The Vanity of Wisdom (Pt 2)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, you can take your copy of God’s word and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 1 where this morning we’ll try to finish looking at the paragraph in verses 12 through 18 as you’re turning there how many of you were there Wednesday night for the first ever corn kick Awesome. How many of you how many of you who went you had a good time?

Good. I’m wondering how many times do you guys listen to Darth Vader go through the New Testament already in these past few days? Has it just been about three whole times? Yeah, yeah. Just like I had read through the whole Bible in one week when I was in second grade. You remember that, of course. Well, one of the things we talked about during our time together Wednesday night was the theme for this year in 128. And it is the theme of what? Two words, abounding love. And we got that from Philippians chapter one, verses nine through 11, Paul’s prayer for the Philippian believers. We’ll be coming back to look at that in more depth, more detail, two Wednesday nights from now, the first Wednesday night of October.

But of course, one of the things I said, Paul prays that our love would abound, and then I kind of took the word abound and made an acronym out of it to describe some of the things in our ministry this year that I’m really wanting to promote and see so far as love goes, a love that abounds. And we talked about, A, a love that abounds is one that is effective, that moves you. We talked about love being blameless, being pure, being righteous. We talked about O being otherworldly. We talked about you being uncompromising, N being neighborly and D being dynamic. And I just kind of like that word. It’s kind of a buzzword today, but I like the word dynamic.

Always progressing, always growing, and hopefully becoming larger. Our love ought to be something that grows, not something that gets colder or harder. It ought to get hotter and stronger and bigger. One of the things I mentioned related to the O, this otherworldly kind of love, that is going to be the theme or one of the ways that I talk about our Sunday morning series in Ecclesiastes, that we would get our hearts, that we would get our loves off of the things under the sun. And we have seen, if you’ve been with us for the past couple weeks and even back at the end of last school year, talking about the introduction to Ecclesiastes, including the rather pessimistic beginning there in chapter one verses one through eleven. Uh, hakol habel hebelim hakol. I’m trying to remember my Hebrew. I keep saying that so that I can remember it. I don’t necessarily need you guys to learn Hebrew, but I’m trying to beat that into my own mind.

All is what? Vanity. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. It is empty. It is meaningless. It is useless. It is fleeting. It’s like breath on a cold morning that appears for a little time and vanishes away. Maybe you think it’s gonna last, but it’s quick to just kind of disappear. And everything, a thing in this life that this life has to offer is described as vanity by Solomon. And we’ve moved then into chapter 1 verses 12 through 18, which is really the beginning of an an autobiographical section. You even noticed in verses one through 11, he was speaking in the third person. Now in chapter one, verse 12, he uses the word I.

I did this, I did this. It’s a autobiographical description of his pursuits because some of us are still kind of holding out hope that something of meaning and of satisfaction is actually available and out there for us to find in this life. And I know that that’s the case that some of us are still trying to do that because I’m watching you pursue it. I’m watching you go after those things. I’m watching you give your loves to things on this earth. I’m watching you spend your time to pursue and to seek after. I’m watching your affections go to various kinds of things under the sun. I know that some of us still believe that Solomon maybe isn’t telling us the whole story.

Maybe he’s given us some ideas. He’s just bitter. Maybe that’s his problem. Maybe Solomon is just old and bitter and he doesn’t really get it. And this autobiographical section is meant to give us some reasons why we can believe him because he has tested it all. He has done the experiments. He’s gone out and tried to pursue finding meaning and satisfaction in all those things. And he’s gonna tell us, I’ve been there, I’ve done it and it’s empty.

And then you die. Hadn’t said that in a couple of weeks, I thought I’d throw that back out and then you die, right? It’s almost like this is the picture I got in my mind. Last night I was running on my treadmill listening to another message on Ecclesiastes. This picture kind of came to my mind. It’s kind of like you’re on the second floor of an observation building or like in an observation room. So you’re on the second floor and there’s this glass pane right behind you. And then you’re looking out on these different compartments that are all different parts of life. And it’s kind of like this, you’re standing looking the other way, you’re not looking out at the different compartments of life.

