in the book of Ecclesiastes. And we come to Ecclesiastes chapter one, verse 12, all the way through chapter two, verse 26. It's quite a long passage, but it is one unit of thought. So I ask if you please turn with me in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter one. This is Ecclesiastes 1, beginning in verse 12, all the way through the whole of chapter 2. Hear now the word of the living God. I, the preacher, have been king over Israel and 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 perceive 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 anyone 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. 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. Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to them all. Then I said in my heart, what happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 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. So I hated life because what is done under the sun was so grievous to me, for all is vanity and striving after wind. I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun. I see that I must leave it to the man who will come after me. 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. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun. 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. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 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. 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, for apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 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 the one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after the wind. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord endures forever. C.S. Lewis once wrote, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. we are far too easily pleased. In our study of Ecclesiastes, we are reading the account of the preacher, Solomon, and his pursuit of the meaning of life. And he pursues this every way he can from the perspective under the sun. that is from a perspective of a life lived without God, a life that doesn't see the eternal glory that is promised in Jesus Christ. And this morning, he continues his quest for eternal meaning in life from this perspective, from an earthly perspective, a human perspective. And his frustration with it continues. And so for you, for I, for anyone who through faith in Jesus Christ, who has the guarantee of eternal hope, we'll see a contrast to Solomon's conclusion. We'll see you can enjoy the daily gifts that God has given you and you can live a life that is pleasing to God, knowing that he has promised you so much more. The preacher begins here in verse 12 by explaining himself, explaining that he has been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And while he has held that position, he applied his heart to seek and search out wisdom by all that is done under heaven. He's saying that he has dedicated himself to earthly wisdom, not the godly wisdom we would read of in scripture, but he wanted to know about how things work here on earth, under heaven, or another way of saying under the sun. He wants to know everything there is to know about everything that is done on earth. And his conclusion is that it is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. His life of dedication to understanding all that is done, meaning all the labor on earth, understanding everything about a life and using wisdom as a tool. He begins with wisdom as a tool to view all of life under the sun. And this has brought him to a conclusion that it is an unhappy business here on earth. And he mentions God here. So he's clearly not an atheist. It's pretty safe to assume that Solomon was never an atheist. but he chose to live his life without God. He chose to live a life knowing that God exists, but not following him, not living in obedience to him. He was living for the things of this world. He was trying to get the most out of life on his own from an earthly perspective, from a perspective under the sun. And he starts here in this passage using wisdom to view everything that is done under the sun. And he found out everything he could about what is done in life. And he's doing this to gain meaning about his own life. He's saying, if I just learn about everything that is done here on earth, there will be something that brings meaning to my life. But actually, it made him sad. He has seen everything that there is to be done and he's concluded all is vanity and a striving after the wind. He's left with a sense of frustration and sadness. If we remember this word vanity, it really means breath or wind. And he's saying that it's fleeting, it's temporary, it's worthless. Your breath is not worth anything and trying to grasp it would just be frustrating. And he's learning through all of his effort to find meaning and profit in this world that something is just not right with the world as it is. And he gives us a proverb to summarize this. He says, what is crooked cannot be made straight. What is lacking cannot be counted. By what is crooked here, he means the sinfulness and brokenness of this world cannot be made straight. It cannot be set right. From an earthly human perspective, there's nothing that can be done about sin and all of its consequences. Not only can we not do anything about our own sin, since God's holy standard is perfect righteousness, once you sin, you failed that standard, and there's nothing you can do on your own to change that. And to make matters worse, your heart is sinful. You can't stop sinning. And the point Solomon is making, there's nothing you can do or that can be done to make this right. And in turn, the brokenness of the world. The world is not what God created it to be. When God made the world, he saw that his creation was good. But when Adam sinned against him, not only was he affected, not only was his descendants affected, but all of creation was affected in the fall of Adam. And there's nothing that can be done that you and I can do to make it right. Now because of this, all the wisdom about all the ways of the world he is concluding will only leave you empty and frustrated. The world is broken. So it's like striving after the win. It's like trying to grab your breath and hold it if you seek meaning from it. There was a successful publisher, an author whose name was Leonard Wolfe, and he basically said the same thing about his life's works. He said, I see clearly