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In Stockholm, Sweden, you can spend the night on Lake Malaren in a fifty-nine-room yacht that is a wonderful bed and breakfast. The yacht is a short walk from the Old Town and practically in the shadow of the city hall where the Nobel Prize is awarded each year.
Had you been in Hong Kong on April 26, 1999, you could have bid at the Sotheby's auction for an Imperial family rose cup from the Yongzheng period (1723-35). The cup eventually sold for 17,840,000 Hong Kong dollars.
An Outline of Ecclesiastes
Following the Logic of Solomon
I. A Critique of Life: Chapters 1-2
Life grinds to nothingness, but man keeps searching (1:1-11).
Intellectualism, hedonism, materialism (1:12-2:11)
Although wisdom is better, all still die (2:12-16).
Thus he despaired (2:17-23).
Conclusion: Apart from God, there can be no life.
Man in himself cannot find meaning (2:24-26).
Vigee Le Brun's 1787 oil painting of her daughter Julie is a beautiful example of maternal love and artistic excellence. It is now held in the private collection of Michel David-Weill.
If you would like to charter a private rail car for your next trip by train, Monon's Business Car number three is available. It features a master bedroom with upper and lower berths, a roomette, one fold-down “Murphy” bed, one convertible sofa, a marble tub, a shower, a dining room, meal service, an observation lounge, an open rear platform, a stereo, a television and VCR, cellular and terminal phones, and an all-wood interior.
At this point you may be wondering what these items have in common. Here's the rest of the story.
F. W. Woolworth, founder of the Woolworth's chain of stores, had made one of the largest fortunes in the world by the early 1900s. A portion of this fortune, more than $50 million, was given to his granddaughter, Barbara Hutton, when she turned twenty-one in 1933.
Although she was one of the richest women in America, Barbara was never able to find personal happiness. She married seven times (including among her husbands a prince, a count, and the actor Cary Grant). Hutton spent her life battling drug and alcohol dependency and anorexia, and her numerous divorces left her almost bankrupt. When the reclusive Hutton finally died at age sixty-six, she weighed less than one hundred pounds and only $3,000 of her fortune remained.
What do the four items I mentioned at the start of the chapter have in common? At one time, all of them were owned by Barbara Hutton.
In chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes, Solomon takes us from intellectualism to hedonism.
Many young men and women in America go through a stage in their lives where they believe that if they smoke it, shoot it, drink it, embrace it, and guzzle it, then they will find joy. Often older people never outgrow this pursuit of personal pleasure; we just find more socially acceptable pleasures to pursue in a civilized way. Listen to the wisdom of Solomon.
I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself.” And behold, it too was futility. I said of laughter, “It is madness,” and of pleasure, “What does it accomplish?” I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to take hold of folly, until I can see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives. (vv. 1-3)
Solomon pursued pleasure as a lab rat. He stimulated himself with wine, women, and song and took notes. What did he find? Why does pursuing pleasure ultimately end in futility?
Because no matter how much fun you have, at some point you have to wake up to the real world. Pleasure will make you mad or crazy because you have to deny the reality that life is filled with pain. A life based on pleasure doesn't have room for getting fired from a job, seeing a loved one waste away with cancer, or having a child die in a car accident. The only way to live for pleasure is to deny the reality of people hurting all around you with no ultimate meaning and purpose in life. It's madness.
Recently I shared Christ with a young man. He's married and has a couple of sons. He told me he has a group of drinking buddies. Most of them have annihilated their lives and everything good around them. They've lost their families through carousing, adultery, and the pursuit of pleasure.
The young man told me that they had recently asked him to go out. He went with them to a bar where they cranked up the same old music, saw the same women, and drank the same old drinks. He just sat there, thinking, I've got a wife. I've got great kids who need a good life and education. Finally he got up and left because he realized he had better things to do.
That man walked out of the bar not because of his Christian morality, but because of Solomon's reasoning. He realized that his buddies' pursuit is vanity; it was madness and useless.
Have you been there? Are you still there? Our affluence in America makes it easy to create a god out of personal pleasure and comfort. Your comfort may not be drinking with your buddies. It may be golf on Saturdays. Or having perfect vacations. Or enjoying fine things in your home. Or watching college sports. Whatever it is, it, too, is futility. If you think there is some pleasure that will make you happy, in the end you will never be satisfied.
