06/01/2026
Sunday Sermon Devotional Day 1 –
The Experiment With Everything
📖 Scripture: "But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere." — Ecclesiastes 2:11 (NLT)
✍️ Devotional: Last week we met the speaker in Ecclesiastes — a king of unmatched wisdom and resources who looked at all of human existence and called it vanity of vanities. Smoke. V***r. Here and gone. This week, he stops observing on the sidelines to find meaning and starts experimenting.
He thinks, If life feels meaningless, maybe the answer is to dive in headfirst. Chase the good times. Build something impressive. Accumulate everything worth having. So he does. Pleasure, laughter, wine, massive building projects, gardens, wealth beyond any king before him, the best entertainers, loads of servants — he withheld nothing his eyes desired.
And then he looked at the whole pile of accomplishments and called it the same thing he called everything else. Meaningless. Like chasing the wind.
This is not the conclusion of a man who gave up too easily. This is the conclusion of the most capable, most resourced, most determined experimenter in history. If self-generated meaning were possible, he would have found it. He didn't — because meaning isn’t self-generated. We were never designed to manufacture meaning from within ourselves. We were designed to receive it from the one who made us.
💭 Reflection Question: What experiment are you currently running — what are you chasing, building, or accumulating — that you are secretly hoping, or unknowingly hoping, will finally give your life the meaning or satisfaction you are looking for?
🗣️ Sermon Connection: "This is the man that was the king with the resources, the brains to do it, and the desire to carry it out. And he says, 'I couldn't find it.' His story is your story. You just can't do it as good as him."
🙏 Prayer: Father, I confess I keep running experiments you have already shown me the results of. Open my eyes to see where I am chasing what was never mine to generate, and give me the humility to receive what you have always been offering. Amen.
🏃 Put It Into Practice: Read Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 today. As you read, write down one category from the speaker's experiment — pleasure, achievement, accumulation, legacy — that most closely mirrors something you are currently chasing. Just name it honestly before God.