gets up at 5 a.m. He found a whole bunch of hours that he didn't even know existed before. gave them a whole new lease on life. And finally, if you still decide to watch TV, make it a choice, not a lifestyle. I said I love to watch Planet Earth. I find out when it's on, I watch it, then I turn off the TV. I don't just flop down to see what's on the boob tube. Choose only what you want to watch and watch only what you choose. So you can change your amusement habits. Neil Postman died in the year 2003. Like I said, I don't know if he was a Christian or not, but I certainly do know he was absolutely right on in his premise. And Christian and non-Christian alike, we are amusing ourselves to death. But you know, for those who are outside the kingdom, it almost makes sense because life ultimately has no meaning whatsoever. So why not eat, drink? Why not be merry? Why not amuse yourself? I mean, we've seen in the series so far that all of the pleasures that Solomon embraced, they gave pleasure, but they were all distractions of the ultimate meaninglessness of life. But you know, that doesn't have to be the case with us. We have the ultimate answer to the meaninglessness of life. We have the Word, the Logos, the Logic, John 1 says this in the beginning was the word that word in Greek is the word logos and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that has been made in him was life and the life with the light of men. Like I said, that word logos, we get the word logic from it. It means that which gives meaning to. Verse 14, it says, And the Word, the Logos, that which gives meaning to, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. The Word is Jesus Christ. He's the one who gives meaning to life itself. In Christ, we know who we are, we know where we are headed and we know why we're here. We are here to glorify Him. See, the answer to Solomon's vanity is Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. All of what Solomon is trying to say is summed up in his final words in Ecclesiastes, the end of all is this, fear God and obey His commandments. In other words, aim your life, aim your life at God and His Kingdom and you will never regret the race that you've embarked on. Solomon had the greatest wealth, influence, and power his world ever knew, but he did not have a fraction of the choices that we have to amuse ourselves. The result is that Hebrews 12.1 becomes much more urgent and much more demanding today. And whether it's compromised communication due to a lack of silence or solitude, or convictions that are rooted in sound bites and sermonettes, or a commitment to study, grow, and share the gospel that gets swallowed wholesale by TV, we need all the more to heed God's word in us. And he says it in Hebrews 12.1. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let's pray. Father God, we do thank you and praise you for the fact that we don't have to spend our time amusing ourselves. We don't have to spend our times turning off our minds, turning off our intellects, because the utter meaninglessness, the utter vapidity of life is so oppressive. Father, we have life with meaning. We have a life that makes sense. We know why we're here. We know what we're doing here. We know where we're headed. And Father, what a gift that is. It's a gift we want to share with every other person on this planet. And Father, I pray that you would give us the ability to understand it and the ability to communicate it. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. If you'd all stand, let me give you God's blessing. This is now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. According to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. And God's people said, Amen.