Ecclesiastes Lesson 6
The Self-Made Man Idea – 2:11-17
Ecclesiastes 2; this book is written to show you that the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. This is a lesson a lot of believers have to learn because a lot of believers have the impression that all I need to do is have a few things. And basically this is wrong because your happiness is grounded solely on your personal relationship with the Lord and you can try to substitute all the things that you want to but Solomon has already done it for you. And in verses 1-11 we found some of the things that Solomon substituted. Solomon had a little problem with carnality; Solomon’s soul had volition which was on negative signals, he had personal affections, he had mentality, he had bodily affections but Solomon, because he was on negative volition blocked out the ministry of the Holy Spirit through his human spirit into his soul. This was completely blocked off by his negative volition. Therefore this created a vacuum in his soul which the New Testament calls mataiotes, translated in the English as vanity, in the Old Testament habel which is also translated vanity. And this means a vacuum is set up in your soul and you begin to crave things; you begin to have this mad search for happiness and contentment and Solomon tried this; he tried mentality, he tried bodily affections and personal affections, all things to try to fill up the vacuum in his soul and it didn’t work.
We found out in verse 4-5 he had his construction company and he started out producing some of the magnificent structures of the ancient world. In fact, his temple is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. And I told you last time about the pools that he built, you can still see them and they’re still being used in the water systems of the city of Jerusalem. So he obviously didn’t have the kind of laborers that we had today; he had people that meant business and when they put something together it stayed. But this didn’t help him out and did not fill the vacuum in his soul. Then he tried the song routine, and in verse 7 he had his own little private choir, his private helpers, this is his kitchen routine, “servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions,” and we found out that at one point over a 14 day period he slaughtered 120,000 sheep and something like 60,000 oxen when they dedicated the temple. So this gives you an idea, that probably was about a tenth of his stock holdings at that time so this man was a fantastic businessman, an excellent business and this didn’t satisfy him.
And then he tried what usually is tried in verse 8, the wine, women and song routine. And he got his money, the silver and gold and the peculiar treasure and he got himself a private choir. So when he was sitting there eating with his servants he just clicked his finger instead of turning the dial; he would compose the music, he composed 1005 different pieces and then he trained these men and women to sing these pieces. And so as he would sit down with his servants he would sit at his table and he’d say listen, I want you to sing number three and for dessert I want number twenty-five. And so he’d give orders to his choir to sing his pieces. This was the kind of a man he was. And then of course he had to have his girls and in the last part of verse 8 as the King James so very innocuously translates it “musical instruments.” He wasn’t playing with music here, this was the call girls of his time and this was the harem that he had of 700 wives and 300 concubines. Of course he had everything and he tried everything and this verse proves it and still he wasn’t happy. Literally in the Hebrew it says “the delights of the sons of men” and we showed from the Song of Solomon this means sexual delights and this didn’t satisfy.
Then in verses 10-11 is one of the most important conclusions that has ever been reached and if you are the kind of Christian that likes to have materialism lust or you happen to feel deep down in your soul you still haven’t dealt with this yet, you still have this craving for things and you still think that things can satisfy you in some way, then verses 10-11 I strongly recommend for your memorization program. “And whatsoever my eyes desired, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy; because my heart” participle “was always rejoicing in all my labor.” In other words as he went from one thing to the next, one girl to the next girl, one song to the next song, one building project to the next building project, his heart was rejoicing. But… then he ads in verse 10, “But this was my portion of all my labor,” in other words, that’s all he had. When the party is over and the Monday morning after the joy was gone, he had the hangover. So here it is, he goes on, he’s happy, he’s contented as long as he’s bombarding himself with things and he had enough things that he could alternate every day on the hour.
