Ecclesiastes Lesson 7

The First and Greatest Philosopher – 2:18-26

We are finishing Solomon’s first great experiment, or the first essay or the first report which is all of chapter 2. We have seen in this section of Scripture a very important section of Scripture, something that is important for us as believers to understand, and that is that operating as a non-Christian or operating out fellowship we are dedicating our lives to perpetual misery. There is no fulfillment, absolutely no fulfillment apart from Jesus Christ and a personal relationship with Him. Solomon, in 2:1-11 tried the pleasure route; he tried to be happy with wealth, he tried to be happy with wine, women and song. He tried to be happy with about every conceivable object that man has ever thought of. Not only that, but Solomon had unlimited operating assets so that he could take each one of these objects and run it for all it’s worth. You can’t; you do not have unlimited operating assets but Solomon did, which means that Solomon could carry each one of these experiments far further than we could.

Therefore it’s important that we understand Solomon’s conclusion as we study it in verses 10-11. This ought to be a key verse that pops into your mind when you have materialism lust, when you have this idea that you can’t be happy unless you have some object. Oh if I had ________ blank, you fill in the blank; blank can be some object, some person, some member of the opposite sex or something else. You fill this in because you think that if you had that person or that piece of wealth or something then you would be happy. And yet in verses 10-11 Solomon reports to you what you will find for yourself if you try it enough. He said, “And whatsoever my eyes desired, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy; because my heart was rejoicing in all of my labor,” and he was saying that it constantly stimulated him to flit from one object to the next, to go from his building program to his pools, to go from his pools to his private courts that he had trained, that he had not only trained but he had written the music for. Solomon wrote at least 1005 songs and he not only wrote these songs but he trained the choir that personally that sang them for him. So this man cut his own records and had them played on his own stereo.

He had all sorts of things and yet he said I had to move from one object to the next, constantly keeping my heart rejoicing, but then in verse 10, the last part, he discovers something very rarely discovered by people today, “and this was my portion of all my labor.” In other words, that’s all he got. On Monday morning it was a hangover. And after the party was over there wasn’t any more rejoicing, it didn’t last in other words. Solomon says there was no lasting happiness whatever in this system, in this concoction of trying to generate human happiness by looking at things. Solomon tried to fulfill his soul by looking at things. And you can’t do that because if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ your soul has volition, personal affections, mentality, bodily affections and you have a human spirit and it’s from this human spirit where the indwelling Holy Spirit is that you gain real happiness.

If you are filled with the Holy Spirit He comes over here and fills your soul with eternal life; eternal life when it activates and operates on your volition strengthens it. When it works in the area of emotions it brings them under control. When eternal life begins to function in your mind you find yourself living in the Word, where from day to day the most important thing is to fill your mind with the categories of God’s Word and Bible doctrine. And when these categories and these Bible doctrines begin to infiltrate your mentality you begin to be occupied with Jesus Christ and you can really love the Lord. Loving the Lord is impossible unless you know something about Him. Otherwise what you’re talking about is a sheer emotional fabrication out of your own imagination. Loving the Lord means you have been in contact with facts about Him; you cannot love a non-existent unknown entity; you have to know certain facts about Him and these facts can only be known through Bible doctrine.

Then in verse 11 Solomon goes on and concludes, “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 [vexation of spirit], and there was no profit under the sun,” the word “profit” referring to that which you can take home, that which lasts; nothing, absolutely nothing. A lot of you could profit from this because a lot of you still think this way, you still think that if you could get something, if you could get some person, then you would have the happiness for which you seek. You will never have the happiness for which you seek and we sincerely pray that you will never find the happiness for which you seek this way because if you ever do you will be deluding yourself. True happiness can only be found by a living moment by moment relationship with Jesus Christ which is only possible as you submit to His Word.

Last time we saw that Solomon tried, in verses 12-17, to discover wisdom itself. Seeing the first 11 verses he set up an experiment, an experiment grounded on the concept can I or can I not get true happiness, ultimate satisfaction, out of things, people and events. Answer: NO! Therefore, in verses 12-17 he goes to examine his wisdom which was used in the previous set of verses to set up the experiment. So in verses 12-17 he examines this wisdom and says all right, this wisdom didn’t find any true happiness in the experiment I set up here so therefore what I am going to do is drop the experiment and move over and examine my wisdom itself and see if perhaps that’s where I can have my true happiness and ultimate fulfillment. And he finds no, because he finds in verses 13-14 as he quotes a proverb, he says I know this proverb, the proverb goes (quote), “wisdom excels folly, as far as light excels darkness.”

Another proverb, verse 14, “The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness,” end of proverb. But then he adds in verse 14, and the rest of it is not a proverb, the rest of it is his commentary on the proverb and he says look, I know the “wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness, but I myself have perceived from my experience that one event happens to them both.” And he says in effect it really doesn’t make any difference whether you’re wise or whether you’re stupid. And remember the word “wisdom” here doesn’t mean education; the word “wisdom” in the Old Testament has the connotation of skill in living; it means that you have mastered the rules of life. And Solomon says you know, as I look out on the world it doesn’t make any difference. When there’s an automobile accident the evil person and the good person are both killed, it doesn’t make any difference. When the bombs are dropped and the bullets are fired the good people as well as the bad people get hit, so why bother; why really bother. And this is why he says that even wisdom doesn’t satisfy.

We showed last time the problem however was his concept of wisdom, for in the Bible there are two categories of wisdom; divine viewpoint wisdom and human viewpoint wisdom. And divine viewpoint wisdom and the Word of God always refers to that wisdom that means spiritual skill, skill in the things that pertain to my spiritual life, skill, for example, in understanding the Word of God; skill in understanding how to apply the Word in my life, the ability to walk in the situations of life, analyze them in the light of the Word, discern God’s will for me and move. Now that’s spiritual skill. Spiritual skill we found from the book of James was characterized by the fruit of the Spirit; it was characterized by spiritual insight, it is always connected and linked in the Bible with wisdom plus understanding; these two are a word pair in the Hebrew. They always occur together except in this book. And the fact that these two words do not occur as a couplet in the book of Ecclesiastes proves that the kind of wisdom Solomon is talking about, that he felt wisdom was is category two wisdom, human viewpoint wisdom. And human viewpoint wisdom, we also found in James 3, is characterized by things of the flesh, strife, mere human insight, etc.

