WWUTT 1674 Seeing Good in Your Labor (Ecclesiastes 2:12-26)

There are many people in the world who have done many great and wonderful things and we have enjoyed some of the work that they have done, but it's only the person who knows

God who finds any real meaning in it when we understand the text. This is when we understand the text, studying

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. We come back to our study of the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 2.

You can either open your Bible and join with me there or I will read it to you. This is out of the

Legacy Standard Bible. I'm going to start in verse 12 and read through verse 26.

The word of the Lord through the preacher writing in the book of Ecclesiastes. So I turn to see wisdom, madness, and simple -minded folly.

What will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done?

And I saw that there is an advantage in wisdom over simple -minded folly, as light has an advantage over darkness.

The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.

And yet I know that the fate of one becomes the fate of all of them. Then I said in my heart, as is the fate of the fool, so will be my fate also.

Why then have I been extremely wise? So I said in my heart, this too is vanity.

For there is no remembrance of the wise man along with the fool forever, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten.

And how the wise man dies with the fool. So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me, because everything is vanity and striving after wind.

Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me.

And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a man of simple -minded folly, yet he will have power over all the fruit of my labor for which

I have labored and for which I have acted wisely under the sun. This too is vanity.

Therefore I turned my heart to despair of all my labor for which

I had labored under the sun. When there is a man who has labored with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, then he gives his portion to one who has not labored with them.

This too is vanity and a great evil. For what does a man get in all his labor and in the striving of his heart with which he labors under the sun?

Because all his days his endeavor is painful and vexing, even at night his heart does not lie down.

This too is vanity. There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and have his soul see good in his labor.

This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat and who can have enjoyment outside of him?

For to a man who is good before him, he has given wisdom and knowledge and gladness, while to the sinner he has given the endeavor of gathering and collecting, so that he may give to one who is good before God.

This too is vanity and striving after wind. So as we've been reading here in Ecclesiastes chapter 2, the preacher has given himself to enjoy the finer things of life.

We often think of Ecclesiastes as being a pretty depressing book, and indeed it is, for we've read about how the preacher has pondered these things and he finds nothing in them.

They're just vanity. There's nothing good about it. I'm not gaining anything from this. So you might tend to think, well, if he would meditate on the more positive things, maybe he would get more out of life.

Well he does do that. In fact, what we looked at last week in chapter 2, verses 1 through 11, the preacher gave himself to enjoy pleasure and possessions.

He wanted to know what it was like to have wisdom and what it was like to be stupid.

So he enjoyed even a little bit of foolishness and still found that to be vanity also. He enjoyed all of the luxuries that he might enjoy as a great king, as somebody who had as much wealth as Solomon had.

And yet in all those things that man tries to fill up for himself, that he delights in, that he labors for and wants to attain.

Like when we're talking about achieving fame and fortune, Solomon had all of that, and yet he found no pleasure in any of that.

So that's what we read mostly in verses 1 through 11. He experienced even a little bit of wine, not unto drunkenness, but enough to make the heart merry.

He experienced women. He had silver and gold. He had wisdom unlike anyone has ever had, but it never made him happy.

He did not find meaning and purpose inherent in any of those things. He found that they were vanity and striving after wind.

And all of this is coming on the heels of the way that chapter 1 concluded,

I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and simple -minded folly. I came to know that this also is striving after wind, because in much wisdom, there is much vexation and whoever increases knowledge increases pain.

And so what we're reading here in chapter 2 is almost expounding upon that idea. You might think that happiness is gained in knowledge.

Well, who had more knowledge and who had more wisdom than Solomon had? And yet he did not find delight and happiness in that.

In fact, as he said, the more knowledge, the more grief. So in verse 12, as we pick up here, he says, so I turn to see wisdom, madness, and simple -minded folly.

So he experiences wisdom and he's experienced foolishness. He's experienced both sides.

