Was Pink Floyd Correct? Ecc 1:12-18

Pink Floyd, the iconic rock band, once sang, “We don’t need no education...” then sang “Teacher, leave them kids alone!”

That’s nice and inspiring as we begin our school year, isn’t it? Perhaps Pink Floyd just took a page out of the famed baseball player turned preacher Billy Sunday. He once quipped, “If I had a million dollars, I’d give $999,999 to the church and $1 to education.” Or to say it as Pink Floyd did…we don’t need no education.

I’m sure our kids, getting ready for the school year, not wanting summer to be over are thinking…okay, preacher, I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to read some Bible verse and tell me why it’s really important that I get an education, why I should pay attention in school, yadda yadda. Go ahead and check out now...

I beg you not to check out just yet…Listen to words of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes 1:12-18.

Ecclesiastes 1:12–18 ESV

I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 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. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. 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.” 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. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Yikes. Our teachers and parents are starting to get a little uncomfortable. I know for our family, my wife has tirelessly labored to educate our kiddos for all these years, are you trying to tell us that all we’ve been doing for these years is “vexation” and “increasing sorrow” and that this is all just a chasing after the wind? I don’t know it might feel like that a little in August as we get ready for another school year.

I bet all the kids in our church might think they’ve found a friend here in the Quester. Let’s talk a little more about our friend here...

There is some debate as to whether or not this is Solomon…he never explicitly says, “yo, I’m Solomon.” But he refers to himself as “king over Israel in Jerusalem” and historically it has been attributed to Solomon—the wisest dude in the world.

We’re not going to answer that question this morning, but what we are supposed to see in verse 12 is that our Preacher, Teacher, Gatherer, Qohelet…he is king…that means he has everything at his disposal.

Here is why that is important. If he wants to pursue knowledge he’s not limited by a three book library. If he wants to pursue pleasure, he’s not on a McDonald’s budget. Whatever he wants to “try” he’s going to be able to…if anyone can find meaning under the sun—it’s this guy. That is what we are supposed to see.

And so he begins this quest…and he tells us that he gave it his all. When it says, “I applied my heart” we’re supposed to see that as him not only doing it with passion but with planning. He’s all-in on this quest. Holding nothing back.

He also says he is doing this “by wisdom”. Which, as we’ll see in a moment is a bit ironic. But he wants us to know that he isn’t going at this like a silly person. He is using all the wisdom at his disposal. He’s really thinking this thing through.

What he’s searching for is “all that is done under heaven.” That’s another way of saying “under the sun”. He’s trying, just as we saw last week, to find meaning in life. What’s it all for.

He’s trying something here that we still try. At the beginning of his quest, starting out on this journey, he holds an assumption that many of us likely still hold. If I just had more education we could fix this.

Now you might not mean by that fancy book learnin’. You’ve seen the kid who spent 15 years in grad school but doesn’t know how to do a basic life skill. He can use big fancy words, design a space shuttle, but can’t even figure out how to start his own weed-eater.

But let’s slow down and listen to what we say there. He knows how to build a rocket but he doesn’t know how to start his weed-eater. What we’re saying is that he has the wrong kind of knowledge for the job. We’re not arguing here that everyone should just be an idiot…we’re arguing that education should be practical…what we need is more education but of a different sort.

We live in a world that believes education is the solution to so many problems. A bridge collapses and several people die…what happens afterwards? Who did this? How could we have prevented this thing from happening. What do we need to cure cancer? More research.

What we really need to know to fix our country, we need to do our own research, we need to be in the know, if we had all the facts, if people just knew what we know about all this stuff—well we’d change.

This even happens in the church. What people need is more biblical knowledge, a better theological education…even now we’re sitting here hoping to what…learn something…so that we can take it home with us, give us some meaning, give us some purpose, apply it to our lives.

But as the Quester goes about this struggle, as he comes back from all that he found and writes down his findings…that’s what you have here in your hand…he says this. “it is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.” But really unhappy may not be the best translation…

The word is almost always translated evil or bad. But we don’t really like having a biblical writer saying that something like “this search for meaning that God has given us…it’s a bad thing man…it’s not a good thing.”

We don’t like that because we know that reality is that every good and perfect gift comes from God. God never does evil. God is always good. And so we don’t translate it as evil…but I really think what the Quester is doing here is similar to Psalm 73. He’s venting a little, he is expressing his frustrations.

He will come to the place, again like Asaph in Psalm 73, where he fills out his understanding. But at this stage of his search…it’s a built-in burden. It’s something you can’t escape. You are always a meaning maker. You can’t turn it off. That is what he is saying here.

Have you ever been there? Maybe I’m just wired different, but there are so many times when I’ve thought “Man, I just wish I could shut this thing off…not think about anything…not try to find some bigger meaning...”