Man in his flesh will never cry, “Finis.” Man's lusts are like a fire that will never be quenched by any pleasure.
After we wake up to the emptiness in the pursuit of pleasure, we move on to something else. And so Solomon tries accomplishments and career success to bring meaning to life.
I enlarged my works: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself; I made gardens and parks for myself, and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees; I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and I had homeborn slaves. Also I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. Also, I collected for myself silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I provided for myself male and female singers and the pleasures of men—many concubines. Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. And all that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun. (vv. 4-11)
Solomon says that he did everything a successful person was supposed to do. He built and achieved everything he could want. (Note that “self” is used six times in the previous verses).
He accumulated great wealth in silver and gold. Johnny Carson once said, “The only value of money is that you don't worry about being poor.” What he meant was that money in and of itself will not produce anything. It will not help your life, your marriage, or your kids. As a matter of fact, after a certain point, money will distract you. Henry Ford once said, “I was much happier as a mechanic, working in a shop.”
Citizen Kane, arguably the greatest movie ever made, illustrates this exact point. In the film, you watch the character Charles Foster accrue an incredible amount of wealth until it ultimately destroys him. As Charles Foster is progressively tainted by his desire for wealth, power, and pleasure, there is a recurring shot of a fireplace in his home. As the wealth grows and becomes more destructive, the fireplace gets bigger and bigger until in the last few frames, it's the largest thing in the movie.
The fireplace is always burning and consuming. By the end of the movie, the fireplace takes up almost an entire wall of his house. Foster's life is nothing but this raging inferno that never, ever is consumed until he dies.
And when he dies, all his possessions are burned. The viewer watches his entire life go up in smoke.
The only difference between him and most of us is that his stuff produced a lot of smoke. He had a big trash bag. We will have a little-bitty trash bag. But in the end, it all goes up in smoke.
Solomon didn't stop with money. Some people interpret the words in the second half of verse 8 as “instruments” and others as “concubines.” Now I enjoy a flute as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't call it the pleasure of men. I think the Hebrew word means concubines. Every pleasure he could conceive of, Solomon tried it.
And his “wisdom stood by” him. He took notes while he was doing it. He investigated every experience to see if it could somehow bring meaning to the vanity of life. Verse 10 shows that Solomon enjoyed the process of building something. But what does he say about the product? “Vanity!”
In verse 12 and following, he says, “Here is my reflection.”
So I turned to consider wisdom, madness and folly, for what will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done? And I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one fate befalls them both. Then I said to myself, “As is the fate of the fool, it will also befall me. Why then have I been extremely wise?” So I said to myself, “This too is vanity.” For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how the wise man and the fool alike die! So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind. (vv. 12-17)
Solomon says that he has tried it all and anything else someone does will only be a repetition of what has already been done. There is nothing new. No one is ever going to reach a different conclusion. Solomon has finished gathering the evidence and is giving us a closing statement.
The first thing he says is that it is certainly better to be wise than to be a fool. He says that the wise man has his eyes open and can understand the world around him, while the fool walks around in darkness. Also, it's better to tell the truth than to lie. And it's better to work hard than to be lazy. Would anybody doubt that? It's better to be faithful to your mate than to bring catastrophe to your home. So it's best in life to live wisely and morally.
But what is somewhat surprising is that even though the wise man and the fool may be different in life, they are exactly the same in death. No matter how smart you have been in this life, you're going to die. No matter how moral you have been, you're going to die, and your foolish buddies will die also. And not only will the wise man die just like the fool, he will also be forgotten like the fool.
I was in London a few years ago and went looking for the church of the most famous preacher who has ever drawn a breath in Western civilization. He was born in England in 1834. He became a Christian and preached his first sermon at the age of sixteen. At the age of nineteen he preached as a guest in the famous but mostly lifeless New Park Street Chapel in London. Only two hundred people came to the 1200-seat sanctuary. By the age of twenty-one, he had taken over the full-time pastorate of this historic congregation.