that I have achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human anthill during the past five to seven years would be exactly the same as it is if I had played ping pong. instead of sitting on committees and writing books and memoranda. I have therefore to make a rather ignoramus confession that I must have, in a long life, ground through between 150,000 and 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work." Although this man authored over 20 books, he sees that it all has been worthless in the grand scheme of things. In an overall, view of life. When you look at the generations passing and going and the brokenness of this world, it all meant nothing. That is the view Solomon is taking in Ecclesiastes. The grand scheme of things and all the human endeavors on earth adds up to a total of nothing, babkis. Not only a waste of time, but complete frustration. All that energy expended for nothing, because in the end, nothing really changes. The world continues on as sinful and as broken as it was before you started. You can't even put a dent in it. As Leonard Wolfe put it, you might as well have been playing ping pong. And what is lacking cannot be counted. There's so much that we don't have, so much that we are lacking and we can't even count it. Even Solomon, he had as much wisdom as he possibly could, but there's so much left that he couldn't even count it. No matter how much you attain, there's always more. And Solomon's search for meaning through human efforts from all the business that is done under the sun left him feeling helpless. He was helpless to change the sinful broken world as it is. And this left him frustrated that there's nothing that can be done to bring meaning to life or to make the world right or even your own individual life right. But he doesn't stop there. He considers even wisdom itself. At first, he used wisdom as a tool to view all that is done under heaven, and now he says, I applied my heart to know wisdom, to know madness and folly. He's considering the value of wisdom itself. Can attaining wisdom make life worth living? Can it add value and meaning to life? In his conclusion, I perceive that this also is but a striving after win. Gaining wisdom itself is striving after the wind, and he conveys this with another proverb, for much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. There's no lasting profit or gain, even from a life dedicated to gaining wisdom and knowledge, because unexpectedly, wisdom and knowledge only serve to increase his frustration and sorrow. It's kind of the opposite of the saying, ignorance is bliss. There's a truth in this. The more you know and understand the way the world is, the more wisdom and knowledge you gain, you clearly see that things are not right. You start to see how evil the world is. It was through wisdom and knowledge that Solomon saw how all that is done under the sun was vanity. Wisdom didn't help, it only made things worse. Even gaining wisdom and knowledge was striving after the win. Pursuing meaning in your life through the wisdom of this world only leads to frustration, sadness. The world is broken and sinful. Things are not right and wisdom will not fix it. But Solomon doesn't end his quest for meaning there. After wisdom let him down, he turned to pleasure. In chapter two, verse one, he says, I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself. He decided to pursue enjoyment and pleasure, everything his heart desires, to see if that would give meaning to his life, if that would make it all worthwhile. And he states his conclusion right up front. But behold, this also was vanity. Dedicating himself to enjoyment as much as he possibly could was fleeting and worthless, just like everything else. And then he goes on to explain how he came to that conclusion. He says, instead of laughter, it is mad and of pleasure. What use is it? And the translation of mad here doesn't mean like crazy or losing your mind, like we often refer to it today. It means something sinful or evil. One commentator put it, It refers to moral perversity rather than mental oddity. And laughter frequently can be that way, especially if the goal is laughter. Not all laughter is sinful and laughing is not necessarily evil in and of itself, but it can be the case. Think about stand-up comedians, how they're often foul. Their goal is to make people laugh, and it goes in that direction. If the goal is simply laughter, then nothing really is off-limits. Even personal joking and laughter can be at the expense of someone else. But we know there is a joyful laughter. There is laughter that brings joy to the Lord. This is said of the woman in Proverbs 31. But it also can be a waste of time. But really the main point here is really that when your goal in life is laughter, you will find it is ultimately useless. A life spent laughing only and doing nothing else would not be a life well spent. A life that ignores God and his kingdom and his glory only to enjoy yourself in laughter is a life that has done practically nothing. But laughter is not the only enjoyment he sought. He tried to please himself with alcohol. He said, he did so, my heart still guiding me with wisdom and how to lay hold on folly. He's exploring drinking alcohol as a way to enjoy life and get meaning of life. Now there's some debate over whether he is speaking of getting drunk all the time or he's simply referring to enjoying alcohol in a moderate way. I believe he's trying both because he says his heart is still guiding him with wisdom and he also says how to lay hold on folly, foolishness. He's trying to explore a wise way and a foolish way that alcohol can bring pleasure. He's trying it in excess and in a limited way. And so this too is vanity. It's chasing after the win. But Solomon was also extremely wealthy. And so he used this, his wealth, his riches, to seek pleasure in all sorts of ways. He made gardens and parks. He planted trees, fruit trees. He made pools so that he could water the trees in the forest. He bought servants, so many that he had servants that were born in his house. He had more herds and flocks and animals than anyone in Jerusalem before him. He had more money and treasure than any other king, even whole providences. He had singers and concubines. He had explored every pleasure that the human heart desires to the full extent that anyone could possibly do. But it was vanity, fleeting, worthless, leading only to