Sermon: Resuming Ecclesiastes (Part Three)

Chapter 2 Expounded
#1098
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 21-Apr-12; 70 minutes

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I am going to begin this sermon by turning to Romans 7. I am doing this as a reminder to you and me, because sometimes we feel put upon, that our burden is pretty heavy, and I want you to see what Paul said about himself. This was probably written about twenty years after he was converted, so we can take some hope for what he says here.

Romans 7:21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.

Is that not the way we are? We will to do good. It is our desire to do it, but sometimes we do not always do it. Why? Verses 22-25 tell why.

Romans 7:22-25 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Paul did not always live up to the high standards he set for himself, and that would get him discouraged from time to time. But he could always look forward, because he knew that his general pattern of life was certainly submissive to God, and even though he sinned on occasion, he could go to God in repentance, and there would be forgiveness, and eventually at the end there would be salvation.

We spent two entire sermons on chapter 1 of Ecclesiastes, but this was essential to understanding Solomon’s theme and purpose. I have been calling his work a lecture, because it was. His purpose is that he wants others to learn from his experiences. His primary concern is that he wants his listeners to have the right orientation in life. Another way of putting that is he wants us to have the best perspective, or the best outlook on life so that the greatest profit is gained from it despite the fact that so much in it seems frustratingly meaningless.

We saw that in chapter one there are three terms: “vanity,” “profit,” and “under the sun” that dominate what is said. When one sees the conclusion of his thesis, which is “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man,” the right orientation becomes exceedingly clear. If one chooses conforming to God and His primary purpose, then life will not be lived in vain. It will be profitable to have lived if one’s focus is “above the sun.”

The choices in life are ours to make, and sometimes it takes strong exercising of the will to choose to devote ourselves to that direction. Sometimes life’s events are confusing, and we do not have a clear picture of the way that we should go. But do not be dismayed; God is not overbearing. He is a patient teacher. He leads us to repentance, and He empowers us to change. And some of the material we have covered is definitely what I would call “heavy.”

What is difficult for us is to trust what He says is in our best interest. Be comforted though, understanding that we are not preparing for His Kingdom and entering on the basis of the perfection of our works, but on the absolute necessary merciful blessing of His grace, and brethren, that is Paul’s message in Romans 7.

Turn with me to Ecclesiastes, and we are going to begin in chapter 2, and we are going to read the first eleven verses.

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure”; but surely, this also was vanity. I said of laughter—“Madness!”; and of mirth, “What does it accomplish?” I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine, while guiding my heart with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives. I made my works great, I built myself houses, and planted myself vineyards. I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove. I acquired male and female servants, and had servants born in my house. Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before me. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasures of kings and of the provinces. I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments of all kinds. So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; and this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun.

Now whereas chapter 1 deals with overall generalities, chapter 2 begins zeroing in on specifics to support his overall theme that life apart from God is vain. Chapter 2 begins a more specific description of a couple of his major quests for satisfaction and meaning to his life. What is interesting is that what he attempts is the very means most people—some almost desperately—use to find fulfillment and meaning in their life even to this day.

A number of years ago singer Peggy Lee made a song popular whose words fit, in principle, what people do and find in their searches for fulfillment and happiness. The song was titled, “Is That All There Is?” I am going to read to you this second stanza, because it is very clear. She sang:

When I was 12 years old my father took me to a circus, the greatest show on earth.

There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears.

And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads.

And so I sat there watching the marvelous spectacle.

I had the feeling something was missing.

I don’t know what, but when it was over,

I said to myself, “Is that all there is to a circus?’”

Each stanza was followed by a refrain that went like this:

Is that all there is, Is that all there is?

If that is all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.

Let’s break out the booze and have a ball

If that’s all there is.

Another stanza tells of her seeing her family’s house on fire. Another tells about the first time she fell in love. The song even goes so far as to explain that she will never commit suicide, because she knows that will be disappointing too. The lyrics express disillusionment with life, because it is not all it seems to be. That is what was bugging Solomon.

