A Selfish Person’s Life Is Nothing but Regret
1I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with mirth: therefore enjoy pleasure”; and behold, this also was vanity. 2I said of laughter, “It is foolishness”; and of mirth, “What does it accomplish?” 3I searched in my heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, my heart yet guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold of folly, until I might see what it was good for the sons of men that they should do under heaven all the days of their lives. 4I made myself great works. I built myself houses. I planted myself vineyards. 5I made myself gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit. 6I made myself pools of water, to water from it the forest where trees were reared. 7I bought male servants and female servants, and had servants born in my house. I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, above all who were before me in Jerusalem; 8I also gathered silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and of the provinces. I got myself male and female singers, and the delights of the sons of men—musical instruments, and that of all sorts. 9So I was great, and increased more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also remained with me. 10Whatever my eyes desired, I didn’t keep from them. I didn’t withhold my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced because of all my labor, and this was my portion from all my labor. 11Then I looked at all the works that my hands had worked, and at the labor that I had labored to do; and behold, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was no profit under the sun. 12I turned myself to consider wisdom, madness, and folly: for what can the king’s successor do? Just that which has been done long ago. 13Then I saw that wisdom excels folly, as far as light excels darkness. 14The wise man’s eyes are in his head, and the fool walks in darkness—and yet I perceived that one event happens to them all. 15Then I said in my heart, “As it happens to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and why was I then more wise?” Then I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16For of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is no memory for ever, since in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. Indeed, the wise man must die just like the fool!
Look into thousands of years of history, and it seems as if a handful of outstanding people, driven by firm convictions and ideologies, made history, while countless others lived and died without a sound. Every age, of course, had its outstanding figures, but it was because of the nameless multitudes who filled each age that history flowed on without faltering. The powerful, driven by a desire to display their own importance, started wars between nations and used the powerless as tools to satisfy their ambitions.
As history runs heedlessly on, we find people oppressed and bound by those who coerce them, people set free from their chains, and people who ride on the coattails of power. In every age, when those in power had an upright and good conscience, an era of peace opened; when their conscience was evil, many were sacrificed. But whatever achievements the mighty left behind, and whatever suffering ordinary people endured, with the passing of the years all of them were quietly forgotten.
If you are concerned for the salvation of those who lived in the past, the answer is this: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” No one who stands outside this word can be saved. Looking at the people who have vanished into history, Solomon said that the wise life and the mad life alike are as empty and vain as chasing after wind. Whatever their lives were like, they all return to dust in the end; that is what made them, in his eyes, as futile as chasing the wind.
What gives you a sense of fulfillment? It matters a great deal that we live with a sense of fulfillment. So while we live, we need to do our best to achieve our plans and purposes, yet we must live honestly, with a good conscience. But succeed or fail, in time all of it will be forgotten, and rejoicing and grieving, being moved and losing heart, will come round once again. We must not forget this; we need to live now by the word of God. The Word of God is Jesus Christ, and that Word is eternal life.
The years of hard work, the pain of failure and discouragement, the seasons of pride: all of them vanish like mist the moment we return to dust. Remembering this, we must look further ahead and live today wisely. In other words, you need to live asking what you will leave behind today. The one who used underhanded means to beat a rival and the one who did what was good and right will alike return in body to a handful of dust, and in spirit they will meet God. Since the word alone is the standard of judgment, if we are to enjoy peace and rest after death, what we leave behind in every trouble we meet in this life must be faith.
God sent us into the world so that, in a world of darkness, we would receive Christ, the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever believes in Christ believes in God, and whoever sees Christ sees God; that is why faith is such a precious gift.
Solomon inherited the throne from his father, but to keep it he had to make the painful decision to put his own brother to death. When his elder brother Adonijah, coveting the throne, conspired with Joab, David’s commander, and with Abiathar the priest, Solomon declared that he had become king with the help of David, Nathan the prophet, and his mother Bathsheba. Although Adonijah had plotted rebellion, Solomon pardoned him. Even so, when Adonijah persuaded Bathsheba to help him take as his wife Abishag, the young virgin who had cared for David, Solomon could no longer forgive a brother who would not give up his designs on the throne.