So what we have done here is show that Solomon basically repudiated the Word of God in verses 13-14; this is fundamental to what we’re moving into today, that in verses 13-14 he has actively repudiated the teachings of God’s Word, for he says I know the promises but I have discovered in my life they don’t work. Now that’s what he’s saying, and the reason why he’s discovered is because, number one he has misinterpreted the Word of God and the reason why he has misinterpreted is number two and that is that he has set his own mind up as the ultimate judge of truth. This is a process known in history as rationalism and when you adopt rationalism as a Christian you are in trouble and in serious trouble because it means that you no longer are submitting intellectually to the Word of God, but you are now submitting to the trends of your own mind, and therefore you have set your own mind up as the absolute criteria of whether something is right or wrong, whether you think it’s right or wrong, not whether the Word of God says it is right or wrong, and there is no submission and that point you re on negative volition and you are out of fellowship and you are going to have self-induced misery and you are going to have tremendous intellectual problems. You cannot, as a believer, be a rationalist. But Solomon was and verse 14 is an expression of his rationalism.

And his conclusion in verse 17 was that “I hated life.” Life had lost its color, life had that blah attitude as far as he was concerned, “because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me; for all is vanity and preoccupation with wind [vexation of spirit],” the famous refrain of this book.

Now we come to verses 18-23 and in this section of Scripture we’re going to find something interesting because here at last he comes to his great conclusion. Verses 18-23 deal with his final thinking. Verses 12-17 was one section investigating wisdom, and now in verses 18-23 Solomon’s contemplating the iniquity of leaving his wealth to his undeserving successor. And he’s thinking well now, I haven’t got any pleasure out of this life, and I know my wisdom hasn’t gotten me any pleasure out of this life, and I notice that I’m going to die just like anyone else and it doesn’t make any difference but perhaps I can give it to my children. Perhaps I haven’t done well in this life and so therefore at least I’m going to give my children something that I never had. And some of you entertain this notion; please be prepared for a letdown this morning because Solomon is also going to examine this notion. In fact, if you’re not pleased with your life that somehow you can gain pleasure by passing to your children what you never enjoyed and Solomon says un-huh, that doesn’t work either because in verse 18 he starts in.

“Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun,” and the word “labor” here means his wealth, these are the things that he made, this isn’t the work that was used in making things, this refers to the things themselves, “I hated the products of my labor, in which I had been a toiler,” literally, “under the sun.” Remember this phrase “under the sun” occurs again and again. In fact, it occurs 8 times; it’s in 1:3; 1:9; in this chapter it’s in 2:11, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 22. It’s a refrain over and over and over again, he says “I have toiled under the sun” and that is a key word that you should pick up because this defines where he is living. “Under the sun” refers to the fact that he is separated from God, he has no communication with the Lord Jesus Christ, he has no communication with God the Father. He has absolutely severed his relationship as far as his experience is concerned.

As believers when we receive the Lord Jesus are entered into union with Christ that top circle refers to our legal relationship. That legal relationship never changes; can’t change, impossible, it’s fixed. But in the old creation, in this old creation is the sphere of your experience with God and now the issue in your Christian life is not whether you hang on to your salvation for that has already been decided by the doctrine of justification. That’s no longer an issue. The issue is for you whether you are in that circle or out of the circle for at any given time in your Christian life you are either in fellowship with Jesus Christ or you are out of fellowship. And the first thing you should understand as a Christian is how can you apply first-aid to yourself when you are out of fellowship. How do you get back in fellowship? The Bible tells you, 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” To walk in this circle you must be cleansed from all your guilt, you must be cleansed from all your unrighteousness and the only way you can do this is to appropriate what God has promised you in 1 John 1:9. This means that as a believer you can walk in fellowship, not by the fact that you’re so great, but by the fact that at a point in time you actively trust in God’s gracious supply and because you actively trust in God’s gracious supply He comes to your aid and puts you into union with Himself experientially. This is called the filling of the Spirit, walking by the Spirit, walking in the Light, abiding in Him, whatever the phrase of the Biblical author that you’re reading.

Solomon is out of fellowship, he’s still a believer, he is still saved, he still has his legal standing before God, he still, as far as the new creation is concerned, is going to be there, but in experience at this point in his life he’s gotten out of fellowship, badly out of fellowship and he’s wandering around in the carnal doldrums trying to find something that will give him satisfaction. He’s like a lot of Christians, when only satisfaction can be found inside the bottom circle and you can wander around like Solomon did year after year, from person to person, experience to experience, and you are so stubborn that you think you’re going to eek out happiness outside of fellowship with God and God has just so designed the Christian life that you’re never going to find happiness apart from fellowship with Him. You can’t help it, here’s where you come smashing head-on into the sovereignty of God. He has so designed your life that He is going to make sure you’re never going to be happy, ultimately, apart from fellowship with Him. And that’s just the way it is, and you can be stubborn and you can say I don’t want to be in fellowship, this is fine, He’s not forcing you, God’s a gentleman, but you’re not going to get happiness out there. This is what Solomon is reporting to you.

So in verse 18 he says I live “under the sun,” under the sun means that he lives outside of fellowship, he just lives from a naturalistic point of view, nothing spiritual about his life at all; spiritually if he had been in fellowship he could have said I live above the sun because I live in fellowship with the God who is far above the sun, who is in heaven. But he doesn’t say that because he is not in fellowship with God at this point. He is merely living a natural life “under the sun.