There seemed to be so much potential with life, that one could have a great experience at almost any time, and yet, though Solomon had all the time and money, it seems, to enter into these kind of things, when he was done, he was, in a sense, saying, “Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that is all there is, my friend, then let’s keep on dancing. Let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that is all there is.”

Notice in chapter 2, verse 1, where Solomon uses the word “test,” he is making a determined and deliberate experiment to find pleasure, and the way he stated his purpose, it appears as though he was not pre-judging the result. He was just going to let it flow and try as hard as he could and see then what would result. I am sure that this was an experiment because of all the things we already read there in chapter 2 that took many years to complete. It was not something that was over in one evening, or one week, or one month. It took years to complete this test, so I think you will get some kind of a feeling to understand this was not something he passed off loosely, but he gathered a great deal of information from his own experiences so that the test would really be one that he felt he could trust.

What we are reading of here is pretty close to a deliberately self-indulgent pursuit. Notice that the first 8 verses all begin with the pronoun “I.” “I said.” “I said.” “I searched.” “I made.” “I made.” “I made.” “I made.” “I acquired.” “I also gathered.” “So I became great.” He is giving us a hint there, giving us the impression that he was doing this solely for his own pleasure. He threw himself into this test, and that brethren, for him was very easy to do. Thus Solomon turned his attention to the activities that most people on earth make strong efforts to derive pleasure from during their lifetime—entertainment almost to the point of hedonism and one’s employment with alcohol added as a necessary part of the mix.

You know that is going on today. Alcohol has to be mixed with everything, and every advertisement you see that has alcohol in it, the people are smiling, they are jumping up and down, they are singing, and they are happy. It is the “necessary” ingredient for these things. In our time the Israelitish people are in the midst of an entertainment binge that must be approaching what Rome experienced as it was collapsing!

Solomon’s quick evaluation shown in verse 2 is worse than it looks on the surface—“I said of laughter—‘Madness!’; and of mirth, ‘What does it accomplish?’ ” In Hebrew, that combination of words—“madness and mirth”—used together as they are here do not indicate mere foolishness, or even insanity. You might think that mirth is just foolishness, and that madness is insanity. No, it is much worse than that. It indicates moral perversity. It was not just foolishness. It was not just madness. It was moral perversity. It was sin in the way that he was going about seeking these things.

The wine, women, and mirth routine failed to impress him in a positive way. In terms of deriving pleasure from his entertainment as an experiment, it was a spectacular failure. You have to give the guy credit that he could do all these things and decide, “This was a bust,” and be willing to admit it after all the time and the money and the effort that he spent on these things. Most people would likely want to brag about all they had done. He did not.

There is something we can begin to conclude from this. Solomon was still a pretty wise man even if a great deal of his wisdom was carnal wisdom that had a great deal of common sense connected to it. Solomon is telling us without directly saying the words—life is no laughing matter.

Basically, he is saying that the level of intensity in employment and entertainment, combined with alcohol he experienced, leads nowhere but the Lake of Fire. He did not say those things directly, but if something is moral perversity, you know it is headed for the Lake of Fire for people to follow right in that way. It was truly a waste of life. This level of involvement is character-destroying and also destructive of others, and is truly utterly meaningless when it is over.

When he threw himself into one of the most intense of all building programs, at least it was doing something that he was well-fitted for mentally and emotionally. He was a creative person who loved beauty, and he had the wealth to indulge in it, but at the end he found even that frustratingly unsatisfying too. The emptiness resulted even though he admits that he enjoyed the work while it was in progress. But why the sense of dissatisfaction though? It is because God did not create us to receive a sense of laughing fulfillment through things, and so Solomon was saying, “Well, the journey was a pleasure, but the destination brought pain.” The satisfaction derived from things is only briefly temporary. We can experience that. We do not have to be as wealthy as Solomon.