He had everything but he had to keep a bombardment of things going until he could get happiness and it never worked because he says, verse 11, “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do; and, behold, all was vanity and preoccupation with wind, and there was no profit under the sun.” And here we have the exact opposite of what the Christian should be doing. Instead of creating a vacuum in your soul because you are out of fellowship, and instead of letting the Holy Spirit remain trapped in your human spirit, you through the filling of the Spirit can change this very drastically on the inside and the solution that the Bible offers you is one from the inside out, not from the outside in. You have the human spirit and if you’re a Christian you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit in your human spirit. This means when He fills you He flows eternal life out to all the functions of the soul. So now you’re on positive volition and your personal affections, you’re now occupied with Jesus Christ. It’s not that you’ve denied emotions toward other people but it means that you have your emotional pattern stabilized, it’s not out of control, it’s a very relaxed kind of life because you have stability and orientation and your emotions never get the better of you, etc. Mentality, you have what we call a relaxed mental attitude; you live in the Word, no matter what you’re doing, whether you’re in the classroom, whether you’re in your home, whether it’s some problem at work or at the office, you are applying Bible doctrine to that area. And so you live in the Word, constantly you’re a drawing force from the Word of God that you know; you’re applying in your particular field of work.
So you have this pattern set up by the Holy Spirit. And you have things out here, the Christian isn’t divorced from things but the things are now in perspective. The details of life are now in perspective and therefore you can enjoy things. You realize really if you are out of fellowship as a Christian you can’t enjoy things, not really, because you’re trying to make them your God, you’re trying to make them into some sort of a dope that you have to take to get high. And when you’re high on things you don’t really enjoy things as God has told you to but if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit and His will then you can enjoy things; you can even enjoy money. Some of you don’t have money, always looking up to some other believer, oh, he has so much more money than I have, if I had a little bit more money I’d be happy; no you wouldn’t. April 15th is coming up and you’d have a lot of headaches. So money isn’t your solution. In fact, some of the most miserable Christians I’ve ever met have been people with a lot of money. Do you know why? Because they can’t manage it. You ought to thank God He hasn’t given you a lot of money because you probably couldn’t manage it right and you’d be very sorrowful. So therefore God has blessed you by withholding certain things in your life as a father loves a child he has deliberately withheld certain things because he’s trying to train you, and some of you think that he’s the biggest meany that ever lived and you blame God for all your problems and you think if you had this and that and God doesn’t know what He’s doing with me, etc. And that’s some of your attitudes and it’s absolutely wrong; God knows what He’s doing with you and the trouble is you don’t know what you’re doing with God, that’s the trouble. But your happiness comes from your fellowship with Him and the things fall into place and the greatest thing about the Christian life is you can have joy without hangovers. There’s no Monday morning afterwards. And that’s the difference between Christian joy and the joy that the world gives.
Now in chapter 2, verses 12-17 we come to a second section of Solomon’s experiment. He has experimented with things in verses 1-11 and now in verses 12-17 he goes over to what a lot of men try and that is the problem of self-development. He’s going to try the program if I could just improve myself and lift myself up with my own bootstraps and be a very impressive person and wear a new suit every day and drive the latest Cadillac, etc. I’d get the way to communicate, how to win friends and influence people, etc. master all these techniques and I am a perfectly self-developed man, I can run ten miles and lift 200 pounds and in every area of life I am totally self-developed. So he engages in operation bootstrap where he tries to engage himself in this self-development program. Now you’re going to see where that leads to.
Verse 12, “So I turned myself to see,” now we’re going to have in two verses a change in translation. This translation I am giving you will not be found in either the King James, the RSV or the ASV. I am getting this from the original Hebrew, studying the way the words fit together under the guidance of Professor Gordis, and I recommend to you Gordis’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes; he is a Jewish professor. It is not a work of a Christian believer but nevertheless it’s one of the most excellent commentaries in Ecclesiastes as far as the Hebrew text is concerned. Therefore that is where we are getting this translation of verse 12. “I turned myself to behold wisdom,” now this verse has to be interpreted the same way verse 17 was back in chapter 1. Remember he said “And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly,” and we retranslated that as: “I gave my heart to know wisdom and knowledge, that they are madness and folly.” The same thing applies here in verse 12, “I turned myself to see wisdom, that it is both madness and folly,” see there’s your word pair again and these are describing what wisdom is like.
