Last time we considered the introduction in Ecclesiastes 1:1-11. Solomon, the author, king in Jerusalem (1:12) there describes the weariness, the monotony and the
repetition of life under the sun. At face value this sounds so pessimistic! Who on
earth wants to read such a book and hear such a message? And yet I have found that people rarely
consider the entire book of Ecclesiastes to be off putting or pessimistic. Many people find it
fascinating to think that such a book can be found in the Bible. It makes something
come alive in us. We can relate to it. I
suspect that its rawness – describing life as it is, as we experience it under
the sun, may have something to do with it. People like gut level talk. Yet, I remind you that gut level talk without God at the center is in itself
meaningless. We thank God that we can consider this text in the greater light
which we have in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Solomon is clearly a man who has been greatly gifted by
God to think deeply about life. He is not satisfied by simply living the life.
In 1:13 he tells us, “…I applied my heart to seek
and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.” And then
follows the first mentioning of God. “It is an unhappy business that God
has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that
is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind.” (v.13b,14).
Notice what he says, “It is an unhappy
business that God has given to the children of man.”
What is the cause of this unhappiness
which the children of man have been given by God? Why would God make man, who
is created in His image, unhappy? The
answer is not given here. The fact is merely
stated. Here we have to go further into
holy Scripture. The answer to man’s unhappiness is found in Genesis 2 &3. The children of man are
the descendants of Adam and Eve. Mankind
was originally made to be happy and contented. They became unhappy after disobeying God’s explicit instruction in Genesis
2:16,17:
“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying,
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it
you shall surely die.”
When Adam and
Eve disobeyed God, everything that God said by way of a warning came true in Genesis
3:16-19. Apart from being now subject to the curse of death, man’s work is now cursed. His life is now filled with pain and dissatisfaction.
Sin caused a holy God to hand man over
to an unhappy business. But remember that man, when he still had a true free
will to obey God, had brought this unhappy business ultimately upon himself and his future
generations. And so now, everything that Solomon describes is tainted by this
fact! He actually makes this point in 7:29:
“See, this alone I have found, that God
made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes”. Man, without God has become a schemer. Although man retains the image of God in his
fallen state, and although man has God’s creative energy invested within him,
man cannot ultimately enjoy his work. Sin keeps messing things up. Things feel hollow and meaningless – a futile chasing after
the wind. God is not in it, because man, without being renewed by the gospel is acting in his
own strength and wisdom.
Some of you know the story of the
famous painter, Vincent van Gogh
(1853-1890)[1]. He is considered the
greatest Dutch artist after Rembrandt van
Rijn (1609-1669). But the story of his life is so sad. He committed suicide
at the age of 37. He did not live to
enjoy the fruit of his creative genius. He
had a massive talent, but not a life lived in honour of the Creator who gave
him these wonderful gifts. The fallen world was too much in him. Great gifts
and great intellects used apart from God are a great challenge to any man or
woman possessed by such abilities. Solomon
concludes the first chapter with these words, “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge,
increases sorrow.” (1:18). So
very profound!
The pursuit of knowledge apart from God
can drive one mad. I showed you this last time from the life of Friedrich Nietzsche, the German
philosopher who went insane at 55.
I came across this 2007 top documentary
called, “Dangerous Knowledge”[2] by David Malone. In this
documentary Malone looks at the lives of four brilliant mathematician-
philosophers – Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. Their
genius has profoundly affected us, but all of them went insane and eventually
committed suicide.
Georg Cantor (1845-1918)
laid the foundation for much of 20th-century mathematics. He died in a mental
asylum.
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) struggled to prove the
existence of atoms. He had mental issues
and committed suicide.
Kurt Gödel
(1906-1978), a friend of Albert Einstein, and himself a profound
mathematician, became paranoid and starved himself to death.
Alan Turing (1912-1954), famous for deciphering the German military codes
during WWII, is the father of computer science. He struggled with many issues and
he committed suicide.
Each one of these men
had great gifts, but their hearts
and minds were not redeemed by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the
end they were alone and frightened by their great thoughts. While insanity and suicide
is not the outcome for every
intelligent person, it is still true to says that when we remove God from the center of our intellectual
pursuit, we are not safe with our thoughts. They may drive us to insanity and
suicide at worst and depression at best. Solomon warns us. This brings us to
the main body of our text.
Ecclesiastes
2:1-23
Here we find Solomon’s personal
testimony. He not only gives himself to a life spent in the pursuit of wisdom
and knowledge (1:12-18), but also to
a life of unrestrained pleasure (2:1-3),
and the construction of magnificent
buildings and gardens (2:4-6). He
has many slaves to serve him. He has great possessions of animal livestock (2:7). He owns much silver and gold (12:8a). His legendary wealth is described in in 1 Kings 10:6-7.