Brethren, I do not know how many new automobiles I have had in my life. I had driven so many miles whenever I was a pastor in the Worldwide Church of God, that I was getting a brand new car about every 18 to 20 months. When Evelyn and I married, we rode around in junkers. I mean all the time! I had a car then that did not even have a starter in it. It is a good thing there are a lot of hills in Pittsburgh! I am not kidding you. In two years of our marriage we had no starter in our automobile. If I did not have a hill, I had to get out there and crank it.

You can be sure that when I started getting new cars, I really looked forward to a new car. That was quite an experience. But do you know what? In a couple of months the exciting experience wore off, and it was just a tool. That is all. It was a pretty tool. It was a convenient tool, but my pleasure did not have the same edge to it anymore.

We can experience the same kind of things with all things physical. I do not care whether it is a new refrigerator, a new washer, a new dryer, a new top on the cabinet in the kitchen, new cabinets on the wall, a new house. Everything like that is all physical and they are wonderful for a short period of time. I do not mean to take that away from us. They are good gifts from God, and they are meant to be enjoyed, but it does not last, because God did not make us to receive lasting fulfillment from things—anything. That is what Solomon ran into, and that is what he is passing on to us. As wealthy as he was, all the things that he could indulge himself in, they gave him pleasure while they were going on, but afterward he was left hollow on the inside because he knew that in the end they did not really matter. He could have been just as happy with a great deal less, and maybe the happiness would have lasted just as long.

What we have to learn from experiences like this is that the level of fulfillment that the human heart yearns for is generated from within, truly loving godly relations that have their source in the most important of all relationships, and that is the one that is available from God, and it is available through His Holy Spirit which He gives to those who are serving Him.

And then you see that level of love extends out to other human beings, especially to one’s own family—to the wife, to the husband, to the children, and on and on. It leads to the conclusion that we must have as part of our working wisdom that people are more important than things, that people are more important than thrills of entertainment, that people are more important than anything except God. Solomon had to go a long way before he ever came to that, but he is passing his thoughts onto us in this book.

It is very interesting if one wants to consider what Solomon accomplished here in Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 and all the programs he was a part of, and the lack of really lasting relationships that he had with people.

If one will reflect upon what it shows us very clearly in the book of Judges, Solomon had all of those good times. “Let the good times roll!”—year after year while he was building his own house, which took, I do not know, 7, 8, or 10 years considering the building itself and all of the irrigation pools and everything that had to be built to take care of all of the trees and things that he planted.

Do you understand what the book of Judges is telling us? It is telling us that people go bad during good times. Do you know why that happens? It is because when the times are good and we are paying attention to our pleasure, it is highly likely that what is going to happen is that our intensity and feeling and our relationship with God is going to decrease. The same thing is true with relationships with people. They begin to cool and become more distant as well.

The book of Judges shows that people went bad during good times, and they did, because they let down personally each and every time. So good times brings on bad times, because during the good times people lose their proper perspective and focus and let down on their spiritual and moral lives and become unbalanced.

There is something that we can get from this, because very often the testing and trials cause us a great deal of pain and a great deal of discomfort, and God is behind them, putting us through those things. Those are the very things that keep us close to Him because we keep praying. We keep in contact with Him, and when He lets up the pressure, things can very quickly go down hill.

Let us go to verse 12 of Ecclesiastes chapter 2.

Ecclesiastes 2:12-14 Then I turned myself to consider wisdom and madness and folly; for what can the man do who succeeds the king?—Only what he has already done. Then 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. Yet I myself perceived that the same event happens to them all.

Where Solomon says that “I turned myself,” it is kind of awkward in the translation, but what it means to you and me in modern English is, “I considered this from a different viewpoint.” “I turned and looked at it from a different angle.” This is basically what he meant. These experiences with entertainment works and with alcohol led to these conclusions.

We are going to go to Proverbs 14. Listen to what Solomon says here.