“I turned myself” means there is a decision reached. Verse 12 summarizes verses 13-17 as is usual and it means that Solomon ended his experiment and started thinking about wisdom itself. You see, in verses 1-11 here what he’s done is sat down and designed himself an experiment of pleasure. He used a little alcohol along the way to keep things well lubricated but he did not allow himself to become inebriated. He used every kind of pleasure he could get his hands on. And then he wound up his conclusion of his experiment, this is great, it gives me pleasure. He’s not denying that things give you pleasure; what he’s pointing out is that after he gets through with them what have you got? You have nothing. And in verse 12 he’s going to turn himself to consider another thing. Now he’s going to look at the wisdom that he needed to design this [can’t understand word]. So verse 12 takes your attention off of the experiment itself, off the wine, women and song, unto the plan, the idea of this planning. And so the emphasis now in verses 12-17 are going to be on his program of self-development. The idea of wisdom, as we’ve said before, is the word which means skill basically in the Hebrew. And it means that this man has skill in living. So therefore what he’s going to emphasize is this skill in living and does skill in living offer me anything; does development of my wisdom in this life yield any distinct quality that really changes my destiny? That’s the point he’s trying to say. Can human good bring me any reward?
Now in the middle of verse 12 we have a very interesting phrase and you want to catch this because this really ties it to each one of us as believers. “For what can a man do that comes after the king? Even that which has already been done.” Now that gives you the sense of the verb but I will give you a more exact translation: “For what is the man,” see the word “can” in the King James is in italics, it means it was not in the original text, it’s supplied by the translators and you can just as well have “For what is the man,” if you want to see how this goes you can look at Psalm 8:5, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” Same expression. “What is man that comes after the king,” in other words, this is some man, any man that comes after the king. “What is the man who comes after the king? With what he has already done.” Now that verb is not passive voice in the Hebrew, that’s a wrong translation, “which has been already done.” That is corrected in the RSV and ASV. It is “what he has already done,” it’s an active voice, not passive. So we now have the translation, “What is the man who comes after the king with what he” the king “has done.”
In other words, you have Solomon here. And now along comes any man; that man could be you incidentally, and so here you are and what are you in comparison to what Solomon has already done? That’s the point that verse 12 is making. Who do you think you are? And this is what Christians have to face, you have to face this because basically every time you get this idea in your mind, if I could have this thing then I would be happy, you are violating verse 12, every time. Now this is not saying you don’t need things, it’s not saying you don’t need the details of life. What it is saying simply is don’t get them out of line, out of perspective. In verse 12 it says if you have this perspective that you’re going to hang everything on some person, some friendship that you’ve developed, some boyfriend, some girlfriend, your wife, your husband, do you know what? You’ll be very sadly disappointed because there’s not one personal relationship in this world that’s strong enough to hang everything on.
There’s only one thing that you can hang everything on and that is your relationship with Jesus Christ and don’t you ever forget it. Marriage and so on are very important but the marriage relationship is not what you hang all your eggs on. You hang your eggs on your relationship with God and that is what gives you stability. What happens if you lose the person; what happens if you have some catastrophe and you’ve hung everything on this personal relationship? That’s why we have so many divorces in this country; people are thinking well, happiness is getting married and all I have to do is find Mr. Right or Mrs. Right and everything will be great. Now it just so happens as a pastor I get the other side of the story and I have married people say well, why did I ever marry this clod. Or how can I get single, if I was only single I’d be happy. And all the single people say if I was only married I could be happy. What needs to change is your relationship to Jesus Christ, that’s where the change occurs and that is where you want to put all your marbles; put everything on that relationship and everything else falls together. But if you don’t do that you are heading for disaster; you are going to be the most miserable person who ever lived and it’s because of your own fault. Don’t blame it on God and don’t blame it on Satan because you are the one that’s doing it—self-induced misery.
