Ecclesiastes 1:12-18, 2:12-17
Listen! “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
Qoheleth’s Quest for the Satisfying Life:..he will try everything before the Book is done.
Friends, we are continuing the book of Ecclesiastes, so we're going to be looking at a couple of paragraphs separated from each other, but they're both paragraphs that deal with wisdom. How far does wisdom take you in life? So one of my main convictions as a Bible communicator is that it should be hope based. There are some communicators who are condemnation based.
Who are anger based? Who are you bad people based?
And I think that's a dead end. It should be hope based.
And I've tried to do that literally for decades now. Then you get into the 1st 2 chapters of Ecclesiastes.
It's a little thin on hope, friends. It's a little thin. So stick with me. We're going to keep going and see what God has for us in each of these paragraphs. So today, chapter 1:12 to 18 and then we'll skip to chapter 2:12 17. Two paragraphs obviously separated, but both of them deal with the question of how far does wisdom take me in the world?
Chapter One, Verse 12, “I, the preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with. I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind.
Vs 15, “What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
Vs, 16, “I said to myself, Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge, and I set my mind to no wisdom and to no madness and folly. I realized that this also is striving after the wind.”
Vs 18. “In much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.”
And then flip over, if you would, chapter 2:12. “For I turn to consider wisdom, madness, and folly. For what will a man do? I'm sorry, for what will the man do? Who will come after the king, except what has already been done? And I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one fate falls on both of them. Vs 15,Then I said to myself. As the fate of the fool, it will also befall me. Why then, have I been extremely wise? So I said to myself, this too is vanity, for there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, in as much as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how the wise man and the fool alike die. So I hate life. It's a very technical Hebrew word which means hated. I hated my life because of what I saw, for the work which is done under the sun was grievous to me because everything is futile and striving after the wind.”
Father, we need your guidance as we think about these two paragraphs together. Pray your Spirit would help us. I pray you'd give me clarity of thought. I pray especially that my heart, all of our hearts would be open to the question of what do you have for us today? I pray in Christ's name, Amen.
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, I'm sure you know, at a theater. It was April 14th in 1865. It happened at about 10 o’clock at night when he was shot in the back of the head. Abraham Lincoln and his wife were at a play called “Our American Cousin”. It was a three-part act play which was comparing the beliefs, thoughts and relational style of Americans to that of British people and it was a spoof, a comedy apparently a funny play and they were watching this play and Lincoln is shot and then the next morning.
And there's a famous joke in America that goes like, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like to play? Other than the fact that your husband was murdered, how'd you like to play? So the answer is of course. I didn't like it at all. The death of her husband overshadowed anything that she saw or experienced that night. Maybe she laughed through the 1st 2 acts before this actor. Booth was an actor who came up behind him and shot him. Other than that, Misses Lincoln, How did you like the play?
I told you that story to say that Ecclesiastes is so far, about like that. So other than the fact that life is fleeting, how do you like it? Other than the fact that life is grievous, how do you like it? Other than the fact that life is wearisome, how do you like it? Other than the fact that life is unsatisfying, how do you like it? Other than the fact that life ends in death, how do you like it? Other than the fact that you will be forgotten, how do you like it?
Not exactly the stuff of hope based preaching this morning, but it's stuff that has value for us. As Qoheleth looks through this question and says how can I find some life apart from God? I'm going to try wine, women, song, wisdom, madness, folly, gardens, chariots, horses, 1000 a thousand wives and concubines. I got a whole bunch of plans and he's going to find that every one of them ends in either cul-de-sac. Or the nasty drop off of a Cliff.
So today he's going to look at the question of how far will wisdom take me? And before we look at that question, I want to introduce one concept that I think is very much in play in this whole book as he is searching through how am I going to find life?
There are three kinds of atheists in the world, at least the way I think about it. The first kind of atheist in the world is the philosophical, theological, or scientific atheist, that is the person who has an honest intellectual.
Hang up with the existence of God, or the nature of God. They believe something in their mind which prevents them from believing what this book says about God, and so they're hung up. They might want to believe, but they just see it intellectually doesn't work for me. Now for that kind of an atheist, the best thing to do is read a book called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Doctor Norm Geisler.
It's a brilliant book dealing with that question, but it's primarily for those kinds of atheists.
The second kind of atheist is what I would call an arrogant and guilty atheist. This is the person who understands their sin, who feels horrible guilt, who's very conscious that they've done evil things and they are struggling because they're afraid they're going to stand before God, but they're too arrogant to humble themselves. Confess their sin and submit to God, and therefore they're hung up. They're not. They don't have an intellectual problem with God. They have a pride problem.