Proverbs 14:13 Even in laughter the heart may sorrow, and the end of mirth may be grief.

I believe we see in Ecclesiastes 2:12 that this was what was happening to him as he analyzed the test he was putting himself through these experiences. He is letting us know that laughter can be a mask that hides a bitter reality. People are laughing on the outside and tearing themselves up within. All of Solomon’s activity was neither the solution, nor was it the basic problem either.

I am going to go on to verses 14 through 17, and then we will come back and pick up some of this.

Ecclesiastes 2:14-17 The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. Yet I myself perceived that the same event happens to them all. So I said in my heart, “As it happens to the fool, it also happens to me, and why was I then more wise?” Then I said in my heart, “This also is vanity.” For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come. And how does a wise man die? As the fool! Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind.

Please do not get Solomon wrong. He was not against cheerfulness, but as he considered the results more deeply, he was left with a hollow feeling because his purpose motivating all of this pleasure was worldly. It was an “under the sun,” self-centered, “What can I get out of this?” way of doing things. Remember, I read to you all those verses that began with the pronoun “I,” “I,” “I,” and so forth. So from Solomon’s statement in Ecclesiastes 2:2, where the “mirth and the madness” appear, it can be seen that he concluded that laughter and mirth as being so many soap bubbles bursting and leaving only a light coating of useless scum behind.

He is showing us that pleasure for pleasure’s sake, and work for work’s sake, is self-centered, and that just does not work in God’s selfless-centered universe. Now why is God’s universe selfless centered? It is because God is selfless centered. He is the one who is the standard, and to be like Him is the highest that man can strive to be.

Whenever we behave selfishly, self-centeredly, we are fighting against, battering against the Spirit that is emanating out from Him, and so it actually creates a measure of conflict with God—something that we do not want. So pleasure for pleasure’s sake, and work for work’s sake is self-centered, and that does not work in God’s selfless-centered universe. It cannot work because it runs counter to a major, major law that operates in God’s great creation. That is because God Himself is not self-centered.

The self-centered process is dominant in Satan’s world, and it pulls one like gravity toward disappointment, emptiness, and death. And unless repentance occurs—and sometimes that can take quite a while until one realizes what is happening—it inexorably moves one toward depression.

There is probably no one that epitomizes this more than entertainment figures. I am talking about those people in music. I am talking about those people in films. They spend their entire life trying to get attention for themselves and what they are doing.

How many successful marriages do you know that those people have? They seem to get divorced about every four or five years. And why? Because both in the marriage are pulling in opposite directions because they are fighting against the Spirit of God that dominates the entire universe, and that hurts them. But they are a good example to you and me if we will learn something from that. Selfless pleasure, which one learns from within a relationship with God, produces true enjoyment and builds godly character at one and the same time.

Recall with me, and I know that you know this is true, but in Galatians 5 does it not say that the fruit of the Spirit of God is love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, meekness, etc.? Every one of them a good positive attribute that a person can have within himself because of the relationship with God.

In II Timothy 3, verse 4 is an interesting statement that the apostle Paul makes, and every one of us is aware of what it says. He is naming all these characteristics of people at the end-time. They are:

II Timothy 3:4 ^. . . . traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

I think there is something that we must be very careful regarding what we are reading in Ecclesiastes about Solomon, and the time that we live in right now living our life as a Christian. It would be very easy to say to us, “I could never get into any kind of problem like Solomon did. I don’t have the money that he had. I don’t have the power that he had.” But no, wait a minute. Let us think that through a little bit. I will concede that we do not have the money, and we do not have the power, but you know what? There may be much to life that we have that he did not have, or that people in his time did not have. Do you think you do not have the resources? Now is that so?

Think briefly about what life must have been like at that time. I want you to do this because we have ample opportunity to indulge in many of the same desires that Solomon had and fulfilled. It may even be, once we begin thinking about this, that we have so much at our fingertips Solomon might have envied us.