Solomon is warning you in verse 12 that “wisdom itself is madness and folly, for what is the man who comes after the king?” What can he do, what value is he? What’s the point if the wisdom isn’t going help you out? Here you are down here, Solomon was 10th century, first millennium, you’re 20th century, that’s 30 centuries, 3,000 years separate you from Solomon’s [can’t understand phrase]. Who do you think you are; that’s what Solomon is saying. And no matter how smart you think you are, no matter how well educated you think you are, no matter how many natural resources you have, you still are not going to come close to Solomon. If you think you have a couple of girlfriends, Solomon had a thousand. If you think you’ve got a few cars, Solomon had a whole chariot force. He had horses, he had investments, he had everything. Some of you think you’ve got a lot of investments and then you remember what the stock market did in 1969 and that’s why some of you are unhappy. Solomon could control the stock market; he didn’t have to worry about what Wall Street did, he ran the market so he didn’t have to worry what it was doing. Solomon ran the show.
Now verses 13-14 we encounter something very interesting in this book and this is the second time we’ve run into it and I want to explain carefully. In 1:18 we ran into this phenomenon once before and if you don’t see this you’re going to come up and say, “pastor, I see contradictions in the Bible.” Verse 18, “For in much wisdom is much grief,” do you remember when we covered that we said that is a proverb that Solomon is quoting and you should put a quotation mark, “for (quote) ‘in much wisdom…” and so on, dot, dot, dot “sorrow’” (end of quotation). [“For ‘in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow.’”]
That is a proverb that Solomon is quoting. You see Solomon grew up in the wisdom schools and he himself wrote 3,000 proverbs so he had quite a bag of Proverbs that he could pull from. Now in verses 13-14 this is what he’s going to do. He’s going to pull one proverb in verse 13 and then translate through verse 14 and then he’s going to cut. So let’s watch this.
Verse 13, “Then I say that,” (quote) “‘wisdom exceeds folly, as far as light excels darkness.’” Now there is one proverb that Solomon cites. It begins with the word “wisdom” and ends with the word “darkness.” The second proverb that he quotes is in verse 14 half way through; it starts with “The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness,” end of proverb. Now if you don’t catch that you’re going to see a contradiction here so watch it. Verse 13 and 14a are proverbs that Solomon is quoting. Then he says, the last part of verse 13, “But,” the “and” should be an adversative, “But I myself perceived that one event happens to them all.” Do you see what he’s doing? He’s whining, he’s the kind of Christian that comes up, but pastor, I’ve tried these promises but it doesn’t work. This is what Solomon’s doing. He’s saying I’ve got these two proverbs but they don’t work. He says I read in the Proverbs where it says “wisdom exceeds folly” and “the wise man’s eyes are in his head, but…” I have found in my experience that the same thing happens to both people. The fool, the idiot, the same thing happens to them as to the person who’s trying to do a good job in self-developing himself, etc. The same thing happens to them all.
Now this is Solomon’s complaint and you don’t get the nature of the complaint until you realize that verse 13 and half of 14 is a proverb that he’s citing. Now why is this wrong? Is this a contradiction? No; this goes back to chokmah, and this is the Hebrew word for wisdom. And chokmah can be of two types, category one wisdom or category two wisdom. Category one wisdom is divine viewpoint wisdom; category two wisdom is human viewpoint wisdom. Category two, the human viewpoint wisdom, is just human skill; category one is godly skill. The word “wisdom” can be used of both skills and this is where Solomon is misunderstanding the Word of God. He is saying something in verse 13-14 that applies to the divine viewpoint wisdom but he has human viewpoint wisdom, he has skill in the normal everyday things of life and he says this doesn’t benefit me. Well bless his heart, the proverb wasn’t applied to that kind of wisdom. It was meant to be applied to spiritual wisdom.
To see the difference we’re going to take a little tour through the Word just so you get a feeling for the shift in the meaning of the word “wisdom.” Turn back to Proverbs 2:2; you see a word pair that occurs again and again in the Old Testament. This word pair tips you off as to what wisdom is meant. When you study your Bible watch for habitual occurring word pairs. Notice verse 2, “So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding.” Verse 3, “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding.” And the word “understanding” here is the word which means insight. So you have this word pair under divine viewpoint wisdom. You have wisdom plus understanding; and if you read through the book of Proverbs you’d notice this occurs again and again and again, wisdom and understanding, wisdom and understanding, wisdom and understanding. It means skill an insight, skill and insight, skill and insight, skill and insight. And this means wisdom with insight; this is the spiritual kind of wisdom.
