Word of Salvation – Vol. 33 No. 25 – July 1988

The Search For Satisfaction

Sermon by Rev. J. Haverland on Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26

Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26

There are some questions that every human person asks at some stage or another.  There are a few key questions that occur to every thinking person on the face of the earth.  What is the point of life?  What am I doing here?  What is life all about?  What will give me meaning and purpose?  What do I have to do to find satisfaction?

Those questions are as old as history itself.  People have always been asking them.  The Preacher or The Teacher also asks those questions.  These verses that we will consider together today trace his search for answers to these questions.  To do this he puts us in the shoes of a man who really had experienced all that life had to offer.

There is some doubt as to who the author of this book was.  Many Protestant scholars since Luther have felt that Solomon was not the author of this book.  The author never comes out and calls himself Solomon.  He rather puts it under the authorship of "The Preacher".  The Preacher appears to be a philosopher or teacher.  He is however writing from the perspective of the king in Jerusalem.  He is writing from the perspective of Solomon.  Writing as Solomon might have written it.

So Ecclesiastes is written from the standpoint of a philosopher who imagines what Solomon tried out in life.  To save us from disappointment The Preacher tells us the result of his search right at the beginning.  Vs.14...(read it).  It is important to note that little phrase “under the sun”.  This is an examination of life in the world without God.  We are under the sun, in the world, in human history.  This is an earthly perspective and we need to keep that in mind as we follow this search.  So let's begin our search for satisfaction.

1.  The first thing we try out is intellectual wisdom.

Usually when the Bible talks about wisdom it has in mind the wisdom of God.  Wisdom that has the fear of the Lord as its starting point.  But that is not the wisdom in mind here.  This is man's reason.  Man's mind unaided by God's revelation.  The Preacher wants us to see how far we will get with our own brains.  He imagines himself as Solomon and he goes to it: I set my mind to know wisdom and madness and folly (vs.17).  So he studied human life, the philosophies of the age, the ideas of men.  He read books, talked to learned men, and at the end of the day he had a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.  You could compare this today to the university intellectuals: The people who read and study and learn; who make it their life's work to know as much about a particular area as possible.  Someone has defined a specialist as "someone who learns more and more about less and less until by and by he knows everything about nothing!"  So these people gain a profound knowledge of the words of Bernard Shaw.  They know all there is to know about plant mutations.  They are experts in the field of digital computing.  But at the end we need to ask: What good is it all to us?  What use is it eternally?  What benefit is there in pure knowledge?  And the answer is: nothing!  It is a striving after wind.  In fact it is worse than this.  Because the more you know the more you come to face the evil and sin in the world.  This strikes all of us as we read our daily newspapers or Time magazine or as we see some of the historical documentaries on TV.  We are confronted day by day with suffering and evil in the world.  Then the words of the preacher ring true: In much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.  Intellectual wisdom is a dead end.

2.  Let's try a second area: Let's follow the way of pleasure.

Again we step into Solomon’s shoes.  Who else had so much at his fingertips?  Surely he must have found satisfaction in all these things.  Look at what he had in vs.1-8 of chapter 2: Laughter, pleasure, wine.  The free exercise of all his creative powers: an architect and builder.  He was a landscaper and gardener.  He was an employer and owner of slaves.  He was a landowner and farmer.  He had silver and gold.  He could indulge in the beauty and delight of music.  He had all the women that he wanted in his harem.  It's not that he went into all these things in an excessive way.  He wasn't pleasure mad.  No he was searching these things to try to find satisfaction in them.  Take for instance the way he used wine in vs.3.  He didn't drink himself into a drunken stupor night after night.  There's little pleasure in that.  No he explored it like a connoisseur.  He sampled and tasted and enjoyed it.  Then at the end of it all he evaluated what he had found.  In vs.10 we read that in the doing of these things he found some satisfaction.

"My heart was pleased because of all my labour, and this was my reward".

The reward was in the doing of these things.  But when he came to the end of it all, when he looked back over it all, then he had to say again that he had nothing left.  It was a vanity, a vapour, a breath.  Here for a moment and then gone.  This is the lesson that our modern western world is still learning.  Never before have we had such a variety of pleasures, so many toys.  You can do any sort of sport or recreation you can imagine.  You can buy boats of all classes, cars of all makes and models, furniture of all shapes and sizes.  Shops are bursting with videos.  Computers can play thousands of games.  Every pleasure that the human mind can imagine is available to us.  But people are still dissatisfied.  They are still empty.  Still searching.  Still living hollow lives.  And so some go for more things.  They go into wilder parties.  They drink more booze.  They try more sex partners.  They use harder drugs.  But still they are unhappy.  Still they find no satisfaction.  We in the 20th century are discovering what The Preacher discovered, that pure pleasure is vanity.  Pleasure too is a dead end street.  This leads the preacher to a third consideration: I have tried wisdom.  I have tried pleasure.