As a man of wisdom, as a man who wants to know everything that a man can know this side of heaven, well, you can't just be pursuing wisdom.

You also have to know what it's like to be foolish a little bit. So he talked about that last week in the previous section, verses 1 through 11.

So just recalling that again, as we kind of wrap up those first 11 verses of chapter 2, so I turn to see wisdom, madness, and simple -minded folly.

What will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done?

Now that thought is going to come up a few times here in this section 12 to the end of the chapter where Solomon is labored for all of these things.

Somebody's going to come after him. What's he going to do? Is he going to continue to build on the success that Solomon has had?

And so Israel becomes all the better, or is he going to squander everything that Solomon possessed,

Solomon achieved, and then Israel will come into ruin? Well, then my labor for all of these great things will have been in vain.

It will have been for nothing. Of course, we see this word vanity come up multiple times. We've talked about this already in Ecclesiastes, but that word does not mean full of oneself.

That's that tends to be the way that we use it, right? You have a vanity with a mirror on it so that you can look at yourself in a mirror and and make yourself look pretty.

I think I'm just talking to the ladies here, not the men that we call that a vanity. Then there's the song.

You're so vain. You probably think this song is about you. So we think of vain as being a person who is a narcissist, someone who is full of themselves.

But that's not the way that the preacher uses that word in Ecclesiastes.

It simply means nothing. Like it doesn't achieve anything when he says this is vanity, it means that this is purposeless.

It doesn't accomplish anything. Why am I committing myself to something that accomplishes nothing?

And so even here where he talks about what will the man do who will come after the king, except what has already been done, if he squanders everything that Solomon succeeded in doing, well, everything that Solomon Solomon did will have been in vain.

It will have been for nothing. So verse 13, and I saw that there is an advantage in wisdom over simple minded folly as light has an advantage over darkness.

So the preacher here has invested in invested his mind and wisdom, and he's invested his mind in foolishness.

Well, which one comes out on top? What what what way is better to live? You've heard the proverb ignorance is bliss.

So is it better is it better to just be dumb all the time to act like a fool to go after foolishness and madness, or is it better to pursue wisdom?

And what Solomon concludes here is there is an advantage in wisdom over simple minded folly, just as light has an advantage over darkness.

The wise man's eyes are in his head. In other words, the wise man looks and his eyes are connected to his brain.

So what he actually looks at, what he sees in the world, he learns from what he sees.

But the fool walks in darkness. So how can he learn from what he sees if if he's walking in darkness?

That's the illustration there. The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that the fate of one becomes the fate of all of them.

The wise man is going to die, go back into the ground, become the dust from which he was formed, the foolish man, same thing's going to happen to him.

He is also going to die and just become dust. So whether you pursue wisdom or whether you live in foolishness, the same result for both.

Both die and both are forgotten, ultimately, because that's something else that Solomon shares here.

Then I said in my heart, as is the fate of the fool, so will my fate be also.

Why then have I been extremely wise? So I said in my heart, this, too, is vanity.

There is an advantage that wisdom has over foolishness, just like light has an advantage over darkness.

You can do more in the light than you can do in the darkness. You can see where you are going when you are in the light, but you can't do that when you are in the darkness.

So just as that's the case, we know working in the day is better than trying to work at night. So it's better to pursue wisdom than it is to pursue folly.

Yet the wise man and the fool meet the same end. They both die and they will be forgotten.

So this, too, is vanity. In other words, there is nothing inherently good.

There is nothing inherently salvific, you could say, or long lasting or eternal about pursuing wisdom.

There are plenty of people who are not Christians. They don't know the Lord Jesus Christ.

You would probably call wise. They're good thinkers. They learn from the world. They know how to possess knowledge and then execute it well.

Put that knowledge into use. We would call those individuals wise and they don't know

Christ, so they are not saved. They're unbelievers. And when they stand before God in judgment, it doesn't matter how wise they were.

