Ecclesiastes 1 & 2 - Being wise and being humble#
Pontesbury Baptist Church - 19/02/2017
John Street Church - 29/10/2017
Main point#
Wisdom#
There are many things in life that can make us feel important if we have or achieve them. We must not be fooled into looking for importance and purpose in the wrong places. We are wise if instead of assuming that we will get satisfaction in the places we are looking for it, or the place we happen to be going, we consider where we are going.
Humility#
Humility comes from understanding our true position before God. God is separate from his creation, all powerful, all understanding, pure, eternal: having no beginning or end. We are none of these things. God gives us our importance and purpose, we cannot impress him and we are not called to. We should not be consumed by trying to impress others by the things we are or do, but instead seek to honour God and inspire others to do the same.
Introduction#
This passage talks both the value and the limitations of wisdom. But more importantly than that it speaks to us about the importance of humility. Why should I have chosen this book to preach from? The reason is that it’s a book that that is close to my heart and has been for a long time.
Background/about me#
I remember being affected from a young age by the account of Solomon at the beginning of his reign asking for wisdom and God being pleased and granting his request (1 Kings 3:9-14). I saw Solomon as a role model. I have treasured/coveted knowledge, cleverness and wisdom for as long as I can remember. It’s what I want to be known for.
I remember on holiday one year I got bored of the Bible study guides I used as a child and asking my Dad how to go about reading the Bible for myself a bit more. He recommended just starting at the beginning of Matthew and reading the book like any book I might read for enjoyment. I got sucked in and kept on going all the way through the Gospels and through Acts. My love of the Bible must have increased tenfold in that holiday.
Some time after I decided to read the whole Bible through from start to finish. I didn’t have a plan, I just started at Genesis 1:1 and kept on till I got to the end of Revelation. When reading through the whole Bible there were some surprises along the way for me and the book of Ecclesiastes was one of them.
Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon and it grabbed my attention because of this. It also grabbed my attention because it is so different to any other book. I could tell there was wisdom in the book but I couldn’t make much sense of it on my first reading.
I came back to the book to study it more in depth in my early twenties. From studying it I wanted to gain wisdom. I thought if only I can be wise enough
I will be sure to please God
I can be sure to have an answer for any question
I will persuade people to turn to faith in Christ
I can show them how hollow their ways of life are, and I might look impressive to other christians.
Some of the motivations I had coming to the book were good and I took insights from its pages that stick with me to today. I was not prepared for how humbling an experience I would find the study of this book.
Man’s insignificance#
Solomon begins by talking of lots of things that make a person’s life seem very small indeed. How we cannot change many things. How we cannot do anything new.
The futility of wisdom#
My attention was really grabbed by the end of chapter 1. I told you how much I value knowledge, wisdom, insight and cleverness. In the first chapter I came straight up against Solomon in his vast experience of life and his God given wisdom saying
“I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after the wind.
For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases in knowledge increases sorrow”
Ecc 1:17-18
Striving for greatness is “a striving after the wind”#
The wisdom of this passage took time to begin to sink in. I was studying this book in order to have things to tell others and frankly I wasn’t expecting to be taken to task by its message myself.
It was intensely humbling to me to realise that:
I wasn’t going to understand everything in this book
Sometimes understanding eludes even the wise and godly
I was seeking to prove myself worthy and important by becoming wise, and it is a futile endeavor
This last point is something I still need to remind myself of. I still want to think of myself and want people to recognise me for being clever, wise and knowledgeable and I can easily slip into the trap of looking for my value in those things.
This lesson of not valuing your own wisdom and knowledge too highly is repeated in even stronger terms at the end of chapter 2:15-17
Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! 17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.
I realised that the hollowness I thought this book would give me the wisdom to expose in others was in me, despite the fact that as a believer in Christ I should know better. I was reminded of the admonition that Jesus gives in the sermon on the mount:
“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
Matthew 7:3
Disillusionment is generally humbling but when caught in an illusion it is wise to shatter it. It was hard for me to realise that the goal I was setting out to get was a goal that would not give me the satisfaction I was longing for. Becoming wise for the sake of my own vanity, is vanity. I will admit to you that this is still my struggle. If not wisdom, then what? Before the pursuit of wisdom, Solomon goes through the pursuit of
Pleasure
Drunkenness and fooling around
Great works, gardens, parks, pools
Slaves, herds, flocks
Silver, gold
Singers
Concubines
Some of these things are good and some of them the Bible tells us are sinful but counts them all as vanity. There may be things in that list some of you would quite like.
Are all these pursuits mere vanity? Is it possible to find our purpose in life? Many people never look ahead to think about where they are going in life. Ecclesiastes is a strong challenge to people to stop and think about where we’re going? Are you heading for satisfaction or regret?