Within a year, New Park Street Chapel had to be enlarged to seat the crowds who came to hear him preach. Yet still more people came to hear him preach, so in 1861 the church moved into the Metropolitan Tabernacle which could accommodate sixty-five hundred people. His sermons were so popular that a publisher printed and sold one sermon each week for more than twenty-seven years. This preacher not only started orphanages to care for thousands of children but he also influenced the lives of businessman, government officials, and kings.
His name was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. When he died in 1892, Spurgeon was perhaps the most famous man in the world.
So when I went to London, I wanted to see his church. I found the right area of town and started asking a few locals if they could show me the way to Mr. Spurgeon's church.
Guess what they said? “Mr. Who?” I found out that I, a small-town Texas boy, knew infinitely more about Charles Haddon Spurgeon than these guys from London. They didn't have a clue!
The foolish and the wise both will be forgotten. As Wordsworth wrote, “Our hearts like muffled drums, beat funeral dirges to the grave.” A college professor of mine used to say, “When a child is born, another death is brought into the world.”
The world consumes you. Solomon comes to the same conclusions in 1000 B.C. that modern man reaches. It's like looking through a time tunnel. He foresees what is to come. He's saying to all of the Greeks and the Romans, to all the Englishmen and the Westerners, to Hume the Scotsman, to Voltaire the Frenchman—this is where you will end up. If you try to find finite things to give you meaning, your search will end in vanity. Solomon is a 1000 B.C. man with twentieth-century depression.
Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun. This too is vanity. Therefore I completely despaired of all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun. When there is a man who has labored with wisdom, knowledge and skill, then he gives his legacy to one who has not labored with them. This too is vanity and a great evil. (vv. 18-21)
Solomon says that he ended up hating the things he had built and accumulated because he knew that he could not take them with him. He was going to have to leave them in the hands of someone who would follow him. Note his progression: He hates his labor, then he completely despairs. Solomon is depressed. This is the inevitable ending of a life without God.
Solomon is humanity in a microcosm. A life built on self heads toward depression and despair.
It is also the story of F. W. Woolworth and Barbara Hutton. Solomon says that when you work hard to make a fortune, build an empire, and be a success, you're still going to die. And when you do, you will leave everything behind. Barbara Hutton received a magnificent yacht for her eighteenth birthday. Today you can book a room in that yacht in Stockholm for $59 a night.
Someone will end up with your big, pretty Rolls Royce and spill coffee all over its polished wood. Someone will take your beautiful house, paint it orange, and rent it to a bunch of college freshmen. Your favorite pair of $200 shoes will end up at the Salvation Army. The land that is so precious to you will end up as a trailer park in fifty years. It's the same for the wise man and the fool—you can't take it with you when you're gone. All lives lead to a casket.
For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun? Because all his days his task is painful and grievous; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is vanity. (vv. 22-23)
Even while you are alive and enjoying the things you accumulate, they are still a pain. The more things you have, the more things you have to take care of.
Solomon says that as hard as you work during the day, at night you will lie there and worry. You aren't going to lie down to sleep and think, Happy am I. Behold my car. Behold my house. Behold my trophy wife. Instead, you twist and flap in the stress and trouble that come with your accumulated glories.
At this point, Solomon is using a literary device. He is building tension and anticipation. You are meant to be depressed when you read this. Solomon is letting the tension build before he provides the answer.
There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God. (v. 24)
It's unfortunate that there is a textual problem in this verse because it may be the crux of the whole book. Now I don't know Hebrew at all, but I read the guys who do. Walt Kaiser, who I believe wrote the best commentary ever on Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes: Total Life, Moody Press), says that the word “better” is not there in Hebrew. Because it is used in other places in the book, translators have considered it to be implied and have added it.
But Kaiser suggests that this is a mistranslation of the text. It should read: “There is nothing in man to eat and drink and tell himself his labor is good.”
That fits perfectly with what Solomon has said in the first two chapters. Wealth, pleasure, knowledge, accomplishments— there is nothing “in man” that he can learn or do that can give him happiness or peace. Man can find nothing in this finite life to give him an infinite peace. Man must go outside of himself or he will live his life in despair. The only way a person can avoid this is by living in denial.