I don't want to confess my sin and humble myself before him. So for that kind of atheist, the key issue is to be a person who repents, who cast themselves on the Holy Spirit and said, help me because I really, I think there's so many of these people who are trying to drive away the existence of God because of personal guilt. If there is no God, I don't have to feel this bad.
Third kind of atheist is what's most prevalent in America. It is the very, most tragic, and that is the practical atheist. That's the person who believes in the existence of God, who maybe even trusts in Christ. Who gives verbal assent to all the things that this person should say and believe about God, but then they live as if it doesn't exist. And they have this huge dissonance between God as they acknowledge him. And God as they treat him, it is a massive dissonance. And every one of us to some degree have a disconnect in our life between God as we acknowledge him and God as we treat him. And this kind of atheist comes into play for that kind of atheist. We just have to take an honest look and say, does my lifestyle match up with what I say, I believe about God? Am I acknowledging God and treating God in the same way? So their Co-health ii’s talking about wisdom in it from an atheistic perspective. And I would say from a practical atheistic perspective. End of the book we're going to see he believes in God, even has faith in God.
But he's on this long journey to say, could I find out? How to find some joy, How to find some happiness apart from him and doing all these experiments?
There, I forgot who said it, but somebody said human beings are wanting machines. We want stuff. And we want stuff, either things or money or pleasure or fame or whatever we want so that we will be happy.
Blaise Pascal. All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they use, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war and others avoiding it is the same desire in both, that is to be happy. This is the motive of every action, every man, even those who hang themselves. Are striving to be happy as a man have not been able to cure death, misery and ignorance. They have taken to not thinking about them in order to become happy. And then he says the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not have the ability to stay quietly in his own room.
He says there's nothing so unbearable for a man as complete repose, without passions, without business, without distraction, without application. Then he feels his nothingness, his abandonment, his dependence, his impotence, his emptiness. Incontinent. From the depths of his soul there will arise boredom, melancholy, sadness, sorrow, spite and despair.
Qoheleth is a man with an absolute. Utter inability to sit quietly in his own room. It would drive him mad. So he's out on this quest, this investigation to find happiness.
First, I will explore by wisdom all of the activities that have been given to man. (1:13)
Now he said previously in chapter 1:8, this general statement, “All things are wearisome. And now he comes in chapter 1:13 to say, all right, “I'm going to look at some specific things and show you.”
They're all worrisome, and that's why I said what I said back in chapter 1:8, First thing, he's going to employ his wisdom in his search for happiness. Wisdom, biblically speaking, is a skill in ethical and practical living. It's prudence. It's a shrewd insight. Or another way to say it would be man's best thinking.
Man's best ability to deal with stuff. We can be practical, ethical, shrewd people at times. But through the whole search that we're going to look at. Qoheleth leaves out the first principle of wisdom, biblical wisdom.
The first principle of biblical wisdom.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Six times in the Bible that comes out, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and Qohelath is using wisdom at this point without the fear of the Lord involved. So he starts with these conclusions.
First Conclusion: Man’s tasks are grievous and are afflicted on him by God. (1:13)
Chapter one, verse 13. The first conclusion is that man's tasks are grievous and afflicted on him by men. All the tasks he tried to find happiness, he concluded it's grievous. It's afflicted on us. God's afflicting us. The word grievous is a very famous Hebrew word.
Pronounced raw. RA and the word means to be bad or evil. It's used for tasks that are disagreeable, unpleasant, displeasing, bad, unhappy, or miserable.
It's like my job in seminary for a while picking dead leaves off a holly Bush. I mean, it was not only painful, it was mind numbing. It went on for hours. It was raw or, or like going to clean up after your child threw up or like reading 1500 pages of regulations. It's just, I can't do this. It's killing me. And he says they're afflicted on us by God. This is like God is causing us something painful. He's humbling us. He's bowing us down by these grievous, afflicting tasks that we have to do. It's like more, more, more bricks with less straw. It just keeps going on. My son will say to me, Dad, you have to afflict us with these jokes, afflict us. To which I say yes, and I do. It's the price of staying in the will. You know what I mean?
My dad afflicted me. I'm afflicting you. You're going to afflict your children. You don't understand it yet, but you will get there. You'll be afflicted and that's his work and relationships and life and fitness and all life in general is grievous. It feels like it's afflicted on us. That's his first conclusion.
Second Conclusion: All work is vapor and striving after wind. (1:14)
Chapter 1:14, “ I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and a striving after wind.”. The words we've discussed have missed, it's breath, it's wind, it's brief, it's going away. You can't grab it and it's also driving after the wind. It's a futile waste of energy. You tell a child, go catch the wind.