Perhaps Solomon found it hard to bear the royal duty of deciding who would live and who would die. But after killing Adonijah, his archrival, he discovered how great his power was, and since this is where pride begins, we must be on our guard. Though he had become king with his father’s help, he possessed the wisdom God had given him, along with great wealth and power.
When God exalted Solomon’s name and he saw how his people and the nations feared him, he realized how formidable his power was. At that moment he ought to have remembered that it was God who ruled over him and that his great strength had been received from God. Once he began to think that everything he owned was his own, he started living for himself, and in this he was deceived by Satan’s scheme to cast him into death.
Nothing is more miserable than living selfishly for oneself alone, for in the end such a person is forsaken by God and by people. Selfish people put themselves at the center of everything and pay no attention to the hearts of others, and they grow ever more isolated as a result. They are generous to themselves and stingy toward others, and the more wealth and power they gain, the more unhappy they become. The fault is their own: they have closed off every way by which God and good people might help them.
God simply watched as Solomon flaunted his strength, indulged in pleasure, and wielded his power. Like a small house with one enormous pillar standing in the middle of it, Solomon’s heart was so full of the world and of selfishness that God could not help him. But because the life we use as if it were our own belongs to God as well, even the most gifted person will at some point run up against a limit. That is because, when God calls, no one can resist, and without a right understanding of death we will meet an empty end.
Great as his power was, his life was not his own; Solomon ought therefore to have lived with the last moment of his life in view. He was a human being formed from a handful of dust, and in the end all he possessed was a handful of dust. Sadly, since even that handful must be left behind, not even that was his. Where a typhoon has passed, the devastation looks as if a bomb has struck, yet strangely the wind that did it is nowhere to be found. When the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, their beauty is beyond compare, but once the petals fall, the tree that was so splendid looks all the shabbier. Life is like this. Power and wealth seem to decide its quality, but once life is lost, they too are all in vain.
Solomon knew how much he owed to the grace of God, and how great a power it is to have wisdom. So even as he indulged in pleasure and worshiped idols, he must always have felt empty and dark, hollow and stifled. God made his will known to Solomon in many ways so that he could turn back, but in the end Solomon would not leave the place of sin, and for that reason the moment of regret came upon him.
At first Solomon too would have worked hard to make the nation strong and to set his people on a right footing. He resolved to live by the word, and he urged the people to offer pure sacrifices to God. But Satan was never going to leave alone a Solomon who kept glancing toward the world. When Satan whispered to him that it was only right for him to enjoy wealth and glory, he grew bored with his life of ease and began to look for ways to delight the flesh. With the priests offering the sacrifices and the people at peace, he had nothing to do. The thrill of completing the temple after seven years had faded, and living in the beautiful palace he had spent thirteen years building for himself and his wives brought him no joy. The people were worn out from the work on the palace, but Solomon, sunk in pleasure, gave no thought to their suffering. He pondered how to live more pleasurably and how to gain still greater power; he withheld his heart from no desire and did everything that looked enjoyable, until his life was filled with sin.
God blessed Solomon because of his covenant with David. But because God had also made a promise directly to Solomon, he waited for him to see his error and come back; Solomon, however, lived for pleasure rather than for the promise. Not everyone is like this, but as people grow rich they grow spiritually dull. Thinking that money can solve their problems, they decide everything as they please.
It is not, then, those with great wealth who are proud, but those who are full of themselves in spirit, whatever they may own. Acknowledging all of it as God’s, people who are full of the Holy Spirit stay humble however much wealth and power they hold. A small vessel fills with very little, and a person of small capacity grows proud with very little; so it is not the rich who are proud but those who have left God. When a person of large capacity looks at someone of small capacity, they see one who still has a long way to go, yet that person is already full and has no room left to consider the will of God.