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him? (v. 25)
Solomon says that the only way we can find real enjoyment and meaning in life is by getting in touch with something infinite. God has to come to us and give us something that we don't have. Man under the sun—man doing it on his own—will inevitably end in despair, futility, and death. If we are ever going to find something that is good, we'll have to get it from the hand of God.
This is called grace. And to experience it, you have to look up. You have to lift your eyes to heaven to find meaning. There is no happiness in life without God.
Have you discovered that? A lot of us, even though we know it at one level, still don't really believe it. Instead we look at God as our Sunday buddy. Or we treat Him as a genie who will magically appear when we're in trouble. Or we try to have a partnership with Him: “God, come in. You can have this part, but I'll handle these other things myself.”
In verse 26, Solomon shows that it's not enough to believe in God intellectually; we also need to be someone who is good in His sight.
For to a person who is good in His sight He has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner He has given the task of gathering and collecting so that he may give to one who is good in God's sight. This too is vanity and striving after wind.
What does the Bible say is the beginning of wisdom? The fear of the Lord (Ps. 111:10). For the man who fears God, the lights come on and he sees life correctly. Not only that, but he has knowledge and true joy. All this comes to someone who obeys Him, submits to Him, loves Him, and seeks Him. And ultimately, when the final accounting is done, the things that have been accumulated by the wicked will be taken by God and given to those He has made righteous through Christ.
Back to Adam: He was perfectly happy in the original creation because he knew God. He sinned, and suddenly his descendants were blinded to God, themselves, creation, evil, maleness, femaleness, and children. They lost sight of God and couldn't understand life. And we are still arguing about defining and appreciating these things today because so many people in our culture are in the dark and can't see. If you don't know God, you can't know anything He made.
What is the most important verse in the Bible? That's easy. It's Genesis 1:1—“In the beginning God …” If you want to understand reality, you have to start with God.
In the 1960s, there was an American girl attending college in Switzerland. At the school she met a lot of young postmodern Europeans. They were steeped in philosophy, humanism, atheism, and nihilism, and some of them doubted that they even existed. They had no reference point—other than their own emotions and insight—to make sense of the world. They didn't know that they were looking for something infinite.
In contrast, this American girl had no problem intellectually with the questions she faced. Her friends asked her why she seemed so content. She said, “Because I believe that the infinite, personal God made us, and we're not simply part of nature. We are created in the image of God. Evil is not just something out there that looks unpleasant; it is truly evil because it's contrary to Him. God has made Himself known in the Bible. The paramount idea of the Bible is the person of Jesus Christ who came to save us from sin. Through Him we can know God and enjoy everything He has given. We can die in hope.”
They asked her where she learned these things. She told them she had learned them from her father. So they came to her house and her father, Francis Schaeffer, began to show them how their worldview ultimately ended in despair. A few of these young people trusted Christ, and soon people from all over the world were coming to L'Abri, “the shelter.”
Hundreds of searching young men and women found rest from a transplanted American who knew God. As a matter of fact, his ministry got so big, he quit everything else. He did nothing but work with these twentieth-century modernistic guys. With patience, wisdom, and the power of the Spirit, he brought them to the knowledge of God and to the knowledge of life through Jesus.
That's the answer for each of us. Again, if you don't know God, you don't know anything that He made. If you know Him, the whole world lies open before you. “A scoffer seeks wisdom and finds none, / But knowledge is easy to him who has understanding” (Prov. 14:6).
1. Why do you think man is so tempted to find meaning in pleasure? Have you ever tried this or been close to someone who has? What eventually causes someone to move beyond this method?
2. Johnny Carson said, “The only value of money is that you don't worry about being poor.” Do you agree or disagree? How are you affected by the materialistic mind-set of America? Have you ever given in to the idea that some thing will make you happy? If you are studying this book with a group and feel comfortable, share a specific example.
3. Why is the interpretation of verse 24 important? How does Walt Kaiser's suggestion make the verse fit in the context? How does this square with your experience?
4. Verse 26 suggests that the sinners are working to hand over their goods to the righteous. Do you see that happening in your experience? What do you think Solomon means?
5. If you don't know God, you don't know anything that He made. If you know Him, all of life is open to you. Do you agree or disagree? Is this statement too extreme? How does knowing God help us understand the true nature of the world around us?