The World is Not Enough
Notes
Transcript
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.
I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.
I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”
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.
I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.
I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.
I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.
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.
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.
So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.
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.
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.
Introduction
Introduction
The book of Ecclesiastes is certainly heavy material.
But it is given to us for a reason.
One of the things that separates us from God’s other creations is that we can learn from others.
For thousands of years this was done by master and apprentice relationships.
To learn a skill or a trade you would apprentice under someone in that skill or trade that has had experience and has himself or herself apprenticed under another master.
This process would allow the apprentice to one day become a master and pass the trade to another generation.
But then in 1436, Gutenberg invented a printing press that allowed information to be stored in books that could be made cheaply and became widely available to most people.
It is after the proliferation of these books to the general public, that huge leaps in understanding and technology would happen.
No longer were things passed on one person, one generation at a time, but the understanding of one master could be put in a book and many apprentices over any length of time could learn skills and trade.
And so Solomon, blessed with heavenly wisdom and a wealthy kingdom can pass on his experience and wisdom to us, thousands of years later.
When we think foolish thoughts about how much happier we would be if we were richer, which we most likely won’t be, we can read his words, and realize we won’t be.
Or when we give our lives to a political cause, only to realize that
What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
As we go further into this book of understanding we need to be reminded of some things we learned last time.
This book calls Solomon Qohelet or the preacher. This is the main character of this book as he experiments with what is the wisest way to live life. The idea is that he gathers a congregation to share his learning so that others may be wise as well.
Then we learned about the phrase “under the sun”. This is the context of what Qohelet is expressing. It distinguishes between the eternal and the temporary. It helps us focus our attention on living a life that prioritizes things beyond the sun and beyond this current life.
This time I want to expand our vocabulary to another word: hebel.
This is the word that is translated vanity and it is used throughout the book.
And it may be that this has caused you to be a little confused as you have read this book in the past.
Usually when we use the word vanity the way that it is used here, we think of emptiness. Like in verse 14
I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
And we think he is saying all is emptiness.
But the word is more in the sense of meaning brevity or shortness. Life is transitory, it is a vapor.
Qohelet is writing a book about the incredible shortness of life, not the emptiness or worthlessness of life.
So verse 14 could be written: “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all of life is short, brief, and vaporous and a striving after wind.”
Life is an attempt to capture the steam from the spout of a tea pot. As soon as you catch some it escapes through your fingertips and is gone.
And so as we live this short life, Qohelet is trying to give us the wisdom and understanding from his experience to keep us from being caught up in a distracted, steam catching under the Sun focused life.
And he becomes a scientist. Testing the different ways that men and women generally think they will find fulfilment in their lives.
He experiments in 4 areas that make us think the world is enough to bring satisfaction under the sun.
And the conclusion that he draws from his experiments is that the world is not enough.
We’ll look at the first 2 in our passage today.
When Wisdom is Not Enough v.1:12-18
When Wisdom is Not Enough v.1:12-18
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.
Solomon was known throughout the world in his day for his wisdom and riches.
The Queen of Sheba came to see his wisdom for herself and after he demonstrated it to her she reported that it was true.
And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built,
the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more breath in her.
And she said to the king, “The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom,
but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard.
He had become the king of Israel and risen in wealth and power, but God had also given him a special blessing of wisdom.
And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore,
so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.
For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations.
He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005.
He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish.
And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.
So he is the perfect candidate to test if wisdom in and of itself is enough to make one happy and satisfied in this life under the sun.
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.
Qohelet applied hisself to the experiment of finding the wisdom or reason for why we are here. He didn’t just think about it in passing, he really tried to figure it out.
And he determined that this is an unhappy business or as the NASB says, a grievous task.
In his search for wisdom and the reason we are here, he does not try to think from a place where there is no God and come up with an answer, but he presupposes that there is a God in Heaven, in fact over 30 times in this book he references God as his starting point for his thinking.
Moreover he sees the fact that man attempts to find his reason and purpose a question that God Himself put in man’s heart.
Call it what you will, an existential crisis or a mid-life crisis, we all have some point in our life questioned why we are here, if we are making the right choices and doing the right things. And this is unique to man, animals don’t have this problem.
My cat doesn’t lay around all day and get depressed about the fact that she is wasting her life because all she does is process cat food, scratch my ankles and sleep for hours.
God put this inclination in us to get us to look past this brief life to the reality of our eternal state.
How often do we have those times laying in bed, kept awake contemplating our lives and our decisions.
But the fact is, in this life, we don’t get to know all of the answers that keep us up at night.
