Grace Evangelical Free Church // Wyoming, MN

    Psalm 23 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
    2    He makes me lie down in green pastures.
    He leads me beside still waters.
    3    He restores my soul.
    He leads me in paths of righteousness
        for his name’s sake.

    4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
        I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
        your rod and your staff,
        they comfort me.

    5 You prepare a table before me
        in the presence of my enemies;
    you anoint my head with oil;
        my cup overflows.
    6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
        all the days of my life,
    and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
        forever. (ESV)

Good morning! My name is Colin Rueter, one of the pastors here at Grace. My sermon this morning is on one of the most familiar passages in scripture, known by Christians and non-Christians alike. It is a little passage that appears on coffee mugs, as a cross-stitched image framed on Grandma’s wall, and on unused bookmarks sitting in our junk drawers. The truths in this short Psalm are a balm for the soul, whether you find yourself in green pastures or walking the valley of deep darkness. I have been blessed and helped tremendously by the book, “The LORD of Psalm 23: Jesus Our Shepherd, Companion, and Host” by David Gibson.

As many of you know, I am not a country boy… I grew up in the city. While I am a shepherd for the church, I am no shepherd on the farm. While I will make references to shepherding and sheep, let it be known that I am no expert in that field… pun intended. I also want to be very clear that while I have heard, and it may be true, sheep are dumb and hence God comparing us to sheep is not supposed to be an esteem-booster… God uses the phrase often to speak to His care, love, guidance, and providence for His people, seen ultimately through His Son Jesus Christ the Great Shepherd.

When David wrote this Psalm, he was preaching these truths to himself, he needed these words. He was also, prophesying about the coming Messiah – the Lamb of God and the Great Shepherd.

Jesus is the Lamb of God who came and He is the Good Shepherd. He had a Shepherd, God the Father, His soul restored after walking through the valley of death, He has been anointed with oil at His Father’s table and dwells with the Father in His house forever on the throne. Jesus, both a lamb and a shepherd, gets us.

In addition, this Psalm is a reminder to us that the word of God is written for us to remind us of who God is, the promises He has made His people, and that life will be a journey of joys and darkness while we are being led home. This Psalm is not just for your death bed, but for the journey Home.

Last note on this Psalm: These promises in this passage are for those who have heard, repented, and entered by faith into Christ. If you are here this morning, not trusting in Jesus, the promises here are not yours… yet. My plea to you this morning, as was already shared, is to trust in the all-sufficient work of the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep… and receive these promises and eternal life today.

Main Point this morning is that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, leads us with His good and gracious hand through this life and into forever. He knows His sheep, He knows the path, and He is faithful to ensure that the whole flock will make it to the House of the Lord. The takeaway for us is to trust and rest in the Good Shepherd.

This morning, we will look at the Shepherd and the life He provides for His people:

The LORD. Yahweh. I AM. A right and growing understanding of the One True God is a life-long endeavor. We must see this statement in vs 1 on the front side to be the reason why David can say, “I shall not want.” Another way of looking at verse 1 is: “The One True Almighty is my Savior and Lord, therefore I lack nothing.” I have all I need in Him alone. Take the world and I gain my soul because God is my Shepherd.

I don’t want to move too quickly past this first verse. The truth – you have a shepherd. The awesome truth – your shepherd is the LORD. Each one of us is following someone or something. Even those of us who would say they are swimming against the current of culture or crowds are at times conforming to it. Yet, brothers and sisters, the LORD is our shepherd. He sees us, guides us, using His crook to keep us on the good path when we stray. We have and should trust in the best shepherd possible – the LORD.

This is woven throughout the story before David. As Jacob blessed Joseph, he reflects on the rich history of God the Shepherd, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day… ” (Gen.48:15).

As Moses led the people out of Egypt, it was the LORD who was their Shepherd, guiding them through the wilderness to the Promised Land. Note also that the Lord gives His people men to be under-shepherds. Moses specifically throughout the early days of Israel was called and equipped by God to lead His people, as Moses (also a sheep), trusted the Good Shepherd, the LORD.

I want to make sure we notice as David, and us along with him, proclaim that God Almighty is my shepherd, he uses God’s personal name, Yahweh. If we move too quickly past this, which we often do, we miss the significance of this statement in two ways: that God would be a shepherd and that He is my shepherd.

This name, Yahweh, can be translated “I am who I am” is the personal name given to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3. Though personal, it also carries with it a mystery. Though God can be known, He remains impossible to grasp completely. So, while the LORD is my shepherd, David’s shepherd, and yours… He is self-existent and cannot be fully understood. This is good news, friends. God, above all else, who is the LORD, is working in ways that remind us that we are not in control, do not know all things, and is keenly aware of what His sheep need. May we functionally live our lives in that truth and not just speak it as truth. More could be said, but let me move on with this: KNOW your God, behold Him, trust Him, remember His works and faithfulness, and when you come to mystery, rest in the goodness and righteousness that He is.

Since the LORD is my shepherd, [THEREFORE] I lack nothing, David says. God, my shepherd will provide all that I need and what I do not need, I will not have. This is a life-long reflection of David. Psalm 23, starting with this verse, is David putting God at the center of his life, hope, peace, and future.

Psalm 37, vs 25-26: “I have been young, now I’m old, but God’s people have not been forsaken or their children ever seen begging for bread… ”

Paul spoke to the deep reality of this passage about Jesus in Philippians, “I have known earthly riches and lack and yet learned to be content in all situations because God through Christ strengthened me.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, spoke in John 10, “I have come that the sheep might have life and life to the full.” Later in John 15, that Jesus’ joy would be in His people and that it would be full joy.

Contentment, joy, provision… because of our hard work, wisdom and awesomeness… NO! We have this because God is our shepherd… therefore we lack nothing.

Vs 2 & 3: “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. 3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

The Lord God Almighty is our Shepherd; therefore, we have all that we need. Our life, instead of clamoring after things to be successful, we rest in the glories that our life in Christ is full of joy and peace. David is speaking on the heavenly realities that he experienced here on earth.

Vs 2: “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides still waters.”

A wiser man, who spent time as a shepherd, said that in order for sheep (one or the whole flock) needed specific circumstances to lie down and rest: free from flies, fear, friction (angst from other sheep), and hunger.

Sheep will not drink unless the waters are calm, fear will rise and they will not stoop to drink waters of life. The waters need to be still and calm before they drink and be satisfied.

Are we not the same?

When we are free from these things, we rest. Through Christ, sin is eradicated, fear is cast out by the perfect love of God, friction (while still existing in this life) can be redeemed and reconciled between us and God and between us as the sheep through Christ who is our peace. Additionally, we no longer hunger for we have eaten from the Bread of Life – Jesus Christ.

Jesus spoke of giving ‘living water’ to the woman at the well. Drink and never be thirsty again. Another translation of still waters is “waters of rest.” Jesus spoke this in John 10: “Through me they will go in and out and find pasture (rest).”

Therefore, Jesus can rightly say, “Come to me all who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) The LORD is your shepherd, He will care for you in all ways so that your soul may rest.

Vs 3: “He restores my soul and leads me on paths of righteousness for His name’s sake… ”

I want to break this verse up into 3a and 3b

First, “He restores my soul… ”

Since God is my shepherd and He provides for all of my needs and therefore I find rest… my soul is restored to the place it must be – a state of true rest and peace. Before Jesus, your soul was restless, you had no peace, and life was always below the clouds (as the Preacher says). After being called and finding the Good Shepherd, your soul finds rest, you have peace, and you experience life above the clouds in glory (partially now and in full when you see Jesus face-to-face).

Second, “He leads me on paths of righteousness for His name’s sake… ”

Since God is my shepherd, He is going to lead me down the good path, His path so I would know His name and goodness. As you have heard the voice of the Shepherd, you follow the voice. You may have chosen the path to walk on, but it isn’t your path… it’s His. This also means that your journey will look differently than someone else’s. We are on the same path, the same way to God… but we are all on different journeys.

There’s this great part in “The Horse and His Boy” by Lewis. Spoiler: Shasta has reached nearly the end of his journey to the North and he meets Aslan. Aslan explains that He has been with Shasta throughout his life, doing good and hard things to bring Shasta to where he needs to be. When Shasta asks about other people that have been with him, Aslan simply says, to the affect, ‘I am telling you your story, not someone else’s. I have been with you this whole time.’ This is the Lion of Judah walking with you on the path of righteousness.

God gives a truly abundant life. He provides for my daily needs (green pastures), provides refreshment and peace (still waters), brings back my soul from death (restores), and leads me on the good path for His glory. The natural flow from these verses brings us to David’s declaration in verse 4.

Verse 4: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

I want to make this note: In the Hebrew, this Psalm is 20 lines, including the title. The exact middle point of this Psalm is verse 4, specifically, “for you are with me.” David wants this to be the center because God wants this to be center in our hearts. So good.

This life is a pilgrimage. We are heading to the Promised Land and to get there… we must travel through this wilderness.

So, David, reflecting on the truth that God is his shepherd, providing and guiding… understood that the Good and Guiding Shepherd will lead him through valleys with darkness like death. Meaning, if He is guiding David… God must be with him. This verse brings us to an intimate point in the psalm. Shepherding during David’s time meant that traversing through the valley was a change in the season for the flock. This time, in the valley, was spent with the shepherd alone.

Friends, when you are in the darkest of places, in the valley deep… you have an intimate position with God. Truly Christ felt this reality in the garden, a pleading voice and obedient voice to the will of the Father. In addition, this means that every trial and every feeling of isolation where you hear your heart or the Enemy say, “You’re alone… no one is here… no one cares… ” – God is. You can preach to your heart and rebuke the cosmic loser Satan that God is ever present and with me in this valley! No fear for God’s guidance, the Spirit and His word, are a comfort for us. They are a means of grace to keep our eyes on the Shepherd… even as we question whether He knows what He is doing at times.

Vs 5-6: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

As the Good Shepherd leads us through green pastures and dark valleys… He is preparing.

From preparing a table for you to sit at, anointing your head with oil to over-filling your cup, see who is doing this. Our Shepherd Jesus has welcomed you to His table, anointed you with His oil, and He fills your cup. You have shifted from being a sheep of His pasture, close but still a sheep… to now seated at the Table of the King where He calls you His friend.

This last section is a look ahead to the Last Supper where Jesus is seated at a table with the traitor Judas and Satan watching and even further beyond to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in Revelation where those invited are seated at the Table of the Lamb who was slain.

We should ask: “How can it be? This is amazing… the Good Shepherd, the King, who called out my name, who cleared out my ears and eyes to see and hear Him has brought me to His table… .”

Well, David gives us the answer that we know, but also proclaim: The Good Shepherd’s goodness and grace pursued me all my days… .You didn’t earn a spot at the King’s table, He graciously pursued you with His goodness and grace. Even as you sit at His table, His goodness and grace keep you there. Friends, Grace Church, this is a current reality in many ways. You are friends with the King today through His grace in Christ.

The Apostle Paul, “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2:4-7)

But wait – there’s more!

AND I will be in the LORD’s house forever

Not only feasting at a table prepared by the King, but we dwell, abide, in His home forever. From the day that we are saved to the day we enter into our Master’s joy, we have a home waiting for us. This is the Christian’s blessed hope. The journey ends with entering the Master’s house. Even more than that, we enter it as He has led us home, faithfully and without losing any of His sheep through all the days of our life.

Psalm 27: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.”

This Psalm is your life through Christ, friends. It is much more than a death-bed comfort… it is a life-long sustainer of our faith in the One who will do these things… why? Because He is my Shepherd, He is your shepherd and He is faithful to guard His flock.

Let me close with this, Familiarity can kill awe… or it can stir comfort and rest. Brothers and sisters… find comfort here in this Psalm and find rest in the Good Shepherd.

The writer of Hebrews knew this well… “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 4:14-16)

To close, let’s stand and recite this renewed version of Psalm 23 together:

     The LORD my shepherd rules my life and gives me all I need.
     He leads me by refreshing streams; in pastures green I feed.
     The Lord revives my failing strength, He makes my joy complete;
     and in right paths, for His name’s sake, he guides my faltering feet.
     Though in a valley dark as death, no evil makes me fear;
     Your shepherd’s staff protects my way, for you are with me there.
     While all my enemies look on you spread a royal feast;
     You fill my cup, anoint my head, and treat me as your guest.
     Your goodness and your gracious love pursue me all my days;
     Your house, O Lord, shall be my home – Your name my endless praise.
               [C. Idle, “The Lord My Shepherd Rules My Life”]

Yes and Amen.

Let’s Pray.

Ecclesiastes 3:9-15 What gain has the worker from his toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

Try to think of a time where someone presented something to you in such a way that you didn’t have an opportunity to immediately interact—with agreement, disagreement, questions, or other feedback. That shouldn’t be too difficult since it’s happening right now. Sermons are by nature one-way streets. They are meant to be expositions of God’s Word for God’s people, not a discussion time. Lectures are like that as well. Concerts, conferences, and training are often one-way in that way too. Sometimes, it’s best to simply take things in.

At the same time, thoughtful people often long for the opportunity to engage whatever they receive at some point. That’s a big part of why we have DGs and why DGs often focus on the sermon. Likewise, one of my favorite parts of grad school was the opportunity we had to sit down with the prof. in a roundtable discussion after the lecture.

In some ways, that’s what we have in our passage. It’s a kind of Q&A with the Preacher regarding his assertion that God is sovereign over every time and season of our lives and his poem commemorating that.

If you were here for last week’s sermon, you heard me say that the Preacher’s poem (3:2-8) is an expansion on his declaration of God’s sovereignty over our every moment and experience (3:1). Last week you also heard me say that he withholds any explanation of that until the next section (which is our passage for this morning).

In other words, in 3:1-8 we find the assertion that, at the hand of God, there is a season for everything we encounter and in 3:9-15 we find an explanation for that. It’s as if the Preacher imagined a batch of questions that were likely to flow out of his assertions and so he answered them right after making them. A lecture followed by an imaginary Q&A.

Within the “Q&A” we’ll see that the Preacher’s big idea is that wrapped in mystery is the fact that God has made everything beautiful in its time. Because of the beauty, we can trust God and find joy. Because of the mystery, our joy is limited under the sun. The main takeaways are to enjoy that which God has given us and look to God’s Word to know more fully what God has given and how to enjoy it.

Grace, this is a helpful passage and I hope a helpful sermon for everyone. At the same time, I’m particularly hopeful that there are some thoughtful skeptics here today. Anyone who has been frustrated with life will find some measure of relief here. Anyone who is honest enough to acknowledge that they experience inner turmoil will find relief here. Anyone who knows that there is a God, but has struggled to know what to do about that will find relief here. Anyone whose conscience has caused them times of restlessness will find relief here. And anyone who has struggled to understand the goodness of some of God’s sovereign works will find relief here.

Over the years that I’ve been a pastor at Grace Church, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God has been one of the more controversial. Not a lot, but some have even left because we believe and teach (the joyful, hopeful, glorious, inescapable reality) that God’s Word reveals, beginning to end, that God is in control of every aspect of His creation.