You’re looking back and you’re kind of like talking to Solomon. And Solomon is there and he’s saying, you know, all is vanity, it’s all meaningless. And you’re looking right at him right in the eye and you’re saying, no, I think I can find satisfaction in a good education. I think I can find satisfaction in just having a good time. I think I can find satisfaction in work and, you know, my results and money or whatever else it might be. And I kind of got the picture in my mind of Solomon basically walking over to you kind of patiently and then taking you by the throat and smashing your face up against the glass and forcing you to look down at all these different compartments and see that they are all empty.

Here you are trying to argue, here you are trying to make your case that there is satisfaction to be found in something out there. And all he’s got to do is just take you, point your face right at the window, right at the compartments, right at wisdom, right at drugs, right at relationships, right at work, all the different compartments that there are that he tried and found empty. And that’s what this section is about starting in chapter 1, verse 12, at least through verse 8 in chapter 2, which obviously we’ll get to not too long from now. The first reflection here in verses 12 through 18 is Solomon’s looking for life in wisdom.

It is his trying to find meaning and satisfaction in education, in knowledge. And of course, NBC tells us that knowledge is power. And, you know, we believe that. And so that’s why we spend, you know, 80 years of our lives going to school in order to get educated, in order to get the knowledge, the understanding to, you know, make good decisions and then make the right grade so that we can get the right job, so that we can get lots of money, so that we can get the good toys, so that we can then die. Oh, they don’t add that part at the end, so that we can then die. And yet, that’s really the progress, that’s how it goes.

But this whole passage right here is his seeking out of wisdom, maybe in philosophy, maybe in knowledge, he could find meaning, satisfaction, a fulfillment in his life. And it gives us kind of two reflections. Both of these reflections talk about his position, his pursuit, his perspective or pronouncement, and then his proverb, the first reflection we got most of the way through in verses 12 through 15 last time. Let me read verses 12 through 15. 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 behold, all is vanity in a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.” First of all, his position in verse 12, he was the king. He had access to everything you can possibly imagine, way more access than you guys do to education itself, let alone then to money and resources, financial kind of stuff to pursue and to secure for himself toys and whatever else he thought might make him happy. He had the power to tell people what to do and to bring him what he wanted. None of us have any kind of position like that to make this kind of experience, this experiment or this test. So we ought to listen to what he has to say. Verse 13, he describes his pursuit. He applied his heart.

He gave himself diligently to seek and to search out the breadth and the depth, examining what he didn’t know, exploring that, and examining in detail things that he did have close by. I mean, from the small to the large, he sought it out to see if he could find this wisdom which would make him happy. Everything that is done under the sun. I talked about that being a pretty comprehensive or exhaustive search. I mean, you get the impression here with all the words all and everything and those kinds of things that he wasn’t missing anything. He didn’t leave anything out. This was a big pursuit on his part and yet he found frustration rather than resolution.

Rather than finding a resolution to all of his problems in seeking out everything under the sun, he found that actually this is a pretty unhappy business that God has given men to do. Life is hard and then you die. You work hard and then you die. You make money and then something happens and the money is gone and then you die. You find wisdom and then you find that in the wisdom all you get is pain. You’ll talk about that in verse 18, and then you die. It’s an unhappy business here. And so in verse 14 he gives his pronouncement, I have seen everything that is done under the sun and behold all is Vandy, emptiness, meaninglessness, futile, and striving after wind. You remember my little illustration about what it would be like to try to run and catch and then grasp the wind.

Again, I was thinking about this last night. Last Monday, the Wentlings and the Zimmers and Mo, Maggie and I went out to Kayak Point and we were having a little barbecue out there. Was not particularly warm and in fact it was particularly windy. And it seems like five or six times, you guys can correct me if I’m wrong on this, It seems like five or six times the wind came along and like blew all of the napkins all over the place. And I was thinking about this. I wasn’t trying to catch the wind. I was just trying to catch the napkins that the wind was blowing and I could barely even do that. I mean, I could see the napkins.

