Sermon Discussion Questions:
1. Read Eccl 1:12-15 together. How does an awareness that there are "crooked" and "lacking" things that cannot be fixed in this life affect your perspective on your frustrations in life? How does this affect what you think of God?
2. Can you resonate with the Preacher's attempts to find answers in wisdom, pleasure, and success to the problem of the vanity of life? If you were in Solomon's shoes and had his power and resources, what would you try?
3. "Life is a gift to be received, not gain to be controlled." What does that mean?
4. How does the inevitability of your death and the uncontrollability of your life free you to enjoy life?
Paul Kalanithi was a gifted student with an impressive academic resume. He graduated from Stanford University with both a bachelorʼs and masterʼs degree in English literature, as well as a bachelorʼs degree in human biology. Paul then travelled to England where he studied the history and philosophy of science and medicine, earning a masterʼs degree from the University of Cambridge, before returning to the states to study medicine at Yale where he graduated cum laude. He then returned to Stanford for a residency in neurological surgery and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience, authoring more than 20 scientific publications and received the American Academy of Neurological Surgeryʼs highest award for research. As he neared the sixth year of his residency, Paul was told by his advisor that he would be the number one candidate for any job he would apply for and was already fielding offers from major research universities, many of them offering a salary six-fold what he was currently making as a resident. Paulʼs future was filled with what most dream of: a happy family, financial security, a meaningful career, and a sense of purpose. He writes in his memoir, “Medical training is relentlessly future-oriented, all about delayed gratification; youʼre always thinking about what youʼll be doing five years down the line...[and] At age thirty-six, I had reached the mountaintop; I could see the Promised Land.ˮ
Paulʼs memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, was a runaway bestseller and a finalist for a Pullitzer Prize, another sterling accolade to add to his trophy case. But, Paul was never able to relish in the honor. 15 months before completing his residency, Paul, who had spent so long preparing, so long looking forward to the life he was about to begin, was diagnosed with a rare and fatal cancer. The book details his experience of going from doctor to patient and was published just a few months after his death in 2015. A doctor (especially one so talented and young as Kalanithi) is one who has the power of life and death in their hands, one in control, one who pushes through the forces of chaos like a boat through the sea. A patient —a term that originally meant “one who is acted upon, one who suffersˮ—is the exact opposite, one at the mercy of an illness, a medication, a prognosis—a cork, bobbing up and down at the forces outside of his control.
And the book of Ecclesiastes is in our Bible to remind us that we all are corks, none of us are boats.
We come into this world, as we said last week, assuming that we are like helicopter pilots. Free to travel in any direction we so choose and arrive whenever we would like. But the reality is that we are passengers on a train, unable to get off, headed to a destination that we did not choose: the grave. And, as the Preacher will remind us again and again, the ride is much shorter than we think. And it isnʼt until we realize that, isnʼt until we see the brevity of life and the small part we play in this world, that we are able to actually enjoy the train ride, enjoy our life.
[Turn to page 553]
12 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.
(Eccl 1:12-15)
Our passage today looks at Solomonʼs escapades to find happiness in all manner of places, and he arrives at three conclusions: What is Broken, What Doesnʼt Work, What is Better
What Is Broken
12 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.
ˮ (Eccl 1:12-15)
The Preacher has, we are told in verse 13, tried to understand why the world is the way it is. And his conclusion is a somber one: life is “an unhappy businessˮ and “vanity.ˮ
Last week, we discussed this important word “vanity.ˮ What does it mean? It means “brief and bafflingˮ—what is here now, gone tomorrow, and doesnʼt always make sense. The other phrase that the Preacher uses often in the book is a helpful illustration, “a striving after wind.ˮ Wind is here, and then gone. And if you attempt to go out and grab it, youʼll find yourself undertaking a rather frustrating and futile endeavor. Children, put your hand in front of your face, and try to blow into it and catch your breath. That, Solomon tells us, is what so much of life is like.