In the OT, some of which the Preacher would have had access to, and some of which he might have even written (Proverbs), of God’s sovereignty we read…

Isaiah 45:7 I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.

Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.

Job 42:2 I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Lamentations 3:37–38 Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?

The NT is just as, and in some cases, even more explicit concerning the fact that God works all things according to the counsel of His will.

Acts 4:27–28 For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Ephesians 1:11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will . . .

Colossians 1:16–17 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

In my experience, the main issue is not whether the Bible teaches the sovereignty of God (because it so clearly does), it’s that people struggle to appreciate the goodness and make sense of the philosophical implications of the Bible’s teaching on it. They don’t understand how they can make real choices if God is sovereign. And they definitely don’t understand how they could have experienced all the hardship and suffering they have under the sovereign reign of a good God.

Those are very reasonable questions. It is good to ask them and it is worth the time it takes to understand what the Bible says (and does not say) about them.

I bring all of this up because it is clear throughout Ecclesiastes that the Preacher struggled with those same things and wrestled with those same questions. He knew that God is sovereign, but he had a really hard time making sense of life under the sun in light of it. In many ways, he seems to have given up trying to understand it and just resigned himself to the fact of God’s sovereignty, the mystery that surrounds it, and the need to just make the best of things in light of both.

Again, having asserted God’s sovereignty and poetically described its scope, the Preacher anticipated a number of questions that many had in his day and still have today.

Given the fact that God is ultimately in charge of everything, what difference (gain) does our work make under the sun? (Remember, an important idea for the author of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher, is “under the sun.” For him it means life on earth, under the curse. It has a strong sense of life interpreted according to earthly wisdom.)

Again, what difference does our work make under the sun in light of God’s sovereignty? If God is in control of everything, including me, my work, and its outcome, does it really matter what we do?

These are questions many of us have felt and asked as well. Does what I’m doing really make any difference? Is there any actual gain in my work?

The Preacher has already addressed the issue of work in some detail. In 1:3, he asked almost the exact same question. His answer there was that man’s work is like running on a treadmill, always moving, never getting anywhere. We just keep working ourselves in circles. It’s all “full of weariness, a man cannot utter it” (1:8). Everything we work for will be soon forgotten.

In the second chapter of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher returned again to this question, this time describing the remarkable works he accomplished. It brought a small amount of joy, but in the end it still seemed like he was chasing wind, such that “there was nothing to be gained.” He even concluded that he hated all his toil (2:18), that it led to despair (2:20), that it “is vanity and a great evil” (2:21), and that it was full of sorrow, vexation, and restlessness (2:23).

In our passage the Preacher added, “10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.” His point is that through all his work and all his observations, he’s seen the inescapable truth that business is frustrating whenever we try to make sense of or find meaning in it, try to hold onto it, or expect to be satisfied by it. He concluded from his innumerable hours of work, that it was almost all mystery and frustration. And that from our toil we gain some, but it’s almost always overwhelmed by what it costs.

Again, have you ever felt like this? What’s more, and more importantly, have you ever felt the amplified frustration that comes from knowing that God is sovereign over all of it; that not only could He make it different, but that it’s this way by His hand? It’s one thing to experience the frustration of the inefficiency and insignificance of our work, day after day after day. It’s something else still to know that it is in some way part of the Lord’s design. That’s the heart of the Preacher’s perspective in this Q&A.

God is sovereign over our work. Our work is often frustrating. So, what are we to make of this? How are we to assess it? The Preacher’s (somewhat) surprising answer to the second question is that we ought to see it as beauty wrapped in mystery.

We’ll come back to the mystery several times in this passage, but first the Preacher straightforwardly asserts the beauty of it all. Look at v.11, “He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time.”

The consistent sense we get from the Preacher is that he believes things he has a hard time experiencing. He knows that God is sovereign and has a good and beautiful purpose in all He sovereignly does, but the mystery surrounding it all is too thick to see through most of the time.

This too is something we all feel constantly. How often, Grace Church, have you fought to feel something you believe? It’s really challenging to know that something is true, but not feel it in your soul.

God is good even in my suffering. I know that, but it’s still really hard to suffer.

God has a good purpose even in the death of my loved one. I know that, but it’s really devastating to experience it.

God is working even in my struggling relationship. I know that, but oh how it can hurt.

God’s glory is in the inefficiency and futility of my work, but it’s really hard to go in some days.

Or, to bring it back to the Preacher’s poem, there is beauty in both ends of the fourteen pairs. God works beauty not just in times of birth, planting, healing, building, laughing, dancing, gathering, embracing, seeking, keeping, sewing, speaking, loving, and peace, but also in times of death, killing, breaking down, weeping, mourning, casting away, letting go, losing, tearing, hating, and warring. God is working beauty in everything we experience, including our every toil.

The Preacher knew all of this, but man was it hard to feel at times. Man, was it frustrating. Man, was the beauty hidden by dark clouds of mystery most of the time.

Again, who among us hasn’t felt this many times? Living in light of what God has said rather than how we feel is the essence of a life of faith. The Preacher seemed to be doing his best to live in light of the sovereign beauty he knew was there, even though it was wrapped in mystery in such a way that he usually couldn’t see it. And so should we.

The next Q&A are among the most important in the whole Bible. The question is: Why is all of this so frustrating? Grace, have you spent much time thinking about that? Why do we respond the way we do to our work and God’s rule over our lives? Why do we feel such tension between our experiences in life, the sovereignty of God, and the claim that there is beauty in (and around, and under, and behind) the way the world is? Why do we even care about any of it?

The beginning of the answer is found in the second half of v.11. It is so frustrating because…

11 …[God] has put eternity into man’s heart

Why would that be frustrating? Again, this is an absolutely critical question for us to answer.

God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end. He has never not existed. What’s more, all that exists has always been and always will be tied to the nature of God.

Why is murder wrong? Because God is justice and life.

Why is lying wrong? Because God is truth.

Why is caring for orphans and widows right? Because God is Father to the fatherless and protector of the weak.

What is goodness and beauty? That which corresponds to God’s nature.

Why is the chief end of man to glorify God and enjoy Him forever? Because God has declared it to be so.

What is reality? All that exists in the mind of God, as it exists in the mind of God.

What does all of this have to do with us and the frustration we can feel in this world? Again, the beginning of the answer is that God has put a piece of all of that in each of us. That is a significant part of what it means to be made in the image of God, and all of us are made in the image of God.

God has put some of His eternity in all of us such that we know (everyone knows, even if they think, pretend, or act otherwise) that there is eternity. Because of the eternity God has put in us, we know there is objective goodness and beauty, that murder, lying, and exploiting the vulnerable are bad, that we do have real purpose in life, and that there is a supremely privileged frame of reference (God).

And because of all of those things, we, by our very God-given nature (as eternal, image bearers) are necessarily and continually searching for meaning and significance in life (in general) and in the specific things we experience. Most of what we’ve read in Ecclesiastes to this point is the Preacher doing just that.

To be human is to seek meaning and purpose. That’s what it means that God has put eternity into man’s heart.

The frustration comes from the fact that although we have this God-given, inescapable longing in us, under-the sun wisdom is not enough to help us find what we are seeking. That’s the essence of the rest of v.11, “God has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

We have an itch that we are powerless to scratch. We have a longing that cannot be fulfilled on our own. We have desires that cannot be satisfied by anything we find on earth. We have questions that do not have earthly answers.

Some of you are here right now, at Grace Church, not because you are trusting in Jesus with all your heart such that you are compelled by joy in God’s design and God’s command to gather with the saints. Instead, you are here solely because you have eternity in your heart. You just know you should be here. You’re not entirely sure why, but you feel bad if you’re not. You feel a longing and you are hoping to find answers here.

The Preacher knew that God had put eternity in his heart. The eternity drove him to great lengths to seek that which is common to all men. What’s more, God had also given him every earthly resource for and human advantage in his search. And yet he still came up empty time after time; just like so many of us who attempt the same thing in the same ways.

Why, then, is man unable to find out what God has done from the beginning to the end? Because we need something not found under the sun to do so. That’s the mystery. God’s sovereignty over all things is beauty wrapped in mystery for everyone under the sun.

Given all of that, we still have to live and make the best of it. So where does that leave us? What is the best that life under the sun offers? The Preacher’s answer is yet another carpe diem claim (his second of three).

Look at v.12, “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.”

He said almost the same thing in 2:24, “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.”

And he’ll say almost the same thing again in 8:15, “And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.”

The key phrase in each is, “There is nothing better.” But the key question is: Why is there nothing better than for mankind to be joyful, do good, eat and drink, and take pleasure in toil?

It’s because under-the-sun that really is all there is. We know there’s more to life than what we can grasp and we know there’s more beauty than we can see, but we can’t grasp or see it, for it’s all wrapped so tightly in mystery. Therefore, the best we can do is enjoy whatever God gives us as best as we can while we have it.

All of us have been here at some point and many are here right now. I’ll come back to this at the end, but for now we need to settle on something the Preacher settled on: All by ourselves, we are powerless to see true beauty or find real meaning or experience anything more than the temporary pleasures of whatever (first) gifts God is pleased to provide according to His common, sovereign grace.

In other words, as harsh as it sounds, we all need to settle on the fact that because of our sin, anything other than misery on earth or in hell is a gift from God. The common grace version of that gift is why there is any joy in life for any who are not hoping in Jesus.

All of us would do well, then, to find whatever righteous joy we can. Do the fullest good in whatever opportunities come before us. Eat and drink good foods and beverages with friends. Try to enjoy work as much as you can, while doing the most excellent work you can. By itself, none of this will ever truly satisfy, but there really is nothing better under the sun.

One more Q&A. Why can all of this seem not only frustrating, but also futile? We find the Preacher’s answer in the last two verses of our passage.

14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

Those two verses are largely a recap of what we saw back in 1:2-11. The gist of both is that God is who God has always been and always will be. Therefore, God works like God has always worked and always will work. Therefore, things are as they have always been and always will be. None of this is going to change and there’s nothing we can do about it. At God’s hand, what has gone around, will come back around again; over and over and over. And it’s a fearful thing to recognize the absolute power of God that enables this.

Under the sun, recognizing these things often causes a great sense of futility. We can feel this in the Preacher’s words.

Of all of this, in my sermon from 1:2-11 I wrote, “It’s hard to explain how exhausting it can be to stay on this cycle for long. You get up, you work hard at things that vary in levels of inefficiency, you try to produce and maintain a good attitude and healthy relationships, you battle sin and discouragement, you say the same thing to your kids for the 1000th time or wish you could say the same thing to your kids for the 1001st time now that they’re all gone, you make meals and do laundry, you make a mess and clean up, you get dirty and take a shower, you try to find some rest through some form of entertainment and go to bed, only to wake up and do it all again the next day.”

That’s what it’s been like since mankind first set up east of Eden and it’s what it will be like until the end of time. And that is the long and short of the Preacher’s message in Ecclesiastes 3:9-15.

I said at the beginning of all of this that this is a passage and a sermon of hope, especially for thoughtful skeptics. But if you were listening carefully, it might not have sounded very hopeful. It, like much of the rest of Ecclesiastes, probably sounded a bit fatalistic and hollow.

To find the hope that is in it, we need to settle on something first. Everything the Preacher wrote in this passage is true. Under the sun, work is hard; work is inefficient; it’s clear there’s design and beauty in the world, but it’s frustratingly hard to see and unclear what we are to do about it; it’s clear that there is more to this world than what we can see, but precisely what that means is illusive; there are things to be enjoyed in this world, but we all always long for more; it’s plain that God is guiding things, but that just makes my actions seem largely irrelevant; and under the sun, everything just seems to go around and around and around.

Again, the Preacher is right in observing all of these things. At the same time, it’s clear that he lacked the key to unlock them all.

Has anyone explained this reality better than C.S. Lewis (in Mere Christianity)?

“Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise… If I find in myself a desire [therefore,] which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

“…Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”

All of this means that the hope of this passage is found in the fact that it helps us to see that the things we are looking for just aren’t found in the places we’re looking. The hope we get comes from the knowledge that we need to look elsewhere. The hope comes from the realization that we need help to find hope.

Grace, there is something better still. That which is truly best for mankind is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But we need an above-the-sun perspective (the Word of God, illuminated by the Spirit of God) to know, understand, and apply this. We need the Son of God to forgive us of failing to do so. And we need the Spirit of God to convict us of our sin, grant us repentance, to cause us to love it, and to empower us to live it out.

Colossians 2 says, that is only in Jesus that we are able to grasp “all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery…”. And that is it is in Christ alone that “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge…”.

Turn to Jesus in faith and then, with an above the sun, Spirit-illuminated, Word-infused, gospel-driven perspective.

And because there is gain in toil for all of God’s people, find one specific way this week to work more excellently, as unto the Lord, at work, home, and church in light of God’s sovereignty over it.

Because God has made it such that everything is beautiful in its time, artistically express the beauty of some aspect of your week in light of God’s sovereignty over it.

Because God has put eternity into the hearts of all mankind, tell one person (who doesn’t already know) (1) That they have eternity in their heart and (2) What difference that makes.

Because it is good to eat, drink, and be merry, host a meal with better-than-usual food and drink. Work hard to make it joyful. And root it all for everyone in God’s sovereign grace.

Because that which is, already has been and that which is to be, already has been, start a new rhythm in your life or more fully embrace an old one for the sake of growing in your faith.

The Preacher was right, more than anyone before or since, about the nature of life under the sun. But Jesus is the key that unlocks life above the sun. Look to Him and find an end to the futility, mystery, vanity, and futility of life. Find instead, the forgiveness, freedom, meaning, purpose, significance, and satisfaction God offers by His sovereign grace in Jesus.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

    2    a time to be born, and a time to die;
          a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
    3    a time to kill, and a time to heal;
          a time to break down, and a time to build up;
    4    a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
          a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
    5    a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
          a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
    6    a time to seek, and a time to lose;
          a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
    7    a time to tear, and a time to sew;
          a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
    8    a time to love, and a time to hate;
          a time for war, and a time for peace.

Good morning, Grace. Welcome to the most famous passage in Ecclesiastes. If someone has heard of only one part of this book, this is almost certainly it. It’s been made popular by various artists for many years. The majority of this passage is a poem and there’s something particularly gripping about its simplicity and scope.

As we make our way through it, you’ll notice that the Preacher does not interpret or explain his observations at all. We’ll get into that a bit next week. You’ll also notice three main claims of the text and sermon: (1) All seasons belong to God, (2) God’s sovereignty is comprehensive, and (3) A biblical worldview is able to accommodate all of the poem’s claims.

The big idea of this passage is that every time and season of our lives belongs to God, for His glory and our good. The main takeaways are to learn to conform our preferences to God’s purposes and to develop a better standard by which to judge the seasons than our convenience.

You may have heard me say once or twice that I am not a big fan of winter. Mid-summer definitely isn’t my first choice either. Late spring and all of fall are the best times of the year, weather-wise, in my humble opinion.