I could see them going farther than me. They were all over the place. And I’m running around because Mrs. Z’s knee was bad, you know. So she’s not able to run out and get them. Everybody else is over by the fire. So I’m trying to run out at least one of these times and catch all these napkins going all over the place. And I could barely even do that, let alone if I was actually trying to catch the wind. If I was actually trying to catch the wind itself. And striving after the wind, trying to catch and grasp the wind is a pretty futile, empty pursuit. Because you’re not gonna be able to catch up. And even if you did catch up, you remember from the illustration, you know, turn around and catch it.

I mean, then what do you got? Nothing. Striving after wind. Well, that brings us to his proverb. This is where we left off last time, verse 15. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. Now, both verse 15 and verse 18, they’re both proverbs. The reason why I say that these are proverbs is because it kind of moves away from the I did this, I did this kind of thing, the structure, the phrasing of the verses kind of set them apart. Most of your Bibles probably have them set apart more like in a poem form or a proverb form anyway. But their structure, their rhythm, a point to them being, you know, like a pulled in proverb. Whether Solomon created these proverbs, we know that he wrote many proverbs. They’re collected for us in the book of what?

Proverbs. He wrote many. He collected others. So perhaps this was one of his own. Perhaps this was one that’s collected. But as it’s recorded for us here in Scripture, it is an inspired proverb, an inspired observation, some inspired wisdom. It’s kind of a pithy thought that that provokes us to stop and think. And it’s almost like people in life or people who especially don’t have a lot of understanding about Scripture and about God’s sovereignty, it’s almost like they look at life and they think God is so frustrated by all of the mess that’s happening down here on planet earth. Again, people who don’t have a large understanding of God’s sovereignty, not really familiar maybe with what God is doing as he reveals himself in his word.

A lot of people out there think God must just be really upset at the mess that’s happening down here. At all of the roads that are crooked and I don’t mean actual roads that you’re driving on. I mean that as a as a figure for your life. Life as a road, life as a path. And you know what? I have never literally, let alone figuratively been able to straighten out a road that I was driving on, a path that I was walking down. In fact, it seems like every time I think I’ve hit a straight stretch, then what happens? You know, major boom. You know, the kind of turn that if you were actually driving would make your car just start to go into a tumble like that because you’re not making the turn.

It’s so crooked. And here we find that what is crooked cannot be made straight. What is lacking cannot be counted. I can’t add. I can’t fill in no matter how hard I try, what effort I give, how much wisdom I have. I can’t make things appear that aren’t there. I can’t count things that are lacking. You know, some people have this idea that if we just work hard and get smart enough, we can make the crooked thing straight. And we can fill up what is lacking, what we don’t have. And yet this proverb comes in and says, you can’t do that. Even if you think that you can do that for a little while, ultimately you come back and find pretty soon that my God is just gonna make it crooked.

Take it away again. Look over at Ecclesiastes chapter seven. You know, again, people wanting to defend God, like he is not responsible for bad things that happen, or he’s not in control of difficulties and trials and problems in life. They’re trying to defend him, say he’s not responsible.

And yeah, look in chapter seven, verse 13. Consider the work of God. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity, be joyful, and in the day of adversity, consider God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.” What in chapter 1, verse 15, is kind of vague, not talking about God being the one who is crooketing up your life, or making things lacking in your life. What is not clear who’s doing the work in verse 15 of chapter 1 is very clear in Ecclesiastes chapter 7 that God is the one who makes things in your life crooked and God is the one who brings adversity and God is the one who makes it so that you can’t change what you do. You can’t change your life in the sense of making it better, finding satisfaction.

And you know, to people who don’t believe in the sovereignty of God, to people who don’t trust God, that’s a pretty unbearable kind of thing. That’s a pretty unbearable, you know, if that’s what God is like, I don’t want anything to do with him. It’s only people who have a different perspective who can look at this and then praise God whether it’s in a day of blessing or in a day of adversity. You cannot reduce life to a neat system. No amount of education that you have, no amount of wisdom that you gain for yourself will be able to keep your path straight and keep you counting what is not there. No amount of wisdom, no amount of education, nothing can do that. Well we move into the second reflection here in verses 16 to 18. Again Solomon said, 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 perceive that this also is but a

striving after wind for in much wisdom is much vexation and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” Again we have his position told to us, his pursuit, his pronouncement, and a proverb that kind of summarizes it at the end. First of all, his position, verse 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. And the point here is not to brag on his part necessarily. He’s not bragging and saying he was better than everybody else as much as he was saying, look, this is my position. He had received the promise of God back in 1 Kings chapter 3. You remember that we looked at in the introduction to Ecclesiastes.