Brethren, I concede that our homes may not be as large, but in almost every case they are more than ample, and they are comfortable. I can virtually guarantee you that we have better furniture in our homes than he had. Our homes are climate-controlled. In addition to that brethren, our clothing is far superior to what they had available. We have huge food-filled grocery stores in which are stocked foods from all over the world. We have radios, and we have television through which we can be entertained with music and dancing girls and magicians, circuses, and everything else. It is on demand. All we have to do is turn it on, and it is right before our eyes, right in our own home, right in our living room, wherever we might want it, in seconds.

In Solomon’s lifetime people walked when they traveled. How many of those people even had a horse? Almost nobody. A rich man might have had a donkey. We have cars, and we have airplanes virtually at our fingertips, and they can take us to places in a matter of minutes, hours. We can travel to the farthest reaches away from us in less than a day by airplane. Not only that, we even have pornography and illicit sex readily available.

I read that verse in II Timothy 3:4 on purpose brethren, because we are living in the very times that Paul is talking about there. We are living in a nature that is on an entertainment binge that is unparalleled in the history of this nation, and only ancient Rome might have come close to what we have available to us.

Do you think that we cannot spend our time seeking pleasure, doing all kinds of things? Maybe we are not building palaces, but we may be building other things. They are right at our fingertips. We are not being denied by God to have access to these things. They are available. What are we doing regarding making the choices? Everything is offered to us. There is hardly a thing that is not unavailable. So, are we satisfied? Do we still want more?

The verses in Ecclesiastes 2:13-14 begin to provide us with quite a measure of hope if we will apply ourselves to accepting and using his advice despite all the vanity that he sees in life under the sun. It is that wisdom—even carnal wisdom—provides a healthy advantage over the madness that he was lamenting about.

Recall that light symbolizes truth, and that it is access to truth that opens the door to wisdom. Solomon uses the contrast between light and darkness to illustrate his conclusion, stating that it is far more advantageous to be in the light than in the darkness, meaning that it is far better to be wise than it is to be foolish.

Even when one is in familiar territory, has good eyes but is in deep darkness, one can still run into things and possibly be injured even though one thought one knew one’s way around. But by saying that one in the light has eyes in his head—(That is what Solomon says there—“The wise man’s eyes are in his head”)—it is saying that the person with wisdom has vision. A person with wisdom can truly think spatially. In other words, wisdom enables a person to perceive possibility and probability.

Wisdom illuminates internally and enables the wise to more clearly see better alternatives. By contrast, the fool not only has darkness around him, but it is inside him as well. The fool cannot think clearly enough, because his mind is blind to the potentials in a given circumstance.

So what is Solomon saying? Regardless of what we have or do not have, it is far better to be wise than it is to be foolish. So if you are going to make a choice in life, take the path—even though it may seem slower, even though it may seem more difficult—that produces wisdom rather than the foolishness of mirth, which he says is madness—a total waste of time.

Solomon left us with a host of proverbs regarding the advantages of wisdom. We are going to run through a couple of them.

Proverbs 10:1 A wise son makes a glad father, . . .

This can be a wonderful contribution for children to make to their parents, to be seeking after wisdom, because it makes the parents glad, happy. As I often say, “You gotta keep the mama happy.” If you do, things go well.

Proverbs 10:1 . . . but a foolish son is the grief of his mother.

I wonder how many mothers could say “Amen” to that.

Proverbs 10:8 The wise in heart will receive commands, . . .

This here is a major advantage that a wise person has over the foolish.

Proverbs 10:8 . . . but a prating fool will fall.

That is why Solomon says that the wise has light in his head. His eyes are in the head. He can think things through. He can think spatially. He can make wise choices because he is open to receiving wisdom from others and from situations.

Proverbs 15:21 Folly is joy to him who is destitute of discernment, . . .

Well, the person may be happy, but the person is not discerning where it is leading.

