Dr. Mark E. Shaw welcomes special guest Pastor Steve Ham of Hyde Park Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Pastor Ham discusses the implications and applications of Ecclesiastes to everyday life. His church can be found at hpbaptist.org
Steve says the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is not a comfortable wisdom but it can help us in teaching counselees to formulate a biblical worldview as opposed to the philosophies, the psychologies, and the psychiatries of this world.
Rather than being “solutions” oriented in counseling, studying Ecclesiastes can help us see the realities of living life under the sun, why people often feel hopeless, and why we need to look beyond the sun. People are crying out that ‘Philosophies of man are not working for me, please give me the revelations from beyond the sun.’ God’s revelation is what we need! The book of Ecclesiastes pushes us to search for the answers in the rest of the Scriptures.
Depression, pain, suffering, and even addiction can all be addressed using chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes for example.
He was given all wisdom under the sun.
In verse 18 we find, “In much wisdom is much vexation,” and “he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”
“So the more we try to assess this world from under the sun, the more our sorrow just increases, the more the pain gets, and the more we see how really dissatisfying it is and doesn’t really solve our problems and just increases sorrow. Haven’t we seen that in spiraling depression? And people as a result of that –the more I want to numb my mind because I see no hope in it.” – Pastor Steve Ham
We see the list of things that he tried 'under the sun'.
Laughter
Wine (substances)
Buildings and gardens,
Possessions,
Sex
And yet it was not satisfying.
This applies to addiction but it’s about self, idolatry, and pleasure all being just a breath.
"Don’t pursue wisdom under the sun to simply solve your problems of this world. It’s all about hope – where are we placing our hope." -Dr. Shaw
"The hope, the wisdom, the help is in looking beyond the hope of this world to Jesus who says I am the way, the truth, and the life." -Steve Ham