A good summary of the Preacherʼs diagnosis of life under the sun is vs. 15: “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.ˮ That tells us first off that there is something broken in this world (crooked), and there is nothing we can do to fix it (cannot be made straight); there is something perpetually disappointing about life (lacking), and there is no end to it (cannot be counted).
Now, what is the source of this dilemma?
The Preacher seems to lay the genesis of this problem at the feet of God. “It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.ˮ In what sense is this all Godʼs fault? We know that the genesis of toil and death began with man, not God. Adam and Eve brought this upon us. God warned them and it was they who rebelled. Yet, God was the judge who carried out the sentence. That shouldnʼt surprise us—He would be an evil judge if He didnʼt. What should surprise us is that the God who we have sinned against didnʼt leave us in our toil. He came down, took on flesh, and He experienced the futility and toil, even unto death. Why? So that He could restore and renew this world from the curse, so that we could escape death, so that we could be free from what is broken and marred. See, Solomon didnʼt know what we know through the incarnation of the Son of God.
Many years after Ecclesiastes was written, Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again and in doing so He brought the answer to the problem of the Curse, to the problem of death, to the problem of our sin. The New Testament teaches us that when we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ, when we trust Him, when we come to Him and say: “I have no idea what I am doing, Iʼm not going to bank on my cleverness or strength or goodness anymore, just You—help!ˮ When we do that, the Bible teaches us that we are united with, fused to Christ, so much so that His story becomes our own. When He lived a perfectly righteous life, it was like you were there, walking His path with Him. When He died on the cross for your sins, it was like you paid the penalty for your sins. When He went into the grave, down to hell itself, it was like you did too. And when He rose again to new life and ascended to heaven, you did too. Of course, you did none of those things. But this is the miracle of faith and the abundant mercy of God. If you will but admit your total need, He will credit to your account the righteous life and sin-atoning work of Christ on your behalf, He will reward you with the eternal life and heavenly rewards that Jesus earned. Hear the Apostle Paulʼs exhortation to the Colossian church:
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.ˮ (Col 3:1-4)
So, we wait for our life to appear. And while we wait, we wait here in this beautiful and broken world where we death still haunts us, where our sin still gnaws, where toil and vanity and loss remain. At the end of The Lord of the Rings, when the great enemy has been defeated, when all the heroes return home, and everything seems right in the world, Frodo still bears wounds that never heal. And they wonʼt heal until Frodo journeys to the Undying Lands. So the final chapter ends tragically, with Frodo saying goodbye to his beloved friends to board the boat that will take him across the sea. Tolkien is reminding us: there are some wounds that will only ever be healed when we return to our eternal home.
If you live long enough in this world, youʼll find two things: life is beautiful and wonderful; life is tragic and painful. One answer to this dichotomy is to ignore the beauty and meaning we find and embrace nihilism. Life is meaningless and bleak.
Lifeʼs but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing. (Macbeth)
Or, if that bums you out too much, then you embrace triumphalism. Sure, you admit, there are problems in life, but we will beat them! With enough knowledge, with enough power, with enough money, or (if you are in the church) with enough faith, we can heal your diseases, fix your relationships, get you out of debt—we can make straight what is crooked!
Christianity, on the other hand—real Christianity—rejects nihilism and triumphalism. Life is not meaningless, it is sacred and freighted with eternal meaning—your life matters to God! But life is not a helicopter ride over Disneyland. It is not an unbroken succession of triumph after triumph. There are some problems and some wounds in our life that no amount of time under the sun will heal. But we struggle to believe that. And so did Solomon. So he paid us the favor of going out and trying out every alternative for us.
What Doesnʼt Work
In this long passage, Solomon turns to two common answers to the riddle of our frustration and disappointment with life: education and pleasure. These sections are not recommending these lifestyles to you, but showing their futility.