What, you're standing in a 40 mile an hour windstorm and all these leaves are going by and you see a red one that you really want to have and you start running after a red leaf in a 40 mile an hour wind. I mean, good luck.
That's his conclusion about these activities that he saw. He's basically saying there's something exhausting about life. It's something difficult to get a real lasting accomplishment.
Many years ago, friends, I read this book about architecture students in the poorest county in Georgia who built things out of almost nothing for the good of their community. And so there were playgrounds and there were youth centers and, and this one student had built a Chapel out of automobile windshields. And he lived in Detroit and he had just gone to all the junk yards and bought hundreds of automobile windshields. And he went down to this poor country and he secured a place and he poured a foundation and he built this really gorgeous tall Chapel out of windshields. It was amazing. The color picture of the book was beautiful. And then one year I had a conference about an hour from there, and I thought, I'm going to go see that thing I drive out there with my rental car. It was a trash heap. The thing was intact, but inside was nothing but garbage. And burned out fire pits. And it was clearly a hangout for underage drinking, underage smoking.
There was graffiti all over it. It was hammered. It was ruined. He knocked himself out, this bright, industrious college student, spent a bunch of money, bought the windshields, and that's a mess. And so he's saying to us, yeah, there's a lot of things that life is extremely wearisome and grievous.
Third conclusion: Vs. 15, “What is crooked cannot be straightened out, and what's lacking cannot be counted.” says Qohelith,.
So, friends, have you ever had a piece of wire that had a kink in it? You could try to straighten it? Well, you can basically get it straight, but you always know where the kink is. That's where it was and you still got that little deformity. You have a spine with scoliosis. You can make it better. Well, you can't fix it. You have a road that needs to be straightened. You can make it better, but you can't. Ultimately, bottom line, at the end of the day, you can't. You can't fix it. The stuff that's crooked in our world cannot ultimately be fixed by us. It can't be healed.
The world is full of crooked stuff because of the curse, because of the fall of Romans. The whole creation is groaning until God fixes it. Now we have a responsibility to fight it, but we're not ultimately going to fix it. What is lacking cannot be counted.
If you don't have any money, you can't count it. I hate board games with a passion, friends. I mean, I'd rather have a root canal than play a board game. But once in a while, my granddaughters will put so much pressure on me. I'll play a board game and I'm playing a board game I've never played before. They've played a dozen times and they just wipe me out. You know, I'm just cleaned out. I get dead last place. And at the end they say, OK, count your pieces to see who won. Grandpa, count your pieces. Oh, you don't have any pieces? Thank you. No, I don't have any pieces.
I can't count any pieces. And sometimes in a scarce world, you can't count the money because it's gone. So then he says, all right, I'm going to try something different. Secondly, he says chapter 1:16-17 and 2:12, I'm going to strive to know about wisdom and madness and folly and knowledge. Let's see if there's anything there. So he's going to try knowledge, which is perception. It's understanding, it's discernment. It's our ability as humans to sort stuff out. To figure stuff out, to know stuff that we need to know. Does it deliver real life? He's going to ask.
Second, I will strive to know wisdom, folly and wisdom. (1:16,17; 2:12)
First Conclusion: All of it is striving after wind. (1:17)
He's also going to try wisdom. We talked about this man's best thinking, practical, shrewd, make life work, do the right things, and be a wise person. Of course, he left out the first principle. So then he says I'm going to try madness and folly. So madness and folly are two different words that both have the concept of mental oddity and moral depravity.
This is not just being strange or thinking weird. This is being mentally offbeat and morally out of bounds. I'm going to try these two things together and I'm going to see how these things work. The ultimate diminishing returns in life, madness and folly. I mean, if you thought you got something out of them the first time, the second time, last, the third time, you know, just look up diminishing returns in Wikipedia. It'll,just say, or it should say madness and folly.
Look up an example of diminishing returns. Or look up an example of madness and folly. What should it say? Freak offs.
It's just, it's crazy, it's immoral, it's altered states of consciousness by drugs or whatever. It's just no restraint. It's just going crazy. Do these things deliver abundant life?
Qoheleth asks. Here's his answer. A whole bunch of conclusions. I won't belabor any of them. First conclusion, verse, chapter one, verse 17. It's striving after the wind. If you think madness, folly, wisdom are going to deliver something to your life.
Just chase a leaf in a tornado. Chase your receipt in a tornado. Good luck. It's madness. There's nothing to it.