And then he says why; verses 18-19 follow the same style that we found again and again in this book, very crucial to understand it. Verses 20-23 describe the details but verses 18-19 generalize. This is a Hebrew style, it’s like a newspaper reporter writing a story, he summarizes everything he wants to say in the first couple of sentences to give you the news and he tries to stimulate you to read the rest of the news story, by injecting something or other and then he develops the story underneath the first paragraph. This is how the Hebrews wrote their Scripture, they give you everything in a nutshell to start with, then they develop the details. If some liberal critics would see this they wouldn’t have any problem between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2; Genesis 1 is a summary statement, Genesis 2 develops one phase of the sixth day of creation.

So here again we have this in verses 18-19, a quick summary of what he’s found. “Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me,” or who would come after me, [19] “And who knows whether he’s going to be a wise man or a fool?” This is very interesting and it has a lot of implications for us. First of all he recognizes a fact that he can accumulate wealth and accumulate wealth, more wealth and more wealth, and he didn’t have the IRS to fight in his day because he was the IRS; he was the one that was taking it from everybody else so he didn’t have any problem. So he had no problem accumulating wealth; his problem was what do with it after I’ve accumulated it. You say I know what I could do with it, I could go out and buy myself a couple cars, take a trip to Europe, and I could find lots of things to do. But if you had as much wealth as Solomon you could try to think of things to occupy 24 hours a day and you still couldn’t spend it all. Actually Solomon had so much money there was no way to spend it. I understand that nobody in this congregation is faced with that problem at the moment, but nevertheless, Solomon had it.

He had so much money it was impossible for him to spend it, absolutely impossible. So therefore he said now what am I going to do with this thing? And he says obviously I’m going leave it to my children. So he says now let’s see, here I’ve slaved away and can’t you hear this, I slaved away and tried to give everything to my children, I never enjoyed these things but I’m going to give it to my children, going to make sure they’re happy, and I’m going to give them all this wealth, etc. And then obviously he is not an idealist, he is not like some of the child-worshiping parents and he says now listen, when I look at the facts in the case and I think clearly about this thing and get rid of all the emotional attitudes I have toward my children, I do have to admit in verse 19 that I don’t know whether this kid is going to turn out to be an idiot or a genius. That’s the clear facts of the case. You can do everything for your children, you don’t know whether they’re going to turn out to be a criminal or an idiot, you can’t tell. You can try to bring them up as unto the Lord, etc. but don’t put your eggs in their baskets; you put your eggs in your own basket and that’s what Solomon is teaching; you tend to your own wealth in your generation.

Every time the church of Jesus Christ has gotten in trouble it’s been a violation of verse 19. We have had seminary after seminary, church school after church school, institution after institution, and church building after church building go down the drain to liberalism because Christians in one generation said what I’m going to do is accumulate more wealth and give it to the next generation. There’s only one very bad problem, you have lost control of your wealth when you’ve given it to the next generation. And that is why you will find institutions that are run according to God’s Word who refused endowments, will refuse money grants to the next generation, they operate on a day by day basis. Organizations like Campus Crusade who have operating budgets in the millions of dollars a year, they absolutely refuse to be endowed. Do you know why? Because as a judge in Massachusetts said two centuries ago, the dead hand doesn’t rule. And that’s what Solomon’s point is here. You can give your wealth to another generation but you’ve just thrown it out and you’d better use your wealth while you have control of it and never mind investing it in the next generation. You invest it to yourself and use it while you have control over it. Solomon says this in verse 19.

He is not going to do this, incidentally, he’s going to turn it over to his son and to see his son, turn to 1 Kings 12:6; this tells us who his son was and he turned out to be a fool. We have seen this in America; we have seen the generation of parents who came up through the depression, who know what it is to not have food to put on the table, and we have seen this generation of parents struggle and struggle to provide materially for their children and their children are kicking them in the face today. It’s a graphic illustration in our own country of the same principle you find here and yet parents go on being stupid thinking oh no, it won’t happen to my kids. Yes it will, so pay attention to what happened to Solomon.

Verse 3, “And King Rehoboam,” this is his son, and he’s in the middle of a crisis, he’s just sat on the throne and the people in the northern part of the kingdom, northern Israel don’t like him. They don’t like his father because his father got the wealth by [can’t understand word] labor in which he would do what the federal government is doing to day, get into every business from A to Z and compete with the little business man, drive him out of business, so therefore in the end the only person who really controlled anything is the federal government, and that’s exactly what Solomon did and that’s exactly how he ruined his country. He got involved in every kind of business going, he violated the commands given in Deuteronomy 16 and 20 to limit his wealth as a king; he didn’t pay any attention to it so now the payday has come; he’s died and his son has sat on the throne, although his son is 41 years old at the time of verse 6, his son actually has held together with the same teenage gang that he grew up with and we’ll see what happens in verse 6.

“And King Rehoboam consulted with the elders,” these are the men of the previous generation, of his father. In other words, what shall I do, these people want reduced taxes, “who had stood before Solomon, his father, while he yet lived, and said ‘How do you advise that I may answer this people?’ [7] And they spoke unto him saying, ‘If thou will be a servant unto this people this day, and will serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever.’ [8] But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up with him, which stood before him. [9] And he said unto them, ‘What counsel give ye that we may answer this people, who have spoken to me, saying, ‘Make the yoke which thy father did put upon us lighter?’ [10] The young men who were grown up with him spoke unto him, saying, ‘Thus shall thou answer unto this people who spoke unto thee, saying, ‘Thy father made our yoke heavy but make it thou lighter unto us; thus shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins. [11] And, now, whereas my father did burden you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father has chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with a whip with sharp points,” literally.