Turn to the New Testament to James 3:17 you’ll see where this occurs. Here you have the wisdom that comes from above, this is godly wisdom, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated,” that means that you don’t have this high and mighty attitude that you know everything and nobody else knows anything. And “easy to be entreated” means you are approachable, “full of mercy and good fruits without partiality” that has the attribute of justice, “and without hypocrisy. [18] And the seed of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” So it’s peaceful, it shows the fruits of the Holy Spirit. So divine viewpoint wisdom can be recognized because it’s accompanied with the fruits of the Spirit.
Now back up a couple of verses to verses 15-16 of James 3 and you get human viewpoint wisdom or category two wisdom. “For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every work. [15] This wisdom descends not from above, but is earthly,” and the word “sensual” should be “soulish and devilish.” What do we mean by soulish? It means the mentality of your soul is dominated by your flesh, your sin nature. So those are your two categories of wisdom. And this is why Solomon is having trouble understanding the proverb.
So let’s go back and find how Solomon is whining and crying around in this chapter, chapter 2 verse 13-14. He has quoted a passage from a proverb, we don’t have it in our book of Proverbs but evidently it was available to him and he’s saying this thing doesn’t work, I don’t see it, all these wisdom teachers are teaching that wisdom is great, wisdom exceeds folly and it’s light and darkness and I don’t see it. But then he says, like a crashing balloon full of water, splat. He says “But I have discovered,” the word “perceived” just simply means to come to know, “that one of event happens to them all” and it keeps on happening to them all, it’s a repetitive action in the Hebrew, it means it just keeps on happening. By the way, this kind of warning that is found in verses 13-14 is like… probably you’ve had this experience. You get around some carnal Christian or you get around some unbeliever that doesn’t understand claiming the promises. And over here you might say “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose,” or “casting all your care upon Him for He cares for you,” and you might have repeated some of those promises and some unbeliever gets up on his high horse and says well I believe that God helps those that help themselves. And that comes straight from hell; God does not help those who help themselves, He never has and never will. God helps the helpless. So you have people misrepresent the New Testament and then they come out with some glorious piece of wisdom like that. Well, this is exactly what Solomon is doing; misrepresenting the Word and now coming out with his complaint of verse 14.
Let’s go to verse 15 and see how this resolves itself. “Then I said in my heart, As it happens to the fool, so it happens even to me; and why then was I [then more] wise?” Here we’re going to have another translation change; the phrase “then more” should not be in that sentence. It should just read “why then was I wise?” Or why have I been wise, and there should be another whole sentence put in between the question mark after the word “wise” and “then.” And that sentence should read, “What is the profit?” In other words, he’s saying, two questions, why have I been wise and what is the profit of it all? “Then I said in my heart, this also is vanity.”
What his point is is that if he looks back in verses 13-14, all these great promises [can’t understand word/s] need something to be wise, this doesn’t mean anything, absolutely nothing. He says I look at my life, I’m going to die and rot and my body is going to be used by the earthworms, my casket is going to rot and fall apart, etc. and it’s just going to be like everybody else. So why bother with it; that’s his point. You can see, by the way, this book is very much keyed to our generation; a tremendous book for our day, a tremendous book. So he says here, “what is the profit?” It’s the same old story, what can I take out of life that really changes me for all eternity; that’s his point. What is it, what is worthwhile about all of this, I don’t see anything worthwhile, I do all these things; I’ve given everything and I’ve done this, and nobody appreciates me, you don’t appreciate me and I don’t appreciate you and all the rest of it. And that’s what Solomon is doing. It’s the same old story.
Now we can find some very easy illustrations of verse 15 in our own time. And he develops it further in verse 16 and makes it very obvious. “For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever,” the word “forever” really should be incorporated in the sentence in the sense that there’s never, forever there’s never, this really doesn’t work any time in history, the idiot dies and the hero dies and the next generation forgets them. And of course we have some people in our school systems that love to take American history and distort it and love to teach our kids without all the bad things that Samuel Adams did and George Washington did. So what, they had sin natures like everyone else. But the reason why the liberals love to distort American history is because they can’t stand American history. American history came from the Puritans and the standards of the Word of God and they can’t stand this and when you can’t stand something you know what you do? What do you do when you’re in a group of people and you can’t stand someone? You try and find something wrong with the person, pull them down to your low level, and that’s why the liberals are trying to distort American history. They can’t stand to be around great men and therefore they have to malign them so they feel at ease with them. You’ve done that, I’ve done that; when you can’t stand someone in your little click or your little group, you know what happens. You always pull someone else down to your level.