We live in a time when more and more people are secular in their thinking and do not believe in God. I think many of these people do not stop to think about their purpose in life. But in my curiosity to try to find out what purpose atheists may try to find in life I have spent some time reading the works of Fredrich Neitzsche. Neitzsche was a German philosopher.
Neitzsche had a low opinion of humanity in general. For instance in one of his books he says
“the earth has a skin, it has diseases, one of them is man”.
He did not believe in God and he did not believe that human beings had any inherent value. So what did he believe the purpose in life is? His big idea was that “overmen” (people greater than your average human being) are capable of “creating their own values” and their own morals.
Among some people this idea is very popular and online you will find no shortage of people who talk of Neitzsche as having a liberating philosophy. They see themselves as self determining “overmen” and people who do not understand as underlings. One of Neitzsche’s descriptions of his philosophy was that it is “life affirming”.
I suppose the question to me is how can I value one set of values I may create over another? What of the values I chose not to adopt, why are those things of less value? Neitzsche talks of masters and slaves, nobles and savages, but really, can one be said to be better than the other? And what if having decided what to pursue and pursued it all your life you attain it and then decide it wasn’t worth it after all?
When you look at Neitzsche’s life, I think you see a hollower, godless, far more tragic life than Solomon’s. Solomon had his regrets but he ultimately points us to trust in God. Neitzsche sometimes in his writings seems confident and defiant and you feel that he thinks of himself as one of these “overmen” but other times you read something and you think how sad and desperate he sounds, in one place he talks of the thought of suicide as a “powerful comfort”, in another he says
“never yet hath there been an overman… even the greatest found I - all too human”.
He also said
“when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you”
In these chapters of Ecclesiastes Solomon talks about futile endeavours and chasing the wind. Another passage that speaks strongly about the same issue is Isaiah 44:12-20
The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”
That final questions always gives me pause to consider. I doubt I am any less prone than this man to fashion my own delusions and hold on to them.
Mortality#
Solomon speaks of death frequently. He is calling our attention to an uncomfortable truth. Mortality is a recurrent theme throughout the book of Ecclesiastes. It seems that every thought has to be examined using mortality as a lens to see if it still feels meaningful once the examination is over.
Does mortality rob our pursuits and even our very life of its purpose?
Solomon even questions the use of leaving things to those who come after, “who have not toiled for them” and perhaps - consequently - will not value them.
Solomon keeps asking difficult questions. I suspect that most people are like me and don’t spend time regularly asking the kind of questions of myself and of my purpose in life that Solomon does. It’s more comfortable for me to not think about them. I found studying the book exhausting.
We can live our lives never giving our mortality any thought, Solomon challenges his readers to put our distractions aside, be wise and confront the uncomfortable truth that we are mortal. Unexpected encouragement and comfort I said earlier that I was not expecting to be provoked and challenged by the book in the way I was. Neither, after being chastened by it, was I expecting it to become an ongoing source of encouragement and comfort to me.
I was chastened to see that part of the thing that drew me to the book was an unhealthy desire to achieve greatness through wisdom and learning. I was encouraged that - even though this is not the aim of wisdom - that it is good after all to seek wisdom Ecc 2:13 “…There is more gain in wisdom than in foolishness…”
By far the greatest encouragement I had from the book was that it encouraged me to give up searching for my own ideas of how to achieve greatness and to instead seek to be humble. It deepened my understanding of just how complete my dependence is on God. How much I need him.
Conclusion#
Chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes ends with a call for us to acknowledge our position before God
“for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”
Ecc 2:25
A passage of scripture that always comes back to me in times of doubt is when Jesus has finished speaking to the crowds about how he is the bread of life, many in the crowd leave him. They cannot accept the things they are hearing. Jesus uses provocative language to communicate how people cannot save themselves but need to depend on him giving his body as the sacrifice for their sins. The people who leave offended would rather depend on their observance of the laws, their sacrifices and their heritage. These are the things these people thought made them great or worthy. After a while only the disciples and a small number of other followers are left and Jesus asks them
“Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and come to know, that you are the Holy one of God.”
Jn 6:66-69
Jesus in his love for Peter asks him this question to make Peter think about how bleak the world is without Jesus. Peter responds in just the way Jesus knows he will. There is nowhere else to go. We cannot make up our own way, follow it and expect satisfaction at the end. We cannot impress God with our efforts. We cannot ignore our maker and expect him to be impressed with what we’ve done. We owe him our very lives. Our achievements are of little significance.
To those who ignore or reject God’s offer of salvation there is warning of judgement. To those who repent and believe in Jesus for forgiveness there is the promise of eternal life with him and our purpose in life is found in obedience and worship of God. The most encouraging thing is that the way is open to all regardless of what we’ve done, what we’re like, who we are or where we’ve come from. God has achieved what we cannot, in so many ways.