You may be interested to learn that I’ve done a bit of introspection as to why that is (joking). In the end, it doesn’t seem to be anything profound or virtuous that is shaping my perspective. I think it’s as simple as convenience. The cold of winter and the heat of summer make ordinary things more difficult and everything harder to enjoy.

On the one hand, like all of you, I’m certainly entitled to my personal seasonal preferences. On the other hand, however, I know that I’m not thinking rightly about this in some ways. God made the seasons and each for His good purposes. We see that consistently throughout the Bible.

After the Flood, God declared to Noah, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22).

And in Psalm 74:16-17 we’re told, “Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. 17 You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter.”

The Prophet Daniel affirms that it is God who “changes times and seasons” (2:21).

Grace, how would we know the extent of God’s holiness (Daniel 7:9) or His washing away of our sins in Jesus if we did not have winter snow (Isaiah 1:18)? How would we know the full measure of new, restored life that is ours in Christ if not for the blooms of spring? How would we know the consuming power of God apart from the fierce summer heat? And how would we know the nature of dying to ourselves apart from the falling leaves of autumn?

In all of this, I’ve come to recognize my need to learn to conform my preferences to God’s seasonal purposes. In that, I’ve come to recognize that I need a better standard by which to judge the seasons than my personal preference or convenience. And in that I’ve come to recognize that the alternative is to dishonor God and miss out on learning the important lessons He’s embedded into each season.

The bottom line is that each season belongs equally to God and is equally an instrument of God for bringing about the glory of His name and the good of His people.

That is, in many ways, the heart of this passage. What is true of the calendar seasons, is also true of the rest of our lives. Our every life-season (circumstance) belongs to God. God has a good purpose for our every experience and He is working it out in all we encounter.

That’s what the Preacher was saying in v.1.

1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…

There is a season for everything and a time for every matter because God has determined it to be so.

Grace, we are about to consider many seasons of your life and mine. The key to bear in mind as we do is that the Preacher understood all of them to be from the hand of God. That might not sound surprising until we recognize that roughly half of those seasons—like winter and mid-summer—are not pleasant. Indeed, they are anything but convenient or comfortable. Roughly half of the seasons and times mentioned by the Preacher are things we typically try to avoid at all costs. And yet, pleasant times and grievous times alike are divinely-orchestrated, the Preacher writes.

And just like I need to learn that God’s goodness and glory flow equally from each of the annual, calendar seasons, we must learn that they flow just as freely from each time and season of life. We need to learn to conform our preferences to God’s purposes in all our circumstances. We need a better standard by which to judge the seasons of our lives than our personal preferences or convenience. And we need to recognize that the alternative is to dishonor God and miss out on learning the important lessons He’s embedded into our every circumstance.

Again, helping us with those things is at the heart of this passage. All seasons belong to God.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 is a declaration of God’s sovereignty over the times and seasons our lives. Ecclesiastes 3:2-8 is a poem that unpacks that in comprehensive fashion.

Among other things, the Preacher’s poem describes the impact of the sovereignty of God on our lives. He uses fourteen pairs to get at the fact that God is at work in everything we experience throughout our entire lives.

The Preacher does not (in this section) speak to the reason behind or aim of the sovereign God’s comprehensive governance, only that it is comprehensive governance.

Collectively, the fourteen pairs are intended to cover the whole span of the human life, beginning to end. The opening line is clearly intended to highlight this, “a time to be born, and a time to die…”. In other words, God is sovereign over the times and seasons of our lives from birth to death, and every moment in between.

Grace, it is not hyperbole to say that you have never spent a single second alone. God has been with you without interruption for your entire life. And God had a good and glorious purpose that He was carrying out in every single moment.

At the same time, as the rest of the pairs in the rest of the poem are meant to indicate, God is sovereign over the whole of our experiences as well. He’s not just with us in some general, overarching way. He is that, but He’s also with us in each and everything we experience within that time.

I invite you to take a moment and draw to mind three or four things you’ve experienced in life. They can be big or small, significant or insignificant, recent or long-past. Just try to draw to mind a few times in your life.

I thought of moving out of my parents’ house (embrace/refrain from), getting married (mourn/dance) and having kids (born/die), and MSU’s 2000 national championship in basketball (weep/laugh). As I’m sure you can see, every one of the experiences I though of are covered in the scope of the poem. I imagine the ones you thought of are equally easy to see as well.

We’ll get into the specifics of the poem’s pairs in just a minute, but for now, the point is simple: Every moment and experience of our lives are within God’s sovereign plan. It is right to say that there is a time and place for all we have and will encounter. Indeed, the Preacher’s poem is meant to affirm the simple, yet profound reality that by God’s design, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…”

As we make our way down the list, it is right to wonder how some of these times and seasons could be glorious and good. When we consider death, killing, breaking down, mourning, losing, and hating, for instance, glory and good probably aren’t the first things that come to mind. Understanding how each is a part of God’s plan, therefore, is important.

Everything covered in the Preacher’s poem makes up a biblical worldview and points to the need for one. That is, a key aspect of living in this world as God intends, and with the kind of meaning and purpose the Preacher was seeking, is having a thoroughly biblical view of everything in it. We need to see the world as God sees it and this poem is a significant help to that end.

Our brains, from the earliest age, are continually trying to make sense of the world around us. We can’t not look for an explanation for our experiences. In many ways, that’s what Ecclesiastes is all about, the Preacher’s explicit and thorough attempts to do what we all do by nature: make sense of what we encounter.

The Preacher looked around and saw all the things listed in vs.2-8 and tried as hard as he could to find the meaning of them all, especially as they relate to the hand of God.

Eventually, we all experience the things the Preacher lists in his poem. But why? What do they mean? How do they fit into the whole? How does God use them for glory and good? We must, by our very God-given nature, ask and attempt to answer those questions. To do so is to construct a worldview. The main question is not, therefore, whether or not we have a worldview. The main question is how accurate our view of the world is.

And, once again, the Preacher’s poem goes a long way to help us with this. If you can’t clearly and confidently explain how each end of each pair fits into God’s plan for the world, then you still have work to do on your worldview (which we all have, of course). When is the time to be born, die, plant, pluck, kill, heal, …?

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 2 a time to be born, and a time to die…

Each of the Preacher’s poem pairs has both a physical and spiritual component to them in God’s design, perhaps none more important than this one.

Physically, there is, of course, a time to be born. This is the easiest of all to see. In the very first chapter of the Bible, we read, “27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” Being fruitful, multiplying, and filling the earth means that God intends mankind to have babies.

It is God who opens and closes wombs (Genesis 29:31) and God who knits us together in the womb (Psalm 139:13). There is a time for babies to be born and it is the Lord who sovereignly determines those times.

What’s more, we need not only to be born physically, but spiritually as well. Sin is such that we are born physically alive, but spiritually dead (1 Corinthians 15:2). If we are to be made right with God, therefore, we need to be born again. This too is from the Lord (John 3:1-8). It is God who grants spiritual birth as much as physical.

Again, I imagine that if you already understand God’s hand in any of Ecclesiastes 3:2-8, it will be this one; that God determines the time for birth and new birth. But what about death? Is that too really determined by God?

Both physically and spiritually we see this from the first pages of the Bible and throughout as well. To Adam and Eve, God said, “16 … “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 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” (Genesis 2:15-17).

As you know, Adam and Eve eventually ate of the forbidden tree. At the very moment they did, they died spiritually and made certain that eventually they would die physically as well. And in that, they came to represent all mankind, bringing death to all their offspring (1 Corinthians 15:22).

In Job 14:5 we’re told that mankind’s “days are determined [by God], and the number of his months is with [God], and [God has] appointed his limits that he cannot pass…”.

Likewise, in Acts 17:24 we read that God “himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he … determined allotted periods…”.

Practically, this means that for a church to be healthy, we need to have a balance between births and funerals. We need steady reminders that death is, as the Preacher has already said, inevitable, and that life is short. This helps us to look to God and feel an appropriate sense of urgency to bring the gospel to the world.

Likewise, we need steady reminders that God is the God of life too. We need to see babies to know our vulnerability and dependence, to remember the new life that is in Christ, and to long for the day that all will be made new. And all of this in its God-appointed time and season for glory and good.

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 2 a time to be born, and a time to die…

I won’t go into as much detail with all of the pairs as this one, but I wanted to unpack this one a bit more to show you how to think biblically about the Preacher’s poem pairs. What I did for this one (and more) can be done for them all.

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 2 a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

A biblical worldview emphasizes that part of our purpose on earth is to make the earth bear fruit (Genesis 1:28-30). This is true on the physical level—we’re meant to plant seeds that will grow into food, flowers, and timber—and on the spiritual level—we’re meant to plant gospel seeds everywhere we go that others might believe in Jesus and be saved (Matthew 28:18-20).

In the same way, a biblical view of the world emphasizes the need not only to plant, but also to harvest (“pluck up what is planted”). God’s people were even commanded by God to celebrate His harvest blessing with an annual festival (Numbers 28). And even more significantly, God’s people are meant to join with the angels in rejoicing whenever a sinner repents and a spiritual harvest is reaped (Luke 15:10).

At God’s sovereign hand there is…3 a time to kill, and a time to heal…

The Bible is filled with stories of God’s healing of the suffering and sick (Luke 4:40) and commands for His people to do the same (Luke 10). To be a Christian is to reject indifference to the hardships of others and to love our every neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39). If Christianity lived out is anything, it’s a recognition of God’s grace in our lives compelling us to give grace to those around us.

A time to heal seems clear and godly, but a time to kill? Isn’t that outright prohibited (Exodus 20:13)?

Yes and no. The unjust taking of a life is certainly prohibited and there is no time or season for that (that’s the heart of the sixth Commandment). At the same time, since the Fall, there are times, at God’s hand and ordained by God in which killing is just. God Himself killed animals to provide cover for Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21). God commanded His people to kill animals as sacrifices (Leviticus 23:19). God Himself ordered the killing of His enemies (Isaiah 63:1-6). God gave the governing authorities the power to punish evil with the sword (Romans 13:1-7). In the last days, God will eternally kill all who remain in rebellion against Him (Revelation 19:20). And God predestined the killing of His Son for the forgiveness of sins from before time (Titus 1:2).

It is sometimes hard to consider, but sin requires killing, and in that way, it is a gracious thing that God has ordained times and seasons to kill, to hold back and atone for sin.

The fourth of the Preacher’s poetic pairs is found in the fact that at God’s sovereign hand there is… 3 a time to break down, and a time to build up;

God’s people are to build up families and cities (Genesis 1:28). He commanded His people to build the Temple (2 Chronicles 1-6). We are to build one another up with our words (Ephesians 4:29) and in the faith (1 Thessalonians 5:11). He is building His Church (Matthew 16:18).

There are seasons as well, equally ordained by God, to break down towers (Genesis 11) and idols (Exodus 34:13). We are to break down “arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5). The Lord will break down the work of the proud (Proverbs 15:25) and the wicked (Psalm 28:5).

Grace, the world we live in, by God’s design, is such that we must be people who build and break in due season. We dishonor God when we neglect either in their proper time.

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

To live as God intends us to live and requires of us, we must weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). There is a time to cry at the sinfulness and destruction of sin (Luke 19:41-44) and in grief over our sin (Matthew 26:75). It is right to weep when the pain of loss is severe (John 11:35).

And, there is a time to laugh and rejoice in the fellowship of the saints and in recognition of the kindness of God. In a sermon a few weeks ago I said, “Laughter is a satisfying gift of God when it is rooted in gladness at the kindness of God and Christian fellowship. The righteous are men and women of deep belly laughs, flowing from the joy of the Lord.”

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 4 a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

Just as we are meant to weep with those who weep, we are to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15). Godliness does not mean that hard things aren’t hard. As long as there is sin, there must be grief in the people of God. Godly men and women are not indifferent to the vile nature of sin or the suffering of others.

At the same time, God’s grace in Christ is such that sin is not ultimately winning. Everywhere we look we can see evidence of God’s glory and victory (2 Samuel 6:14). Every where we look we see evidences of grace. Everywhere we look in the Bible, we find promises of God (Romans 8:28). Everywhere we look there is some aspect of God’s nature and work to celebrate with dancing.

I hope you’re beginning to see the pattern. And I hope that within it, you are beginning to see that this world is such that there is a time and season for things on the opposite end of the spectrum. And in that is another important lesson still: Whenever we are mourning, someone else is dancing, even as whenever we are dancing someone else is mourning.

At the same time you are burying a spouse, someone else is getting ready for their wedding day. It is good and right for both to happen at the same time. It is a means of God’s comforting grace to see others dancing while we are in mourning. It is grace to remember that it has not always been like this and that this will not last forever.

At the same time, it is a sobering means of God’s grace to see those who are mourning while we are dancing. This keeps us from making idols of the object of our joy and reminds us that we are made for something greater than the best this broken world has to offer—that’s a lesson the Preacher, evidently, hadn’t quite learned yet.

At God’s sovereign hand there is…4 a time to mourn, and a time to dance… and both, by God’s gracious design, often happen at the same time.

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

This one is the trickiest of all the pairs. No one seems confident in the meaning of this one. In addition, unlike the rest of the pairs of pairs (two pairs/verse), the pair of pairs in v.5 have no obvious connection. It seems to be a kind of break in the rhythm of the poem.

Nevertheless, at the very least it means that there is a time when it is good to remove stones (as a farmer would do before planting a field) and a good time to gather them together (as a farmer would to build a stone wall).

The eight pair lets us know that at God’s sovereign hand there is… 5 a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing…

There are few things better than the embrace of your spouse (Song of Songs 2:6) or your child or a good friend. One of the sweetest things I’ve experienced is the hug of a brother in Christ whom I’ve labored in the gospel with across the world. There is an immediate connection when serving with suffering saints.

There are times to refrain from embracing as well; like when we send missionaries (Matthew 10:5; Luke 22:35) or excommunicate someone from our fellowship (Titus 3:10). Both are hard, but right in their own way.

Like the rest of the pairs, for every godly person there are regular times in which we must be hugging others and regular times in which we must let go. Both are from the Lord for glory and good at the right time.

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;

It is good for God’s people to seek wisdom (Proverbs 3:13). It is good for God’s people to seek the salvation of non-Christians (Luke 19:10) and to seek to restore Christians who have wandered from the faith (Matthew 18:15).

At the same time, there are seasons in which the opposite of seeking (losing) is what we must do. On the most practical level possible, this means that we cannot hold onto anything in this life so firmly (other than our faith in Christ) that we will not let it go. At some point, we need to be willing to give up the search for every lost thing so as not to sacrifice everything else for it. Jesus even gave this example in letting go of the salvation of others if they steadfastly refuse to receive the good news (Luke 9:5).

On a more profound level, we must lose our lives so that we can gain them (Matthew 10:39). We must lose whatever parts of our bodies that cause us to sin so that we can save our souls (Matthew 5:29). And we must lose the whole world that we might gain salvation (Luke 9:25).

