I can recall quite vividly the time when I had to discover the meaning to life for myself, and I went, before I came to know Christ, I went via the route of philosophy, and I can recall being at a party in high school one night, I think my junior year in high school, just really discouraged and not getting into the party thing, and so I went outside, and it was a really beautiful night with all the stars in the sky, and it was very clear, and I went to this place where I could be alone and really think about life, and I decided that I needed to come up with some sort of philosophy, some sort of philosophy of life that would make myself significant, bring meaning to my life, so I devised this philosophy, it went kind of like this, it was, well I'm going to just suppose that the earth is a cell, and that people are parasites or something like that on this cell, and the cells within a body like mine are yours, and earthquakes are the result of the body belching or something like that, and I went on and on and on, I don't know if anyone's heard anything like that before, but I went on and on and on, the whole idea was, I was trying to make myself feel significant in a world that just seemed too big for me, and I was lost, and Solomon also came to this kind of place, and so he came up with a philosophy that recognized contrast in life, but didn't quite know how to integrate the contrast, didn't know how to put it all together, Solomon studied every philosophy that was available at that time, and like I said, that's in that chapter, he studied evolution, and he studied empiricism, agnosticism, and most major, and all major religions, because he wanted to find meaning and purpose to his life, and the result was that it too was vanity and striving after win, he next tried money, money is found in the 5th chapter, verse 10 of Ecclesiastes, he says, he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income, this too is vanity, one night I suppose what Solomon did was, he had, you've heard some of what he had, one night I suppose he went out, and he went, he was at one of his construction sites, and he hired at least 50 ,000 men to work on some of the projects he had going, he'd walk out by the barracks where these men were staying, and he'd hear them just snoring away, just sleeping, peacefully, heartily, with a lot of gusto, sleeping very, very well, and he'd walk down there, and he'd notice this, and these were men that had very little, they had just enough clothing for what, they just had the only clothing they had was that which they had on their back, and maybe an extra pair of shoes, but they were very, very poor, yet they slept very well, and this inspired the verses 12 through 15 where he says, the sleep of the working man is pleasure, is pleasant rather, whether he eats little or much, but full of the full stomach of the rich man does not allow him to sleep, what happens, what happened to Solomon is that in acquiring all these riches, he developed insomnia, concern about income taxes, concern about what he had to do in terms of his investments, and all the plans that he had to make around all the money he had robbed him of life, of just the simple thing of being able to sleep, 13, there is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun, riches being hoarded by their owner to his heart, when those riches were lost through bad investment, and he had fathered a son, then there was nothing to support him, as he came, as he had come naked from his mother's womb, so will he return as he came, he will take nothing from the fruit of his labor that he can carry in his hand, next he tried reputation, the 7th chapter, the first verse, a good name is better than a good ointment, now the reputation thing in my own life came when, like I mentioned in high school, one of the main motivating forces prior to knowing Christ personally was to get that letter sweater, to get those medals, to get those awards that were there for me, and the thing you wanted to do of course is when you got it, to impress some girl by giving her what you won, that sort of thing, and it was a whole status sort of thing that was associated with that, and Solomon got into that reputation, and he had a very good reputation, but again the conclusion was that it too was vanity and striving after win, and the last thing he tried was sex, and that's found in the 7th chapter of the 26th verse, where he says, and I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains, one who is pleasing to God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her, in Proverbs 5 .4, Solomon speaking there, says that he compares relationship, his sexual relationship as being like wormwood, and wormwood was a sort of a stimulant, it was poison, but when you put it in your mouth, and you were tasting it, and eating it, it was very very pleasant, it was very very pleasant, it tasted really good, but the result was death, because it was a poison, and it sort of highlights the transitoryness of all the other things that Solomon tried.