The Experiment (Part 1)

Proverbs 1:1–7 CSB

1 The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: 2 For learning wisdom and discipline; for understanding insightful sayings; 3 for receiving prudent instruction in righteousness, justice, and integrity; 4 for teaching shrewdness to the inexperienced, knowledge and discretion to a young man— 5 let a wise person listen and increase learning, and let a discerning person obtain guidance— 6 for understanding a proverb or a parable, the words of the wise, and their riddles. 7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.

Last week we began our series in Ecclesiastes.

Solomon sets the stage for his teaching by telling the listeners that all is Hevel.

Everything under the sun is a vapor, wind, or as many translations put it vanity.

There will never be an end to the longing of something more if all we do is chase our own tails or try to capture the wind.

He wants us to really feel the weight of what he is driving at.

There is meaning to life, but it isn’t found in earthly things.

It isn’t found in this world.

It isn’t found in something that was created.

And if we search for meaning,

If we search for joy,

If we search for satisfaction in the creation we will constantly be hungry.

We will never be satisfied.

Here recently my boys have been watching a lot of YouTube videos.

And we have limited their YouTube consumption to educational videos.

One of their favorites used to be a NASA Engineer.

I love and appreciate the mind of an engineer.

They are analytical.

They are thoughtful.

They are calculating.

They love to see a problem and find out how to solve it.

But with seeing a problem and solving the problem there are often mistakes.

There are often bumps in the road.

So they have to experiment.

And to run a good experiment, you have to see the problem and attack it from all angles.

And when they are finished with their research and their models they can bring you back a report on what worked, what didn’t work, and how to solve the problem in the future.

What does this have to do with Ecclesiastes?

Solomon sees the problem.

He knows that life under the sun is fleeting.

That it’s simply a vapor.

Here today and gone tomorrow.

But he still wants to find meaning.

So he sets up an experiment.

He works on this problem like an engineer.

He wants to try all the variable and see if he can figure out meaning to life.

This is what can only be called a Hedonistic Experiment.

Hedonism is defined as “the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.”

Essentially Hedonism tells us that if it feels good do it.

Or if it makes you happy do it.

The problem is that Hedonism leaves us empty.

Its a philosophy that permeates and penetrates our society.

It’s what social media was built on.

Those quick little dopamine hits that make us feel good in the moment, but leave us ultimately empty.

If it feels good do it is the motto of the American Dream.

But what we are going to see this morning is that emptiness is at the end of that promise.

And Solomon’s Hedonistic Experiment is going to prove that point.

He is going to try pleasure to the extreme.

He is going to chase what offers happiness.

He is going to let his every natural instinct run wild.

Why would Solomon qualify for such an experiment.

Solomon was one of the wealthiest men to ever live.

Just a small picture, According to 2 Chron 9:13 “13 The weight of gold that came to Solomon annually was twenty-five tons,”

He is counted as the wisest man to ever live 1 Kings 3:12 “12 I will therefore do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and understanding heart, so that there has never been anyone like you before and never will be again.”

He had more money, wisdom, influence, and power than we could ever imagine.

And yet what did he find…nothing under the sun would satisfy him.

We are about to read about this experiment.

But before we do let’s pray.

Ecclesiastes 1:12–14 CSB

12 I, the Teacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to examine and explore through wisdom all that is done under heaven. God has given people this miserable task to keep them occupied. 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun and have found everything to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.

Futile Search

Earlier in the Service we read part of Proverb 1.

Interesting to note that the same man that penned most of Proverbs is the one who is talking in Ecc.

In Proverbs he posts up the importance of wisdom, and here he posits the limits of wisdom.

What’s going on here?

Notice that in Proverbs he talks about the Fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom, yet here in Ecc he focuses on his own mind and knowledge.

This is a theme in this section, the focal point is different.

Here he is talking about worldly or earthly wisdom.

Not about Godly or pure and true wisdom.

And this is where he tells us that he is going to set up the experiment to find the meaning of life.

“I applied my mind to examine and explore through wisdom all that is done under heaven.” v. 13.

Solomon is taking his experiences.

He’s taking his knowledge and he is looking out at the world for meaning.

As stated earlier, he is perfect for this task.

In fact, b/c of his money, wisdom, influence, and power, there is no one better equipped to delve into the depths of everything under the sun.

Here’s a trap that I have seen many fall into.

In fact, I have fallen into it as well.

The pursuit of knowledge to live a fulfilled life.

I love to learn. I love to grow. I love to gain knowledge.

In fact, there’s a joke at our house that sometimes I am like Johnny-5 from the Movie Short Circuit.

“Need more Input”

When I was in school, attaining knowledge and wisdom felt like the highest of all callings.