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 6 a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

This second pair in v.6 is very similar to the first. To keep and seek are tightly paralleled, even as to lose and cast away are as well.

In this life, God has ordained that there are times to hold onto something and to let it go. This refers to family heirlooms and to friendships. It refers to ministries within the church (VBS is an effective tool in certain seasons and not in others) and to approaches to the spiritual disciplines (one Bible reading plan my serve someone well as a new believer but not as well as they mature).

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 7 a time to tear, and a time to sew…

The Preacher’s eleventh poem pair concerns tearing and sowing. It is likely that the Preacher had in mind the tearing of garments associated with mourning. When the people of God were exceptionally angry or distraught, they would tear their clothes as a symbol of great grief (2 Kings 22:11). There are things in this world that ought to tear our hearts and cause us to anguish and lament.

At the same time, it is right to cease our mourning at some point (to sew back together the clothes we tear in our grief). Our mourning cannot go on forever, for there is new mercy each day.

The main point, once again, is that living rightly under the sun often means doing opposite things at their God-given times. It is the time and season that determines the appropriateness of certain things rather than the things themselves.

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 7 a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

The Proverbs (some, perhaps, written by the Preacher himself) are filled with such wisdom.

Proverbs 10:19 When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.

Proverbs 13:3 Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.

Proverbs 15:23 To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!

Proverbs 16:24 Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.

Proverbs 21:23 Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.

Sometimes godliness means speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) and sometimes it means listening in love. Sometimes God intends us to correct and rebuke (2 Timothy 3:16) and sometimes He intends us to sit silently with our friends. Sometimes we hold our tongue and overlook an offense (Proverbs 19:11) and sometimes we take our offense to our brother or sister (Matthew 18:15).

By God’s design, there is a time and a season for talking and for remaining silent. And we need God’s Word, God’s wisdom, and God’s Spirit to know when it’s which season.

At God’s sovereign hand there is… 8 a time to love, and a time to hate;

If there is a consistent message in the Bible it is that all mankind ought to love God above all things (Matthew 22:37). If there’s a second consistent message in the Bible it is that all mankind ought to love our neighbors as God loves us and we love ourselves (Matthew 22:39). Beginning to end, God means us to love even our enemies (Matthew 5:44). Beginning to end, God means us to love everything righteous (Psalm 45:7). Beginning to end, God means us to love our brothers and sisters of the faith (Romans 12:9-10).

But the truth is, as the Preacher recognized, if we love well, we will also hate well. That probably sounds a bit counterintuitive, but God’s Word assures us that it is not.

If loving someone well means giving all of yourself for the best of that person, then we ought to hate everything that gets in the way of what’s best for a person. That is how God loves and why he hates.

God hates every abominable thing, especially those who “burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:31). God hates false gods and the alters constructed for them (Deuteronomy 16:22). He hates all evil doers (Psalm 5:5) and those who love violence (Psalm 11:5). He hates those who hate His people (Psalm 139:21). The Lord hates “haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, 19 a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers” (Proverbs 6:17-19).

We ought, therefore, to hate what the Lord hates because we love what the Lord loves. Our hatred for wicked things, along with the knowledge that God set His love upon us while we were still wicked things ourselves, compels us to love in far greater ways than we otherwise could.

And all of this is because God has made it so, each in its proper time and season.

Finally, the Preacher’s fourteenth poem pair is that according to God’s sovereign hand there is… 8 a time for war, and a time for peace.

Whenever possible, insofar as it depends on us, we live at peace with those around us (Romans 12:18). More significantly still, all who are in Christ have perfect, eternal peace with God (Romans 5:1).

But because of the world we live in, there’s a kind of peace that is only on the other side of war. Therefore, we make war on our sin and flesh (Romans 8:13). We make war on the schemes of the devil (Ephesians 6:12). And in the end, we will join God in making war against everything that sets itself up against Him (Revelation 19:11-16).

There really is a time for each and every pair in this poem. The time is set and ruled by our sovereign God. Understanding that is a key component to viewing the world as it truly is and for living it as we ought.

This really is a remarkable passage. Its main message is that every season is God’s season and, therefore, men and women of God give ourselves to learning what God has for each season. With the Spirit’s help, we train ourselves to love God’s appointed seasons more than the comfort they might provide. We seek to gain every possible grace from whatever season we’re in, knowing it’s all from the hand of God in Jesus for all who will receive Him in faith.

In other words, the big idea of this passage is that every time and season of our lives belongs to God, for His glory and our good. And the main takeaways are to learn to conform our preferences to God’s purposes and to develop a better standard by which to judge the seasons than our convenience.

Ecclesiastes 2:18-26 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21 because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22 What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.

24 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, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 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.

We’re only two chapters and six weeks into Ecclesiastes, but I want to remind you how the book begins, “…vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” I put that up there with Genesis and John’s Gospel for the most memorable beginnings of any book in the Bible.

I mentioned early on that I think the primary idea the Preacher has in mind with the word (rendered into English as) “vanity,” is “mysterious” (or “enigma” or “inscrutable”). The Preacher’s main argument is that life under the sun (that is, life lived according to observational wisdom on this cursed earth) is annoyingly impossible to understand. Things ordinarily work in certain ways, but not always, and the inconsistencies lead to a level of unpredictability that is often a source of great frustration.

Many people feel the same frustration but remain convinced that the solution remains just outside of their grasp. Life is not quite (or maybe not at all) what I want right now, but if I could just get the thing, or more of the thing, or get rid of the thing, it would make sense and be satisfying.

The reality, however, is that we only think that’s the case because none of us have ever gotten the full measure of the thing we think will solve the vanity of life and allow us to live a life of genuine meaning and satisfaction. And for that reason, we hold out hope. But the question is, of course, is it well-founded hope? Is it a legitimate hope? Can anything under the sun actually bear the weight of that hope?

The backdrop of Ecclesiastes is that the Preacher felt all the same ways, but had more money and more power to use it than any of us could ever dream of. He used all that money and power to the point all of us are trying to get. And Ecclesiastes is largely his report on what he found when he got there: Even there, “…vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

Rather than simply declare his conclusion, though, the Preacher takes us on a good deal of his journey. He reports not just his findings, but his process as well. He tells us the things he tried all the way to the end. So far, we’ve seen his (failed) attempts to find meaning and significance through understating, pleasure, and various approaches to life (wisdom, madness, and folly).

This morning, we’ll see a fourth attempt. In it, the Preacher tried to find meaning and significance through his work, his labor, his toil, through the things he built, created, and managed. The big idea of this passage is that work for its own sake can never provide the kind of meaning and significance we long and are made for. The main takeaways are to look first to Jesus and then to work as unto Him.

I do wonder how you’d describe your relationship with work. Is it easy for you to imagine a scenario in which you could find genuine, lasting satisfaction in life from the work you’re currently doing? If not your current role, can you imagine a role that would?

If so, if you can imagine a scenario where work could provide genuine joy, I imagine that the kind of work you have in mind will look a lot like that of the Preacher. Do you remember how spectacular his work was?

2:4-7 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees… 7 I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.

That’s a lot of significant work and a lot to show for it. There’s a lot there to be proud of and to enjoy. You might think that you could be happy if you could do that work (or something like it). And who wouldn’t be happy once it was complete. Even though much of that is what many of us are working for right now (a number of beautiful, tranquil homes, with lots of bountiful land and animals), none of us have come close to it, so we don’t really know.

But again, what we imagine, the Preacher accomplished. So, what was his conclusion? Was he as happy as we imagine ourselves to be if we’d done that work, accomplished those things, and had them to enjoy? Did his work provide for him what we seek from it? Quite the opposite.

18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun,

20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun…

22 What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.

Hatred, despair, sorrow, vexation, restlessness, vanity. That sounds similar to what the Preacher found in his previous attempts; which was a long, long way from what he was looking for.

Can you relate? Have you ever felt this way about your work? Have you recently used any of those terms to describe your experience with your company, boss, business, home, or other place of toil?

Over the years I’ve prayed with many people who shared with me many such sentiments regarding their work. Some just don’t like work on its face. They consider work as a necessary evil; one to be avoided if at all possible. Others are vexed by work because they don’t seem to be able to turn it off. It seems like it’s constantly pulling at them. Others confessed knowing the vanity of work because they’ve unsuccessfully tried to find their identity in it—in the type of job they have or the title within it or the success they’ve attained from it. Others still have told me they experience despair from their work because it seems so insignificant, even undignified. Others hate their work because they have a really difficult boss or coworkers. And others have expressed persistent restlessness at work because their company stands for things that prick their consciences.

As real and common as these reasons are for many of us, the Preacher had different reasons still for despising his toil—three of them.

The Preacher’s first reason for hating his work was that he knew that no matter what he did, everything he worked for would eventually end up in someone else’s hands, someone who didn’t work one bit for any of it.

All by itself, that’s kind of depressing, isn’t it? It’s a harsh thought that the thought that the average American works something like 90,000 hours in their lifetime (40 hours/week @ 45 years) and we don’t get to keep anything from it in the long run. Whatever else might be true of your thoughts on work, that’s a hard pill to swallow; all those hours, all the challenges, all the frustrations, all the sacrifices, and in the end, no matter what you do, none of it will be yours in almost no time.

The Preacher said this in a couple of different ways.

18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me…

21 … sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.

Sometimes the product of our lifetime of work ends in the hands of our surviving spouse, sometimes our kids, sometimes in an estate sale to a stranger, and sometimes simply abandoned to decay. For all kinds of reasons, our stuff will end up in all kinds of hands, but the simple fact remains that eventually everything we work day after day after day to acquire will no longer be ours. The Preacher realized this, hated it, and called it a “great evil”.

Rather than provide satisfaction, the fact that the he had worked so hard and gained so much, seems only to have caused even more grief than for those, like us, who have less to show for our work.

A second reason he hated his toil was that he knew that not only would it end up in someone else’s hands, but it was as likely to end up in the hands of a fool as someone wise. It’s one kind of hardship to have your stuff to go to someone you love who will try to honor it, but it’s another kind of hardship altogether to have it go to a fool who will do nothing but neglect or squander it.

The Preacher wonders about this at the beginning of v.19, “…and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool?”

This is the stereotypical parent who created a successful business from the ground up; coming from poverty, working hard, doing it right, having nothing given to them, only to have the profits left to a kid who was lazy, disinterested, entitled, arrogant, wasteful, and selfish. It’s an unpleasant thought to imagine millions of hard, honestly-earned dollars being spent on the lusts of the flesh by someone who didn’t earn or appreciate any of it.

This was a much bigger deal in the Preacher’s day as well. Inheritance was a lot more of a pressing concern in the past. You may recall some of the many stories in the Bible describing the serious problems that resulted from inheritance issues, and many of those because the inheritors were fools.

There is unquestionably a part of that that is vexing vanity and the Preacher hated it. The more he worked and the more he gained, the more this possibility haunted him and robbed him of joy in his toil. Far from providing meaning, purpose, and satisfaction, it caused him to give his heart up to despair.

The thought of all the fruits of his labor falling into the hands of someone else led to one level of vexation. The thought of it all falling into the hands of a fool led to yet another level. But the third and final reason work failed to provide satisfaction for the Preacher, which was on another level still, was the thought of it being managed by fools.

In other words, it’s one thing to leave a pile of money in the hands of a fool, but it’s another thing entirely to leave the management of your name, reputation, company, or great works in the hands of one.

19 Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.

Since Ecclesiastes is written in the voice of King Solomon, it’s particularly important to recognize the fool that King Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, was. When Solomon died, Rehoboam inherited his father’s kingdom and crown. Being the fool that he was, he rejected the wisdom of the wise and took his counsel instead from other fools. Their counsel and Rehoboam’s choice was to exploit his subjects for wicked, worldly, personal gain. And as a result, his people rebelled and the kingdom was splintered. He ended up mismanaging that which was left to him to the extent that he lost ten of the twelve tribes of Israel (1 Kings 12).

The Preacher’s concerns couldn’t have been more appropriate. Hatred, despair, sorrow, vexation, restlessness, and vanity make sense.

It’s hard not to think of this today when it comes to those in charge of certain denominations. They bear the names of Martin Luther and flow out of the faithfulness of the Wesleys, but are now managed by fools. It’s staggering to think of some of the perversions of the gospel done in the names of these men who labored at such great cost for its purity.

But the Preacher didn’t end there. In vs.24-26 we see, somewhat surprisingly, that the Preacher covered some new ground with his conclusions. What comes next, Grace, is one of the main reasons I felt burdened to preach through this book. It’s one of the most important things you’ll hear in Ecclesiastes; indeed, it’s one of the most important things you’ll your life. I hope that doesn’t seem like an exaggeration once we’ve considered it.

The first part of what makes this section so remarkable begins at the beginning of v.24.

24 There is nothing better for a person than that…

I’d like to offer two reasons why it’s good to pause here. First, to recognize that the way a person finishes that sentence is everything! Getting it right or wrong is, 100% of the time, a matter of eternal consequences. Close is not enough and almost won’t do. Everything hangs in the balance as we choose our words.

We will never get what the Preacher was after (a life of genuine, lasting, meaning and satisfaction) if we don’t settle on the fact that it only comes from finishing that sentence rightly.

And second reason to pause here is to give you a chance to do so. How do you finish the sentence, “There is nothing better for a person than that…”? What is the best life? What is best for a person?

Not everyone has consciously answered that question, but everyone functionally has. We can’t not answer it in the sense that, inevitably, every moment of our lives is a living out of what we believe the answer to be. Your life tells your answer to that question even if you never thought about it or don’t have the words to express it. We are all chasing something because we believe that there is nothing better for a person than that.

The Preacher, in these few, simple words, affords us the opportunity to consider carefully, name explicitly, and scrupulously evaluate our answer. And all by itself, that is a great gift.

So, Grace, what is your life aimed at and will it lead where you’re hoping it will lead?

As we’re about to see, the Preacher finishes that sentence in a certain way, and there is important truth in it, but giving us the question is at least as big a gift as is giving us his answer. Don’t let up until you know your answer, Grace. And once you do know it, don’t let up until you know it’s right.

With that, then, how did the Preacher finish the sentence?

24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

The essence of the Preacher’s answer is that because everything, in the end, is left to someone else (possibly a fool), the best thing we can do is enjoy what God has given us while we have it.

Like I said, there’s some important truth to that. But within it, and in the few verses that follow, is something far, far more important still. We are about to see that a big part of the secret of life is in coming to recognize that the happiness and satisfaction we need and long for requires two gifts, not just one. And that revelation is one of the biggest reasons I’m preaching through Ecclesiastes.

In this passage the Preacher describes a first gift of toil/work that results in something to eat and drink. Simply, we need to see that fruitful labor is a gift from God.

It is so easy for us to forget that every good thing is a gift from God (James 1:17). It’s particularly easy to forget this when it comes to the more mundane things of life, like breathing, sleeping, consciousness, and health (at least until we lose those things). The more ordinary they seem, the more we’re prone to think of them as part of us rather than the gifts of God that they are.