God is the one who told him, I’m going to make you wiser than anybody who has ever lived. It’s almost just saying that. And the point is, if he can’t find meaning in wisdom, then nobody can. If the guy who had the most wisdom ever says wisdom is not the answer, then that’s probably the answer or he’s giving the truth. He’s being trustworthy in that statement. If he was the wisest, God says he’s the wisest one to ever live. And he says in his wisdom, it’s meaningless. There’s good reason to trust. his position. Verse 16, he reminds us of his pursuit in verse 17, the first part of it.

And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. Here he kind of expands out what he had said in the first reflection. In the first reflection he’s talking about seeking out just things in general in life. Now he says he applies his heart to get knowledge of wisdom and knowledge of folly. And he’s actually going to tell us in chapter two about more of this pursuit of folly, but here’s both sides. Wisdom and silliness, seriousness and playing around. Knowledge and duh. He’s gonna say I’ve searched out both of those. I have plumbed wisdom to its depths, and I have plumbed fun to its depths. I have examined both ways of going about trying to find satisfaction and meaning of life. That was his pursuit. The second part of verse 17 is then his pronouncement again, and I perceive that this also is but a striving after wind. You are not going to find what you are hoping to find in the pursuits of wisdom or the pursuits of folly. A striving after wind. That brings us already to verse 18. For in much wisdom is much vexation and he who

increases knowledge, increases sorrow. This is the second proverb, again identified by its kind of short and sweet parallelism, a different kind of structure. And what he says is there is a corresponding amount of pain. Your pain is going to increase proportionate to the amount of knowledge that increases. Now that’s kind of an interesting statement. That’s a unique idea that the more wisdom you get, the more pain and sorrow you’re going to have. The more you understand, the more you’re going to have grief. Well, we need to talk a little bit about what that means. I have heard people say before that the greatest luxury is hypocrisy.

I’ve heard that said, that’s kind of a proverb I’ve heard people say. The greatest luxury is hypocrisy. You know, because then you can say whatever you wanna do and then do something else. And I would disagree with that. In light of this verse right here, seems like the greatest luxury is ignorance. Because right, if you don’t know, if you don’t have the wisdom, if wisdom isn’t increasing, then I mean, you don’t know what you’re missing. I mean, if you know what you’re missing, well, I mean, and you don’t have it, that’s pain. But hey, if you’re just ignorant, if you’re just, you know, walking around, dawing everything in life, I don’t know if that’s actually a verb, dawing.

We’re going to make it one for this morning, at least. Walking around ignorant, then that’s a luxury, perhaps. He says if you increase in knowledge you increase in sorrow at the same time now on one hand That’s not really difficult to prove I know for myself. I learned this principle my mother tells me when I was around three Because apparently one afternoon one summer afternoon It was nap time And my mother explained that it was naptime to me and I apparently in my great wisdom said something to this effect if I’d have known life was going to be this hard then I wouldn’t have wanted to be born and see what had happened was my growing wisdom about the heavy burdens of napping and the responsibility there to obey and do what I was told and go nap when it was a great day to play outside, that wisdom brought me sorrow, pain.

It happens, the older you get, the more you know. The difference, one of the differences at least, between being a kid and being an adult, is amount of wisdom that you have. And generally speaking, the kind of wisdom that a lot of us get when you get older is not really fun. For example, the difference between knowing that somebody is paying bills and knowing that you are the one who is going to pay the bills, in that knowledge and wisdom is a pretty fair amount of sorrow, any kind of responsibility. You know, you learn how to do something. Guess what? people are probably going to expect that you do it. That is one of the reasons why I have never learned how to set up the sound system.