frustration, like striving after the win. There's a saying, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. And the underlying idea in that phrase is what the preacher is expounding here. That what your heart desires may not be what's best for you. It certainly can't give meaning to your life. And if you pursue meaning through pleasures and joys and trying to fulfill every one of your heart's desires, it ultimately will leave you frustrated and empty. You see this in many celebrities, people who we would think have it all. They have all the things that our hearts would desire. They're rich, they're good looking, they have everything we would think we would want, and they're empty. They end up addicted to drugs and alcohol because they don't have what they thought they would have. They pursued their heart's desires and it was vanity, fleeting, worthless, frustrating. Striving after the wind just like everything else. Pursuing meaning from the things that this world will leave you feeling that way. But the preacher continues on his quest. He doesn't end with pleasure. He actually returns to consider wisdom once again. And there's this air of desperation in his quest. He speaks of the fact that anyone who comes after him as king, there will be nothing for them to do because it already has been done. So he considers wisdom and madness and folly again like he did at the end of chapter one. At first he used wisdom as a tool for examining all that is done under the sun. Now he's considering wise living and its alternative of madness and folly. He's considering them both, the wise decisions, but also bad decisions, foolish decisions. But this time he adds it to his original thoughts on the matter. So when we say wise decisions, we're like from an earthly perspective. Good investments of your money, eating right, exercising right, things that would be wise decisions on this earth versus foolish decisions. And he recognizes that wise living is better than foolish living. There's more to be gained in wisdom and folly, and we all kind of know that. But this is despite the fact that looking for meaning in life from wisdom would only increase frustration and sadness. He's saying it's better to be wise than to be a fool. He even compares wisdom to light and folly to darkness. Through wisdom you can see. The person who is wise has eyes in their head. The fool walks in darkness. And so he's not speaking here of light and darkness, as we would say, from a spiritual point. He's not speaking of Jesus Christ as the light of the world. He's just saying the things of this world, like I said, financial decisions, healthy decisions, and so on. The wise person can see how to live life to make a better life, to make life better living, but there's still a problem. Although wisdom is greater than folly, both the wise person and the fool end up with the same fate. It doesn't matter how wise you live or how foolishly you live, either way you will die. Living wisely doesn't help you escape death. So his conclusion is, what's the point of living wisely then? He says, why then have I been so very wise? All of this effort to live the right way, but death is still waiting for him. And so he concludes this also is vanity. Living wisely, just like everything else, is fleeting, worthless, frustrating in the end. It brings gain, but it's only a temporary fleeting gain. In the grand scheme of things, it's just a blip. Living wisely brings gain that is like a breath. It comes, it goes as quickly as it comes. And it's worthless in the long run. It's interesting to notice that many people who do live wisely in this world according to human wisdom, earthly wisdom, the rich, the powerful, they often will shift their focus to slowing down the aging process, even to avoiding death. There are many billionaires that have done this because eventually they start to see the same thing the preacher sees. No matter how well they end up living now, they are still going to die. There's actually a new Netflix documentary titled Don't Die, The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, and it follows a millionaire entrepreneur named Brian Johnson who says he wants to extend his life beyond all known limits. And he really believes if he does the right things, if he lives in the healthiest way possible, doing all the right exercises, eating perfectly, taking like 50 supplements a day, then he can defeat death. In a recent interview, he said, I think people are going to say two things happened in the early 21st century. We gave birth to super intelligence and we figured out how not to die. And when the interviewer asked him, do you think you are going to die? He said, point blank, no. But as Solomon concluded from his life of living wisely, there's nothing you can do on your own to escape death. Death is a consequence of sin. All who sin are destined to die, which is everyone, and you can't outmaneuver death. It is the great equalizer. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, wise or foolish, death awaits all who have sinned, which is every one of us. No amount of human wisdom can change that. But God, out of his infinite love, sent his son into the world to change the fate of humanity. Jesus came to live the perfectly sinless, righteous life, which is needed, that you and I could live eternally. He lived a life that we could never live, so that through belief in him, he gives you the gift of eternal life. Because he not only lived the righteous life under the law that God requires, but he took the punishment that your sins deserve. Through him, you can live forever, and only through him. It is through faith in Jesus Christ that you have eternal life. And so Solomon gets the first part of the gospel right here, that everyone, no matter how they live their life, will die. And this points you to Jesus Christ, the only one for whom this is not true. He's the only way to avoid the fate of death. He's the only way to gain eternally. But Solomon never gets to that point. Because the wise died just like the fool, he hated life. Everything that is done under the sun is grievous to him. And he once again concludes, for all is vanity and a striving after the wind. And the fact that he was destined to die made the preacher hate all of his work because any gain he would get under the sun could only be for this short amount of time that he had on earth. And because he's certain to die, his vast wealth would just