3.  So he now considers the relation of wisdom and folly. (vs.12-17)

It was obvious to him that wisdom was far better than foolishness.  They are as far apart as light and darkness.  The fool walks around with his eyes shut and this makes him a fool (vs.14). All of us would rather be wise rather than fools.  But two things Occur to the preacher as he compares these two lifestyles.

a.  In the end it makes no difference.

So what, if you were wise?!  You still end up in a hole in the ground.  So what if you had three Ph.D's from the most prestigious universities in the world?!  In the end it makes no difference.  Death comes to everyone.  So there is hardly any point in being wise.  But someone might say: maybe it's better to be wise because other people will notice.

b.  This leads to a second consideration:

No one remembers anything after you have gone (vs.16).  You may have been wise.  You may have lived sensibly.  But after you have gone, who remembers?  This leads to the final part of the search for satisfaction.  (1) Intellectual wisdom is futile.  (2) Pleasure is futile.  (3) Wisdom compared to folly is futile.

4.  To work hard is futile. (vs.18-23)

The Preacher is still following the course of Solomon’s life.  Maybe he is thinking of the end of his life when the kingdom passed to Rehoboam.  Remember what happened?  All that Solomon had built up Rehoboam destroyed.  The kingdom was divided.  Things went into decline and were never the same again.  This makes the preacher very disillusioned.  What on earth is the point of working so hard if it is all left to someone else at the end?  And who knows what they will do with it?  We have this often in life.  You can build up a good business.  You work hard.  You pass it on to someone else, maybe even a member of the family.  A few years later the business is down the drain.  This leads The Preacher to the conclusion that it is utterly useless to work hard.  All is vanity: wisdom, pleasure, hard work.  Everything you do in life is futile and pointless.  There is no satisfaction to be found in anything.

Remember again that this is the perspective of man in the world.  Here is man under the sun.  On the earth.  You think about the lives of many you know who live apart from God and you will see that this is where they must end up.  Maybe some of you here this morning are pursuing these things.  Maybe you are searching for satisfaction in your studies at university, or in pleasure and partying, or in working hard at your job or in your home.  Remember that satisfaction is not found there.

So where is satisfaction to be found?  Let's listen for a moment as The Preacher gives a glimpse at the answer.  For in vs.24 the perspective changes.  For a moment the veil is lifted.  The Preacher gives us some hope.  He turns briefly to look at life from God's perspective.  In these three verses he makes three brief points:

a.  In vs.24 he tells us that things are good in themselves.
It is good to eat and drink and come home satisfied after a day’s work.  It is good to enjoy a good meal, to savour a cool drink on a hot day, to take pleasure in designing your house, in building your garage, in putting on your extension, in pursuing your woodturning or your knitting or your computer programming or whatever.  All these things are good!  We may enjoy them!  We should enjoy them!  Nothing is evil in itself Paul tells us.  When Christ came to die for our sins and to redeem for himself a people he also redeemed all of creation.  All creation groans waiting for the redemption of the children of God.  As all creation was affected by the fall, so all creation can be touched by the redemption of our Lord Jesus.  All things are good in themselves and able to be enjoyed in Christ.  Remember that as you go home this afternoon/evening.  As you enjoy a cup of coffee, as you fellowship with your family and friends, as you go out into the work God gives you this coming week.  These are good things.

b.  Vs.26 emphasises that all these things are gifts from God.
Three times in vs.26 we are reminded that it is God who gives.  It is important to see this because this makes all the difference.  If we simply use and enjoy these things in themselves then they will soon be empty.  If we use and enjoy them knowing that they are gifts of the Creator then they have meaning.  They are given to us as some of the blessings we share in Christ.  So we have someone to thank, we have someone to respond to.  One author has commented that one of the saddest things to see is a proud new father trying to say thank you for a new baby.  He doesn't know whom to thank.  So he thanks the doctor and the nurses and the lift operator and the receptionist!  But he doesn't think to thank God.  These things come from God.  We can thank Him.

a.  All things are good and are to be enjoyed.

b.  All things are gifts and are to be received with thanks.

c.  And most important: In all things we are to acknowledge God.

This is the most important and the broadest of these three.  In all things we are to acknowledge God.  Vs.25 puts it well as it asks that rhetorical question: "For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?"  Literally it reads: "who can eat and who can drink outside of Me?”  And the answer obviously is: no one!  That reminds us of Jesus words in a different context: Without Me you can do nothing.  Apart from Me you are nothing.  Life without the Lord Jesus Christ is futile.  Life with Him is rich and full and satisfying.  May you find it to be so in your life!

Amen