So he says if you thought my father was tough, wait till you see me; that was Rehoboam and so he listened to his teenage crowd that had grown up with him and stayed with him, all the boys, and they just blew the kingdom because in 931 the northern kingdom revolted under Jeroboam and the kingdoms were fragmented forever; they will not be returned, the southern and the northern kingdom until Jesus Christ personally returns. And he just blew the kingdom right out of the tub at this point, simply by his idiotic policies, because of the fact that he was 41 years old. Now think how old he was, he wasn’t a little kid when he took over the throne, he had 41 years of training with his father. And do you know what the trouble was? His old man was out of fellowship 95% of the time; that’s the trouble. And therefore during these 41 years Rehoboam saw a great man, his father was a genius, one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived, but he saw his father miserable and he says huh, this guy struggles for his money, this guy struggles for his wisdom, and I know my father because I’ve lived with him, my father is never happy; he’s one of the most suffering miserable people I’ve ever run across and I’ll be darned if I’m going to go his way. And that was Rehoboam’s attitude; my father represents one of the most miserable men I have ever run into in my life and I am not going to live my life like my father, therefore what he did I’m going to do exactly the opposite. So the way Solomon counseled his son, in fact wrote most of the book of Proverbs to teach his son what his do, his son said the heck with it, chuck it and he went further than his father went. If you thought Solomon was out of fellowship you should see what his son, Rehoboam did; this man never got straightened out the rest of his life. And he was 41 years old when he took over the throne and yet even at 41 Solomon really didn’t know his son.

So now if we turn back to Ecclesiastes you can get some background of the history behind Solomon’s problem here. Solomon looks at his son, he looks at his wealth and he says I’ve done this, I’ve struggled to do this and now I’m going to turn it over to my son who’s going to be an idiot; big deal, I’ve really accomplished something haven’t I? And of course this is what many parents do, turn everything over to their children without Scriptural training, etc. The most you can do for your children is to expose them to the Word of God and a living Christian testimony and you can’t do more than that. That’s the most you can do and you needn’t feel guilty because somebody’s kid turns out to be a JD some place after you’ve done everything you can. You expose them to the Word, you give them an example of how to apply the Word and if that doesn’t do it, that’s their problem; they’re on their own and you have no need before the Lord to finance the rest of their life for them. Let them earn their own way and it will be one of the greatest lessons they will ever have. Solomon did not do this with Rehoboam and we see the tragic results that happened in history.

Verse 20 is the result and here we have Solomon do a most significant thing. It’s at this point in the book of Ecclesiastes that we are introduced to the concept of philosophy. And it’s at this point in the book of Ecclesiastes where we have developed for us the background for thirty centuries of human thinking, for it in this work that Solomon first intimates what philosophy has discovered in the last 200 years, that man, basically, starting from the non-Christian point of view can’t know anything, and basically he can never receive full satisfaction and therefore all things are in despair. This is the modern existential movement anticipated thirty centuries ago by Solomon in verse 20.

“Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labor which I took under the sun.” and the word “despair” is a Hebrew word which means to make a decision to give up hoping for something. Turn to 1 Samuel 27:1 and we’ll see an illustration of the verb form of this despair. It means to make a decision which sentences all hope to the drain. It means at this point you’ve decided in your mind there is no hope here, bang, and that’s your decision. In 1 Samuel 27:1 we find this verb used and I refer you here for a picturesque historical illustration of how this thing works. David is being chased by Saul at this point, Saul has his police all over Israel looking for David; he knows that David has been ordained by God to replace him on the throne, he doesn’t like it, and therefore he’s got his underground trying to find where David is. And David’s running from one cave to the other and it’s during the sojourn of David with his gorilla band that he writes many of the Psalms that we know. Psalm 142, for example, was written while he was inside one of these caves.

“And David said in his heart, I shall not perish one day by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better for me that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines, and Saul shall despair of me,” now what does he mean, “to seek me any more in any border of Israel. So shall I escape out of his hand?” That’s what despair means. Saul is going to get the word back through his spy system, listen, David just fled the border, he crossed the border into Philistia, he’s gone. And Saul doesn’t want to mess with the Philistines because Saul was a chicken by this time in life and he didn’t want to fight the Philistines so he said okay, that’s it, we’ve had it. Therefore he says I’ve given up all hope for ever finding David. That’s what this verb “despair” means, to give up hope of ever finding something.

Coming back to Ecclesiastes we understand what Solomon has done at this point. After the knocks of the experiment and after verses 12-19 he now comes to a decision; he’s got to do something, he’s looked at every area for happiness in his life, he’s looked for wealth, he’s looked to people, he’s looked to things, he’s looked to every detail of life, he’s looked to his children and he said every possible exit is closed, there’s no exit out of this misery that I face. So therefore in verse 20 he says I caused my heart, I began a process in which I gave up all hope of ever finding answers. And this is what modern philosophy has done. To see this we have to go back and have a brief review of the history of thought from about the time of the Greeks in 586 BC on down to the present time and you will understand from this why it is that this book of Solomon is so fantastic.

In 586 BC was a time when [not sure of word, sounds like: Phay lees], one of the first Greek philosophers, predicted an eclipse. This is taken arbitrarily as the date for the beginning of western thought for in 586 BC it means that man now, through rationalism, to set up his own categories of thinking. And it was from this that western thought began to develop. The place was Miletus on the western edge of the Asia Minor Peninsula, actually right close to the city of Ephesus. There was a school of the Milesians and these Milesian Greek philosophers were the first great systematic rationalists of the times.

Incidentally, those of you who know your Bible prophecy, this should also be doubly important because what does 586 BC mean? 586 is exactly to the year the date when the times of the Gentiles began, for 586 is the end of the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ said the times of the Gentiles shall go on in history until I return again. So we have the kingdom, here’s Solomon, we had it split under Rehoboam, the northern kingdom went into captivity in 721 BC, the southern in 586 BC and with that we have the book of Daniel and other passages of Scripture that tell us that power was transferred to the Gentiles, for this is the meaning of Daniel’s four visions. In the four visions of Daniel you have first the Babylonian Empire, you have that succeeded by the Persian Empire, then you have the Greek Empire and then you have the Roman Empire, the four great giants of history and we are now still in the stage of the Roman Empire because the Roman Empire was only one of the four visions of Daniel that never was destroyed. The Roman Empire phased out gradually but did not go down sharply like these three other empires and that is why during the Tribulation, after the rapture of the church, the Roman Empire will once again revive and the United States of Europe and this is the subject of these great prophetic passages of God’s Word. We are still basically under the Roman phase of history.