Solomon has endless entertainment and endless sex:
“I got singers, both men and women and
many concubines…” (2:8b). 1 Kings 11:1-8 comments on this, and v. 3 in particular is very telling, “He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives
turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart
after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God…”.
Never before had a Hebrew king so
much prestige and so much wealth. Solomon says, “So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem…”
(2:9). He had the means to pursue
all that his eyes desired (2:10). He
made it his goal to give himself to unrestrained pleasure… ”I kept my heart from no pleasure”. He
also confesses that, “my heart found
pleasure in all my toil, and this was the reward for all my toil” (2:10). Was is it enjoyable? Yes, of
course, and secretly (and not so secretly) we tend to envy him. That’s the
stuff that the tabloids and the glossy magazines thrive upon- the reports of
the lives of those who pursue wealth and unrestrained pleasure. We buy these
magazines because we crave this. But what was the outcome? Well, we read
of it in 1 Kings 11. And we read of it
in 2:11,
“Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had
expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity, and a striving after wind
[3]
and there was nothing to be gained under
the sun.” (2:11)
The search
continues!
“So
I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly…”(2:12). Having looked life materially, he now considers life philosophically. He begins to
question the meaning of searching for wisdom itself (2:12ff). Is it better to live as a wise man or a fool? He decides that a wise man is better off than
a fool. A wise man avoids many pitfalls;
a fool falls into many of them. It is not difficult to see which way of life is
preferable. “But here is the sad point“,
says Solomon, “The wise man and the fool
both die in the end – so there is no advantage in being wise after all”. This thought fills Solomon with bitterness, “so I hated life, because what is done under
the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.” (2:17)
Do you get the point? You work, you get wealth, you apply wisdom,
but then he confesses in 2:18-21 the
meaninglessness of his work. He mentions toil/labour
eight times. This man wasn’t an arm chair philosopher. He worked hard. He built,
he invested and he produced. But Solomon gets to the point where he says to
himself, “What’s the point of it all? I will
leave this all to a man who comes after me- and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool?… This also is vanity” (2:19).
When he saw this, his heart was
filled with despair (2:20) since
ultimately everything is left to a person who essentially did not labour for
all this hard work- and who will probably squander it. “So, what is the use of all this striving”, he asks? (2:22). A man may work and worry and
lose sleep- but in the end… for what? This also is vanity (2:23). So again, what is the point of
it all? Nothing under the sun brings
lasting satisfaction.
Interim
conclusions and an ultimate conclusion
Interim
conclusion: So far we have learned that all things are vanity! They are all
a striving after the wind (lit. shepherding
the wind); They are nothing
gained under the sun. Thank God that this is not the final conclusion.
The Ultimate conclusion (2:24-26): Here comes the first
bit of God centered counsel for living life in a fallen world from the mouth of Solomon.
If pursued for its own sake this life is filled with so much
meaninglessness, Solomon now asks, How then do you work? How then
should you think? How should you
eat and drink? The answer is given
in 2:24-25:
“There is nothing
better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his
toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him
who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
So the answer is this: Find God at the center of your life! And then
eat and drink and work, and pursue
EVERYTHING with God at the
center.
Remember that it is God
who provides your daily work and your
daily bread. That thought is
repeated in 3:12 &13. And this is precisely what Paul also teaches the Corinthian church, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever
you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1
Cor. 10:31)
And now take note of this final verse in 2:26: “For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge
and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and
collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a
striving after wind.”
A God
fearing man (cf. 5:7) walks through life with a God centered
perspective, and the fruit of this life is godly wisdom, knowledge and joy. And
it totally satisfies the man/ woman who walks with God. They have God, and if
they have God, they have everything.
The man who does not fear God (the
sinner) works (gathers and collects) ultimately only to lose what he gains. He
has pockets with holes in them (Haggai
1:6).And eventually he will lose everything to the meek who please God, for it is the meek alone that will ultimately inherit the earth (Matt 5:5). The God-less life is
ultimately wasted and meaningless.
The Gospel
in Ecclesiastes
There is no
true enjoyment of life, no real meaning to work, apart from God. Sin has messed
life up. Life cries out of meaningfulness, but apart from
God’s intervention and apart from this reversal of the curse by a Divine intervention this cannot happen. The Lord Jesus
Christ is God’s ultimate answer to the curse of meaninglessness.
See how He
changed the life of Paul in Philippians
4:12,13.
As a fallen being have you been changed by the gospel of God?
Do you sense that you are being helped to escape the
futility of life in this world through God centered, gospel centered thinking?
[1] https://www.vincentvangogh.org/biography.jsp
. I have seen some of his paintings in the National Art gallery at Trafalgar square in London
[3] lit. “shepherding the wind”
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