One day it struck Solomon that he had paid no heed to God or to those around him, and he came to regret deeply the selfish life he had lived for himself alone. Even if the marriages were meant to secure friendly ties with foreign nations, keeping a thousand wives is not something a man of God can do. He had turned a deaf ear to the cries of his people, who were suffering because of these women, and now he looked back on what he had been doing all those years.
He had a thousand wives, people to serve him, and vast territory, yet Solomon was not happy: like a conscience seared with a hot iron, his sense of what is good was gone. He feared God, yet he could not give up the world. He had heard God’s voice directly, handed down remarkable judgments by God’s wisdom, and experienced for himself that God is alive as he won his battles. And this was the man who lived a life apart from God.
When he realized how great his sin was and repented with tears, he found that sins which had seemed faint until then stood out ever more sharply. The more we repent of sin, the more clearly we see it and the deeper our remorse. That is why you must now show the good sense to fight sin and overcome it.
In 1 Kings 9:3, God, having heard Solomon’s prayer, promised that he had made the house holy to put his name there forever, and that his eyes and his heart would be there perpetually. Solomon had received such a promise from God, and the temple where God was present stood before his very eyes, yet he committed sin after sin. Now he came to see that the God who had been with him when he lived by faith had also been watching him when he sinned.
Once Solomon understood this, he was too ashamed to face God. He grieved over himself for having lived for a world of vanity upon vanity. There were times, while he was sinning, when he thought of God, but he was ashamed that he had never made the decision of faith and had been dragged about by Satan.
If you sense that you have strayed from the truth, you must turn back quickly. Because Satan never lets go of anyone easily, if you rely on the Holy Spirit and decide firmly, you can win. Otherwise Satan will drag you ever deeper into the mire. He will do anything to lead a single soul to hell. Even when your faith is full, he keeps on tempting you; only by praying, praising, and abiding in the Lord can you overcome.
For the pleasures of the flesh Solomon sought out women and wine. Because wine numbs reason and takes control of a person, those who walk the narrow way of truth are forbidden to drink. Proverbs tells us that drunkards are easily swept up in sorrow, strife, and complaining, which keeps them forever picking quarrels. They stagger, unable to defend themselves, and bear wounds from sword or spear; with bloodshot eyes they go about seeking mixed wine that is stronger and harsher still.
Solomon could describe a drunkard’s behavior so precisely because he had experienced it. He knew how he had changed and how clouded his judgment had become when he was drunk on wine [sin], and it was this knowledge that led him to declare that wine does no good. When you first drink wine it goes down smoothly and you feel nothing, but once the alcohol begins to spread through the body, it is like a serpent’s venom spreading: the eyes see strange things, the mouth speaks perverse things, and one can no longer behave normally. Solomon had yielded to Satan’s temptation and given himself over entirely to wine.
Human sin is Satan’s power, and human sin is his food. Jesus Christ atoned for that sin, yet the unthankful human heart began to fill with sin again. Those who pour wine, like a serpent’s venom, into the precious earthen vessel where the Spirit of God dwells lose control of themselves and readily do things they would never do sober. We need to ask whether those who believe in the pure and holy Jesus Christ can really enter heaven living like this.
Since only the sinless can enter heaven, we must serve Jesus Christ as our King, our Lord, and our all. Heaven is holy and beautiful, a place where angels, the redeemed, and even flowers of every lovely color praise God. Do you think someone who has fallen to Satan’s temptation and sinned all their life can enter it? Only those without spot or blemish enter heaven, and those who keep God at a distance and have no fear of sinning cannot go in.
Jesus Christ, who bears the nail marks in his hands and feet and the wound of the spear in his side, said that he would go and prepare a place for us and come again to take us to himself; until then we must fight sin and overcome it. Not only wine but anything in this Satan-ruled world that captures our hearts will draw anyone into a sordid life. Those addicted to the world throw away their own precious character, their work, their family, and their very life, and run toward death only to satisfy themselves. Caring nothing for how much there is to be thankful for, the breath they draw, the people beside them, the work in their hands, they live for themselves alone. Those who are truly thankful live according to the will of Jesus Christ and always put the Lord first. Each time he sinned, Solomon felt regret in some corner of his heart, but his refusal to give up his pleasures and his boasting cost him a great deal of time. The more he clung to the world, the emptier his heart became, as though it had been hollowed out, and in an effort to fill it he tried everything he wanted. But the only thing that could fill his heart was the grace of God.