Well that’s what the liberal basically have done with American history. They can’t stand men, for example, of the stature of the Puritans; we’ve had men in our own generation, truly great men that American has produced and they’re not going to be remembered. Think back to Douglas MacArthur, one of the greatest men in the 20th century; he’s not going to be remembered and yet it was Douglas MacArthur that warned this country back in 1945 what was going to happen in the Far East. When he signed the treaty on the battleship Missouri appealed to Christians and he said there is a spiritual vacuum in Japan and all of Far East Asia and if you Christians don’t get over here with Bibles, testaments and missionaries this thing in 20 years is going to go to the communists. Those are the words of Douglas MacArthur. And now we wonder why we’re having trouble in China, why China went only four years after MacArthur said that, why North Vietnam went, why South Vietnam is going, etc. It’s very easy, MacArthur told us but nobody listened.
See, Solomon is right from the human viewpoint verse 16 is absolutely true, there’s no remembrance. Men don’t like people like because MacArthur’s personality gripes them; the issue isn’t his personality, the issue is what he has told you and whether it’s right or wrong. Because some people are turned off by MacArthur’s personality they can’t stand him. Personality is never the issue and if you’re a smart person you’re going to pick your friends, not on the basis of their personality but whether they level with you or not, because you can develop around you a whole group of friends and they’re very weak people and you will ask them and they’ll never tell you the truth. They’ll never level with you, they always tell you oh yea, yea, yea, you’re great, and pretty soon they’ll hypnotize you into thinking you really are great. And they’re just insincere hypocritical clods and you love them because you love to be flattered. You can’t stand to be around another person that will level with you and when you’re wrong they’ll tell you; when you’re right they’ll tell you. Those are the kind of friends you ought to cultivate. I’m not talking about being nasty; I’m not talking about a nasty person.
Some of you have these kinds of friends and that’s why you’re miserable. Others of you don’t know how to handle a [can’t understand word] person. You’ll be in a Christian group or some situation somewhere and you’ll have some Christian that’s out of fellowship and they just gripe you, you can’t stand them but you think you have to love all the brethren, so you stay around and make yourself miserable and everybody else miserable. Now there’s such a thing as loving the brethren but if someone makes you miserable in a group just avoid them. Life is too short to waste your time with some clod. You don’t have to get upset and start spreading gossip and maligning them, just avoid them. Pick somebody else, there’s three billion people in the world and you can’t find someone. You don’t have to stick with people that annoy you, just go some place else, relax and enjoy yourself.
So this point about the fool and about the wise man is true if Solomon’s premise is true, that is, what is his premise? Again, the phrase “under the sun.” Solomon is looking at life from the human viewpoint, and he’s saying if God really doesn’t care, if it really doesn’t matter with Him, if there’s not a real personal relationship available then all of this is absolutely true. Some of you Christians are engaged in evangelism. Do you realize that right here in this book of Ecclesiastes that you’ve got a profile of the person to whom you’re witnessing. And when you talk to someone without Jesus Christ as their Savior you are talking with someone who follows verses 10-11. You can analyze from this passage immediately what’s going through the mind of the person to whom you’re witnessing. You walk in and maybe you feel intimidated by somebody and yet if you’ll be honest with the Word of God you already know a lot about that person. You may not know that person personally but you know from the book of Ecclesiastes, verses 10-11 are true and so therefore you recognize that unbeliever can smile at me, he says I don’t need Jesus Christ, I have a wonderful time, and you can look him right in the eye and say you are a liar because verses 10-12 are true. Solomon is giving you a tremendous thing here, a tremendous truth to understanding the misery of the non-Christian.