Proverbs 15:21 . . . but a man of understanding walks uprightly.

In other words, he is not bowed down by slavery because his wisdom keeps him free.

Proverbs 29:3 Whoever loves wisdom makes his father rejoice, but a companion of harlots [meaning a foolish person] wastes his wealth.

Solomon is giving us all kinds of reasons all through the book of Proverbs why it is better to seek after wisdom.

Back now to Ecclesiastes 2:14. The last line of verse 14 contains a thought that every Christian must take into account, and this is that no matter how wise one is, or even how godly one is, there are things in life beyond one’s control, and the godly sometimes get caught in the same calamities as the foolish. The last line of verse 14 says:

Ecclesiastes 2:14 Yet I myself perceived that the same event happens to them all.

Then in verse 16 he names a specific one that he is thinking of, and that is death. That is the major one, but I wanted to say what I did regarding verse 14 because death is not the only thing that the wise and the foolish may have to meet together, but because the wise person is wise, you can be sure that he is going to endure the calamity better than the one who is foolish. That is what Solomon is getting at. Even in calamity the wise are better off than the fool.

Ecclesiastes 2:16 For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come. And how does a wise man die? As the fool!

We are going to focus on death here for a little while, because death is no respecter of persons, and this true thought is frustrating to many because they have spent their lifetime trying to deny the reality of their mortality. In a way, Solomon was saying, “Why must I die? “

We need to pick up on this because Solomon mentions death seven times in this lecture. It was important to him, and it is one of the reasons why commentators feel that he wrote this, composed it toward the end of his life because he was recounting what his life had taught him, and we see it there for us to get major advice from.

Because Solomon does this seven times, I believe this is a major hint from God regarding right choices. Choosing to make the best use of our time is a major portion of wisdom.

Now how often did a proverb address the time-wasting result of laziness, drunkenness, and chasing after laughter? Well, I do not know. All I know is the answer “often.”

Another question. Why do the proverbs warn so strongly about this? There is a very logical reason. It is because, when life ends, judgment ends, and there can then be nothing favorable added to our record, because death is an absolute certainty.

So what is God saying through Solomon? Make the best use of your time that you can because we never know when we are going to die. That is such a simple truth. We all know this, but the question is, at this point—How do we make good use of this knowledge without making the reality of death morbid? Part of the answer to this is a proverb we just read, and that is that the wise will make use of it because they are willing to take counsel. They do not think they know it all. They are not hard-headed, and they are not stiff-necked, but they are humble enough to take advice and to consider what is given to this.

Let us chase this out a little bit more. We have to take death in this regard. God planned that we would all die. “It is given to all men once to die, and then the judgment.” Therefore, everything God does is done in love. What God does in causing our lives to come to an end at a time that we do not know—(we do not know it definitely)—is an act of love. It is an act of love for Him to cause us to die. This reinforces what I said earlier, and that is life is serious, and time, brethren, is precious. I cannot say that strongly enough. Time is precious. That is what Solomon was learning.

Now the young, the immature, especially children, do not think very often of this. A major part of the foolishness bound up in the heart of a child is that the child does not think much about end results. Solomon though was concerned because the darkness of which he warned in verses 13 and 14 was still within them, and the point for us is that we must make certain, as we can, that we are not a foolish child of God, and take advantage of the time He has given to us. He has converted us. He has given us His Spirit, and we are His children in whom some measure of foolishness is bound up, but He is warning us beforehand—“Foolishness is there. Do the best you can to get rid of it and to overcome it.”

Ecclesiastes 2:17-22 Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind. Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because 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 rule over all my labor in which I toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity. Therefore I turned my heart and despaired of all the labor in which I had toiled under the sun. For there is a man whose labor is with wisdom, knowledge, and skill; yet he must leave his heritage to a man who has not labored for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. For what has man for all his labor, and for the striving of his heart with which he has toiled under the sun?