be left to someone else. He's saying that working your whole life for gain is once again vanity. fleeting, worthless, frustrating, because you're just going to hand your life's work over to someone else who didn't earn it. No matter how hard you work, it can't stop you from dying and just giving it all to someone else, someone who has done nothing to earn it. And so he asked, what has a man from all his toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 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. All the stress and difficulty that it takes to earn wealth in this world, which is tremendous, in the end is vanity, just like everything else. But joy is possible in this life, and it comes from God. Your work itself can never give meaning to your life. I've tried this myself. I've tried getting meaning from my work as a teacher. Students come and go year after year. They are in the same struggle once they graduate from their work as I am from mine. It's just like an endless cycle of students in and out, trying to find meaning from my work as a teacher truly is vanity. It's fleeting. It's worthless. It's frustrating. I tried it in coaching. I pursued meaning from a second career in coaching. I thought if I win as a coach, that would bring meaning to my life. But ultimately, that couldn't do it either. In sports coaching, You're only as good as your last win. No matter how successful you are, eventually you'll retire and you will approach death just like a coach who barely won any games. But the preacher says now, he says you might as well simply enjoy the fruits of your labor. You should just eat and drink and find enjoyment in your toil. He says something surprising about this. He says, this also I saw is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? And then he points out that there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who please God, those who God has given them wisdom, joy, and knowledge, and then there are sinner to whom he has given none of this. And so he concludes, even simply enjoying the fruits of your labor is vanity if you are a sinner. Meaning you are apart from God. He's beginning to understand the foundation of the gospel. There are several things. He has not made the leap to Jesus Christ and the salvation found in him. But first, he sees that the world is broken. He sees that there's something just not quite right about this world. It's not supposed to be this way. But as we know, God, the good news is that God, through Jesus Christ, is restoring all things. He's redeeming all of creation. Second Solomon notices that everyone dies. His search for meaning has brought him to frustration because everyone dies no matter who they are, no matter how wealthy, how poor, no matter what area they're from, no matter how hard they work, making all of his effort worthless. Understanding this, understanding this is the beginning of accepting the good news of Jesus Christ, the preacher, is laying out bad news after bad news. Some call the book of Ecclesiastes depressing, but it's only after understanding this bad news that you can accept the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. And he goes even further to accept this fact that there are two kinds of people. There are those whom God blesses with spiritual blessings and those who do not receive those blessings. And so for you, the question first from all of this is where do you stand before God? There are two options and only two options. There are standing before him in your own sins, standing before him judged and condemned. Or there are standing before him clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Through faith in Jesus Christ, through trusting in him, God sees you as righteous. He sees you with the righteousness of his son. And in this, he blesses you with all the spiritual blessings that only Jesus deserves. So through faith in Jesus Christ, you can enjoy the gifts God has given you, because you know there is so much more to come. When you realize that this life is not all that there is, when you realize that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you have eternal life, and you will live in glory for eternity, you can focus on now, on living a life that is pleasing to God. When someone has a perspective under the sun, when someone has an earthly human perspective, it's then when they focus primarily on finding meaning from the things of this world that this will lead to frustration. If you use the things of this world to try to find meaning, that's when it is vanity. It's fleeting, it's frustrating. Life on this earth and all the promises of glory that is offered in this world are truly vanity. They are fleeting, they are worthless, and they are frustrating in the end. Because no matter what you do, you are going to die, and it's all going to go away. But when you understand that through faith in Jesus Christ, God has promised you so much more, you can enjoy what he has given you now, and you can live for him. Through Jesus Christ, God has promised you eternal glory, an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, so you can live your life for him now, and you can enjoy whatever blessings he has given you, knowing that he has promised you so much more. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we know, Lord, that we come before you empty-handed. that you are a God of eternal glory, and there's nothing that we can bring to you that you need. But Lord, you loved us so much that you sent your son to die to redeem us, that we are made in your image and we marred that image with sin, but you are restoring that image through the work of Jesus Christ. You are redeeming all of creation. It is you, Lord, that make life worth living. It is you, Lord, that makes life beyond the vanity of the things of this world. We know, Lord, that you have promised us more than we can even understand, and so we hold on to that glory. We are grateful and good stewards of all the things you have given us now, but we know that they are temporary. We don't store up these treasures on earth. Instead, Lord, help us to focus on storing up treasures in heaven, that we will focus on you, your glory and your kingdom, which is a glory beyond anything we fully understand. And we hold on to the hope that all of us, every believer in Jesus Christ will be raised in glory and we will be with you in eternity. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.