And Solomon’s conclusion was that if you don’t have that reality in mind you really are missing the point of wisdom.
I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
This life is too short and too brief to grasp it all. Under the sun, we are just striving after wind and grasping at vapor.
Wisdom is equipped to the task of answering the questions of life, just like our arms do when it comes to striving after or trying to capture the wind.
We are told that we can be whatever we want to be, or attain whatever we want to attain in our lives, but it’s not true.
We are told to live carpe diem, or to seize the day with our lives. That we can educate ourselves to a higher plane of understanding, but no matter how much we invest in education or in living for the moment, we still can’t grasp the answer to life’s biggest question.
Because...
Things are crooked
What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
Qohelet gives us this little proverb as an answer.
Crookedness is a great way to think about the problems in this life.
Things are just bent. Right is wrong, good is bad, we get sick, floods happen, hurricanes happen, family and friends get sick. Our lives are just not right. They are off kilter.
The trajectory of history is showing us that we can’t straighten the crooked things.
So know we look at all of this, and we ask why is it like this? Who made it this way?
Qohelet says in
Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?
God made it this way! He is working things out for His own will and pleasure, and we don’t have enough wisdom in this world to understand it...
Thomas Leale said:
Ecclesiastes Suggestive Comments on the Verses
Our wisdom is baffled by the system of Providence, as well as our power. As we cannot resist the decrees of it, so we can find no principle to harmonise its apparent discrepancies. Our safety lies not in rebellion, but in patience, faith, and hope.
So terrible are the restrictions of human destiny, that man can have no perfect liberty here. The seeming disorders of life sorely chafe him. We must be born into another life before we can have complete emancipation and “glorious liberty” (Rom. 8:21).
Solomon does not mean, in so saying, to teach or countenance the revolting doctrine of fatalism; he does not mean that we are to regard ourselves as being in the iron grasp of a remorseless power, in regard to which we have no resources but passively to leave ourselves in its hands.… It is His will—the will of the only Wise, Just, and Holy Jehovah, and not that of His ignorant, erring, and fallen creature, that is to decide what shall be. Let man, therefore, humbly and reverently acquiesce in what the Lord is pleased to ordain as to his earthly estate. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” [Buchanan].
My wife and her family enjoy working on crossword puzzles, I’m not the biggest fan, talk about hevel!
They make many different difficulty puzzles for those who really enjoy the challenge. They have a puzzle that is all one color, has no edge pieces, doesn’t have a picture of what it looks like on the box and doesn’t tell you how many pieces there are...
That is like our lives, that is crooked.
So we can not learn the reason why everything happens, but we must trust the One who is in control and rest in the fact that He is good.
The More You Know
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.
Qohelet applies himself to the experiment of wisdom and the experiment of madness and folly.
He tests everything to finds his answer, and he finds there is none.
In fact, the more you know the worse it gets.
The saying goes, “ignorance is bliss,” but Solomon flips it on its head, “knowledge is sorrow.”
If you pick an area of study, already you are narrowing the amount of things you can know, but if you pick one and focus in on it.
The more you learn about that subject, you begin to find that there are tangents and connected ideas and concepts that you didn’t know existed before you started. You didn’t even have a clue that they were connected.
So the truth is, the more you learn, the more you realize there is to know.
Gaining wisdom to find answers in this life is like striving after the wind.
And so we find that wisdom, or education is not enough to give us the answers to the questions of life, or to bring us any real, true satisfaction in this life under the Sun.
Qohelet’s experiment in finding enough in wisdom has shown him its result.
So he looks at another area where men seek to find the answers.
When Things Are Not Enough v.2:1-11
When Things Are Not Enough v.2:1-11
I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.
I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”
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.
I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.
I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.
I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.
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.
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.
So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.
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.
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.
There is a concept going on in the modern American church that God wants us to be happy.
That we are intended by God to go through life, and if we are doing whats right, that our lives should be free of pain, and trouble and anything that we don’t like.
This is the message that we are told by the tv preachers.
The problem with this philosophy (besides that it isn’t the truth according to the Bible), is that practically it just isn’t the case.
Who in here has lived one week free of pain or trouble in our lives? No matter what type of life you live, or how faithful you were to obey God...
And so this leads to confusion and disappointed.
The youth of our churches are told this lie, and when they get into the real world, and are confronted with the reality of pain and struggle, they drop off like flies.
This is not a new idea, you can see this mindset all the way back in the book of Job in what Job’s friends were telling him.
His friend Zophar reprimanded him and told him he must have did something to deserve the trials in his life, he said
If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and let not injustice dwell in your tents.
Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish; you will be secure and will not fear.
You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that have passed away.
And your life will be brighter than the noonday; its darkness will be like the morning.
And you will feel secure, because there is hope; you will look around and take your rest in security.
You will lie down, and none will make you afraid; many will court your favor.
Qohelet says this is not the case, that we do not find meaning and satisfaction in pleasure, happiness is not the point of our lives.
How many young lives are harmed by their first times away from their parents when they, like Solomon, experiment with finding meaning in pleasure?
How many marriages and families are ruined when one spouse decides they are no longer happy with one wife or one husband?
They attempt, as Solomon did, to experiment and they come to the same conclusion, it is hevel.
We don’t have to do it ourselves, we can learn from Solomon the Wise.
I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.
He sets up several tests of pleasure to see if he could find satisfaction in them, but all he found was short-lived.
The Experiment of Laughter
I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”
He tried comedy.
Laughing for laughing’s sake, to drown out the questions of life by distracting hisself with comedy.
Kara Stoke wrote in her article, “The Importance of Comedy”
“I believe that laughing, and getting others to do the same, is one of life’s greatest pleasures and that comedy is a beautiful way of coping with life’s pain. One of my inspirations, Robin Williams, believed that comedy was a type of therapy that could enrich people’s lives...
...comedy can “provide a distraction from the disaster of…living”.
And this is true, how many people use comedy as a distraction from the disaster of living, but thats all it is, a distraction.
The disaster of life always comes back, as in the sad story of Robin Williams, and then, as Qohelet said, “What use is it?”
The Experiment of Wine
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.
One commenter said that Solomon wanted to experience life through chemistry.
Solomon tasted all the wine and alcohol he could.
Notice he doesn’t give himself to complete debauchery, his heart still “guided him with wisdom.”
But like many who drown their pain with alcohol, he found that it didn’t help.
The last phrase of that verse is telling, it didn’t help get through the “few days of his life.”
Throughout history man has turned to drink and drugs to find some pleasure in their otherwise hard lives. And America is no different when it comes to seeking distraction.
How many conversations have you had with friends and family about benders they have had and the hang overs that come the day after. How many close to you have suffered terrible loss and have turned to the bottle?
Solomon is not prohibiting its use here, for he gives guidelines for its use elsewhere, but he is finding it the wrong method for facing the pain of this short life.
The Experiment of Stuff
I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.
I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.
I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.
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.
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.
Qohelet was rich. The king of Israel. He could do what he wanted, spend what he wanted, go where he wanted.
Yet he still didn’t have true peace in all of this.
He did what most rich people do, experiment with architecture, buy and build multiple homes, he found a hobby, agriculture. He said he made pools, and they have found the pools. They are huge reservoirs of water for the purpose of growing Solomon’s trees. They must have been huge forests!
And it says he made these for himself. He did it for his own pleasure.
He got slaves or employees, had a great portfolio of silver and gold and won over his competitors, underwrote artists and had any woman he wanted.
He made the richest people of our time look like paupers.
But in all this he found no true lasting satisfaction, no true happiness, nothing real to salve the knowledge that no matter what he did, he was going to die soon and he couldn’t bring anything with him.
We hear all this talk of legacy, what you leave behind. Rich people support causes, build buildings with their names on them so that they will be remembered, but no matter what they say in the movies, you don’t live on in other peoples memories.
So after these three experiments he found there is no amount of self-indulgence that will be enough.
If you had any thoughts of performing these experiments for yourself, you don’t have to, Solomon tested them himself.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.
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.
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 is enough? How much is enough? Solomon tried to explore the ends of wisdom and self-indulgence, but found them to be lacking.
He looked back at what he had done and behold, all was hevel and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun...
What can we learn from this?
We can learned not to be tricked.
All of these things that Solomon tested, can be good things in there place.
Wisdom
Laughter
Wine
Money
Sex
But the moment we rely on them for real peace, the moment we are distracted by them from looking beyond this life under the sun, we will find nothing but dissappointment.
God did not give us these things for us to find our value, and importance, and acceptance in those things.
Stop thinking that I will only be happy if I had that thing, that money, that job, that spouse, that whatever, because you will not find anything but more brevity and more pain in it.
The only place that you will find true value, true importance and true acceptance in this life and the next is through Jesus Christ and His grace. That the only thing I need to reach out for to find these things is to a loving God who is ordering our lives for His glory and our good.
That those times when we are discouraged or are going through trouble and pain are moments designed on purpose to point us to Him.
Seek Christ and His kingdom and not the hevel, the vanity of this life under the sun!
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.