Just given a couple illustrations here. I have purposefully chosen to not get the knowledge of how to set up the sound system because I know that as soon as I have that knowledge that there will be opportunities for me at rather inopportune times to answer questions or to then actually do the work of setting up the sound system. I’ve chosen instead, it’s not like I’m trying to get out of work, I just chose to do work other ways, but in that case, I don’t have the knowledge, sorry, I can’t have the sorrow. I have chosen to not learn how to drive a bus.

Okay, in fact, I was talking with Mr. Lugge this last Sunday morning we were talking about something other and I mentioned that I would probably not be working to try to get my bus driver’s license and he kind of you know poked fun and said something to the effect of what but I thought every youth pastor could drive a bus and you know what that might be true but you know what this is a youth pastor who is not going to as far as I’m concerned you know I’m even praying right now that God is not going to crooked up my path and include some bus driving. I understand that that’s dangerous, to say it out loud. But as soon as I have that wisdom and the knowledge of bus driving, I know that the little red light is going to be blinking in my office some day, and I’m going to come in and check my voicemail, and it’s going to be asking me to drive the bus for some, you know, other group.

That’s happened to me before now with the bus, but even just driving the vans. With the school vans, you gotta go through the special licensing. And one day the bus broke down on a field trip. And it just so happened that since the youth pastor doesn’t have anything else to do, I was on campus, was on the list of somebody who knew how to drive a van. And so I got to spend my afternoon driving down to pick up the people who were stranded because the bus was broken down. So see, I mean, that’s happened to me. The knowledge that you get leads to responsibility, which generally leads not to happiness, but to sorrow and grief.

There are more serious ways to talk about it than just those kind of tasks and what you know how to do. Mr. Jim Martin calls it the underbelly. This is a great phrase. I like to listen to him expound on the underbelly. And he talks about how a lot of people at church, You know, just come and basically sit in the chairs or sit in the pews and they participate on their various level. But then the more involved they get, the more of the underbelly of the ministry they get to see as well.

You know what, because if you don’t participate and you’re not involved, you’re not gonna probably run into people who are treating you poorly. If you just stay at home, you just stay in your room, don’t have any relationships with other people, then your heart’s not gonna be opened up to them and they’re not gonna be able to trash it, right?

But you go out there and you try to grab the world by its tail. No, you go out there and you open yourself up and you try to get involved and you learn about various things that happen. Guys, guess what? Most of the time it’s not a real pretty picture. Most of the time, the more involved you get in something, the more problems you find out it has. And that’s not, oh, I love learning about those problems. In the increase of wisdom and knowledge, there is generally an increase in sorrow and grief.

That’s what it’s like. Even just talking about knowledge itself. The more you learn, generally speaking, The more you learn, you don’t know. That’s not necessarily an encouragement either. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. I mean, that’s how it is in studying the Bible. That’s how it is in most fields. The more you learn about a subject, typically speaking, the more you learn you don’t know. And that is, that’s sorrowful. That causes grief. The more you know about the human condition. I tell you what, the more you study sin, the more you know about sin, the more pain there is knowing how you have offended God.

Again, just another example of how that works. The more you know about what God expects, the more sorrow and pain there is in watching other people who don’t want that and who don’t want him. It is actually a very sorrowful thing to know what God requires of us and to know the joy and the satisfaction that can be had in following him and then to watch a bunch of other people just shrug it off and be indifferent to it. That’s sorrowful. That’s a grief-causing kind of thing. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. The more you know, the more responsible you are for it, the more assignments you can get. The more you get involved, the more you see the underbelly.