I did not become a Christian until university days. I lived as a non-Christian, I didn’t live miserably, I had everything life had to offer, I had all the scholarships I wanted, I had every goal that I set forth for myself in high school, I got a scholarship to MIT where I wanted to do, I had everything but do you know what drove me to Jesus Christ? After I had everything I realized verses 10-11 are true, my rejoiced until after Monday morning, and then on Monday morning, all events, the goals had been complete, I was the same person. You can honestly believe that any non-Christian is in this state. You can go back down to verse 16-17 and this tells you even more about that non-Christian. He may not realize it, you may have to draw his attention to this; in your conversation with a non-Christian it may take you to realize that this is all he has. That’s all he has, and he can try all the self-development programs, and he can try to excel in business, he can try to get a bigger home and a bigger car and all the rest, and yet you come right back on him with Solomon’s quotation in verse 14, but you know that one things happens to them all and it doesn’t ultimately make any difference, does it.
In verse 16 is when he really gets emotional as he starts to conclude, “For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever, seeing that which no is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dies the wise man? Like the fool.” And the word “how” here is a Hebrew explanatory phrase and it means at this point this man who has kept his self-control all during these experiments, a fantastic example of self-controlled [can’t understand word] and at the end of verse 16 suddenly Solomon erupts in an emotional outburst and you can tell it by the language, “But how dies the wise man? Just as the fool,” and all of a sudden you can tell all the hatred and all the frustration of Solomon breaks forth into this emotional outburst. He says I’ve done everything, I’ve self-improved myself, I’ve done things for this nation, Solomon was the greatest, the richest king, and yet he says I’m going to the grave and to the worms just like everyone else, what does it all matter. Absolutely nothing.
Verse 17, Solomon says, “Therefore, I hated life,” and we would translate it, it just frustrates me, life just frustrates me, “because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me; for all is vanity and preoccupation with wind [vexation of spirit.]” Did you see the interview with the 12 year old girl and the interviewer said why did you get on dope? And she said because life is so crummy, and that’s exactly what Solomon is saying; it doesn’t take a 12 year old girl living in New York City in 1970 to tell you that; Solomon tells you right here, that on the non-Christian principle, on the non-Christian basis that’s all you’ve got. You hate life because it’s just a lot of hot air.
Now this book is very discouraging, and so we always like to conclude by taking you to the New Testament and at least the principles of the New Testament so we’ll turn to Colossians 3:1-4. We never want to leave you at the point of despair but we want you to go through the despair that you may understand the non-Christian. Yet logically the non-Christian and even the carnal Christian doesn’t have a thing going for him; not a thing. Those of you who have been raised in Christian homes really have not experienced the vacuum, the heartache, that inner frustration that the non-Christian is daily experiencing all around you. The only way you can experience this for yourself is two-fold: (1) study of the Word of God that gives you the principles, and (2) getting involved in something where you share with a non-Christian and I mean really share, I don’t mean buttonhole him and pour it in his mouth and jam it shut; that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking a real personal communication where the non-Christian tells you something and you tell him something back. And when you begin to get that communication going then you suddenly discover what you’ve got. Some of you never will discover what you’ve got as Christians because you’ve just had it too long, but those of you who are serious in understanding the blessings that have come your way, you’ll appreciate Solomon and you’ll begin to see this in the non-Christian around you as you engage in conversation.
In Colossians 3:1-4, “If ye, then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God.” It goes back to the diagram that we frequently draw; when you receive Christ this is the point and you enter into a legal relationship with Him. We call that circle “in Christ.” This is your legal position; this never changes and don’t let anyone ever tell you oh, if you do this you’re going to lose your salvation. You never lose your salvation, absolutely impossible. “In Christ” and you’re always “in Christ,” once for all the Holy Spirit puts you “in Christ” and you are there legally forever. This is living in the new creation and legally you already live there, that’s what verse 1 says, “if you be risen with Christ” and it’s a first class condition in the Greek, it means if you are risen and you have, this is true for you, you have risen, then this is what you should do, you should “seek those things which are above,” and live in compatibility with your legal position.