Second conclusion: verse 18. More wisdom, more grief, more knowledge, more pain. And so this talks about grief as vexation, grief, frustration, and then pain, mental pain, sorrow.
And the crazy part of life is when I have more wisdom, I have more grief.
And when I have more knowledge, I have more pain. The more I know about life, the more I see into it and the more painful it is to me.
When the auto mechanic comes looking at my car and I says that won't start, and then he takes off some stuff and he says, hey, yeah, well, you've got oil in your air intake. The motor is ruined.
How much do I know about it? It won't start.
He's got a lot more knowledge. He knows the motor is ruined. I go to my dentist. I got this infection outside of my gum. I say, does this need to be a Lancer medication or what? And she says, no, you need a root canal. It's called a fistula. It means your root canal has got to be done.
More knowledge, more pain.
The guy who finally checks the final numbers on a parking garage that his company has already built discovered they forgot to include in their calculations for the weight of the cars. This really happened. They built a fine structure if you're not going to put anything in it, but it has to be reinforced because they forgot the weight of the cars.
More knowledge, more pain. Now I don't have any ability in mechanics, dentistry, engineering, but I've worked with people enough that I see stuff and I know stuff because I see how they act and what they say and what they don't do and I can read them because I've been doing it for 40 years.
More knowledge, more pain.
I look at stuff and I say there's something wrong here. And you have expertise and you know, you see stuff you say. The average person has no idea, but there's some pain going on there.
Third conclusion: (2:12) The next king cannot do more than I have done. Now, friends, the next king, the next president, the next pastor, they're all going to be striving people. They want to do stuff. They want to accomplish stuff and they should and we all want to accomplish stuff and strive. And there in terms of the little stuff, they can't do any more than the last guy did. And in terms of the big stuff, they will fail utterly, like curing cancer and stopping war and ending sin and ending death. That's just beyond us. The next guy, I'm sure he will strive, but he can't do more than me. I mean, one of my blessings in life is that I know I'm interim. Every pastor is interim, but I know I'm interim. It's right in my title. And I want to be a person who, when I have this moment on this platform, I want to help. It's in my heart to strive and to help, but I'm really clear that I'm not going to, you know, solve the problems of the world or even FCBC. I'm going to strive and you're striving at what you're doing, But ultimately, there's got to be some other solution. We want to honor Christ, but he's going to have to do something.
Fourth Conclusion: (2:13,14) Wisdom exceeds folly as light exceeds darkness.
A duh, Yeah. Better to be wise than foolish, because a wise person, he says, has his eyes in his head. She's walking around in the light. A foolish person is walking around in the dark. And when you walk in the dark, you hit your shin on the coffee table. You beat yourself up on the edges of life. Foolish people are beating themselves up on the edges of life. The medicating was stuff they're self medicating. They're taking their car title in to get a loan on it, you know, 3000% whatever they charge in those things. I mean, they're just beating themselves up on the edges of life because they're foolish. They're walking in the darkness. If you have wisdom, you walk in the light. Friends. Years ago, I went to speak at a men's retreat. It finished on a Saturday night. I was going to be given a ride home by a friend of mine because I had to speak the next morning in Houston. And I got all my gear together and I'm standing in a parking lot and I see him driving off and I think, oh, no, he's forgotten me. And so I started running. In the dark and I didn't see a railroad tie that was hooked down to keep car wheels from going past it. I hit it with my right foot. I sprawled on the parking lot. Road. rash on my hands and my knees.
Got in the van. My foot is hurting terribly. I asked him to turn the Dome light on my tennis shoes covered with blood. I'll spare you the details of what I found when I took off my shoe and my sock. It was a mess. Don't run in the dark. Don't run with scissors. Don't be a fool. It's better to be wise than to be foolish.
It's dangerous to run in the dark. Wisdom is better than foolishness.
Fifth Conclusion: (2:14, 16) But both the wise person and the fool are going to die, and they're going to be forgotten. Whether you're wise or foolish, you will die. Whether you're fit or a slob, you will die. Whether you're rich or poor, you will die. Well known or unknown, you will die. Whether you're beautiful or plain, you are going to die. Count Zinzendorf, extremely wealthy man in Germany about a century and a half ago, helped with the
Moravian movement of believers, gave them his castle and property to live on, became a serious follower of Christ. He said we are responsible, our responsibility is to preach the Gospel, die, be forgotten. Well, Uncle Hella says hey, preach the gospel and.