Education
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.ˮ 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. (Eccl 1:16-18)
As Solomon grows in knowledge, he correspondingly becomes sadder. His impressive mind, when applied to the broken-things, to the crooked, to what lacks...proves insufficient. He cannot answer every question, cannot solve every riddle of the human dilemma. And it wasnʼt because he simply failed intellectually —he was great in wisdom and surpassed everyone else. But the higher he climbs the knowledge ladder, the more he realizes how insufficient it is to climb out of the hole. The more you know, the more you realize just how much you donʼt know.
Does this mean that pursuing education, knowledge, and wisdom is pointless? No, later the Preacher commends wisdom:
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.ˮ (Eccl 2:12-14)
Wisdom is like walking around with your eyes open; folly is like closing your eyes. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is a bliss that leaves you looking like a fool. Solomonʼs criticism of wisdom isnʼt intended to disparage knowledge or education. It is to remind you that in the grand scheme of things, it will not fix what is crooked.
“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?ˮ 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.
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. (Eccl 2:14-23)
For all his wisdom and all his labor, Solomon realizes that no amount of degrees or books authored or projects completed will stop the inevitable arrival of his death. He will one day be laid in the dirt, just like the fool, just like everyone else, and will one day, like the fool, be forgotten. And, to add insult to injury, he has no idea if his successor will be a wise man or a fool—he does not know if the one who comes to take his place will carry on his lifeʼs work, or throw it away. And, as we know from history, Solomonʼs successor, Rehoboam, did throw it away. Almost immediately into his reign, he ruled foolishly, and the entire kingdom is ripped in half. Solomonʼs fears were realized. What if you devote your life to building a company, a legacy...only for it to be torn to shreds once you die?
Why then, he asks, has he devoted himself so seriously to wisdom? Why work so hard? That question there belies that Solomon pursued wisdom as a means to an end—he wanted wisdom to make him bulletproof, immortal...but it didnʼt work. This aggravates him terribly, making him “hate lifeˮ and “hateˮ his work. Why do you want an education? Why do you want to work hard at work?Is it to make a name for yourself? Pursue knowledge, education, and degrees as means cementing your legacy, and you will find how disappointing it is. The toil of labor will rob you of peace, the vanity of life will frustrate you, and your legacy will be out of your hands. Most likely, you and I will be forgotten shortly after we die. Think of you many of the things that make your life pleasant this very (hot) day: air-conditioning, home insulation, televisions and laptops, irrigation and public water, refrigerators—do you know the names of any of the people who invented those? Even though you benefit daily from all of their work? Do you burn up a lot of emotional energy wondering what other people think of you? David Foster Wallace wrote, “Youʼll be a lot less concerned with what others think of you when you realize how seldom they do.ˮ If that is true now, that is certainly true after we die.
Try to fix the crooked and lacking things in life with more knowledge and more education and you will be as successful as one who tries to grasp the wind.
Pleasure
If the intellectual life is insufficient, how about the carnal one?
I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.ˮ But behold, this also was vanity. 2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,ˮ and of pleasure, “What use is it?ˮ 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. (Eccl 2:1-11)
The rich and famous Solomon undertakes a serious exercise in the pursuit of pleasure to address the vanity of life, but he tells us immediately, he finds only more vanity. Solomon explores both low and high-brow pleasures here. He tries out partying, humor, alcohol, leisure, food, money and sex—he lives the life of a rockstar. But, he also tries architecture, music, gardening, horticulture, he even makes for himself an arboretum with its own irrigation system—no small feat in the ancient world. And, you may have noticed, that even as Solomon pursues more base pleasures, he does so with “wisdomˮ guiding him (2:3, 9). He didnʼt undertake all of this with a lampshade on his head. He tried to reach that golden mean of pursuing pleasure without diminishing it; yes, he had a harem of a thousand women and denied himself nothing, but he tried to do so as the sophisticated elite, not the frat boy. He drank champagne and went to art galleries and sponsored community projects. But it all turns into ash in his mouth, from the base exploits of the prostitutes bed, to the cultured heights of sophistication, from living for extreme self-centeredness to living for an aesthetic ideal that others are impressed with, get blackout drunk or volunteer for the Peace Corps—both extremes leave him just as empty.