They will perish and go to hell because they did not humble themselves before God and turned to Christ for the forgiveness of their sins by his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave.

So they can be the wisest man in the world. But if they don't have Christ, they have nothing. So wisdom in and of itself is not salvific.

We need more than just wisdom. We need the wisdom of God and the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world, as Paul talks about with the

Corinthians and first Corinthians chapters one and two. So wisdom in and of itself is not saving.

As Solomon or as the preacher here has stored up much wisdom, he's come to find that it doesn't save him.

It doesn't last forever. It's not even going to make his name last forever. Because what happens to the fool also happens to the wise man, so this is vanity, for there is no remembrance of the wise man along with the fool forever, verse 16, in as much as in the coming days all will be forgotten and how the wise man dies with the fool.

So I hated life for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me because everything is vanity and striving after wind.

Can you possess the wind? Can you grab it in your hands? No. So pursuing the wind is it will result in nothing.

You attain nothing from that. Same with pursuing wisdom over pursuing folly.

So then the next portion, the last portion of chapter two here is about trying to find worth and meaning in work and labor.

Now, just as in the section on wisdom, the preacher finds it's better to be wise than to be a fool, just as it's better to walk in the light than in the darkness.

So he is going to find some satisfaction in the work that he does. But it doesn't mean that work in and of itself is salvific.

Let's consider that as we go through this here, verses 18 to 26. Thus, I hated all the fruit of my labor, which

I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a man of simple minded folly?

Yet he will have power over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored and for which

I have acted wisely under the sun. This, too, is vanity. Now, the vanity here that he's talking about isn't necessarily he's not he's not really attributing that to the work that Solomon has done, for he's going to say later that it is good for a man to see good in his labor.

That's verse 24. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. So God will give worth and meaning to the work that we do if we do it unto the

Lord. The preacher is going to come to that conclusion here in this particular section. So what he's saying is vanity in verse 19 is the fact that a wise man would accomplish all of that, but then a fool takes it over.

So everything that the wise man did, does it amount to anything if the fool takes it and squanders it and doesn't love the work?

You know, doesn't doesn't he himself grow in wisdom because he's not the one that did the labor that the wise man did?

So therefore, it's vanity. Verse 20, therefore, I turn my heart to despair.

To despair of all of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, when there is a man who is labored with wisdom, knowledge and skill, then he gives his portion to one who has not labored with them.

This, too, is vanity and a great evil. I use this particular section in a what video that I did a few years ago, and it was about how how great celebrities, particularly musicians, will achieve so much with their art, fame and fortune that that is a crazy level of fame and fortune that you and I, God willing, will never achieve because mankind is not meant to have that kind of fame before other men and women in the earth.

So you have these pop stars that achieve this fame and they feel so empty when they climb that mountain and sit on the throne that they've created for themselves through all of their accomplishments.

They create this music or you might even talk about television or movie stars or artists of any kind.

So they have invested themselves in their craft. They've done this art. Other people enjoy it.

They their lives are enhanced because of the art that this famous person has done music or movies, entertainment, whatever it might happen to be.

Other people are benefiting from that, but the artist himself or herself just comes out feeling empty.

And you know this, you've seen many interviews with people who have attained all this fame and fortune, and they say they're still looking for happiness.

They're still not happy with these things. Well, there was a string of artists that had committed suicide and some other famous artists that were talking about killing themselves that they've pondered suicide.

And so I talked about that in this what video. And I borrowed scriptures from this section of Ecclesiastes chapter two, because there are those who have labored and they give their portion to one who has not labored.

And this, too, is vanity and a great evil they get to take from all the labor and work that this other person has done.

And, you know, then they've not really worked for it. You see this in the art world quite a bit because musicians create this music.

Record labels own it all. The musician dies. And then the record label is still making money, still making a fortune off of the art that this person had put out, though the label did not do any work in creating that art.

