When Solomon says, “Come now, I will test you with mirth”, he is speaking to himself, hoping to find something in his experience which would not be as sad and filled with grief as the accumulation of wisdom and knowledge had been. But instead, he wanted to find something that would bring him delight and joy in the journey of life. He was going to test himself with mirth, and he would attempt to do it skillfully. He would pursue the pleasure of mirth. And he tells us this, even before he tells us how he went about pursuing this pleasure. He tells us the conclusion of the matter. He says that it was madness. The proposition that Solomon brings to us in these verses is this: Laughter, in an earthly sense, without the joy of knowing God, without His works and His grace bringing us to the right kind of mirth, is all madness. And when he declares this, he is challenging all the mirth-makers in every generation to produce the lasting benefit of this mirth. “What does it accomplish?”, he asks. And so, this afternoon we want to see 1st of all, how Solomon vainly pursued earthly mirth. And then 2nd - We want to also see the value of holy mirth.
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Pastor Paul Rendall was born in November of 1951, and grew up in Davenport, Iowa. He went to college at Drake University and the University of Iowa where he received a B.A. degree in Social Work and History in 1974. Paul searched for truth in all the wrong places in college, but...