This is true for many great thinkers.

Those who sit in their Ivory Towers and ponder things all day long.

Have you ever encountered the person that is a know-it-all.

And not in the humble way, but in the braggy way, where they are always trying to one up you in the things they know.

They can be insufferable.

I know this, b/c I am one, and unfortunately we are raising one too.

Solomon is here telling us about life.

About what worked for him and didn’t work for him.

He knows the emptiness of this hedonistic pursuit.

And look a the words he used in v.13, he examined and explored.

Some translations use the words seek and search.

This wasn’t a one off observation.

He was diligently seeking the truth.

He was diligently seeking to know and find meaning.

He was on a mission.

His quest was extensive and intensive.

Just imagine a man who was looking for lost treasure.

And he knew that it had to be somewhere close.

And so day after day, night after night, he is seeking and searching diligently.

That’s the type of image that should be stirred up in your mind as you read about Solomon’s journey here.

But again his problem here is that he was seeking with earthly wisdom and not Divine wisdom.

That’s why he gets so frustrated in his pursuit.

He is missing the mark.

I want you to hear me clearly, seeking wisdom, even worldly wisdom is not inherently bad, but if it ends at that pursuit, it will end with frustration and grief.

The problem with worldly wisdom is that it informs the mind, but can’t transform the heart.

It’s held completely in the mind while not sitting on the heart.

That’s why we can philosophize and debate till we are blue in the face, but that won’t change people’s heart.

Expending all this energy, led Solomon to emptiness.

And that led to a negative attitude toward God and this world.

That’s why he says in v. 13, Ecc 1:13 “13 I applied my mind to examine and explore through wisdom all that is done under heaven. God has given people this miserable task to keep them occupied.”

These are some rough words from our teacher.

I’m not sure if you noticed or not, but this is the first time that Solomon has mentioned God.

In fact, the word here for miserable is the Hebrew Ra’ which can be translated to either bad or evil.

So Solomon is making a moral judgement on God’s design for this life.

It’s not just a miserable task, it’s bad business.

Solomon is criticizing God.

Why b/c he has found that under the sun, there is no meaning.

There is no hope.

All the work of understanding, of searching, of attaining wisdom and knowledge is toilsome and ultimately unfruitful b/c it doesn’t satisfy.

He’s looking for answers.

He’s seeking.

He’s examining.

He’s exploring, but he’s coming up empty.

What he’s doing here is challenging the notion that the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom will satisfy.

Like a hamster spinning on the wheels of life, the goal will never be attained through earthly wisdom.

Through pursuing knowledge.

Solomon is just saying something out loud that I am sure many of us have felt at one time or another in life.

We have cried out to God asking what is the meaning of this.

What is the purpose of life.

I feel at times like all this work and toil is bad business.

That I work, work, work, and never find fulfillment.

Never find hope.

I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.

That’s the point though.

This toil, this endless feeling of chasing the carrot is meant to drive us deeper into the true meaning found in God.

Remember that Solomon is pushing us to recover eden.

To long for a reconstruction and restoration of meaningful work.

When our all of our focus and all of our energy is put into the temporal things under the sun it is fruitless.

It is frustrating.

We don’t find ultimate meaning.

We don’t see that we have significance.

We all long for significance.

But we will never find true and lasting significance under the sun.

We need to look past this earth to the God that is reigning from his throne.

We need to know that as Followers of Jesus our work and our search isn’t toilsome or meaningless.

When we are pursuing him.

When we are focusing on him.

When we have our eyes on him.

If our focus is on the work and we never take the time to look at the Lord then we will feel like what we are doing isn’t going to working.

And we may feel justified blaming and criticizing God for the bad business he has brought us into.

But if we know the character of God.

If we know the person of God.

If we take a moment and just stop to think about how and why God has created us we won’t fall into this trap.

Solomon’s problem when he looked out into the world and used his wisdom to examine and explore the world for meaning was that he was searching the world for meaning.

Meaning will never be found inside of creation.

“The task is evil b/c no solution is found after much hard work. The search leads to frustration rather than resolution.”

So here, Solomon is giving us the conclusion to his experiment before he even tells us what he experimented with.

These are based on his conclusions.

His personal experience.

He wants us to know what he has found.

What does he say in v. 14?

Ecc 1:14 “14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun and have found everything to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.”

All things done under the sun are hevel.

A vapor. Smoke.

All the exploration.

All the examining.

All the trials.

All the wisdom used.

It’s all empty.

Again we need perspective.

An earthly and “under the sun” perspective is empty.

But we know that God is working out his plan.

With our eyes on him, we gain perspective.

