“It Doesn’t Last!” – FBC Morning Light (6/7/2024)

Well, a good Friday morning to you, I hope you're looking forward to the weekend and to gathering with God's people on the Lord's Day for worshiping the Lord and fellowshipping with one another. Today we're reading in Ecclesiastes 1 -3, but before we get to that passage of scripture, let me remind you of the help that we need, especially related to broadcasting, live streaming these devotionals on Facebook.

If we don't get a minimum number of followers on the church's Facebook page or my personal Facebook page by Monday, then we'll no longer be able to live stream to that particular site. So if you're watching on Facebook, would you please go to my Facebook page and the Faith Baptist Church, Sterling Facebook page, and choose to follow both, because we live stream both to my personal page as well as to the church's page.

And if you're watching on YouTube or Boxcast or Sermon Audio and you have a Facebook account, it would be very helpful if you could go to Facebook and choose to follow, again, follow my page, Brian Bice, and also the Faith Baptist Church, Sterling Facebook page.

So I don't know as of right now whether or not we'll be broadcasting on Facebook after Monday, but if you normally watch on Facebook, you'll find out then. So trust you can help us out. Well, as I read Ecclesiastes, and particularly chapter two, I was reminded of a recent trip that we took a couple weeks ago on vacation to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.

If you've never been there, check it out on the internet. It's just an absolutely incredible place, absolutely incredible. We toured the home and toured the gardens, and it's incredibly fascinating. The home, if you want to call it that, it's more like a castle and humongous, the kind of thing with a bowling alley in the basement, a swimming pool in the lower level, servant's quarters.

I mean, it's just astounding, the grandeur of the place. On the grounds itself, these beautiful gardens, and then set off to one part of the estate, there's a vineyard and a winery and all that kind of thing.

And the opulence, it was just overwhelming. And as you toured through this facility, you could imagine 100 or so years ago, 120 years ago, the people staying there and living there in such luxury and enjoying all of the amenities of the day, the fine dining and the entertainment that they brought in and so on and so forth.

The Vanity of Earthly Grandeur in Ecclesiastes 2

Well, what all that has to do with Ecclesiastes is what we read in chapter 2. The writer, Solomon, he says, I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine while guiding my heart with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly that I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under the heaven all the days of their life.

He says, I made my works great. I built myself houses and planted myself vineyards. I made myself gardens and orchards. I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove.

I acquired male and female servants and had servants born in my house. Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before.

Me.

I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasures of kings and of the provinces. I acquired male singers and female singers and the delights of the sons of men and musical instruments of all kinds.

So I became great and excelled more than all them who were before me in Jerusalem. And this is what George Vanderbilt could have said 120 years ago. He was an heir of the Vanderbilt wealth from Cornelius Vanderbilt, the commodore who amassed an incredible fortune through shipping and railroad enterprises back in the 1800s.

And indeed his wealth was unprecedented and what he did with it was unprecedented. But what's an interesting thing is then came the Great Depression and the Vanderbilt estate, the Biltmore estate, in time fell upon some difficulty.

And they had to figure out how they were going to manage things because they didn't have the money anymore. They didn't have the wealth anymore. And now the Biltmore estate is pretty much, I mean it's still fabulous and it's still opulent, but it's a tourist destination.

It's not somebody's home anymore. It's a tourist place to go and visit. And so the descendants of George Vanderbilt have had to create a foundation and try to keep the place up and going and running by opening it up to the public like they do.

Which brings us to what Ecclesiastes says in verse 11. He says, I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled, and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind.

It all passes away. The pleasure and the opulence may provide temporary diversion and truly enjoyment. But it just doesn't last. It can't give lasting, meaningful satisfaction because it just slips through the fingers, sometimes very slowly, sometimes very quickly.

So we cannot look to things like this, possessions and wealth and what money can buy to give us lasting, meaningful satisfaction. We'll find out on Monday, I believe it is, what it is that shall. Our Father and our God, we do realize that the things of this world are quickly passing away and they can't satisfy, no matter how much of it we have.

I pray that you would burn that into our hearts so we might look to the right place. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a great weekend. And again, let me remind you, help us out on Facebook by following my Facebook page and the Faith Baptist Sterling Facebook page as well so we can keep broadcasting on those sites.

All right, have a good weekend. God bless.