In fact, many commentators point out that there are a number of textual clues here that evoke the description of the garden of Eden as we read Solomonʼs pleasure- pursuit: gardens, trees bearing fruit of various kinds, gold, bodies of water—it is like Solomon erected his own garden of Eden! And, just like Eve in Genesis 3 saw that the forbidden fruit was “a delight to the eyesˮ, so too does Solomon tell us: “whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them.ˮ But God placed a flaming sword at the entrance of Eden for a reason: try to force your way back into paradise on your own terms, and youʼll only find death.
Most of us assume that we are unsatisfied with life because we lack these kinds of pleasures, and spend our lives pursuing them. We are distracted from our inner turmoil because we are so busy looking ahead to the next thing that we think will satisfy us. Have you ever met someone who had reached the mountaintop you were striving for—they have the career, the family, the body, the charisma you strive for—only to hear them tell you they feel just as empty?
Make pleasure your god, live for yourself in all your pursuits and find...nothing will satisfy you. Why would millionaires or celebrities ever commit suicide if money and pleasure could satisfy?Nothing can be gained by it.
Whatʼs Better
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. (Eccl 2:24-26)
Ecclesiastes can sometimes feel like a strange book because it appears contradictory. Earlier, didnʼt the Preacher criticize a life given over to pleasure, eating, and drinking? Didnʼt he tell us that the more knoweldge and wisdom you have, the more sorrowful you become? Yet, here, he commends these things! They are gifts from God! You may have noticed that during Solomonʼs recounting of his pursuits “Godˮ was not mentioned. It is like thus far, Solomon has been taking us on a tour of trying to address the biggest problems in life, without reference to God. And the results have been bleak: knowledge, success, pleasure —none of it fixes the problem. Or, to put it in the Preacherʼs words, there is “nothing to be gained under the sun.ˮ
“Gainˮ in Ecclesiastes, as we said last week, is a reference to what is left-over. It is what you by your own power and strength create and horde up, what is left at the end of your life that can shield you from the grave, that can protect you from the futility of death. And, repeatedly, Ecclesiastes tells us that we could live the most spectacular of human lives, we could receive degrees from the most prestigious of universities, have a bottomless bank account, and the prestige and respect of the world...or we could live like a foolish nobody: either way, our life amounts to “no gain.ˮ Nothing left. The grave levels us all.
And here is Ecclesiastes point: the good things of life, like knowledge, wisdom, pleasure, food, drink, family, leisure—if you try to use these things to cement a legacy, to make a name for yourself, to fix what is crooked, to fill the holes in your heart—they will only break your heart. You will come to retirement, and not know who you are or how to make sense of your self; you will reach a difficult point in your marriage and wonder: is this not working out? Maybe I should find someone else. What are you doing? You are a passenger on a train who is under the delusion that you are a helicopter pilot, and you are panicking that you canʼt seem to get the craft under your control.
But when you realize that God is in control, that He alone is the One who can fix what is crooked, and that only comes on the other side of the grave in the New Heavens and New Earth, then you see that He gives us food, drink, sex, friends, leisure, and work as a gift to be received and enjoyed in the short time we have here on earth, not gain to be controlled. When you see that, then you are free to just enjoy them as ends in themselves, not as means. And that is a good summary of the entire book of Ecclesiastes: Life is a gift to be received, not gain to be controlled.
You read a book because you simply enjoy the book. Not to climb the next rung of a ladder or get a better handle on controlling your life. Writing of what the effect of knowing that death is imminent, Paul Kalanithi writes: “Everyone succumbs to finitude...Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.ˮ
But then, Paul turns to address his eight-month old daughter who will grow up never having any memories of her father:
“When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying manʼs days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.ˮ
That—a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied—that is what we want, and that is what is available to us, if we are willing to trust Christ who controls our life.