He’s telling us from the beginning, “I’m on this quest and I really wish I wasn’t on this quest because it’s such a heavy burden trying to find meaning. I wish I didn’t have to go to school. That’s what he’s saying. And he’s upset with God for making him go. And essentially saying, “I’m back from my quest and I don’t feel any further than when I started.”

Let’s dig in a little more to his frustration. He says in verse 14, “I’ve seen it all,” he says. And it’s all meaningless (that’s the word from last week). It’s all frustratingly absurd. It’s all empty a vapor. It’s but a breath.

Then he gives us a new word. “a striving after wind”. It is literally “a feeding of the wind”. You could even translate it “shepherding the wind”. What he is saying is that this quest…this attempt to find meaning…it’s about as fruitful as trying to shepherd and tame a tornado.

I wasn’t here for the Joplin tornado. So, I don’t know all of the emotion and the pain connected with that. At all. I’m not able to see and feel that same anxiety you might feel when you see the clouds forming a certain way, when you hear sirens go off, how it takes you back there. It was an awful thing.

And what happened after that event? More and more research into severe weather. And we’ve grown and learned so much. We are able these days to detect when storms are even potentially threatening. It’s an amazing thing.

But you know what I saw here a few months ago? There was a pop-up storm, came out of nowhere. There were no warnings issued. And what happened? Well, we got mad. We should have been given a warning, we should have known this, this could have been prevented. Meteorologists were told that they had failed in their job. Why couldn’t you have predicted this?

This is essentially what he’s saying in verse 15. He’s not saying that there is no meaning. But he’s saying that we, as humans cannot lasso it. No amount of knowledge or information or knowing the meaning of life or any of that stuff is going to be ours. But we’re going to be really upset that we can’t find it.

There are things in this world that are inconsolable. In his book, The Imperfect Pastor, Zack Eswine spoke of the inconsolable things. He said,

“Inconsolable things” are the sins and miseries that will not be eradicated until heaven comes home, the things that only Jesus, and no one of us, can overcome. We cannot expect to change what Jesus has left unfixed for the moment. The presence of inconsolable things does not mean the absence of Jesus’ power, however. Rather, it establishes the context for it. There in the midst of what is inconsolable to us, the true unique nature and quality of Jesus’s  power shows itself to be unlike any other power we have seen.

If this is true for us, in the time after Christ has come and set in motion our redemption…how much more true was it for the Quester?

This is what we’ve been learning so far in Ecclesiastes. Nothing we do “under the sun” is going to give us the rest that we desire. That’s what we’re trying to do…maybe just maybe if we can get a grasp on this, wrassle that tornado with our education…well, then people won’t die and we can create shalom.

No amount of education can ultimately lead you there.

We want control. We want to rule again. Well if I have enough information, if I can be smarter than the other guy, smarter than all the things that life throws at me…maybe I can gain mastery. Maybe I’ll go back to being able to rule and reign in creation.

No amount of education can ultimately give you the control you desire. It cannot and will not set you on any throne that actually rules.

Well maybe if I know all the facts and get all of the answers correctly, maybe then I’ll be loved. If I know enough people will love me. Maybe God will love me…so long as I have good theology and believe all the right things and don’t have any error in my thinking…maybe this will restore our relationship.

No amount of education can ultimately restore that relationship which our sin has broken. Nor can it truly bond you to another human. It cannot and will not give you the relationship which your heart desires.

That is what we are being told here. We can’t wisdom our way out of this brokenness. It doesn’t mean it won’t be fixed. It doesn’t mean that some day it won’t be made right. But you and I aren’t going to fix it.

You can have all of the education in the world and it isn’t going to make the crooked world straight. If you think wisdom or knowledge is going to give you meaning…answer all those longings…fix everything…bring you redemption…as if education or knowledge is able to fix it all…well, it isn’t going to happen.

Wisdom cannot change reality. That’s the first thing he jots down in his notebook. If you’re looking for something to change reality…to get you out of this brokenness…well, it’s not going to be wisdom and knowledge.

Let’s see now the second thing he writes in his book...

Verse 16 is almost like him coming back and saying, “I did it! I got all the wisdom. But not only all the wisdom I also understood what I could about madness and folly. I explored it all.

That’s the point there. He left no stone unturned. If anyone had wisdom, it was him. He plunged the depths of human wisdom. And what did he find? Emptiness. Striving after wind. Wrasslin’ that tornado.

We don’t need no education. Have a happy school year kids...

Okay, so what do we do with this? What do we do with his findings? That’s his second thing. I didn’t get rescue…what I really got was even more brokenness.

Not only did this pursuit of wisdom not change the reality of the brokenness it only made me more keen to how messed up everything is. It led to vexation. It increased my sorrow.

Wisdom, then, it’s all a chasing after the wind. That’s what he concludes. But what do we do with this?