But Jesus said that basically the Gentiles will dominate all areas, politically, and if this state hangs true, then evidently that prophecy included that the Gentile forms of thinking would prevail in the intellectual atmosphere too. Therefore what we have, the times of the Gentiles means that categories and thoughts of the Gentiles dominate politically and intellectually and we now live in the time when the whole environment, intellectually, politically and otherwise is dominated by Gentile type thinking. So we find in verses 2:13-14 Solomon exhibiting this characteristic. I want you to see this because it’s one of the great characteristics of western thinking: rationalism, I am my own authority. And in verses 13-14 you see Solomon manifesting exactly the same characteristic, for he quotes part of the Word of God and then he repudiates the Word because he says I set my mind and my experience over and above the Word of God. And with this Solomon subscribes to the rationalistic principle that philosophy later developed five centuries after he lived.

Then we come down in history and we find that not only did Solomon do this and anticipate it but we find Solomon has anticipated another principle of philosophy. We find that philosophy develops through the Greeks, on down through the Romans, actually not too many of the Romans were outstanding people, comes down to the Middle Ages. And after the Middle Ages something happens. We have two movements moving in opposite directions. We have the Reformation under Martin Luther and John Calvin and we have another movement called the Renaissance. And everybody learns in their history courses in school, oh, the Renaissance was so great, it was a time when all of the superstition in the Middle Ages was dumped, etc. a great time. Nonsense; the Renaissance was one of the worst things that ever happened to the human race. It would have been better to day in the Dark Ages than go into the Renaissance.

The Reformation was the great thing that ended the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the preaching of God’s Word was what liberated man. Don’t you buy this malarkey that’s pedaled in the classroom about the Renaissance. The Renaissance was just man basically going back, rejecting tradition and going back to the age old principle of rationalism. And the Renaissance has come down into our time to despair. Why? Because after four or five hundred years philosophers, one after the other, said look, I think I see reality this way, and then you read all about him. Those of you who have studied this have had this desperating, exasperating experience in philosophy. You study this man’s system, you may go back and study somebody back in the ancient times and you’ve got Aristotle, and Plato, and then you come down to the Middle Ages and you pick up some philosophy says this is the way is, maybe it’s Descartes, and you read all about Descartes and he said this and he said that, and then later on the people after Descartes said no, it’s not this way, this is the way it is. And finally they got tired of playing this little game of musical chairs and they went into a program of despair. And with this finally men like Kant, Hegel, etc. introduced the concept that basically we give up all hope of ever finding true knowledge. So today in this time it’s come down to us in the form of existentialism. This is what your liberal clergy believe, this is what communism has been borne of, etc. the idea of despair, that man can’t really know everything, many can’t really be fulfilled. So when we hit this we hit the second element. The first element was rationalism, that I am my own authority but after centuries and centuries and centuries of philosophy men have said no, not only is it frustrating but I just give up, we just give up. So from Kant on, from the 1800s on you have despair and you have these people saying we give up.

And that’s basically what Solomon has done here in verse 20, except Solomon saw this thirty centuries ahead of western civilization. That’s why this book is such a tremendously importantly book. Solomon, in thirty years of his life, compressed thirty centuries of man’s intellectual struggle into his own life. And he predicted in this book what would happen and what we see happening today.

So he goes on, in verses 21-23 he describes where this leads him. He says in verse 21, and these are the details now, he develops the details, “For there is a man” or here is a man, this is an example, “Here is a man whose labor is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity;” actually not “equity” but “craftsmanship.” Here’s an example where modern studies in the Old Testament have helped us. This word, we never understood what it means, the consonants are kshr, the Hebrew doesn’t have vowels in it, and however this was pronounced people misunderstood what it meant, they couldn’t figure out what this was, and even at the time the King James translation was made they guessed at it; they said “equity” and it’s wrong for in Ugaritic we find that this is the name of a god of craftsmanship; this word in the Ugaritic means the god of craftsmanship. So now we know what this word means. “There is a man whose labor is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in craftsmanship, [yet to a man that has not labored therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil],” he has still to put all the fine points together.

Verse 22, “For what has a man of all his labor, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he has labored under the sun?” He says I’ve done all these things but what have I got out of it? And if you’re honest, if you’re operating as a non-Christian or even as a Christian out of fellowship you’re going to say the same thing, you have worked and struggled at the office for I don’t know how many years and if you are really honest with yourself what have you gotten out of it besides to have headaches. That’s what Solomon says, he says I struggled at the office and I’ve done all these things and where has it gotten me? That’s what Solomon’s point is, it hasn’t gotten him anywhere, of absolutely no benefit; absolutely no benefit.

So verse 23 is what he says, “For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart takes not rest in the night. This is also vanity.” His heart can’t even rest at night, he’s so wrapped up in his business that he can’t even relax at night; he’s got to take sleeping pills just to get three hours of sleep at night; he can’t even unwind when he hits the sack, that’s the problem. He’s going in such high gear all day that he can’t even relax at night, so there’s no time when he can even enjoy himself. Not only is it not going to benefit him in the future, he can’t even enjoy what he has right now. That’s what Solomon is saying. Solomon was a realist, he wasn’t one of these guys that walks around says ha-ha, I’ve got the joy. He didn’t have any joy and he’s leveling with you, he’s saying this business doesn’t give me any joy, he says I’m one of the greatest kings that ever lived, I’m one of the most skillful men that ever lived and I’m miserable. I can’t even sleep at night. I can bring my choir into the bedroom and have them sing lullabies until 2:00 a.m. in the morning and I still can’t get to sleep.

Verse 24, here’s the beginning of his conclusion. So verses 24-26 he gives you his philosophy and here you come face to face with basically where philosophy in our day has moved. “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor.” Actually this verse reads: “There is no pleasure through all man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor.” He says this is all that’s left. Let’s draw a bar graph, the first bar of this graph goes up to the goal line, this hits the top and he says this is my aspirations, this is what I want, this is the fulfillment, the aching void in my heart that I want to fulfill. But I can’t fulfill it, I’ve tried every way under the sun to fulfill it and I can’t fulfill myself with things, people, business or anything else. So therefore what I’m going to do now is give up hope of ever, ever finding an answer.