We are going to go to Psalm 49, and we will pick up a piece of wisdom or two there, and then go back to Ecclesiastes 2 once again.

Psalm 49:1-4 Hear this, all peoples; Give ear, all inhabitants of the world, both low and high, rich and poor together. My mouth shall speak wisdom, and the meditation of my heart shall give understanding. I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will disclose my dark saying on the harp.

Psalm 49:6-12 Those who trust in their wealth and boast in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him—for the redemption of their souls is costly, And it shall cease forever—that he should continue to live eternally, and not see the Pit. For he sees wise men die; likewise the fool and the senseless person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inner thought is that their houses will last forever, their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man, though in honor, does not remain;he is like the beasts that perish.

We put these things together, and this is what we find. We find that death has the power to erase the fact that a person even lived and accomplished all kinds of great things, including the kinds of things that Solomon had, and Solomon reasoned would be kept around for him.

There is a story that involved Alexander the Great. He accomplished a great deal in his life, but he also had contact with a very wise human philosopher by the name of Diogenes. One time, when Alexander was young, he found Diogenes standing alone in a field looking at a pile of bones. Alexander asked Diogenes what he was doing. Diogenes replied, “I am looking for the bones of your father, King Philip, but I cannot seem to distinguish them from the bones of the slaves.”

There is a lot said there. How long did the memory of King Philip last? Mr. Armstrong addressed this reality in a section of his autobiography. Before he was in the ministry, his job involved travelling a great deal in a wide area of the Midwest, and often he was in a bank. These banks almost invariably had pictures of their founders and other officers of the past hanging on the walls. He discovered that almost none of the bank’s employees knew who was pictured there, or whether they even had a connection with the bank. Those people in those pictures had been dead only a few years. This was the president of the bank. This was the founder of the bank. This was the secretary of the bank. “What is their name?” That is exactly what this psalm is getting at.

It is interesting that Solomon’s name and some of the things that he did have lasted through millennia of time, but he is the exception. He is the exception only because God preserved a memory of him so that Solomon’s lessons learned in life could be passed on to you and me.

How many of you know anything of what Jehosophat, who was one of the better kings of Israel, wrote and did? How about Josiah, who was really a good king, maybe second to David? How much do you know that he left to his family when he died at the age of 39 because he did something stupid? The foolishness was not all out of him yet as good of a king as he was, and God let him die. When he died, Judah fell apart and went into captivity. That was all she wrote for Judah.

We will be dead, and our family will remember us for a while. I know my grandfather because I spent a lot of time with him. He and I used to talk baseball on the porch, and he used to take me out for walks when I was 4 and 5 years old. We would watch automobiles go by on a heavily travelled road, and he required of me that I name the year and the make of every one of those automobiles that went by.

Do you know what? I do not know a thing about my great-grandfather. I do not even know what his name was. That is only four generations away. That is the kind of thing Solomon is getting at here. Even the memory of us will be forgotten, actually fairly quickly. That is what Mr. Armstrong was getting at. And of course what they want us to do is turn this into making something that God recognizes that He wants to be in His Kingdom, and regardless of whether men remember, God will never forget.

So we have to make use of the time that has been given to us and do what we can to impress God, not people. Even in its most narrow sense, it is God, not even our family, because sometimes God only calls one person in a family, and God has to become the most important thing in that person’s life, not his family, even though he loves his spouse dearly.

That is what Solomon is getting at in the entire book of Ecclesiastes. A person’s life has to be centered on God if it is going to be meaningful, and whether a life impresses other people does not matter. We have to do what we can to impresses Him, and so Ecclesiastes is about making right choices in all of life at all times. And so Solomon even said in Ecclesiastes 1:11, “There is no remembrance of former things.” So much for the efforts of the founders of a bank.

The point is that human wisdom cannot overcome death, and therefore human wisdom cannot solve the problem of the meaning of life. Death brings everything to a halt, including all of the dignity and the great accomplishments that one had before one died. And so Solomon was stymied, and life seemed irrational and futile, and yet even he, in this circumstance, admitted it was better than death.