Especially if we contrast this with Proverbs. Proverbs tells us that wisdom brings joy and life. For 31 chapters we see the benefit of living a life of wisdom. And this is even more intriguing if Solomon did in fact write both of them.

In Ecclesiastes he seems to disagree with Proverbs. Nah, wisdom doesn’t give you joy and life. Wisdom gives you frustration and pain. This isn’t where it’s at. Wisdom can’t change reality—but boy it can give you plenty of sorrow.

What do we do with this?

Let me tell you a story about a couple of other Questers. One guy, a French fella, named Rene Descartes. He wanted to find a foundation for science and philosophy that was free from doubt.

And so what he did was he tried to clear away anything that was doubtful, anything that couldn’t be absolutely proven. What this means is that faith had to go. Revelation from God was kicked to the curb. These could be doubted. There was not a consensus for these things…therefore, for Descartes they couldn’t provide a proper answer to his quest.

And so he kept stripping things away until he came to almost nothing. He even explored things like how do I know that I’m not in a fictional universe? Can I absolutely know that I’m not just in someone’s dream right now? How do I know that I’m not actually in a mental institute at this moment and everything that is happening is all just a dream I’m having?

But one thing he couldn’t doubt, the fact that he was doubting. This act of thinking, he argued, proved his own existence as a thinking being. Thus we have, “I think, therefore I am.”

Now Descartes was a believer, he would argue for the existence of God in his work…but what he does here has had absolutely horrendous consequences.

It shifted the quest. It was no longer revelation to be had an understood, it was something to be pursued. It was a quest to be had. Similar to Solomon here in Ecclesiastes.

And it also opened the door for other philosophers. Later philosophers like Nietzsche would even doubt the act of doubting. It plunged us into complete madness and…well a chasing after the wind. Meaninglessness.

I want to show you something. Look back at your Bible for a moment. Scan through there and see how many times you see the word “I”. Solomon was doing the same thing as Descartes. He was placing himself at the center of knowledge. It was his quest.

And that we find, will only yield even more brokenness.

I told you I wanted to tell you about another Quester. This one is Augustine. He started at a different place. He said, “I believe in order to understand.” His point here was that truth is found in a Person. Truth, meaning, all of that comes to us…we don’t go to it.

Earlier I quoted Zack Eswine. I’m going to do that again, when he’s talking about all those inconsolable things he says this:

But the presence of things we cannot control or immediately fix reminds us that though the Bible is God’s revelation, it in itself is not his magic remedy. It lights our path by his Spirit, but it cannot always shield us from what he shows us there. Only the Christ that the Bible verses reveal can do this.

What he is saying there is that you can use the Bible wrongly. Bible verses don’t bring down the good news to us…they point to it. They point to Him. If I’m using Bible verses as a sword to bring about my own redemption…I’m using it the wrong way. The Bible is a sword used to point to the One true king.

And it hints at the difference between Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Proverbs says “the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.” Ecclesiastes does the opposite.

We’re meant to be brought to the end of our rope here. To say… “I can’t fix it.” We’re not meant to be brought to the end of our rope, to load ourselves down with doubt, and then say, “I think, therefore, I am.”

Was Pink Floyd correct, then?

We don’t need no education. Well, yes, and no. If wisdom, education, finding the meaning of life…is what you are using to “make the crooked straight”…well, it’s not going to ultimately bring that about.

You’ll devote your life to this thing. And even if you get to the bottom of everything…you’ll come to the same conclusion as the Quester. I can’t tame the tornado and this has all only lead to sorrow.

But Pink Floyd is also not correct. And this word in Ecclesiastes is incomplete. It only tells us about reality “under the sun”, but it doesn’t yet tell us the better story.

Wisdom by itself, education, this pursuit that the Quester is on cannot provide redemption. But that doesn’t mean redemption isn’t happening. That doesn’t mean that rest, rule, and relationship aren’t being restored. They are in Christ.

In Mark 4:39 there is a mighty wind upon the sea. It’s threatening to sink their boat. But Jesus gets up, rebukes the wind, and told it to be quiet. And it does.

He shepherds the wind. He calms the storm. He tames the tornado.

Part of that better story is that Jesus is restoring all things. That includes wisdom and education and such. In fact, Christ Himself, becomes our wisdom…see 1 Corinthians 1:30.

1 Corinthians 1:30 ESV

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,

Christ calls us to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind. And we see that the Great Commission is about “teaching them...” It has new meaning.

I’m not learning to try to get a kingdom that Christ hasn’t already given to me. I’m learning because it’s exciting. I want to know more about Christ. I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection. I want to live wisely because I know that His way is best.

And I’d tell kids to do everything they possibly can to learn about God and His world and all of that stuff. Education does matter. But it’s not ultimate. Christ is.