Now do you see what he’s done? He’s actually committed spiritual suicide at this point. Because of his failure to find some answer in life he’s not, like some say, well the answer is out there, I haven’t found it yet; oh no, he’s gone way, way, way beyond that and he says I don’t even believe the answer is there any more, I’ve just given up. I don’t even believe the answer is there any more so I surrender, forget it. So what he’s going to settle for is whatever he can get at the moment, and if it’s eating, then let him eat, he’s going to order the most delicious hamburgers he can buy in Israel and he’s going to enjoy himself. And he’s going to go down and have some coke or whatever, and he’s going to enjoy himself. And he’s going to do everything he can and he’s just going to live from one moment to the next enjoying it as he can get it. “What I can get now” is going to be his slogan because he says I know I never can totally fulfill myself so let’s just live for now. You don’t have to be too perceptive to see how significant this is to our generation. This is exactly what’s going on in our generation. Solomon saw it thirty centuries ago which proves the brilliance of this man. It didn’t take him thirty centuries to figure out the answer, he saw it clearly in his generation what would happen if you started apart from God you’d wind up apart from God.

So this is why he says strange thing at the end of verse 24, you wonder why does he say this: “This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.” Now why does he say something like that? It goes back to 1:13, do you remember when we went through 1:13 we warned you of something about this book, that when Solomon uses the word for “God” he misuses it. In other words, what he’s saying is that if he walked out of the room and a light dropped on his head he’d say that’s from God; now it could be Satan too you see. But what he has the concept that the design of what’s there, just the design of myself, the way I’m made, everything, there’s no direction, there’s no individual responsibility, there’s suffering all around me, that’s from God.

What is the great doctrine that he’s denying here? Do you know what the great doctrine is? The fall of man. You know these crybabies that walk around in our generation, oh I can’t understand how a God of love would permit such suffering and it’s horrible, all this slaughter that goes on in war, etc. how could a God of love ever allow this? The Bible tells you, a very simple answer. God never designed it this way in the first place. Genesis 1:31 says when creation left the hands of God, God said this is very good, there was no death, there was no sorrow, there was no heartache, there was no suffering. Therefore what does that tell you? It tells you all the suffering and sorrow that man tries to pawn off on God is due to his own fall. Man fell and that is why you have suffering in the world. And that is basically the only answer man’s intellect has ever received over history, the problem and the solution to the problem of evil. It has come about by man’s volition. True, God sat by and let it happen, because God respects you as an individual person; God respects you in the Christian life.

This is why in this church we don’t have ram, cram and jam programs. Do you know why? Because God always respects your volition and you can get with it or you can flunk; it’s up to you and nobody is going to shove something down your throat around here and nobody is going to be knocking on your door for money or anything else because it’s up to your volition; that’s the way God operates and that’s the way the Christian church should operate. You respect a person’s volition and you don’t arm twist. You don’t embarrass, you don’t coerce, you don’t beat people over the head and basically this is the way God is operating here in the fall. He didn’t say Adam and Eve, don’t you do that and then pull their arm from the fruit. No-no. He sat by even though while God sat by, and don’t think He was irresponsible as He sat by and had the idea I’m not going to get involved, oh no, God got very involved because His Son died on the cross to solve the problem, so it wasn’t that God stood by and let it happen without getting involved. God got very involved because He knew the moment Adam and Eve fell it meant the death of His Son; that’s what it meant, so God was very involved but He was a gentleman and He let the thing go because He allows you to exercise your volition.

You see, one of the things that we learn in history is that man has to exercise his volition and take his knocks because you learn from your knocks and you learn by making mistakes. And that’s what God is saying in history, I’m going to let you people make mistakes, I’m going to let you fall flat on your face some times because that’s the only way you are ever going to learn something. And many of you can rise up and testify to the fact that that’s the only way you ever did learn something is because you were allowed to fall flat on your face. So that’s why God teaches us this way; of course there’s an easier way to learn and that is pay attention to His Word so you don’t have to fall flat on your face in the first place. But God always has His second means of teaching.

Now here’s the fall of man that Solomon denies and he’s saying look, the whole cotton-pickin’ machine complete with suffering, complete with all of these things, the death, the heartache, the sorrow, the frustration, all of this is from the hand of God. Do you see what he’s doing? He’s deterministic, he’s blaming everything on God. So this is not a testimony of his faith. Ecclesiastes 2:24 is not a testimony that Solomon believes anything; that’s just a testimony he’s all fouled up, that’s all he’s saying, he’s just blaming God here. “This is from the hand of God.” See what he’s done, go back to the bar graph, he says I’ve given up hitting the goal and I’m settling for this that’s less than the goal and that, this despair, I give up ever finding real abiding happiness in this life. He says that, that despair is from the hand of God. Now this is not a testimony of faith; don’t every time you read the word “God” in Scripture think that the guy is believing in God. Not necessarily and here’s a perfect example of it, a perfect example. Solomon is doing exactly the opposite.

Verse 25 is an explanation of his statement, “the hand of God.” “For who can eat, or who else can hasten,” now here the word “hasten” does not mean hasten. We’ve got a problem here, we have this word, and then we have this word that doesn’t really mean anything, it’s like a word for hasten and yet it doesn’t seem to fit here. And for years and years and years people wonder what does this word mean, it just doesn’t seem to fit in the context, it’s never used this way elsewhere in the Scripture, what happened. Then a man by the name of Gordis wrote a commentary in which he pointed out that this word vav sometimes can be changed, so that the vav shifts, you see what I’ve done, I’ve taken those last two Hebrew consonants and shifted them. And this sometimes happens with Hebrew vowels. Now it turns out when this happens this word is “abstain” and it makes a lot more sense. “For who can eat, or who can abstain,” that’s his point. He’s asking the question, “who can eat or who can stop from eating?” Now the last part of that is also a Hebrew [can’t understand word] there’s one expression, “more than I” and the other expression means “apart from him.”