Here’s something that Solomon is missing when it comes to his observations.

There is beauty in the mundane.

There is beauty in the toil.

There is beauty in the day to day life.

What I mean is this, when we stop and take a step back and realize that every day is a gift from God, then we can see the beauty in what seems futile.

The Fact that God has chosen us as his sons and daughters.

That he has invited us into his kingdom.

Gives our life purpose.

Most of us look for purpose in the “big” decisions of life.

Who we are going to marry.

What job we are going to work.

Where we are going to live.

And those are all important, but for whatever reason, we give less credence and thought to the mundane reality of life.

Each decision you make everyday, not just the big ones, have an impact on your mind, your future, and your character.

Think about a gardener.

Right, that’s what Solomon is pointing us to.

He wants us to long for Eden so that we can move towards restoring Eden in our circle of influence.

Now harvest time is the big time for a gardener.

But each decision that led up to harvest is equally if not more important.

The tilling of the land.

The choosing of the seed.

The depth of the seed in the soil.

The watering and protecting of that seed day in and day out.

And it is only until you have completed those steps that you get harvest.

The mundane toil of life is where fruit and harvest, change and growth happen.

There is beauty in the toil.

There is beauty in the mundane.

This is where you as a follower of Jesus bring glory and honor to God.

When we understand that the toil and the mundane are opportunities for us to do our work not for ourselves, but for the glory of God.

When we realize that it’s not just the big decisions that honor God, but every choice we make can bring honor and glory to him.

Your whole life. All the Toil. All the struggle. All the relationships. All the conversations.

Your whole life has meaning when we look at it from God’s perspective.

When we were going through the book of John, especially toward the end, I wanted us to really see that our life was to imitate Jesus’ life.

What does that mean?

It means that our life should be about pointing other people to God.

Pointing beyond ourselves and to the glory of God.

In fact our whole life, the reason we were created was to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

And we minimize our life, our purpose, and our meaning when we limit it to the things of this world.

We have to zoom out and see the bigger picture.

We have to look to God and attempt to see what he sees.

And we need to interact with people in a way that will honor God.

As his children we carry his name.

It can be hard for us to realize that many of the things that we chase after here on earth don’t really matter.

They may be important in the immediate context, but they don’t ultimately amount to anything.

That’s why Solomon points to the futility of everything under the sun.

Nothing lasts.

It’s all a vapor. It’s all Hevel.

...

Now, Solomon introduces another phrase here that is going to show up from time to time in Ecclesiastes.

And it carries with it the same flavor as Hevel does.

And it is “a pursuit of the wind” or some translations say “chasing after the wind”.

I don’t know if you can feel the emptiness in this phrase or not, but no one can catch the wind.

We can chase after it day after day, but we can’t master it.

And how foolish would we look if we went outside and started to try and capture the wind?

It would be a meaningless and fruitless endeavor.

He wants us to see that life on this earth without the proper perspective is futile and frustrating.

I think about during the summer when my kids are playing around outside and they are chasing after bubbles.

What kid, and most adults, don’t like chasing bubbles?

But what happens when you catch them?

They pop. They cease to exist.

And though it was fun in the moment, that play was ultimate fruitless.

What do we gain when we chase after bubbles?

So in his little experiment, he is going to show us that chasing after wisdom, pleasure, possessions, and work are the same as chasing after the wind.

So the question is, why is this so?

When God created the world he saw that it was “very good”?

How can something that declared “very good” by the creator of the universe, a perfect, holy, and righteous God, be viewed as toilsome, tiresome, and meaningless?

Did God create the meaninglessness?

Was God’s declaration of “very good” wrong?

Is the search for meaning tainted and unattainable?

Well, if all we had of God’s Word was the first chapter of Ecclesiastes we would come to the conclusion that it is, but we have a whole collection of God’s revelation to us.

So we know that there is more to this than a defective creation by God.

We know that we play a part in this brokenness.

And Solomon is going to lean into this brokenness and realize that we can’t fix the brokenness.

Ecclesiastes 1:15 CSB

15 What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.

Crooked and Lacking

One of the core tenants of the Christian worldview is that the world is broken.

That things aren’t what they ought to be.

People have a longing for things to be as they should.

If we really examine our lives and the world around us carefully we can see the disparity between what is and what should be.

That’s what Solomon is focusing on here.

We see this in v. 15.

In wisdom literature, crooked is a metaphor for sin or moral brokenness.

No matter what we do to try and straighten out what is crooked we are fruitless.

A crooked stick can never be a straightened one.

When humanity departed from God’s design in the Garden, then we made things crooked.

Our sin and rebellion is never straight.

We have the capacity to take what God has deemed good and distort it and make it crooked.