Understanding this, the Preacher picked three things to name: eating, drinking, and fulfilling labor. If we have any of those things—good food to eat, clean water to drink, and profitable work to be done—it is because, and only because God gave them to us as a gift. We need each of these things to survive and thrive in this world as God has made it and because of that, they really are gifts from God.

At the same time, however, as any parent of a toddler knows all-too-well, just having food, drink, and work do not satisfy all by themselves. “I don’t want this food, I want that food. I don’t want vegetables, I want Mac-and-Cheese. I don’t want milk, I want juice. I don’t want this juice, I want that juice. I don’t want to put my clothes in the hamper, I want to play. I don’t want to produce anything beneficial, I only want to consume.” Toddlers often don’t think of any of those things as gifts, much less find enjoyment in them.

But that kind of misplaced dissatisfaction certainly isn’t unique to two-year-olds, is it? Adults, as you know, we often don’t move on, we just move on to more sophisticated versions of the same thing. “I don’t care what we eat, I just want someone else to cook it for me. I don’t just want good things to drink, I want the things I drink to be made in a certain year. I don’t just want honest, productive work that provides, I want to work a job that better fits my hobbies, values my contributions, and sounds good when I explain it to others.”

This is the Preacher’s great gift to us. He helps us to see that true satisfaction requires not one gift from God, but two. We need the thing itself (food, water, work, relationship, hobby, etc.)—that’s the first gift—and the ability to enjoy the thing—that’s the second gift.

This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 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.

There are few things going on in these verses, including another declaration of vanity in the fact that some people seem destined by God to do nothing but labor for the gain of others. The critical idea, however, is in revealing the fact that we mistakenly believe that the first gift is all we need. That is, the biggest mistake that most of us make is not in believing that there is joy to be found in the things we seek on earth. The biggest mistake, rather, is believing that those things are the actual source of the joy. We mistakenly believe that the thing itself will satisfy.

Apart from the grace of God, we all live our lives under the mistaken belief that if we could just have the gift of a kid, or another kid, or a slightly older, more independent kid we could be truly happy. Or, if we could just have the gift of a job, or an new job, or a promotion/raise within our job; a hobby, or a new hobby, or more time and money to enjoy our hobby; to do better in school, or to be done with school, or to get into the right school; to get into a relationship, or to help a hurting relationship, or to begin a new relationship after the loss of a spouse; to be in ministry, or be in a different ministry, or get out of a certain ministry, then we’d be content.

Every one of us in this room has at one point or another convinced ourselves that if we could only get that thing, or the next thing, or a little more of the thing after that (the first gift), then we could be happy.

As I said, and as I hope you are beginning to see wasn’t an exaggeration, one of the items at the very top of the list of gifts God gives through Ecclesiastes is this: Joy in anything on earth requires two gifts, not just one. It requires the gift of the thing itself AND it requires the second gift of the ability to enjoy it. We need God to give us the good gift of the marriage, job, kid, hobby, ministry, etc, and we need God to give us a second gift of joy in it.

What’s more and greater is the fact that when we have this second gift, we can be satisfied with any measure or lack of the first gift. Listen to words of the Apostle Paul to this effect, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13).

Paul received the second gift of God’s pleasure, so that he wasn’t at all dependent on a particular measure of the first for joy and satisfaction and contentment.

The fullest example of our need for two gifts from God is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. There’s a remarkable picture of it that many of us read last week in our Bible reading. It’s found in Acts 16.

By that point in Acts, the apostles, including the Apostle Paul, had spread the gospel in an ever-increasing arc throughout the known world. That’s the first gift. Having the good news of Jesus is truly a gift all by itself. There are many in the world who lack even this. Which is why we have missions. Which is why we spend tens of thousands of dollars as a church to give this gift to those who do not have it.

At the same time, however, as we saw over and over in John’s Gospel, and as we see over and over in the book of Acts, and as we see over and over in our own lives, having the gift of the gospel (having the words and concepts) is not enough for us to become recipients of the good news; to be reconciled to God through it. We need to come to the point that we see it for what it is and trust in it with all we have. And to do that, we need a second gift from God.

In Acts 16 we find that a woman named Lydia was one of the many who received the first gift, the gift of the gospel, through the ministry of Paul. And in v.14 we’re told that she received the second gift from God as well.

The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. 15 And after she was baptized, and her household as well.

The thing I love most about this short passage is that it describes this second gift in the simplest and most straightforward way that I’m aware of. Nowhere else in the Bible is the need for God’s second gift of regeneration talked about in such clear terms.

Life is like this. Work is like this. The Preacher helps us to see that it’s not enough to simply have the gift of work or the gift of fruitful work. To find what the Preacher was searching for but didn’t find, we need a second gift of God as well—the ability to enjoy the work and its fruit in Him.

And so, Grace, the great lesson is to stop believing that the satisfaction you are searching for is in any first gift; in any thing or person or place or possession or position. Stop wasting your life pursuing wrong answers to the question of “There’s nothing better for a person than that…”. Instead, recognize through the Preacher’s failure to do so, that true joy comes, always and only, from God’s second gift—the gift of joy in whatever type or measure of the first gift he’s pleased to give us, which is ours in Christ.

With all of that, as I’ve tried to do each week, having heard from the Preacher concerning an under-the-sun perspective on work, I want to close by offering an abbreviated above-the-sun one.

Five years ago, in preaching through the beginning passages of Genesis, I delivered an entire sermon doing just that. I used a good number of words unpacking biblical principles on work. I’m simply going to list them below to give you a taste of some of what the Preacher missed. I encourage you to pick one or two of the things on this list and dig deeper into them this week.

All of this together means, as the Preacher half-learned, work is a critical component of a life of meaning, but it is never the meaning of life. There is great joy to be had in work, but only when we work as God has called us to work: for Hs glory, according to His example, in His delight, and through faith in His Son.

And when we work like this, we know that God has given us two gifts (not just one), that He is pleased with our every act of work offered in faith, that He will use it for good, and that contrary to the Preacher’s conclusion, our work performed in faith really will last forever; whether in the souls of men or in the pleasure of God.

While the conclusion of our passage really does offer us the first truly above-the-sun look on things, we’re left with the sense that the Preacher didn’t really grasp the magnitude of what he saw. He didn’t understand the full measure of his insight.

Thanks be to God that we have the whole counsel of God and that the Spirit of God has opened our eyes (like Paul and Lydia) to it. Thanks be to God that everyone who has received the good gift of the gospel, along with the second gift of ears to hear it, knows true and eternal satisfaction in Jesus. And thanks be to God that everyone in Jesus can also find genuine delight in joining God in His work and pleasure in it—physical and spiritual, labor for bread and labor for souls.

And so, Grace, work hard as unto the Lord. Build great things for God’s glory and the good of the world. Serve well. Be an excellent boss or laborer. Leave what you can to your kids, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Seek the joy of the Lord in those things. And give yourself to the work of proclaiming Christ to the nations and presenting others as mature in Christ (Colossians 1:28).

Ecclesiastes 2:12-17 So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. 13 Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. 14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! 17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

Once again, the second half of Ecclesiastes chapter 1 and all of chapter 2 (1:12-2:26) is one larger section. In it the Preacher examines four different aspects of life in his quest to find meaning and significance “under the sun”. We’re on aspect three this week.

The Preacher’s first attempt (1:12-18) to find an “under the sun” life worth living was all about trying to find satisfaction through making sense of the world around him. He did so by examining it with (observational) wisdom. His conclusions were that the world is bad, vain, beyond repair, vexing, and sorrowful.

In his second attempt (2:1-11) the Preacher tried to find genuine satisfaction through mere hedonism; the simple pursuit of pleasure. To that end, the Preacher tried all the laughter, wine, great works, servants, possessions, treasure, and entertainment that money can buy. His conclusion was that “all [is] vanity and a striving after wind, and there [is] nothing to be gained under the sun” (2:11).

And in this third attempt to find a satisfying life under the sun (2:12-17), the Preacher considered whether or not it makes any difference how you live in the world. Neither understanding, nor hedonism worked to provide genuine satisfaction, “So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly…” (12). He watched those acting according to each and made a few observations about the results. As we will see, and as you’ve probably come to imagine, the result was very much the same as with his previous attempts.

The big questions are: Is there any discernable difference between the lives of those who live according to wisdom, madness, and folly? Do any of them prosper more than the others? Do any of them have more overall joy in life? Do things end up any better for any of them?

In other words, if you’ve ever known what was wise, but felt like you’d rather do something different; if you’ve ever felt like you know better than what you’ve been told is right; if you’ve ever felt like things that are wrong are just more fun than things that are wise, this is the sermon for you. The Preacher felt the same way. More importantly, under God’s inspiration, we get to see and, Lord willing, learn from his conclusions.

The big idea of this passage is that God moves in mysterious ways. Things simply don’t work in ways that are predictable, but that’s by God’s good design. We need more than our own reason or desires to live a life of meaning and significance. And the main takeaway is to trust God’s Word and promises rather than our interpretation of our circumstances.

Look with me once again at the beginning of the first verse of our passage.

12 So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly…

At the university I went to, everyone had to take Psychology 101 as freshman. One of the requirements for the class was to sign up for a certain number of hours as a participant for grad student research projects. I don’t remember much besides the fact that they’d have us do certain things and watch how it all worked out. We were never told what, exactly, the project was trying to determine, only that our response to whatever was put in front of us was a key component of it.

In some ways, that’s the picture here. It comes across as a kind of formal sociological research project. The Preacher observed various subjects in order to discover whether or not there was any discernable difference in their quality of life. What was the same and what was different for each group of subjects? What ended well and what ended poorly? Who fared better and who fared worse?

Before we consider the results of the Preacher’s considerations, let’s get clear on the (familiar) participants: the wise, the mad, and the fool.

The first group the Preacher examined was the wise. This is the eighth time in less than 30 verses that the Preacher has referred to wisdom. It’s clearly an important theme for him (causing further echoes of Solomon to ring in our ears).

At the same time, we must remember that the wisdom he’s referring to is largely general-revelation wisdom (rather than special-revelation wisdom). That is, it is mainly the kind of wisdom someone gains by being a careful observer of the world, not the kind someone gains from carefully studying the wisdom of God in the Word of God. It’s not bad wisdom; it’s just (as we’ll see) insufficient wisdom.

This is the culturally religious and the altruistic agnostic. This is the generational farmer and the thoughtful grandma. It’s the person who is careful to live according to things as they really are on the horizontal level. It’s the Jordan Petersons or the J.K. Rowlings.

The second observed group was the mad. This is the third time the Preacher used the word madness; another familiar idea in Ecclesiastes. And as I’ve mentioned each time, it is a madness of morality, not sanity. He was not watching the insane, the crazy. He was watching the lives of those who lived according to their base desires; according to the desires of their flesh. The Preacher observed those characterized by immorality.

This is most of Hollywood and late high school – 20 something guys.

And the third group explicitly named by the Preacher is the fool. Like madness, this is the third time he has made reference to folly. Folly is different than madness in that it is more about being determined to choose one’s own path than it is about conscious, willful rebellion. Fools don’t think of themselves as rebels, just as rightly confident in having discovered a better path. Fools are wise in their own eyes (and only in their own eyes).

This is the godless wealthy and well educated. This is the arrogant atheist. It is Jr. High boys. It’s the confident advocate of any world in which Christ is not King.

The Preacher watched an untold number of people whom he determined to be living lives of wisdom, madness, and folly, and did his best to keep track of how it went for them. As we’ll see, he ends up lumping the mad and the fool into the same category. Some have called it “mad fools”. Without explicitly saying so, it seems that through his observations, the Preacher recognized that there really are only two ways to live—the way of wisdom and the various ways of folly.

At the end of v.12 he mused, “For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done.” To be honest, trying to work through this clause on my own and then wading through the commentators’ attempts was somewhat dizzying. It’s a hard passage to translate and a harder passage to interpret.

In the end, I think the gist of it is this: “I, the Preacher, considered many people who were wise, many who were mad, and many who were fools. I did so to determine which, if any, of these groups of people lived the most satisfied, meaningful lives. Having done so, you can trust my conclusions because I used all my unmatched wisdom and kingly resources to answer that question. And for that reason, everyone who follows, anyone who repeats my efforts, anyone who tries to answer the same questions, will only be doing what I’ve already done, but in a less-informed, less-thorough, and less-rigorous way. I am giving you the final word on the subject. Trust the science”

With that kind of personal endorsement, we’re right to wonder what conclusions he came to. What were the results of his considerations?

The Preacher came to three main conclusions: (1) There are important differences between the wise and the mad fool, (2) The wise and the mad fool experience the same things in the end, and (3) All is still vanity, which the Preacher despised. Let’s consider each from the text.

In verses 13-14 the Preacher speaks to a couple of differences between the wise and the fool. Look at v.13.

13 Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness.

The wise are different than fools in that there is more (or a certain type of) gain in wisdom than folly. There is more to gain in the sense that life generally goes better for those who walk according to well-grounded wisdom than it does for those who continually reject that path or invent their own. And that, in the same way that it is better to walk in the (literal, not moral) light than the darkness.

It’s easy to prove this obvious point. We just need two volunteers; one to run through the fellowship hall as fast as you can, with all the tables, chairs, spilled crayons, walls, and doors in the total dark of night and another to do so in the full light of day. Who do you think is going to fare better? The answer, as we all know, is the one who does so in the day.

I remember being a foolish teenager at a ski resort. We got our hands on some sleds one night and decided to try to bomb the back of a ski hill with them. It was awesome for about 25 yards and then I hit a large, sharp rock. It tore my pants and cut my leg pretty severely at the knee. I honestly can’t believe that I didn’t break my leg. It left a scar for many years.

The thing is, it was dark enough that night that I couldn’t even really see what I’d hit. It wasn’t until we went back the next day and saw how ridiculous it was. In fact, in the light of day, I saw that I was probably lucky to have hit the rock since it only got worse from there. If I’d seen the hill in daylight, I’d never have tried to sled down it.

With that kind of picture in mind, the Preacher concluded, “14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness…”.

In considering the lives of the wise and the fool, the Preacher saw that it was like comparing those who walk in the light vs. the dark. There is almost always a more desirable outcome for those who walk in wisdom and light (who have eyes to see), than for those who walk in folly and dark (who are blind). Often, it’s not all that close.

You’ve experienced the same thing, right? You have found, like the Preacher, that in general…

Proverbs 12:4 An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.

And

Proverbs 12:8 A man is commended according to his good sense, but one of twisted mind is despised.

And

Proverbs 12:11 Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.

And

Proverbs 12:18 There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

And

Proverbs 12:24 The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.

And

Proverbs 13:18 Poverty and disgrace come to him who ignores instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is honored.

Things don’t always work out like this, but they usually do. This world ordinarily works like this.

Again, the Preacher’s first conclusion from his considerations was that there is an important difference between the wise and the fool—there is more gain in living a life of under-the-sun wisdom than one of folly.