Now “apart from him” turns out to be the best reading here. I think the ASV corrects this translation. Here’s why, and I’ll show you the little fine point here, here’s what the Hebrew means, “more than I.” That’s what it looks like, this is mmny, it’s read from the right to the left, that’s what the Hebrew means, “more than I.” “Apart from him” is mem, mem, nuwn, vav. Do you see the difference? There’s not much difference. And there are a lot of manuscripts that have this; in other words this shortened thing could very easily be lengthened like this; it’s a case of that or that. Some manuscripts testify to this and all the Greek manuscripts testify to this and it does make much more sense, so we change the translation again in verse 25, “For who can eat, or who can abstain, apart from Him?” and that fits the context beautifully.

It fits the context beautifully because he’s just said this thing is from the hand of God, he says the fact that I can at least eek out this enjoyment, I can go down here and accept this relative enjoyment, I can accept that and after all, if it’s possible for a man to be at least partially fulfilled by his eating and his drinking and making himself [can’t understand word] enjoy good, then that also is from the hand of God, isn’t it, because if it wasn’t you wouldn’t be allowed to do it. Now that’s kind of an idiotic way of reasoning but this is the way the man’s reasoning. He’s saying whatever I can do the fact that I can do it testifies I’ve got the freedom to do it, if I’ve got the freedom to do it it means God’s meant for me to do it.

Now you can see where things are getting a little dangerous here because it doesn’t take a genius to realize let’s pull this a little further, anything I’m free to do is God’s will. Aha, well, that introduces some interesting aspects of the Christian life. You can see how tremendously dangerous ground he’s on. Do you know why he’s on this ground? He’s given up the Word of God. Bible doctrine is no longer its criteria, it’s what he’s going to do is automatically from the hand of God. And that’s his philosophy. Now can you see this appearing all over our culture; now can you see this thing and why this book is so crucial. This book is all over the place. You can see it in the newspaper, you can see it in the way people act, everything. And it’s all anticipated for you back here in Solomon.

Verse 26, “For God gives to a man that is good in His sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner he gives travail,” and here’s something else you want to watch out for and you have to compare this, if you compare verse 26 to chapter 3, verses 12-13, “I know there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life; [13] And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor, is the gift of God.” See, its parallel, so however we interpret verse 26 we can’t interpret it so we get a contradiction. Verse 26 has to fit the overall argument of Solomon.

So what is he saying here? Again we come to a peculiar thing with this book. When Solomon uses the word “sinner,” the word “sinner” here in the Hebrew means one who misses the mark. It was used for a person who shot an arrow and missed the target. That’s the word from which we get miss the mark or sinned. Only one problem, Solomon doesn’t have any mark to hit. Do you see the point? If he’s given up Bible doctrine, if he’s given up the absolute standards of God where has the definition of sin gone? If you’ve given up a verbal concept of the Word of God, and this is not literally reporting God’s Words to you, then how do you define sin any more. You’ve got to define it by some other means. And the way, as we’ll see later on as we get into this book, Solomon defines sin as neglecting the opportunities that God has given you. That’s his definition of sin. In other words, God has given you the freedom to at least partially enjoy yourself; He’s given you an opportunity, at least you can eek out some happiness by your eating and your drinking and your enjoying yourself moment by moment and getting what you can at the time. He’s given you that opportunity and it’s the stupid sinner, the word “sinner” really is a synonym in this book for a fool.

Turn to chapter 7 verse 26 and you’ll see where he uses this again somewhat like this. Verse 26 is an indication that he is redefining the word “sinner.” This book is a little tricky to study. “And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands; whoso pleases God,” and that’s the same word used back here, “whoever is good before God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be taken by her.” Now if you compare 7:26 with the Proverbs you find that in the Proverbs instead of using the word “sinner” like Solomon does here, Proverbs uses the word “fool.” So basically what Solomon has done is make an equation between the word “sinner” and the word “fool.” And it means a person who is just an idiot, that’s all.

Now coming back to 2:26 it again makes a lot more sense to fit into the context, “For God gives to a man that is good in His sight,” in other words, takes advantage of his opportunities, “wisdom and knowledge, and joy; but to the person who is the idiot He gives travail,” and here’s an interesting thing, notice what the travail is for the idiot in verse 26, He gives this to the idiot, that the idiot may “gather and heap up, that he [the idiot] may give to him that is good before God.” So what he’s saying, this is the story of life. Here you have “I”, we’ll make “I” the idiot. Then we have the person who’s the genius, he’s the guy that takes advantage of his opportunities. So now what have we got? We’ve got this man getting all the things from God because he seizes opportunities to enjoy himself. This person over here is miserable, miserable, miserable, because he doesn’t want to go the way Solomon’s gone and so he fights the thing, and all he winds up doing is taking all his joy and giving it to this guy. That’s Solomon’s point.

Now this is despair and I hope you see as we come to the end of this chapter now, what this book is telling you as a Christian. Turn in conclusion to 1 Cor. 15:16 in the New Testament. I hope as you see this, I’m going to show you deliberately a passage in 1 Cor. that parallels the book of Ecclesiastes and I believe is a quote from this section. I want you to see that the men behind the Bible, the men who wrote the Bible were not pious make-believers. You’ve got to see this because I fear, basically fear that too many fundamentalists are pious people that would not come to grips with the obvious implications of denying one’s faith.

