Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday morning's sermon on Ecclesiasties 1:4-11.
All things are full of
labour; man cannot utter it:
the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing
(Ecclesiastes 1:8).
In
this verse Solomon describe man’s insatiable (unsatisfied) sensory appetite for
the things of the natural world. It is
expressed in two statements: “the eye is
not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”
How
immediately we can resonate with this in the digital age, where at the click of
a mouse we can bring any site foul or fair before our eyes. We can hear nearly any speech, listen to
nearly any song, in nearly any genre, in nearly any language. But what is becoming the distinguishing mark
of this generation? Boredom. When the envelope has been pushed to the
extreme the result is not satisfaction but dissatisfaction and the craving for
more. I once heard a man say that if he
had a choice between food and hi-speed internet he’d take the internet.
We are
acutely aware of this now, but it was just as true in Solomon’s day. It was true when there was no television,
when there was no video, and no audio recordings in any form. It is just as true for the Amish who live
without electricity as it is for the man who can’t live without his
Facebook. Man has an insatiable hunger
for what he can experience through his senses.
It was
in attacking this stronghold that John wrote:
1 John
2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If
any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is
in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
What a
difficult battle it is! When Bunyan
wrote his allegory called The Holy War
about the battle for the town of Mansoul as Emmanuel retakes it from the
clutches of the wicked Diabolos, he describe how important was the defense of
the five entrances into the place, including:
eye-gate, ear-gate, mouth-gate, nose-gate, and feel-gate.
Indeed,
how weak and vulnerable is man in his unregenerate state before the onslaughts
of Satan! The description is bleak. But where
is the gospel in this?
I believe it is there in pointing us to our need for
Christ. To those whose eyes were never
satisfied and whose ears were never filled, Jesus said: “I am the bread of life: he
that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst” (John 6:35).
There is
nothing new under the sun. Man’s need of
Christ is the same in the twenty-first century as it was in the tenth century
BC when Solomon lived and in the first century AD when Jesus himself walked the
earth. He is the only one who can
satisfy.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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