The other two are kind of taken care of. You know, the rest of them are going to happen. You're going to be forgotten. I don't care who you are. Now, here's the problem, friends. We're going to be forgotten in this life. As I told you, a couple messages or messages or whatever it was, I don't know my great grandfather's name. I will be forgotten. My great grandchildren probably won't know my name. I will die. I will be forgotten. Nothing to that. But I don't want to be forgotten in heaven.
You and I want to be people who hear the message of this book that we have this sin problem that separates us from a holy God, that we violated His standards, His law, and His character. And because we did that, we can't be with him. God cannot wink, overlook sin, or he stops being holy and he stops being God. And so he did something. Sacrificed his son to pay for our sins. And he says to us, if you'll trust my son for forgiveness, give up on everything else. I mean, 100% give up on everything else, Jesus, plus nothing, I'll give you forgiveness. I'll give you eternal life.
And if I do that, no matter how worrisome, grievous, frustrating this life is, no matter how many of my projects end up like a garbage dump with fire pits in them, I will be remembered in heaven.
Even though I'm going to be forgotten here, I don't want to be forgotten in eternity. Chapter 2,
Sixth conclusion: (2:15) Since we both diem it was vapor to pursue wisdom
We will both die. Meaning, he says, the wise men and the fool. It is vapor to pursue wisdom. I knocked myself out and it was like trying to grab a piece of vapor. The billionaire and the bag lady, the wise and the fool, they're all going to die. They're all going to be forgotten. Wisdom, again, is devoid of the first principle.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Seventh Conclusion: (2:17) I hated life because all work is grievous, futile and striving after wind.
Are you depressed yet? It's grievous. It's the word we already talked about raw. It's happy, it's unhappy, it's evil, it's bad, it's unpleasant. I had a job one summer, friends as a kid, selling hot coffee at the Cody Knight Rodeo.
Now the adults all wanted beer, the kids all wanted Coke, and I was selling hot coffee. It was grievous. It was a long summer. I'm walking around with these things, a hot coffee. The other people are selling out and going back from where I'm selling like 1 cup a night. It's grievous.
That's what a lot of life is like in this world. We just struggle with stuff. It's futile. It's Haveel, it's breath, it's striving after wind, it's chasing a receipt in a Tornado. Other than that, how do you like life?
Mike Rowe had a TV show called Dirty Jobs. Here's some of his top dirty ones. Sewer inspector, Pig farmer, Hot tar roofer, Sludge cleaner, Goose down plucker, Jellyfish separator.
I was intrigued. I watch a little bit of the jellyfish thing. There is a woman who stands with like a 200 gallon thing of salt water full of jellyfish and she picks him up and she peels the top off of them, throws the top there and the and the rest of it over there. All day long. She's separating a jellyfish from his head. It's grievous, it's draining. It's raw, RA. It's bad. You think your job is bad? Just think about this woman. You're not doing that. Here's his conclusion. Second week in a row, he is walking off saying to us, yeah, I got nothing for you.
I got nothing for you. It's grievous, it's long. It's you're going to die, you're going to be forgotten. There's really nothing there. The truth for each one of us is we have to be careful about this question of am I living as a practical atheist?
Is there a massive disconnect between what I declare to be true about God and the way I treat Him? Because if I'm a practical atheist, not even an intellectual atheist, a scientific atheist.
A guilty atheist. If I'm a practical atheist, I'm coming to the same stuff that he came to. It's going to be a hollow life. If I have all the wisdom in the world, but it is devoid of the first principle, which is the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
So a practical atheist is a person who declares their faith in God, even put their trust in Christ. They said, I believe the Bible is infallible. But they don't read it. They're the people who 4 weeks later realize, oh, I'm missing my Bible. They come into the office. Oh yeah, it's been in the lost and found for four weeks. I missed it after four weeks, went to pick it up to carry and it was gone. I don't use it. Obviously. They declare a steward of God's money, but they never give. They declare I'm a follower of Christ, but they basically forget him all week.
I have great confidence in prayer, but I don't pray it. It's a hollow life. It's hollow life trying to find God, trying to find life without wisdom. Ask yourself the question as I ask myself, is there a disconnect between God as I acknowledge him and God as I treat him?
Let me pray for his friends.
Father, thank you that Qoheleth is so honest. Quite depressing, but so honest. And I'm asking today that we would be people who give a serious look at whether we are trying to be satisfied in Jesus.
Or in something else? I'm asking we'd be people who pursue you in a serious way that we would reduce the gap. Between you as we acknowledge you, and you as we treat you. Please help us, Father. Please help me.
We need your help in all of this, and we pray in Christ now.
Conclusion: Qoheleth, for the second week in a row you have walked off without giving hope.