I want to show you what Paul says here. He’s discussing the problem of whether the dead rise. And in verse 16 he draws this conclusion, look Corinthians, “If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised, [17] and if Christ be not raised then your faith is in vain, and you are yet in your sins. [18] Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ shall perish, [19] If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are, of all men, most miserable.” Do you know why? Something inside of you should rise up and say “no, Paul, I don’t believe it.” You should feel tension when you read this; you ought to read this until you get hit with it, what Paul’s just told you. Do you realize what Paul just told you? He’s told you that if somebody could prove that the dead don’t rise, do you know what you should do? Go on believing in spite of the fact, like some Christians would, or give it up? Paul is saying if someone can historically prove that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead you have no right to continue believing. Do you see now why the physical resurrection is so important? And why fundamentalists for years and years have said that this is the keystone of faith and you can’t start shoving the resurrection down the drain, you can’t say whether it happened or not is irrelevant. Paul says listen, if the facts of the Bible are not true, if these facts aren’t true then just forget the whole thing.

Now how many of you have the guts to do that? Unless you do, you have the wrong kind of faith because faith in the Word of God is faith in facts; faith in history, it’s a historically grounded faith and if the base is rotten the whole structure is rotten. And don’t ever give the impression to the unbeliever, well I’d just kind of shrug along merrily and believe any way. One of our young people was asked a question: if the theory of evolution could be proven as a fact, would you still believe? And this person had a great deal of wisdom; he said no… no, if the theory of evolution were proved true I’d deny Jesus Christ. Do you know why? Because the whole thing hangs together, that’s why. Our faith is grounded on what really happened in history and we would not believe in Jesus Christ if these things are proven false, in spite of all the answered prayer, in spite of all the spiritual experiences that you could cite and everything else it would go right down the drain.

That’s what Paul’s saying here in 1 Cor. 15 and he says furthermore, in verse 19, “If we only have Christ in this life, we are of all men most miserable.” Do you know what he’s getting at here. Look, here’s the plan of salvation, we divide it into three phases; the first phase is the point you receive Christ. Phase two of the plan of salvation extends from that point in your life to the time that you die or until the rapture. Here’s the time of life where you’re living right now; here’s where you’re living. Now what Paul says, look carefully, verse 19, “if in this life,” that’s phase two, “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”

Now what does this mean? It means that if what happens beyond the grave doesn’t happen, if you die and suddenly you don’t get to be in the presence of the Lord, if there’s nothing that goes beyond as far as the Bible is concerned when you die you’re going to be face to face with the Lord and in the future history Jesus Christ is going to come and call the dead from the grave, if that’s not going to happen, he says you are most miserable people. And you say why is that? Wait a minute, a moral life has dividends. Oh yes it does, but what Paul’s point is you’re not enjoying yourself because if you’re a Christian living in the power of the Spirit you are abstaining from certain immediate pleasures of the moment, if you’re living as unto the Lord. You are abstaining daily from things that could give you immediate pleasure. You’re not going along with the crowd because you’re betting on the idea that this is going to be rewarded in the future. Now if there’s no reward in the future look what you’ve done; you’ve just blasted you life. Suppose you get down here and the whole Christian faith turns out to be zilch; suppose the whole thing just falls through, suddenly they discover the body of Christ somewhere. Suppose the whole thing goes right down the drain. Look, all the things that you’ve dedicated to the Lord, you’ve given money to the Lord you could have used for yourself, you’ve done these things in your life that you could have done for yourself, you could have pleasures but you put it off because of the fact that you were obeying the Lord and now it all turns [can’t understand word].

And Paul’s conclusion would be in verse 31 of this same chapter; this is the way he lived. If the Christian faith is nothing, then this is what he would say. In verse 31 he’s saying look, “I protest, brethren, your rejoicing.” He says I’ve gone all over this Asian Peninsula and I’ve been beaten up, people have thrown rocks at me and I’ve been thrown in jail, I have given up... Paul could have had a teaching position at any seminary going in the ancient world; he could have been wealthy, he could have had his wife, etc. as he says is in 1 Cor. 9, he says I haven’t had a wife and I would like one but I’m not going to have one because I know my ministry is so dangerous I don’t want to subject a woman to that kind of life. Therefore he forbear marriage; he wasn’t saying everybody do it but he was saying my ministry is such that I don’t want to expose a woman to that kind of thing. So therefore he forbear getting married. All right he says, now, after all these things, verse 32, “If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus,” and I’ve gone through all these tortures daily, what advantage has it made it if the dead rise not? Let’s eat and drink for tomorrow we die. That’s Paul’s conclusion.

Now do you see that your faith is grounded on historical fact and you’re betting that the whole thing hangs together, it’s going to be true. That’s what you’re betting when you become a Christian. And it’s not some jump into the unreal world where you say oh, I believe in Jesus and I’m going to believe in Jesus regardless of what happens. It’s true you believe in the Word of God over what happens because you’re personally convinced of it, but our faith is grounded on historical fact and if that fact is not true then if we’re honest people we should say with Paul, forget it, let’s just close up shop and say all we’re going to do is eat, drink and get it for now. That’s going to be our slogan, and that’s what Solomon has showed you in chapter 2.

If you are a non-Christian, if at the point of the cross you have not received Christ, you’re not in Jesus Christ, you’re wallowing around out here. This is all you’ve got. If you will think through logically, it may take you a couple of months to arrive at this conclusion, but Solomon guarantees if you will think through carefully you are going to come to this conclusion; as a non-Christian, if this Bible is not true, if this whole thing is a fraud, then the only thing I have left is to get what pleasure I can for the moment. This is the conclusion that a lot of young people are coming to today and rightfully so. These young people are honest because what they’re saying is I don’t believe it and therefore I’m going to live consistently with that denial of faith. If I don’t believe this then why should I listen to you moral standards; what good will it do me? It don’t do me any good, they just deprive me of the pleasures I can have now and your moral standards mean nothing because there’s no reward after the grave. Do you see why the moral breakdown in America is directly related to the rejection of Bible Christianity? And why liberal Christianity can never turn the tide against it? To put your eggs in some conservative political basket or put your eggs in some liberal Christian basket will not solve the problem we face in America today. The only solution we have as a country is to get back to the Word of God. That’s the only answer that will be reasonably accepted by the next generation and not listening to all the pious mess. Either this is true and we live in accordance with it or it’s not true and all we do is get it for the moment. Those are the only two conclusions you can come to. With our heads bowed.