At the Same Time, the Wise and the Mad-Fool Experience the Same Things in the End (14b-16)

That kind of sounds like progress, doesn’t it? In 1:17-18 he declared, “I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. 18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”

In 2:13-14a, after a second consideration of the three, he sounds more optimistic, doesn’t he?

Well, sort of. At the same time, though, he also observed that the wise and the fool experience the same things in the end. When it matters most, every ends up dead and forgottenness.

Death. Regardless of whatever increased, short-term gain someone might get from living in the light of wisdom,

14 … yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” 16 … How the wise dies just like the fool!

The “same event” is death. Everyone dies, no matter what they do in this life. The wisest and the foolishest both, eventually, end up as dust in the ground.

The fact that the Preacher was wiser and richer and more powerful than anyone before him in Israel did nothing to change the fact that he would (and did) die just like the most foolish, poorest, and weakest person.

The Preacher discovered that in the length of time it takes for a puff of smoke to dissipate, every man, woman, and child will die. We’re not here, then we’re here for a short while in a harsh world, and then we die; everyone, always, without exception.

Forgottenness. But it gets worse. Not only do we all meet the same fate in death, but before long, no matter what we do in this world, we’re all forgotten—wise and fool alike; much gain or little; powerful or weak.

16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten…

In a far more poetic and succinct way than I’m able, one commentator summarizes the Preacher’ second conclusion, “If one fate comes to all, and that fate is extinction (forgotten in death), it robs every man of his dignity and every project of its point” (Kidner, TME, 34).

Just like that, what appeared to be a crack in the Preacher’s vexation, what appeared to be a ray of light in the tunnel, all but vanished.

Have you ever felt like that? Has it ever seemed to you that it just doesn’t matter what you do? Have you ever thought that everything is simply out of your control and heading toward something regardless of whatever attempts you might make to steer things differently? Oh, how futile it can all feel. And the Preacher, who examined this more than anyone, felt it deep in his bones.

But the Preacher wasn’t done. He has one more main conclusion to share from his considerations. Look at the second half of v.16.

16 And I said in my heart that this also is vanity.

In the end, then, the Preacher came to the same conclusion he had each previous time–vanity. His third attempt led to the exact same conclusion that his first two did. What started out looking like it had promise, eventually ended in the same place.

As you all know, hard things happen in life. One thing that can help mitigate the difficulty of a hardship is hope in a solution. What’s often even more comforting is a number of possible solutions.

In order to really feel the weight of the Preacher’s next words, we need to imagine a real hardship—being diagnosed with some significant ailment, a serious relational strain, paying for a piece of land that you later find out cannot support a septic system, losing your job, etc.

Now imagine that after coming to grips with the reality of the hardship, you start to put together a list of ways to overcome it—and it really does seem like there are a number of possible (maybe even probable) solutions. Then you order the possible solutions from most likely to least and you begin to try them out.

If the first one, the most likely in your estimation, fails, it’s frustrating, but not that big of a deal since you have several more good possibilities. But as the second and third fail, and as the remaining ones decrease in probability of success, what do you think? How do you feel?

This was the case for the Preacher. He lacked a sense of meaning and significance in his life. He made a list of possible ways to find meaning and significance, but one by one they failed to the point that…

17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

Rather than taking a more positive step, the Preacher seems to have taken one large step back.

Living according to wisdom, madness, and folly, living under the sun, is no better than hedonism or understanding. It’s all mystery. It’s all enigma. None of it makes much sense. None of those things make life predictable or allow a person to really shape their lives, much less the end of their lives. No matter what you do under the sun, nothing is really in your control and it all funnels to the same place in the end. It’s hard to imagine something more frustrating than that.

Indeed, the Preacher “hated life.” All of life under the sun was “grievous” to him. Everything that he reached for was impossible to grasp, as if he was continually trying to shepherd the wind (“striving after wind”).

Again, let me ask, can you relate to the Preacher? Have you ever come to the point that you hated life, or at least certain aspects of it, because nothing really made sense? Nothing you did made things any better?

Your sickness just wouldn’t end.

Your marriage just wouldn’t heal.

Your kids just wouldn’t obey.

Your anxiety just wouldn’t lift.

Your loneliness just wouldn’t abate.

Your loved one just wouldn’t get better.

Your boss or coworker just wouldn’t let up on his criticism.

Your finances just wouldn’t get stable.

If you’ve felt what the Preacher felt because of these (or similar) things. Please listen carefully to my conclusion.

Once again, the Preacher was spot on in his evaluation and conclusions. There is nothing false in this passage. The flaw was not in the Preacher’s calculus. The flaw was in his methodology. The Preacher’s problem was that he needed to evaluate four groups, not just three. He left out of his study the most important group.

It really was like studying the cause of lung cancer among everyone but smokers, or looking for ice cubes everywhere but in the freezer, or trying to field a winning hockey team with everyone but people who know how to skate. It doesn’t matter that much how thorough your study is, if it’s missing the right subjects.

Again, the Preacher was right in concluding that all is vanity for the earthly wise, the mad, and the fool. But there really is another group. Had he studied that group, he would have found something entirely different. The fourth group, the missing group, is those who live according to the promises of God.

Under-the-sun wisdom, even the Proverbial wisdom of God, are good for their intended purpose, but their intended purpose was never to meet mankind’s deepest needs or answer our deepest questions. More than a way to make sense of this world, to find pleasure in this world, or to live in this world in a gianful way, we need to be forgiven of our sins, to be reconciled to God, and to learn to live according to the promises of God. That (and only that) is where the meaning and satisfaction the Preacher was (and we all are) seeking come from.

As we’ve seen, the Preacher did not have access to the full measure of the promises of God, but he did have enough to be made righteous by God and happy in God through hope in God. He did have enough to know that God promised to provide a way for mankind to be made right with Him. The Preacher couldn’t have known that was Jesus, but he should have known that his hope would come from the Savior God promised to send.

An example of that is found in Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

The Prophets spoke of the promised Savior as well. We see a familiar example of that in Isaiah 7:14, “…the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

The Preacher, and most of the OT writers, had access to these promises and many more like it.

And yet, once again, although the Preacher didn’t have everything we have, he had enough for righteousness. That is why it can be said of Abraham that he “believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3).

We do not know how many men and women of genuine faith the Preacher might have considered in Israel at that time, but we do know (from Hebrews 11) that there were many faithful saints

Let’s close then, with a Hebrews 11 call to live, not (like the Preacher) according to our assessment of our circumstances, but in faith in the promises of God (like so many who had gone before and came after the Preacher). God does work in mysterious ways, but His promises are faithful guides through every mystery. And by living out of them, we can have what the Preacher missed.

Hebrews 11:13-16 These all died in faith [the faithful saints the Preacher would have known about and ought to have considered], not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

The men and women who set their hope in the promises of God are the ones the Preacher ought to have considered. Just two chapters later in Hebrews we find the methodology the Preacher lacked, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7).

We know that Jesus is the Savior God promised to send. We know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We know that there is genuine salvation and satisfaction in no other. And we know that for those who live according to the promises of God for us in Jesus, death is not the end and we will never be forgotten as God’s beloved sons and daughters.

The Preacher was so close. May we learn from his mistake and live according to the Word and promises of God as we turn in faith to Jesus.

1 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. 2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” 3 I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. 4 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.

9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. 10 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 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, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

What constitutes the good life? Where is genuine and lasting satisfaction found?

You may remember from last week’s sermon that Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26 (the second half of chapter 1 and all of chapter 2) is one larger section and that in it the Preacher examines four different aspects of life in an attempt to answer those questions.

The Preacher’s first attempt (last week) to find an “under the sun” life worth living consisted of a quest to understand the world through wisdom. He thought that if he could just make sense of things, a fulfilling life might follow. What’s more, we’re told that he did so with more access to the world and more under-the-sun wisdom than nearly anyone else in history. In other words, if anyone was going to be able to do so, it was him. His conclusions, however, discouragingly, were that the world is bad, vain, beyond repair, vexing, and sorrowful.

In his second attempt, found in our passage for this morning, the Preacher tried a different approach. If satisfaction isn’t found in understanding, perhaps it’s found in mere hedonism; in the simple pursuit of pleasure. To that end, the Preacher shares in some detail the process he went through to find out. He also shares his conclusions. In all of that, as I hope to help you see, we’re given a remarkable gift from the Lord.

The big idea of this passage is that true and lasting satisfaction is never found in the pleasures of this world, especially when they are sought for their own sake. And the main takeaway is to seek fullness of joy in the one place that it is found, in the presence of God, through faith in Jesus Christ.

Again, remember, the Preacher’s main aim in this larger section is to find a way to live a life of meaning, significance, and satisfaction under the sun. His first attempt failed in spectacular fashion. But what about his second attempt? Helpfully, he begins by explicitly naming it and his conclusion from it in the very first verse.

What was the Preacher’s second attempt? Look at the first half of 2:1.

“1 I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself…’”

Some years ago, in the midst of some philosophical/theological debate with a friend—a non-Christian, well-educated, thoughtful, gainfully employed, married, father of three—I asked him to explicitly name his moral code. That is, I asked him to help me understand how he decided what to do in any given situation. His answer was a bit sheepish, but simple and crystal clear, (paraphrasing) “I suppose I do whatever I think will make me most happy.”

To be clear, he certainly had a category for finding happiness in sacrificing for his wife and kids and giving money to charity. It wasn’t as if he meant an entirely self-centered, selfish pursuit of happiness, but it was all about his happiness nonetheless. More specifically, it was all about an under-the-sun happiness. He couldn’t really imagine anything more.

In a very real way, that’s what the Preacher was talking about. He decided to “test his heart” to see if it might find genuine and lasting pleasure in the things of earth (11). We’ll come back to the specific places he sought earthly pleasure, but for now, it’s important that we simply acknowledge his aim: testing various pleasures to see if through them he could live a satisfying life.

And rather than make his readers wait, the Preacher immediately revealed the results of his heart-test, “1 …behold, this also was vanity.” Just like seeking satisfaction through understanding, the pursuit of satisfaction through pleasure is also nothing more than vapor, a puff of smoke. It also is mysterious in its inability to deliver on what it promised.

All by itself, that’s a powerful warning and a significant gift (we’ll come back to that in a bit). If all we had concerning the outcome of the pursuit of pleasure, was what we find in v.1, we’d be well-served. In particular, we’re shown the need to be really careful concerning what we say in our heart and what we decide to test it with. As I’m sure you all know, our feelings and desires often lead us into trouble.

As helpful as that is, the grace of God, through the insight of the Preacher, is greater still. What follows (in vs.2-8) is an itemized list of the Preacher’s hollow, hedonistic pursuits. And then in vs.9-11 we find the Preacher’s expanded conclusion from his pursuits.

In all seriousness, if I were to ask every one of you to write down a top-five list of the things you most want in this life, I wonder how close it would be to the things the Preacher tried. Another way to frame it would be to ask you what are the main things in this life that, if you were to have unlimited access to them, are most likely to truly satisfy you?

Please consider carefully your answers to those questions as we make our way through this list of seven things that the Preacher tried, employing all his vast power and resources, to find lasting pleasure in.

1. Pleasure through Laughter (2).

2 I said of laughter, ‘It is mad,’ and of pleasure, ‘What use is it?’”.

The key word in this verse, v.2, is “mad.” It has the same root as the “madness” of 1:17 (“I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly”). And just like 1:17, it refers more to morality than sanity. The kind of laughter the preacher sought was from what the NT calls “crude joking” (Ephesians 5:4).

He brought in the comedians from HBO and SNL. He sought pleasure from laughter elicited from unrighteousness. Even righteous laughter can’t provide what the Preacher was looking for, but sinful laughter definitely can’t. And for that reason, the Preacher rightly asked, “What use is it?”.

2. Pleasure through Wine (3).

Laughter elicited by coarse joking didn’t do it, but what about wine? Maybe that would be different.

3 I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.

For a second time, the Preacher explained that his pursuit of pleasure was anything but cursory. It was anything but flippant. He “searched with [his] heart.” He gave all of himself to this pursuit. He did his best to get deep into his own heart. His testing was thoroughly thorough in every manner, and specifically, here, with wine.

There’s a bit of uncertainty surrounding the nature of the Preacher’s wine-driven pleasure pursuit. In fact, he mentions two, seemingly conflicting, aspects of this pursuit.

He says, “I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom…” but also, “how to lay hold on folly…”.

If all we had the was the second thing he said (“how to lay hold on folly”) we would assume that a key aspect of his search was intoxication; pleasure through drunken parties.

And if all we had was the first thing he said (”my heart still guiding me with wisdom”), we would probably assume he went to wine not (mainly) to be made drunk by it, but to appreciate it as a connoisseur. The idea would most likely that he tried to find satisfaction in the pleasure of wine-tasting.

Either way, the point is that a life of satisfaction “during the few days of [man’s] life [on earth]” was the ultimate goal, and pleasure through wine was a means the Preacher tested to see if it was able to provide.

3. Pleasure through Great Works (4-6).

Next, the Preacher tells us that he tried to find lasting pleasure through building, planting, and cultivating great things.

4 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.

I do wonder whether the pursuit of pleasure was more aimed at the commissioning and oversight of those projects or the enjoyment of them once completed. Many have sought pleasure in each and both; in the power to create and in the enjoyment of things created.

Either way, when we consider the vast measures of wealth, resources, and manpower at the Preacher’s disposal (more on all of that in just a minute), it’s not hard to imagine what a significant accomplishment and how beautiful all of that must have been.

This is a good place to pause to ask you all to consider again the question I asked earlier. What if you had all the access you wanted to your favorite comedians, the best wine, and the ability to create and enjoy anything you wanted? Do you think that would be enough for you to be truly satisfied?

4. Pleasure through Servants (7a).

In the beginning of v.7, the Preacher spoke of another potential source of pleasure, the accumulation of servants.

7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house…

The basic idea here is one we’ve all had, I’m sure: A life where you only have to do the work you want to do and someone else does all the rest for you. You get to work in the shop or craft or teach or garden or cook or whatever you like and someone else pays all the bills, changes all the diapers, handles all the discipline and doctor appointments, plans for the future, and does all the cleaning and dishes.

Perhaps, the Preacher wondered (like so many of us), if I can just give myself to the things I like best, if I only work within my specific gifts, if I can get rid of all the responsibilities in my life that I’m particularly inefficient at or frustrated by, I can be satisfied in the pleasure that brings. And so, he bought an untold number of servants to test his heart in this (undoubtedly to help with his great works, flocks, herds, and household).

5. Pleasure through Possessions (7b).

A fifth (of seven) test, connected to the accumulation of servants, was that of possessions. In the ancient world, the most significant possessions were often animals.

7 … I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.

If the Preacher is in fact Solomon, we’re told in 2 Chronicles 7(:4) that he sacrificed (not had, sacrificed) 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. What a staggering number. I’m not sure I can even imagine what that means from a logistical, boarding, feeding, cleaning, perspective. But the main point is that the Preacher wanted to see if accumulating animals in that vast of a quantity would satisfy his heart.