OK, so I'm taking what the preacher is talking about here in Ecclesiastes two, and I'm applying that to kind of the royalty of our day, the famous celebrities and things like that that are always on our magazine covers and whatnot.

So we see this play out even in the world around us, where there are those that do all of this, this, this work, all of this labor, and somebody else benefits off of it.

It's it's a great evil and it's vanity. It doesn't really attain or achieve anything.

Your life is not better because you heard Thriller by Michael Jackson and Michael Jackson's life is certainly not better off as this man has died and has had to appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

So verse twenty two, for what does a man get in all of his labor and in the striving of his heart with which he labors under the sun?

Because all his days, his endeavor is painful and vexing. Even at night, his heart does not lie down.

This, too, is vanity. And you see that among many successful men and women in the world, how much work and work and work they do for the sake of their careers and what they've invested themselves do, they'll make all kinds of money.

They'll get really famous from it, but they're never satisfied. And even at night, they can't get their heart to be still, they lie in their beds restless.

Because they really haven't done anything of any inherent worth at all. This, too, is vanity.

So the preacher says in verse twenty four, there's nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and have his soul see good in his labor.

But how does a man attain that? That's the next part of verse twenty four. This also

I have seen that it is from the hand of God. If you do find pleasure and satisfaction in your work and in your labor, it's because God has blessed you to enjoy those things.

And incidentally, this is a common grace thing. So he has blessed even unbelievers to enjoy the works of their hands.

There are, you know, people out there who have done great work and have enjoyed the fruit of their labor.

And they talk about, man, I love my career. I love what I've been able to accomplish over my lifetime. And that is a common grace blessing from God.

It only comes from God. It does not come from man. For if it came from man, that any man would be able to do it.

But only a few get to enjoy that pleasure. Verse twenty five, for who can eat and who can have enjoyment outside of him?

Now, when it comes to us as Christians, we must do everything to the glory of God. And there is long lasting satisfaction.

There is meaning and purpose in what we do. If what we do is to Christ. Verse twenty six, for to a man who is good before him, capital

H, so talking about God for to a man who is good before him, he has given wisdom and knowledge and gladness.

While to the sinner, God has given the endeavor of gathering and collecting so that he may give to one who is good before God.

This, too, is vanity and striving after wind, and that is in is is in reference to the sinner who works and doesn't get to enjoy what he has labored doing.

But it has to go to the work and the joy has to go to a person who has delighted in God, who has been good before him.

God gives the pleasure and the enjoyment of what the sinner has done, he gives to the saint.

He gives to the one who delights in God and labors before God. And, you know, we can take an example from art to kind of give an application to that as well.

You can read a poem that was written by somebody who was not a God fearing man or woman.

And yet you can find godly truths in that poem, right? Maybe the person who wrote the poem wrote the song, wrote the

TV show, whatever else. Maybe they did not know that what they were saying was some

God given truth. But you find it in exactly what it is that they had written. And you're able to give glory to God for it.

You see that, but they don't. So you found enjoyment in the thing that actually never brought them pleasure.

And you're able to give glory to God as a result of that. Paul did this, you know, when he referenced poems to the

Greeks as he was as he was reference secular writing to them that they might recognize even their own

Greek writers understand that God exists and it is through him that we live and move and have our being.

Now, the writer who wrote that was they thought they were writing about Zeus. But Paul is pointing out to the

Greeks there at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17. It's not about Zeus. It's the true

God. It's the one God who has given us life and breath and everything.

So don't take that life and breath and give glory to yourself with it. Take the life and breath and everything that God has given to you and give glory to him for the glory of Christ.

Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here today. And I pray that we understand meaning and purpose that we have in life.

If there is any meaning in what we do, it's going to be because it was done in Christ.

We do it in worship unto your great name. Thank you for the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ, our

Lord, and help us to walk in that righteousness today, giving glory to God for all good things.

It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. For more about our ministry, visit us online at www .utt