Oct 4, 2026 · 37 min · 11 segments
In this Vanishing series message, Dom Gibson looks at Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 and the Preacher’s search for meaning through pleasure, possessions, and achievements. Despite having freedom and resources…
Dom GibsonGuest
Cam StephensHost
My name is Don Gibson, if we haven't had the chance to meet, and I'm so excited to be here with you all this morning.
I'm thankful for this church community and our church's leadership, and I'm grateful to be able to share from God's Word today.
It's my prayer that as we learn together from today's scripture passage, we would each grow deeper in our knowledge of who God is and deeper in our relationship with Him.
Now, in the early 1800s, archeologists had unearthed a fragment of a statue of the Pharaoh Ramesses II, and this fragment, after traveling around the world, was now on its way to England for study and so people could see it.
He's regarded as one of the most celebrated, rich, and powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
Now, as Shelley, the author, was thinking about this statue's upcoming arrival in England, he began working on a new poem, which is called Ozymandias.
I met a traveler from an antique land who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.
Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away." In this poem, Shelley describes a broken statue standing in the middle of the desert with the shattered face of the statue lying nearby in the sand.
And there is an inscription, there's wording on the pedestal or the base of that statue that refers to Ozymandias, or Ramesses II, as the king of kings.
And it says, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" But there is nothing left of this once powerful pharaoh's dynasty.
All that surrounds the statue as far as the eye can see is sand, as everything else has faded away.
Shelley wrote this poem as a meditation on the temporary nature of human power and achievement.
Kings like Ozymandias imagine that their kingdoms will last forever, but time eventually reduces even the greatest kingdoms to fragments, or as the preacher in Ecclesiastes would call it, vapor.
My name is Don Gibson, if we haven't had the chance to meet, and I'm so excited to be here with you all this morning.
I'm thankful for this church community and our church's leadership, and I'm grateful to be able to share from God's Word today.
It's my prayer that as we learn together from today's scripture passage, we would each grow deeper in our knowledge of who God is and deeper in our relationship with Him.
Now, in the early 1800s, archeologists had unearthed a fragment of a statue of the Pharaoh Ramesses II, and this fragment, after traveling around the world, was now on its way to England for study and so people could see it.
He's regarded as one of the most celebrated, rich, and powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
Now, as Shelley, the author, was thinking about this statue's upcoming arrival in England, he began working on a new poem, which is called Ozymandias.
I met a traveler from an antique land who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.
Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away." In this poem, Shelley describes a broken statue standing in the middle of the desert with the shattered face of the statue lying nearby in the sand.
And there is an inscription, there's wording on the pedestal or the base of that statue that refers to Ozymandias, or Ramesses II, as the king of kings.
And it says, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" But there is nothing left of this once powerful pharaoh's dynasty.
All that surrounds the statue as far as the eye can see is sand, as everything else has faded away.
Shelley wrote this poem as a meditation on the temporary nature of human power and achievement.
Kings like Ozymandias imagine that their kingdoms will last forever, but time eventually reduces even the greatest kingdoms to fragments, or as the preacher in Ecclesiastes would call it, vapor.
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