When you increase in wisdom, you increase in vexation or frustration. He who increases knowledge increases sorrow. I mean, this is one of the problems with education. It was almost as if Solomon began this pursuit here. Solomon began this part of his autobiography, you know, with the idea in mind that our greatest enemy is ignorance. If we can just overcome ignorance, then we’ll be able to get meaning and satisfaction in life. It’s like he started out with that as his hypothesis. That was going to be what he tested. Ignorance is our greatest enemy. So let’s try to overcome ignorance and get wisdom and what he finds is that it was the exact opposite of what he thought. Not only in getting the wisdom did he not get over the problems of ignorance, he actually got more sorrow and pain as he increased in wisdom. To think that more and better education is the answer to meaning in life is one of the most serious mistakes we can make. Why? Because information in the heart and mind cannot solve the

problems in your life. At times it may increase the comfort of your life for at least a short period of time. I mean, yes, learning some things can make some things better. I mean, you know, learning to use a hammer to drive a nail in instead of your thumb, you know, there are some quick temporal benefits to having some knowledge. Certainly as far as your grade card is concerned, you know, there are benefits to learning and having wisdom, but when it comes to the the hole in your heart, when it comes to meaning in life, no straight-A grade card is ever going to fill that hole. No book on philosophy that you read is ever going to make you happy, and certainly not for eternity. The western world, I mean where we live, has had more widespread educational opportunities than most civilizations and cultures in human history.

I mean, we have more education, more resources, more information, we have access to more resources, and yet, as a culture, think about this, right? We have more people in college today and getting professional degrees and doctoral degrees and, you know, MDivs, that’s the study in the Bible. We got more people getting more letters after their name. You know, when it comes to education, We got more people reading, more literate people with access to books and information. We got more of that than maybe any other time in human history and yet are people more satisfied?

I mean, do we look around and see people more happy? Not at all. Are we more technologically advanced? Yes. But are we better? Are we happier because of that? Some of the most educated people in the world are the most miserable people in the world, as many philosophers, you know, have taken their own lives as, you know, ignoramuses. The thing is, wisdom is a pain in the neck.

Solomon knew that. And you know what? Solomon had more pain then than any other person. Right? He says if in the increase of wisdom, there is much sorrow as the wisest one who ever lived. That meant he had the most pain. Even look back at verse chapter one, verse 16. He said, I have required great wisdom surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. That sounds good in that verse, but by the time you get to verse 18 and he says what the conclusion of that is, in much wisdom, there’s actually a lot of sorrow. It’s not, again, a pretty picture. Education, wisdom, knowledge, those things cannot provide for you happiness in life.

They may do it on a temporary basis, but not on a permanent and definitely not on an eternal basis. Now, let me give two warnings before I conclude this morning. First of all, this is not a statement about knowledge of God. This is not a statement about knowledge of God. This is a statement about knowledge of things under the sun. Now in my illustrations, I gave a couple examples of knowing more sin, knowing more about sin, knowing more about my own sin, that brings an increase of sorrow and pain, but that’s actually, that’s appropriate. I mean, that’s good. Because that drives me back to God. I mean, that’s beatitude kind of stuff, okay?

Knowledge of God is not included in this as you know more about God, and that in and of itself is sorrowful and grief. Though again, depending on how you look at it, it can’t make us sad, sad and sorrowful that we’re not following him more closely. But again, that’s different. There is no encouragement here for us to then not study God or know God. That’s not what Solomon’s point is. His point is that in life under the sun, no amount of knowledge, wisdom, experience, education is going to fill that hole in your heart. Only God is gonna be able to do that. So obviously then knowing God and understanding God is a key thing.

By the way, that’s why he wrote Proverbs, right? So that we could have wisdom. Wisdom as relates to living before God. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter two. Down in verse 13 he says, then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly as there is more gain in light than in darkness. He is not saying that even though there is an increase of sorrow and wisdom that then you should try to be dumb for the rest of your life. That’s not his point. His point is that even if you are wise, you’re going to die like the fool.

The same end comes to you, and even if you’re wise, you can’t make your life better, still has to be depending on God. But he still says wisdom is better than folly. That is, again, part of the reason he wrote the Proverbs to give us wisdom, and certainly he’s not meaning to suggest that knowledge of God is unimportant or that we shouldn’t pursue that. That’s one warning. The second warning is, and I just know that we can’t finish this morning without dealing with the dangers for some of you sluggers out there who are gonna use this passage as a reason for not doing your homework. You know, you’re gonna go home and you’re gonna be like, but mom, it’s all vanity and striving after wind.