I don’t know exactly what the modern-day equivalent would be. Maybe businesses or houses or cabins or cars or toys to support hobbies. Regardless, the Preacher tested to see whether the accumulation of more of the most valuable possessions could provide enough pleasure for a life of genuine satisfaction.

And in that, once again, we’re invited to test ourselves in this as well. Can you have enough stuff to be happy?

6. Pleasure Through Treasure (8a).

Perhaps the most obvious, the places most of us would think of first, are the last two named by the Preacher. In the beginning of v.8 he tells us that he sought satisfying pleasure in treasure.

8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces…

The Preacher wondered if gathering in vast sums of wealth would do the trick.

Again, even if the Preacher wasn’t Solomon, Solomon gives us the benchmark for accumulating silver and gold. 1 Kings 10:14 tells us that “the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold, 15 besides that which came from the explorers and from the business of the merchants, and from all the kings of the west and from the governors of the land.”

In case you’re not up on your ancient measurements, a talent was around 75lbs. That means that Solomon brough in over 50,000lbs (25 tons) of gold every year. On the low end, that would probably put Solomon’s worth at over 2 trillion dollars in today’s money. He certainly succeeded in accumulating wealth, but was it enough to satisfy? Do you think it would be for you?

7. Pleasure through Entertainment (8b).

Finally, the Preacher sought to satisfy his heart with the pleasure of entertainment.

8 … I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.

Singers and sex.

Concerning singers, it’s important to recognize that music was much harder to come by in the Preacher’s day. There were, of course, no recordings. And instruments and training to use them were far scarcer. But the Preacher, with his vast wealth and power, gathered them together for his pleasure.

And concerning his pursuit of satisfaction through physical pleasure, one final time we look to King Solomon as the benchmark for what the Preacher likely had in mind. 1 Kings 11:3 says that he had “700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines.” I do not intend to speculate how that worked itself out, but needless to say, the Preacher did not skimp on this (or any) pursuit of pleasure.

Again, how about you? Unlimited concerts, records, and access to your favorite musicians. Functionally unlimited access to physical pleasure. Could you be satisfied by that? We might wonder how could you not be?

One of the key features of the Preacher’s pursuit that I’ve mentioned repeatedly was his unparalleled power and wealth that gave him access to the things of the world to examine and his unparallel wisdom with which to examine them. The Preacher himself explicitly states that in v.9.

9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.

The result is that there was nothing on earth that the Preacher knew of but did not try. He names seven specific things, but his pursuits went even beyond those. He gave himself to every single pleasure known to him.

10 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure…

(The second part of v.10 simply explains the earthly means by which he gained the resources necessary to indulge in every possible pleasure.

10 …for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.)

Again, all of that is virtually impossible to imagine. And if we’re honest, most of it is probably pretty appealing. But was it enough?

Before coming back to the Preacher’s conclusion, I’d like to point out one more aspect of the Preacher’s quest and ask you to bring a now familiar question to a point.

The thing I’d like to point out is that in this context, the Preacher was testing his heart with every pleasure to see if he could find satisfaction in life. Not for his family. Not for those in his household. Not for the people over whom he was king. And certainly not for the people he’d employed (or conscripted) to provide the various pleasures he sought (the comedians who elicited laughter, the wine makers or vineyard managers who produced the wine he consumed, the carpenters and gardeners who built and tended his “great works,” the servants who freed him from work, the shepherds and herdsmen who tended his flocks, the bankers who stored his vast treasure, the singers who sang, or the concubines who performed). There’s a possible allusion to others in v.3, but far and away, the Preacher was after his own pleasure and his alone.

1 I said in my heart…”enjoy yourself.”

3 I searched with my heart how to cheer my body

4 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.

5 I made myself gardens and parks

6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.

8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings

10 I kept my heart from no pleasure

There’s something profoundly selfish about the Preacher’s hedonism. It’s rather staggering, really, to consider the hundreds (probably thousands?) of people and millions (probably billions?) of dollars spent in pursuit of his own pleasure.

And that leads to the question I’d like to bring to a point. If you could have all of those things (all the laughter, wine, great works, servants, possessions, treasure, and entertainment that money can buy), do you think you would be satisfied? Most of us are chasing satisfaction in those same exact things all these thousands of years later. Do you really believe that if you got them, they’d provide meaningful satisfaction?

It’s an extremely important question, especially if we’re going to get the full measure of benefit out of the Preacher’s conclusion. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you get to the bottom of this for yourself. Ask the Spirit to test your heart in this matter. And ask the Spirit to help you learn from the Preacher.

We heard the shortened version of the Preacher’s conclusion in v.1. He unpacks it a bit more in v.11.

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, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

Everyone who has ever tried to find genuine satisfaction in someone or something falls into one of two categories. Either they eventually gained access to it or they didn’t. Either you got the job, the promotion, the girl/guy, the kids, the cabin, the toys, the money, the retirement account, the work of art, the signed copy, the degree, the income bracket, the trip—whatever you thought would make you happy—or you are still seeking it.

Those in the second category (still seeking the person/thing) often remain convinced that they could be happy if only they were to get the thing they sought. The result is usually a life of longed-for pleasure that continually seems just out of reach.

There are some, however, who fall into the first category (who get the under-the-sun thing(s) they sought). The Preacher was one of them. And the end result is the same for all who do.

All the time, money, and energy the Preacher spent; everything that the Preacher tried; all the people the Preacher involved…all of it, every ounce of it, he concluded was vanity (mystery, enigma, futility), all if it was completely illusive (like trying to catch wind), nothing to be gained in the end!

Perhaps one of the most straight-forward and well-known quotes on this idea came from quarterback, Tom Brady, after winning his third Superbowl (a year in which he led his team to an undefeated 16-0 record, set the single-season touchdown pass record, and was MVP). During the course of an interview with 60 minutes he said,

“Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, ‘Hey man, this is what is.’ I reached my goal, my dream, my life. I think, ‘God, it’s got to be more than this.’ I mean this isn’t, this can’t be what it’s all cracked up to be … I love playing football and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I’m trying to find.”

I do not mean to say that there is no joy for those who got the thing they chased. I do mean to say, however, with the Preacher, that there is a difference between short-term joy and genuine satisfaction. I also mean to say, with the Preacher that nothing under the sun can provide genuine satisfaction. Many things promise it and advertisers pay lots of money to make you believe it, but all are (by God’s irrevokable design) impotent to do so.

As I said at the beginning, seeing all of this in the Preacher is a remarkable gift from God. It’s a gift in that it frees us from looking for satisfaction where it will never be found. Rightly read, it frees us from the zealous, hollow pursuit of the next mirage and then the next and then the next.

For most of us, we will never get the full measure of the things we are seeking. And for that reason, we can live on under the delusion that it might be found in those things.

The Preacher, however, had all of those things, and came to see first-hand that they cannot provide what they promised. His access is our God-given warning.

I want to conclude with an above-the-sun take on all of this; on the relationship between pleasure and satisfaction. The Preacher showed us one side, but there’s another that’s just as important. That is, we know now where true satisfaction is not found, but does God’s Word give us any help on where it is found?

What my non-Christian friend said, as well as what the Preacher was after in our passage, is the inevitable aim of every human heart. Believe it or not, part of being made in God’s image is the continually pursuit of highest joy. We must seek our satisfaction. We can’t not. God made us that way.

The only difference between men is where they seek it.

Said another way, there is nothing wrong in any of the Preacher’s pursuits. Every single one of them has a proper place in the life of a Christian. Every single one of them can be a righteous source of satisfaction, properly pursued. Every single one of them were in the first Garden (the Garden of Eden) and will be in the last (in the new heavens and earth). In fact, this entire passage is in many ways the Preacher’s right longing for the Garden and a wrong attempt to recreate it by his own hand.

The chief end of man really is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever! Our God-given highest purpose in life is to seek and find satisfaction…in God.

The Preacher looked in creation for what can only be found in the Creator.

I just read of King David’s (possibly the Preacher’s own father) acknowledgement of this in my QT this week. In Psalm 27:4 he declares, “One thing I have asked of the LORD, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the says of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”

Why would David want to dwell in the house of God and gaze upon His beauty continually? Because, as another of His songs highlights, “In [God’s] presence [and in His presence alone] there is fullness of joy; at [His] right hand are pleasures forever more” (Psalm 16:11).

True, full, eternal satisfaction is found in God’s presence and pleasure. And we know that access to the presence and pleasure of God is ours by grace, through faith, in Jesus Christ alone. He alone was able to atone for our sins (including the sins of seeking our joy by placing our hope in what will be destroyed) and reconcile us to God.

Grace Church, hear me clearly and tell your neighbors joyfully, it is right that you want to be truly and lastingly satisfied. It is right to seek that. God has put that desire (that need) in you. But you must seek it where it can be found. And it is found (eternally!) in Christ alone. Every other pursuit—every.single.one—leads in delusion, disappointment, and eventually (if not repented of) destruction.

The news that we can have our heart’s true desire in Jesus gets even better though. When that happens, when we find our true satisfaction in God through Jesus, the rest of His creation opens itself up to us as well.

Indeed, laughter (contrary to the Preacher’s experience) is a satisfying gift of God when it is rooted in gladness at the kindness of God and Christian fellowship. The righteous are men and women of deep belly laughs, flowing from the joy of the Lord.

Wine is a satisfying gift of God when it is a part of godly celebrations (Psalm 104:15) and more importantly, the celebration of the gospel that is the Lord’s Supper (Matthew 26:26-28). It will be a part of the great marriage supper of the Lamb (Matthew 26:29)!

Building works of wonder (homes, gardens, parks, trees, ponds) are satisfying gifts of God when they are done for His glory and the good of his people. It is a part of God’s earliest (pre-Fall) commands to exercise dominion over the earth (Genesis 1-2) and a significant means of pointing people to the glory of God.

Having servants is a satisfying gift of God when our treatment of them is a blessing to them and they aid us in righteous pursuits (Colossians 4:1). Jesus Himself said and modeled, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

Having possessions is a satisfying gift of God when the possessions are used to care for the vulnerable and provide a sight pin to God’s glory. Indeed, Jesus is in heaven right now preparing a place of His followers in the mansion of God (John 14:2).

Being wealthy is a satisfying gift of God when we view ourselves not as owners of the wealth, but as stewards of God’s (Matthew 25:14–30); using it all for His purposes and glory as His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 9:6-7).

Music is a satisfying gift of God when it is excellent and celebrates that which is good, beautiful, and true. God’s people are commanded to address “one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart…” (Ephesians 5:1). And singing will be our native tongue throughout eternity (Revelation 15:3).

And sex is a satisfying gift of God when it is experienced in its proper place (within a covenant marriage) and for its intended purposes (procreation, protection, and communion).

In other words, everything the Preacher tried was a good gift of God. His problem was that he sought each in an under-the-sun way—as ends in themselves—when he was meant to seek God first and all those things for God’s purposes—for the glory of God, for the good of mankind, and according to God’s design.

Grace, the big idea of this passage is that true and lasting satisfaction is never found in the pleasures of this world when they are sought for their own sake. And the main takeaway is to seek fullness of joy in the one place that it is found, in the presence of God, through faith in Jesus Christ.

Ecclesiastes 1:12-18 I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

    15 What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

    18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Many years ago, Socrates, a philosopher in Ancient Greece, was charged with the capital crimes of failing to acknowledge the proper gods and of corrupting the youth of Athens with his teaching. Socrates was put on trial for those things and was ultimately found guilty and put to death.

Socrates maintained his innocence throughout the trial and refused to recant. In his mind, he was doing nothing but seeking truth and virtue. Indeed, for Socrates (as he is portrayed by Plato), there was simply no other way to live. He famously said, “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.” In other words, if Socrates had to choose between a life in which he was forced to stop pursuing truth and death, he would (and did) choose death.

By all accounts, it was common grace alone that caused Socrates to have such zeal for understanding. He looked out into the world and into the hearts of men and wanted to understand what he saw; so much so that he didn’t want to live in a world where he couldn’t. We would do well to imitate his desire to understand God and the world He made.

Indeed, the Bible has many commands, like the one in Philippians 4:8, to do just that: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” The gist of the Apostle Paul’s command is for Christians to think hard about the things in this world that are worth thinking about.

The Bible not only commands us to think carefully about the world around us, though. It also gives us several examples of men and women of God who did so. In fact, that’s exactly what we have in our passage for this morning. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Preacher determined to examine every aspect of life under the sun, to use only wisdom, and then to share his conclusions.

The big idea of this passage is that all human wisdom has limits. Wisdom is better than folly, but it alone is not sufficient to predict life under the sun with 100% accuracy. And that is often really, really frustrating. The main takeaway, therefore, is to seek wisdom, reject folly, and live ultimately according to the promises of God that are ours in Jesus.

Before we get into the heart of our passage, there are three things I want to point out to help you follow along.

First, our passage for this morning is the beginning of a larger section that runs all the way to the end of chapter 2. In that larger section, the Preacher considers the under-the-sun vanity of looking at the world by wisdom (our passage for today), the pursuit of pleasure, living by wisdom, and our daily work. In other words, for the next several weeks, we’ll consider the mysterious nature of several ordinary aspects of life.

Second, the Preacher makes two statements in this passage that have led many to conclude he could be no one other than King Solomon (v.12 and v.16). The first one is found in v.12. There, the Preacher identifies himself as king over Israel in Jerusalem. The argument is that Solomon is the only son of David (1:1) who could have said that, since after Solomon the kingdom was divided and from that point on the king in Jerusalem was only the king of the southern tribes, the king of Judah.

The second statement that those who believe Solomon to be the Preacher point to is v.16. “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me.” That lines up with what we’re told of Solomon in 1 Kings 4:29-31. “And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore, 30so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. 31For he was wiser than all other men…”.

As I said in my first sermon, I do think there is a good case to be made for Solomon as the author of Ecclesiastes. And yet, the two main things to see are that it is written with Solomon’s voice (even if Solomon isn’t the author; one commentator refers to the Preacher as a “second Solomon”) and it is intentionally anonymous. In my estimation, we lose more than we gain when we try to definitively go beyond those two things.

And the third preliminary point I’d like to make is to share the simple outline of this sermon. There are three main sections. In the first, we’ll consider the fact that the Preacher decided to examine the world with wisdom. In the second, we’ll consider the Preacher’s conclusions from having done so. And in the third, we’ll reexamine some of what the Preacher wrote from an above the sun perspective.

With that, let’s get into the text and begin looking at the fact that mystery inevitably results from any attempt to interpret the world around us through the lens of wisdom.

In our passage, the Preacher makes a few extraordinary claims. The first of which is found in the first half of v.13 and again in the first half of v.14.

13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven…

14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun…

The Preacher determined to go on a quest. And the keys to really appreciating the significance of the quest are its nature, aim, and scope.

Of its nature, it was self-assigned and earnest. The quest was not given to the Preacher. It was something he decided to embark on of his own volition.