Because selfish people, to satisfy themselves, inevitably join hands with Satan and throw away all grace, they do not easily escape the path of evil. Convinced that their own thoughts, judgments, decisions, and ideas are right, they do not turn back. This is why Jesus told us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves [Luke 10:27]. In the end Solomon knelt before God only after he had grown old and lost his strength. If you too live as the flesh desires, you will end up full of regret, like Solomon, once Satan has robbed you of all the grace of God. Only in old age did Solomon realize that a life lived as the flesh desired had been no different from an animal’s.
Ecclesiastes 2:3
3I searched in my heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, my heart yet guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold of folly, until I might see what it was good for the sons of men that they should do under heaven all the days of their lives.
Solomon sought every pleasure the world offered, and wine besides, to delight his flesh, yet he already knew that none of it could satisfy him. The strain of guarding his power was so great that he tried to fill his heart with other things, but nothing in the world could satisfy him.
Do you think your frame of mind could stay the same whether you lived an ordinary life or owned tens of billions of won? To keep his throne, Solomon had to bring the kings of other nations under his authority, and that must have weighed heavily on his mind. People might have thought he lived happily, enjoying wealth and glory, but he was always lonely and always on edge, and he was never happy. From the beginning he was a man who could be happy only by walking with God. The one thing he truly longed for was the grace of God. Even in the very moments he was sinning, what he wanted to hold on to was God’s love and care.
You will have had this experience too. In the middle of some game or amusement, you sometimes hear the voice of a good conscience asking, “What am I doing? This is no time for this. Shouldn’t I be going to God?” Whoever decides quickly at that moment and turns back is wise. But habits such as the love of pleasure, a hot temper, and laziness are held fast by Satan, and he never lets go of them easily.
Knowing that he can bring down those who belong to God if he keeps his grip on them long enough, Satan does his utmost to drag them to hell. And because sin becomes habit, it grows all the harder to break. At first the heart is torn two ways, but as time passes we settle into the world, and in the end even the thought of turning from sin disappears. The habits of the flesh have the strength to overcome faith, so unless we make our decision ready to die for it, leaving the place of sin will never be easy.
Before you lament, as Solomon did, that you have lived a life of vanity upon vanity, may you make your decision now. Solomon realized that what he had done in wisdom and what the fool had done in darkness would both be forgotten alike once they died. He and the fool alike would be forgotten in the end, and on that ground he said that all of it was vanity. He hoped that others would not lament at the end of their lives as he did, but would live a blessed life walking with God and leave no regrets behind.
You are wise, and I hope you will enter into Solomon’s heart and live a life you will not regret. If you must stand at the edge of a cliff before you know it is dangerous, and fall before you know it hurts, Solomon would rebuke you: “Why did you not believe what I told you?” Friends, the sensible person is the one who sees the hardships of others and does not take that road, and the wise person is the one who watches others solve their problems and learns how. Selfish people feel regret only when hardship strikes them, so they cannot help wasting much of their time.
You have a mature faith, you know what life is, and you have learned how to live. So you must keep your balance when great joy comes, and if you keep your balance when great sorrow comes as well, your faith will not be shaken. If you rejoice beyond measure when good things happen and grieve beyond measure when sad things happen, then even those feelings revolve around yourself, and a mature faith is hard to attain. If, like a calm sea, you receive both joy and sorrow well and are considerate of others, you can build up faith in every circumstance, win a spiritual victory that reaches beyond this life, and become one of the holy people who enter the eternal Kingdom.
Had Solomon been considerate of those around him, as Jesus said when he told us to love our neighbor as ourselves, his faith would have been a success. I earnestly ask you to become holy people who praise the glory of God with a mature faith that cares for others, and to live a life without regret.