The Bible says so. Okay? And again, Solomon is not giving you a reason to be lazy. He is not writing in order to make you dumber. He wants us to be wise and not fools. He doesn’t suggest that what he learned, that the things he learned were of no value at all for the sake of his work for the sake of his enjoyment. What he says is wisdom cannot provide meaning to your life. It’s a line there. Wisdom cannot fill in the hole that only God can fill that is in your heart. Wisdom is not in and of itself a bad thing. Wisdom is better than folly, you ought to then pursue wisdom, just recognize that if wisdom is your God, you’re going to be pretty miserable.

Well, maybe there’s hope in folly. I mean Solomon says, no hope in wisdom to provide meaning in life. Maybe there’s going to be some hope in fun. Well, come back next week and we’ll begin looking at verses one through eight, where Solomon moves on from pursuing life in wisdom to pursuing life in pleasure, pursuing life in humor, pursuing life in alcohol or getting a buzz, pursuing life in stuff or money, pursuing life in work, pursuing life in power or position, pursuing life in music, pursuing life in sex and relationships.

He’s going to shove our faces. He’s going to move us out of the, looking into the compartment of wisdom. And he’s going to move us along. He’s going to slide our face right along the looking glass. You know, like somebody is shoving your head down on the spit shield at the salad bar, sliding you along, looking at all the different options. He is pointing our faces. pointing our faces right into what He has pursued, what He has examined, and His conclusion is nothing under the sun is going to bring us satisfaction. I’ll mention this again next week. You know, I was originally thinking as we were going to move into chapter 2 that it was going to be more preventative medicine, and for some of you it definitely will be hopefully preventative of medicine and discourage you from going down those roads before you get on them in the first place.

But like I said last Sunday, even looking at some of the things on the internet that some of you have up there, I mean, you are right there. And you’re arguing with Solomon that you’re going to find life there. You’re going to find life in some of this other silly, fun, pleasurable kind of stuff in the world. It’s not there. Some of you perhaps have had wisdom or education as an idol. And I’m not saying don’t pursue wisdom, but don’t think that that’s gonna be the meaning in your life. Whatever college you go to and grades you get and career you have, that’s not gonna do it for you. Only God can do it. Few questions just to suggest for your small group time.

What are some of the reasons that make Solomon’s thought trustworthy. And I’ve mentioned that multiple times, but just to drive that into your mind one more time that this guy is worth listening to. What are some of the reasons that make Solomon’s thoughts trustworthy? A second question might be, what are some of the limits of wisdom and why? I mean even as junior hires or high schoolers or certainly as staff, I mean you have learned certain things that still haven’t gotten you what you wanted, even from your own experience, let alone from this passage, what are some of the limits of wisdom and why? Third question is, in light of question two, why pursue wisdom at all? I want you to be able to answer that. Just because wisdom under the sun is vanity, does that mean we shouldn’t pursue it at all? You got to be able to think right about that and then fourth, is your head out of the trash can of life? That was a phrase from last week. Or are you dumpster diving, swimming around down in the garbage to try to find something satisfying? And maybe even if you don’t

answer that out loud, I mean that’s that’s the question you got to think through in your heart. What are some of the reasons that make Solomon’s thoughts trustworthy? What are the limits of wisdom? Why? In the light of question too, why pursue wisdom at all? And is your head out of the trash can of life? Perhaps your small group leaders will have other questions. Maybe you have some other questions to talk through as well. And I hope that’ll be a profitable time this morning. And then perhaps if you return to that Wednesday night. Father, we live in a culture that has both pursuits, pursuits of wisdom and pursuits of folly for the sake of finding meaning and we just won’t find it if it’s not in you.

bring us to the end of ourselves, the end of our wisdom, the end of our strength, and throw us then completely, totally on you. We cannot make straight what you have made crooked. We cannot count what is lacking. You’ve not given us that ability even with the most wisdom we could get. So again, turn our eyes upward and give us a love that is otherworldly beyond just under the sun. We pray all this in Christ’s name. Amen.