In fact, it’s our superpower as humans.

Just a real quick couple of examples.

One-Sex. This is beautiful gift from God, and when done in the proper context of a Married Man and Woman it is how God intended.

But we’ve come along and distorted it through pornography, sex outside of marriage, and homosexuality.

We’ve take what God has deemed good and changed it into something crooked.

Or how about providing for a family through work.

As far as family is concerned as parents we are called to take care of our children.

But often times this can lead to neglecting the children to make sure they are provided for.

Or it can lead to greed always wanting more b/c there is never enough.

It could lead to an unhealthy relationship with work where we become workaholics.

Again taking something good and designed by God and making it crooked.

Not only do we distort and make things crooked, somethings are crooked b/c we live in a broken world.

Some of our circumstances, no matter how hard we try, will never be fixed.

We can’t avoid sickness.

We can’t avoid degrading bodies.

We can’t avoid death.

We can’t avoid people treating us poorly.

We can’t avoid broken and disappointing relationships.

These are the realities of the broken world we live in.

And to take it a step further in v. 15, Solomon states Ecc 1:15 “15 What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.”

What does that mean?

It means that there is emptiness that we don’t even know about.

If it’s lacking it can’t even be accounted for.

We don’t even know its gone.

We may be looking for it but it’s competently gone.

We aren’t even aware of what’s missing.

Or even what’s missing is beyond measure.

Talk about a gloomy outlook on life.

We can’t straighten out what we can see and we don’t know everything that we are missing.

Something is always going to be either crooked or missing.

Ecclesiastes 1:16–18 CSB

16 I said to myself, “See, I have amassed wisdom far beyond all those who were over Jerusalem before me, and my mind has thoroughly grasped wisdom and knowledge.” 17 I applied my mind to know wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly; I learned that this too is a pursuit of the wind. 18 For with much wisdom is much sorrow; as knowledge increases, grief increases.

Limits of Wisdom

So what’s Solomon’s conclusion.

Simply Ignorance is bliss.

He once again states that his wisdom is greater than those who have come before him and those who will come after him.

Again, a biblical teaching found in 1 Kings 3:12.

And he used his wisdom and the knowledge he gained to seek a way to make the crooked straight.

To figure out how to find what he is missing.

And found that he was chasing after the wind.

Chasing after bubbles that touch your fingertips and then disappear.

Not only did he apply wisdom and knowledge, but he also thought about madness and folly.

“Madness and Folly” refer to living foolishly.

That is living in open rebellion against God and his commandments.

He tried to discern right and wrong.

And we are going to look more at this idea next week when we study Chapter 2.

What are we to do with this passage.

How are we to look at it and seek the fingerprints of God?

How are we to reconcile God’s placement of this as scriptural when it seems to stand against much of what the rest of the bible teaches?

Remember what I said last week.

One of the purposes of Ecclesiastes is to poke at our longing for restoration.

The toil of this life is to push us to want to restore and recover Eden.

Here’s how we examine Solomon’s Conundrum.

Look at the pronouns used in these verses.

10 times in these verses Solomon uses the pronouns I, my, and me.

His perspective is wrong.

This is where we need the gospel.

If our perspective on life is focused on me, myself, and I. There is no way that we can find the cure for what ails us.

We cannot overcome the crookedness of the world.

We cannot know what is hidden.

But we don’t need to.

God knows the brokenness.

He sees the crookedness and he made a way for the restoration.

We can’t rely on ourselves.

We have to rely on Jesus to fix the problem.

Knowing that he will ultimately put back together the broken pieces.

We cannot make sense of the world from our own perspective.

Trying to understand the ins and outs of life is impossible without a divine perspective.

Trying to make sense of suffering, love, beauty, and purpose is impossible without God’s perspective.

This longing and search for something better has made its way deep inside us.

And not only in us but in creation as well.

I want to close by re-reading the Scripture that was read earlier.

Romans 8:18–30 CSB

18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope 21 that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. 23 Not only that, but we ourselves who have the Spirit as the firstfruits—we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? 25 Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience. 26 In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.

There will be a day when Jesus restores everything to it’s rightful order.

Where what Ought to be will be.

There will no longer be any longing, we will be living in the perfection of Christ’s creation.

Our calling to long for that day.

And while we live here on earth we are to make the world around us just a little better.

If you want to know your purpose and meaning in life, it is to glorify God and do the works he has set before you.

He uses the toils and struggles of everyday life to conform you into his image.

So as we live in Christ, there is no meaninglessness.

Everything has purpose.

His purpose gives our life purpose.

He straightens out what is crooked.

God can make a straight stroke with a crooked stick.

Thomas Watson