What does First B Jackson teach about regret?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First Baptist Jackson, the teaching on regret takes Solomon as its central case. Pastor Ray and Pastor Mike have both worked through the arc of Solomon's life to show what regret actually looks like when it is honest and purposeful. Solomon had wisdom that no one around him could match, wealth beyond imagining, and direct warnings from God that echoed the warnings his own father David had already given him. He ignored all of it. The specific pull that drew him off course was not ignorance or poverty but a slow pattern of letting earthly things replace God, foreign wives, foreign gods, and the habits that came with them. The kingdom split exactly the way God said it would. Ecclesiastes is the record of what that cost him.
The teaching has been careful to frame Solomon's regret as something he chose to make useful. The book of Ecclesiastes is not a depressing text written to drag its readers down. It is a retrospective, written late in Solomon's life, by a man who had been down the wrong roads and desperately did not want anyone listening to have to learn the same way. There is a difference between a hypocrite and a teacher. A hypocrite says do as I say, not as I do. A teacher says do as I say, not as I did. Solomon earns the title of teacher by being honest about where his own path led, and that honesty is what gives the book its weight.
For anyone sitting with regret right now, the consistent thread in these messages is that regret can be redirected. The imperative verbs scattered through the later chapters of Ecclesiastes point toward a life still worth living. Wisdom and wealth, as Pastor Ray has put it, are not the answer to the human problem, because Solomon had both and still turned away from God. What Ecclesiastes ultimately calls its readers toward is the same thing David called Solomon toward at the beginning: walk in God's ways, keep His commandments, and do not substitute anything else for Him.
Taught from Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 · Ecclesiastes 1:2 · 1 Kings 9:1-9 · 1 Kings 11:1-3 · 1 Kings 2:1-4
The passage taught · 1 Chronicles 28-29
28:1 David assembled all the princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes, the captains of the companies who served the king by division, the captains of thousands, the captains of hundreds, and the rulers over all the substance and possessions of the king and of his sons, with the officers and the mighty men, even all the mighty men of valor, to Jerusalem.
28:2 Then David the king stood up on his feet, and said, “Hear me, my brothers, and my people! As for me, it was in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of Yahweh’s covenant, and for the footstool of our God; and I had prepared for the building.
28:3 But God said to me, ‘You shall not build a house for my name, because you are a man of war, and have shed blood.’
28:4 However Yahweh, the God of Israel, chose me out of all the house of my father to be king over Israel forever. For he has chosen Judah to be prince; and in the house of Judah, the house of my father; and among the sons of my father he took pleasure in me to make me king over all Israel.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- February 26, 2023 Fear God and Keep His Commandments Pastor Ray walks through the arc of Solomon's life and the book of Ecclesiastes to show why wisdom and wealth alone cannot satisfy, and where true answers are found.
- May 5, 2013 The Philippians of the Old Testament, Traditions (3) Solomon had wisdom, wealth, and warnings from God, yet still turned away. The pastor traces the arc of his life to show what Ecclesiastes is really about.
- May 5, 2013 The Philippians of the Old Testament, Morning Praise The pastor traces Solomon's arc from wisdom and wealth to regret, showing how Ecclesiastes was written by a man who knew better but wandered, and what that means for us.
Mentioned along the way
- October 14, 2018 Use the Green Bananas A missionary's 70 pounds of rotting bananas becomes a vivid picture of what happens when we ignore the spiritual gifts God has given us to serve one another.