God is Greater Than...Wisdom: The second trap to consider is thinking that pursuing a life of knowledge and wisdom, the intellectual life, will lead to lasting meaning and satisfaction. Now there's nothing wrong with education, innovation, or technological breakthroughs, in fact, they can help so many areas of life. So get wisdom! But avoid the trap of pursuing knowledge and wisdom apart from God. Recorded on May 8, 2022, on Ecclesiastes 2:12-16, by Pastor David Parks.

This message is part of our "God is Greater Than..." sermon series. There are several common traps that human beings have fallen into for thousands of years. Traps of believing that certain pursuits are satisfying enough to take the place of God in your life. But in the end, these pursuits reveal themselves to be ultimately meaningless and lead to a hollow and deeply unsatisfying life. Our series will examine the traps of pursuing pleasure, wisdom, work, and wealth before coming to the conclusion that God is greater than all.

Sermon Transcript

All year, we’re focusing on, The Greatness of God. And today, we’re continuing a sermon series called “God Is Greater Than…” And we’ve said that there are several common traps that human beings have fallen into for thousands of years. These traps are traps of faith, of believing that certain pursuits are big/important/satisfying enough to take the place of God in your life. But in the end, these pursuits lead to a life of hebel, the Hebrew word translated as meaningless; ultimately, these pursuits lead to a life that is hollow and deeply unsatisfying. Our series will examine the traps of pleasure, wisdom, work, and wealth before coming to the conclusion that God is greater than all, and it’s only in him that life has meaning/significance which will last forever. Today, we’ll consider the trap of pursuing a life of wisdom, of pursuing more and more knowledge — the intellectual life. How could that be such a bad thing to be an intelligent person?? Why is the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom a trap? If you have a Bible/app, please open to Ecclesiastes 2:12.

Ecclesiastes 2:12-16 (NIV), “12 Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly. What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done? 13 I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. 14 The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. 15 Then I said to myself, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.” 16 For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die!”

If you missed our series introduction a few weeks ago, you can go back and watch that if you’d like more background on the book of Ecclesiastes. But we’re assuming that King Solomon is the author, which means this book was written almost 3,000 years ago. And King Solomon was known for his wisdom which was a gift from God. So Solomon decided to go on a journey of discovery. He went on something like a quest to understand everything that is done under the sun — a phrase that means basically everything done in this broken world apart from God. And he did this in order to find out what, if anything, is truly meaningful, what among all the possible activities really matters in life — what really gives us meaning under the sun? Last week, we saw that this journey started with pursuing a life of pleasure. Solomon said that “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.” And he tried to see if good food, good wine, accomplishing big projects,