Basically the Christian life is as though you took a time machine or some other machine and you were transported to heaven at the point of your salvation and then you came back to earth to live, would that change your life. If you could get a glimpse of what heaven is like and then come back here, where would your occupation be? Well, it’d be back in heaven because of the tremendous things you’ve seen there. And that’s basically the Christian life and that’s what Paul’s talking about in verse 1, if you really are risen with Christ, then “seek those things which are above,” logical, that’s logical. It doesn’t mean you deny yourself all things and you walk around like a monk or something and you hibernate and you walk around like a lot of straight-laced Christians. It doesn’t mean that at all but it does mean that the center of your life is now up here, it’s not down in the old creation, it’s not things, it’s not circumstances and it’s not people. It’s the Lord Jesus Christ. “If you be risen with Christ, then you seek those things which are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God.”
Verse 2 is how to apply it, “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. [3] For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” We said Jesus Christ gives you many things; He gives you perfect obedience credited to your account, that’s called imputed righteousness. He gives you death. You say I don’t want that; yes you do, you want a [can’t understand word] of death that separates you from this world and that’s what God gives you, Romans 6, so you are dead and you have been crucified with Him, and God gives you something else, He gives you resurrection, and that’s what this verse means. Positionally you have been raised with Christ so that although His physical body is sitting at the Father’s right hand, legally you’re there with Him. Legally you are there with Him if you are a Christian. Therefore He gives you eternal life and this eternal life flows down here and you experience this as you are filled with the Spirit, and that’s what makes life worth living. You never have to say this with Solomon because your decisions down here do make a difference, and there is a difference in how you die, and the difference is made by the fact that God [can’t understand word] His righteousness. God is sovereign, God is righteousness, God is justice, God is love, God is omniscient, God is omnipotent, God is omnipresent and God is immutable. These are the attributes of God; the attribute of righteousness and justice, God has absolute standards which He is never going to violate and people who violate His standard by rejecting Jesus Christ are going to go to hell.
Some of you have thought the fire and brimstone was utterly useless. I admit that this has been wrongly used by fundamentalists. It has been used as a club to beat people over the head for a decision for Jesus Christ and it’s a wrong club because if you have received Christ as a fire escape from hell you’ve received Him for the wrong reason. But that hell fire and brimstone has a reason because if it isn’t there then it doesn’t really matter what you do. If men like Adolph Hitler and great examples of men of iniquity of history are not really punished in phase three, then why should you bother [can’t understand words]. Why should you bother? It doesn’t make any difference, it absolutely makes no difference. You see, judgment in the Christian system, in Biblical Christianity the judgment is absolutely necessary to give your life meaning and purpose. Without the judgment every time you’ve chosen and decided for God it is a wasted decision because there’s no reward, it doesn’t do anything, there’s no change in your life. But the fact that we know our God is absolutely righteous and just and although right now in this life, if we go on in this physical life and we die, in this life the scales aren’t even, we have the assurance and God’s Word that in eternity things will be evened up. That’s where the scales are evened. So even though the scales are not evened up and the accounts are unbalanced now, you know from the Word of God that they will be balanced. And that’s all you have to know. You don’t have to live down to the time of the judgment to see the scales balanced, all you have to know is by faith in the Word of God that you know that although it might not come in our generation I know it’s going to come. That’s all I need to know as a Christian.
All I need to know is that at some point in the future the scales are balanced and now my life has meaning, and now the right decisions are blessings and the wrong decisions are cursing. But if this isn’t true and you’re a non-Christian, or a Christian that doesn’t think this way Biblically, you basically have nothing to live for. Oh yes, you can keep busy for 16 hours a day, but basically you don’t have anything, and you’re basically where Solomon is; it doesn’t make any difference. And if you’ll be honest with yourself you have to admit that life lived from the non-Christian point of view doesn’t make sense. It absolutely doesn’t make sense. If I were a non-Christian the only logical thing I could do after thinking through what Solomon’s gone through is to commit suicide. That’s basically the only logical position a non-Christian can have. I don’t know anything, I don’t have any standards, I have no assurance that the right is going to be vindicated, the wrong is going to be judged, why should I bother; there’s no base for it any more, everything is gone.
With our heads bowed.