There is a proverb that says that there are no pockets in a shroud, and we must face this reality and make efforts toward building what can be taken through death, and that is what we personally are when we die. And so we need to ask ourselves the question: Are we making progress toward being in the image of Jesus Christ? This impresses Him, and thus it will survive, because God never forgets.

And such is life under the sun. Solomon hated life because of the certainty of death, and the absurdity to him of losing all of his wisdom, and nobody would even remember him. Is there any reason why we should hate life?

Turn with me to the book of Colossians once again. This makes about the second or third time that we have been there already today. Here is the advice in Colossians 3 from the apostle Paul.

Colossians 3:1-7 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ whois our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.

Brethren, this is the only way out of the hatred that was building in Solomon, and can build in us as well. The only way out is to seek and use the wisdom that comes from above the sun and it has been dropped right in our laps by our merciful and benevolent God and Savior, and Christ is alive so that we have access to that wisdom. In addition to that, we know that we can participate in building in this life and will be remembered for all eternity.

There is an interesting word in verse 3 of Colossians 3. Are you aware that the term “hid” in the KJV, and “hidden” in the NKJV, that the Greek word under that is the root word for our English word “encryption”? That word “encryption” should be part of the vocabulary of anybody familiar with computers. That is what the word means. It means something that is hidden.

Our life is hidden in Jesus Christ, and Paul is seeing us spiritually within Christ’s body. We can see it. The world cannot see it. Paul could see it in his mind’s eye that we are hidden, encrypted within His body, and when He comes we will be resurrected, because there we will be alive. Do you get it? That is really encouraging. In fact, those last 7 or 8 verses of Ecclesiastes 2, when you begin to stretch them out and their meaning into other parts of the book, are really very encouraging.

Let us go back to Ecclesiastes 2 again and read verses 24 through 26.

Ecclesiastes 2:24-26 Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God. For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight; but to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting, that he may give to himwho is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.

At least one way these verses might be the most surprising of the first two chapters is because they are so positive. None other than the renowned Martin Luther called them “remarkable” in light of all the negativism that preceded them. In fact, he called them the principle conclusion of the entire book. I do not agree with him, but there is no doubt that they are at least “an oasis of grudging optimism in a wilderness of despair,” as another commentator wrote.

It is only the second time in the book so far that Solomon has mentioned God, and that brethren, is significant. The first time he made reference to God was in Ecclesiastes 1:13, and there he said God was part of the cause of vanity. These comments in these last three verses, however, are positive counsel, and the first clear indication that not all in life, even from Solomon’s point of view, is vanity. Even joy is possible!

Do you know that seven times Solomon repeats almost word for word what he says in these three verses? It is always at the conclusion of some distressing thing, and this encourages me, because it shows me that Solomon really never lost sight of God completely as he was going through these things.

Solomon was not a fatalist. He was not saying, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” He knew that life is determined very greatly by the choices people make, and we have to be wise in making our choices. He says that if we are wise in making our choices and using them, that God absolutely promises He will bless those people so that their lives are not meaningless, that they are not being lived in vanity.

He is beginning to indicate that one cannot find joy in anything apart from God; thus, if one is having trouble finding enjoyment in life, it must be because God is not the center of things in his life. Solomon is urging us to make use of God by turning our vision, our perspective above the sun and include God in all that we are doing.

And then in that last verse he shows that God gives wisdom, and knowledge, and joy to a man who is good in His sight. He is promising that a person who thinks, and whose vision and whose perspective is above the clouds, that God will give that person joy in his life, and of course with it will come the wisdom to make the right choices. The choice will fill the person to make it in the right way, but nonetheless, because of the relationship with God, God will instruct the person and enable the person, and then leave the choice up to him. If he makes the right choice, He will bless, and He will never forget us either.

JWR/smp/drm