It’s like the weirdos who choose to willingly subject themselves to the rigors of running marathons; who pay for the pain of training and racing hundreds of miles over many months.

It was not only self-assigned, though, it was also earnest. The Preacher says that he “applied [his] heart” (13 and again in 17) to the quest. Another way to translate that is he “gave [His] heart” to the quest. This is further emphasized by the twin clauses, “to seek out” and “to search out”. Somewhat like saying “holy, holy, holy,” the repetition is meant to emphasize the earnestness with which he engaged the quest. He gave his whole heart, all of himself, to seeking and searching. He decided to do it and he determined to hold nothing back. Head-first, no hesitation.

This is not merely an aspiring marathon runner who was pressured and decided reluctantly to give it a shot. It’s an aspiring marathon runner who, unprompted, went all-in from the beginning; bought clothes for every condition, bought all the pairs of shoes upfront, changed the diet for maximum benefit, found the best base fitness and refining training plans, and cleared everything necessary out of the schedule to fully train.

I wonder what you have applied your heart to. Is there anything that someone might describe you as having given your whole self to? It’s important that we all do that and (as we’re about to see) it’s really important that we give ourselves to the right thing and in the right way.

So, what exactly was the Preacher’s quest and what was its scope? What did the he give his whole heart to seeking and searching out and to what extent did he do so?

The short version of the aim of the quest is: understanding. The Preacher wanted to be able to make sense of the things in life. He wanted to be able to really understand the world around him. Therefore, he gave himself entirely to figuring out “that which is done under heaven (13), or, that which is “done under the sun” (14).”

Finally, concerning the scope of the Preacher’s quest, it’s critical for us to understand that the Preacher earnestly set out on a self-assigned quest to understand “all that is done under heaven” (13) and “everything that is done under the sun” (14).

All of us have certain things we like to know more about; that we’re eager to understand. I love finding out more ways to use my lathe or catch trout on a fly rod, for instance. I know others who like to study certain aspects of their work to be able to do their job better. Still others have been through particularly hard things in life and long to know more about how to help themselves and others to heal from that. There’s an entire philosophy of education that is built around the idea that people always learn better when they study things they care about.

But the Preacher didn’t limit himself to examining a few areas of personal interest. Astonishingly, he tells the reader (in this passage and repeatedly throughout the book) that he determined to leave no stone unturned. His quest was for nothing short of making sense of everything around him.

He gave his whole heart to seeking and searching understanding regarding work, time, family, the sun, the wind, the waters, the human body, history, wisdom, happiness, morality, pleasure, folly, aging, gardens, buildings, parks, plants, servants, animals, treasures, rulers, conquering, ruling, marriage, sex, memory, inheritance, food, God’s sovereignty, birth and death, sowing and harvesting, killing and healing, tearing down and building up, tears and laughter, mourning and dancing, eliminating and gathering, hugging and keeping distance, seeking and letting go, destroying and mending, silence and speaking, loving and hating, making war and making peace, and that’s just what he explicitly names in the first three-and-a-half chapters!

He skipped the marathon and jumped straight to a desert 100 miler.

Even more astonishingly though is that the Preacher claims to have actually done it.

14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun…

To be clear, he was not claiming to have seen everything that could be seen. God alone can do that. It is to say, however, that he really did examine everything that he encountered.

All by itself, that’s pretty staggering. Therefore, when we add to that the fact that the Preacher had more ability to encounter more things than almost anyone in the history of the world (because of his vast power and wealth), we can see that this is an even bigger deal than it already seems.

Again, the Preacher determined to give his whole self to seeking to understand all that is under the sun, and he did so to an unmatched degree.

There’s one more aspect of this first point to examine before we move on to the Preacher’s findings. There’s one more question to ask. Through what lens did he look at the things done under the sun?

That might sound like a strange question, but it’s critical. Doing what the Preacher did by looking through different lenses makes a world of difference.

For instance, if the Preacher examined everything under the sun, looking to find that which brough him the most intense and sustained pleasure, his conclusions would be a lot different than they were. Likewise, if the lens through which he was looking was that of how best to conquer the world in light of how the world works, it would have been a lot different still. If his perspective was to examine all things in order to find the most leisure in life, his analysis would have been different. And if the lens was to look at the whole world to find the best path for ending all conflicts, it’s a different game again.

Let me ask you all quickly, through what lens do you examine the world? When you get sick or offered a promotion or get bullied at school or tempted with a new sin or see a beautiful sunset or loose a loved one or move into a new stage of life or make a new friend or find a one-legged seagull, how do you process what you’re experiencing or seeing? How are you evaluating the things you encounter in this life?

Those are the kinds of things the Preacher’s seeking and searching shine a light on for us. He helps us to see that our answers to those questions are truly significant.

Again, then, what was the Preacher’s lens? It was, he tells us, one thing and one thing only.

13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.

What’s more, the Preacher tells us in v.16 that he did so with no small amount of wisdom.

16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.”

In the same way that the Preacher was best able to examine all things since his power and wealth afforded him greater access to all things, his exceptional wisdom put him in an unparalleled place to be able to evaluate them. If anyone was going to be able to accurately and helpfully grasp life under the sun it was going to be the Preacher for he had more access and wisdom than anyone.

He tells the reader that he “Applied [his] heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven” (13). In other words, he determined to use only wisdom to consider everything he encountered. He decided to evaluate everything under the sun by wisdom alone; not impulse, not mere desire, not semi-sanctified common sense, not popular opinion, not opinion at all, not self-satisfaction, only wisdom.

The Preacher even went so far as to use wisdom to evaluate “madness and folly” (17).

17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly…

The main point here is that the Preacher used wisdom to consider whether immorality and foolishness led to a better outcome than wisdom itself. (We can’t help but to think of some of Solomon’s many foolish choices, like taking hundreds of wives and concubines.)

The Preacher really and earnestly determined to and did! seek and search for understanding in everything under the sun with more wisdom than anyone before. That sounds like a high and noble quest, doesn’t it?

Before answering that question, however, there’s an important caveat that I need to share. There’s a key clarification that we all need to grasp concerning the primary kind of wisdom employed by the Preacher.

One commentator notes, “The Hebrew word for wisdom is a broad term. Here it refers to what human beings can learn about the world without any special revelation from God” (Ryken, PTWC, 38).

That is good in a sense. Many have used such wisdom to discover amazing things about God’s world; even non-Christians and atheists. It is right to look at a corn seed and observe how long it takes to germinate and what soil it grows best in and how much sun and water it needs and what kind of yield it can be expected to produce. Billions of people have been fed because of the kind of wisdom the Preacher used in studying corn.

And yet, the same commentator continues, “The question is, how far will such wisdom take us? Will it help us to know and worship Jesus Christ as the Son of God? Will it lead us in the way of life everlasting? Will it help us understand why everything matters” (Ryken, PTWC, 38)?

The answer to each of those questions is, of course, no. This kind of wisdom is utterly unable to answer many “what” questions and absolutely no “why” questions. By itself, it can help us to see a great deal, but nowhere near everything we need. We’re about to see this in unmistakable fashion in the Preacher’s conclusions.

Once again, if anyone was going to be able to accurately and helpfully grasp life under the sun it was going to be the Preacher. So, what was the result? What were his conclusions after having given it his best shot?

His findings seem to fall fairly neatly under a single banner: discouraging. Through approaching all of life under the sun with more common grace wisdom, with a greater measure of natural revelation, than anyone before him, the Preacher concluded his quest profoundly discouraged. The Preacher used five different terms to describe his conclusions and not one of them is positive.

The first place we see the grim/gloomy/discouraged conclusion of the Preacher is in v.13.

Immediately after describing his self-imposed, whole-hearted, wisdom-quest for understanding, he concluded: “13 …It is an unhappy business…”.

It is not clear from this passage whether the “unhappy business” refers to life in general or the quest for understanding specifically. What is clear, though, is that the word for “unhappy” is more moral than emotional. It’s closer to bad/evil than to sad.

In other words, the Preacher’s first conclusion is that wisdom has taught him that a very significant part of human existence is bad. That’s not a great start.

The Preacher’s next conclusion strikes a similarly somber, even if familiar, note. He determined that in light of everything he’d seen under the sun that “14 … all is vanity and a striving after wind.”

He concluded the same thing after considering the benefits of living according to wisdom instead of madness and folly, “I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind” (17).

Everything is mystery with a side of futility. You’ve probably heard the expression “herding cats”. The point is that it’s really hard to get a group of cats together. Striving after wind (or shepherding the wind) is even harder. Indeed, it’s impossible. Life under the sun is mysterious to the point that it’s impossible to grasp. That’s what the Preacher concluded.

In v.15 we find another facet of the Preacher’s conclusion, this time in the form of a Proverb.

 15 What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

The gist of the Proverb is that the world under the sun is filled with things that are beyond repair. This includes moral corruption, but is not merely or mainly that. The picture is like a crumpled piece of paper. Have you ever tried to smooth one out? If so, you know that it can be made better, but never fully restored to its original crispness.

It’s the fight between friends that leaves a painful memory that fades, but not entirely. It’s the picture or video you shouldn’t have seen, but can’t unsee. It’s the car crash or loss of a loved one or health diagnosis that leaves behind a measure of anxiety that never fully goes away, no matter what happens next or how much time passes.

All the Preacher’s tests, using all the Preacher’s wisdom, led him to conclude that the world is filled with crooked things and mankind is powerless to make them straight again.

The second part of the proverb only enhances the frustration. It most likely communicates the simple fact that on top of the continual futility we feel from our inability to fully restore what we know to be broken, we also feel the futility of things we will never even be able to name. As everyone of us has experienced, there are things wrong with the world that we continually feel without ever knowing exactly what they are.

The final two conclusions come from another proverb in v.18. The first half says,

    18 For in much wisdom is much vexation…

Vexation in this sense refers to “an irritation, a frustration of the soul verging on anger” (Ryken, PTWC, 43).

The main idea the Preacher discovered was that as he grew in and applied wisdom to the world he encountered, it only led to more and deeper frustration. That kind of examination of the world with that kind of wisdom did not provide relief, only a growing irritation at the realization that not only are things not as they ought to be, but also that there’s nothing that we can do about it.

Finally, and maybe most gloomily/discouragingly, in the second half of the proverb of v.18 we read,

18 …he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Perhaps the simplest way to reword this is: If you don’t know how things are supposed to be, you can’t be upset that they’re not that way. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

By applying wisdom to every aspect of life the Preacher came to better understand how things ought to be, but also that they are much further from that than he had ever imagined. That realization increased his sorrow.

How many of you have ever had a significant disagreement/argument with someone you’re really close to (a friend or family member or spouse)? By “significant,” I mean something more than a simple misunderstanding or a brief dust up? Sins were committed, feelings were hurt, great and prolonged difficulty was experienced.

Let me press one level deeper. How many of you, during one of those significant disagreements, believed yourself to have had your head around things in such a way that should have been helpful? You thought you had a decent understanding of the situation—both sides. You thought you had a decent handle on what God’s Word has to say about a situation like that—both sides. And as far as you were able to tell, you wanted, and were trying, to honor God and the person you were arguing with.

But…

Wisdom (at least the measure you had) wasn’t working. As much as you tried to act in wisdom, it didn’t help resolve the situation. Of course, none of us are perfect, but as far as you could tell, you were doing what was right and for right reasons. Nevertheless, it didn’t help, and in some ways, it even made things worse.

Indeed, trying unsuccessfully to act in wisdom usually only makes things harder. Trying to do what’s right only to have it backfire in your face is often more frustrating, more challenging, and more upsetting than if you hadn’t. Sacrificially doing what’s right in the face of persistent rejection tends to only increases the sorrow, permanently bending things for both people.

And to make matters even more that way—more unhappy business (13), more vanity (14, 17), more beyond repair (15), much more vexation (18), and more increased sorrow (18)—is the fact that all of this, the Preacher discovered, is that which “13 …God has given to the children of man to be busy with.”

It’s not only the way things are, but God’s hand is in all of that on some level. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!

We’ve all felt this; sometimes with the kind of crushing weight the Preacher experienced. Some of us are in it right now. The more you understand, the harder things are. The harder you try, the worse things get. This life is one big mystery, with the unavoidable cumulative effect of unhappy, vexation and sorrow. So, what are we to do with all of this? How are we to make sense of this, especially if God is involved in all of it?

That leads to the final section.

If all the under the sun wisdom available to us is not sufficient to live a life of joy and contentment, then what are we to do? Simply, we must seek and live by a higher wisdom, above the sun wisdom.

We need not only general revelation, we need special revelation as well. All the under the sun wisdom in the world is never sufficient to live in this world as we were made to do so. And in that way, all the under the sun wisdom in the world cannot lead to a life of genuine satisfaction and fulfillment. The path to those things is found in the promises of God alone, which are ours in the Word of God alone.

There are, of course, many promises of God to us in Jesus, but there are two of particular significance regarding the Preacher’s observations and conclusions: promises concerning the nature of sin and God’s relationship to it. He certainly had some measure of awareness of these, but like the rest of his understanding (along with every man before Christ), it was incomplete.

Things are the way the Preacher observed because of the corrupting effects of sin. Again, of course, the Preacher knew of sin, but he did not know the full measure of its corrupting effects.

In a very real way, all that the Preacher experienced can be summed up by two NT verses: Romans 8:7-8 and Romans 8:22.

Concerning the reason the Preacher experienced what he did in mankind, Romans 8:7-8 cuts straight to the heart of the matter, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

And concerning the reason the Preacher experienced what he did in the rest of creation, Romans 8:22 sums it up, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

Under the sun wisdom is sufficient to recognize the corruption of men and the fact that the rest of creation is struggling, it’s sufficient to recognize that there is nothing that man can do to fix it, and it’s sufficient to know that if that’s all there is, it is vexing and sorrowful indeed.

But we need above the sun wisdom (wisdom from God, given in His Word) to really grasp the extent of what’s happening, why that’s happening, and what can be done about it. And that leads to the second promise of God.

The world is the way the Preacher observed because of sin and mankind is powerless to do anything about it. But God’s Word tells us what under the sun wisdom can’t: that every ounce of the sovereignty of God is continually at work in every single thing the Preacher saw for the greatest good of those whose hope is in Jesus. The Preacher was right to conclude that God was in everything he experienced, but he was wrong about how.

We find that promise just a few verses later in Romans 8.

Romans 8:28-30 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

Practically, this means that in every aspect of the mystery the Preacher discovered through wisdom is being worked by God for the good of His people. It is not, therefore, ultimately unhappiness, vanity, striving after wind, vexation, and sorrow, but temporal and eternal gladness and peace and joy in Jesus.

Grace, the world is as the Preacher observed, but it is also more than that; much more than that. For every visible display of hevel (vanity), is a billion purposeful, gracious, merciful, good, loving works of God in and around in through them all. And a life of clarity (not mystery) comes only when God’s grace opens our eyes to that in His Word.

All of the Preacher’s wisdom, great as it was, is addressed by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 1:18-22 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

    “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.