Answering the Fool: The Apologetics of Ecclesiastes

Puritan Reformed Church Phoenix

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Please stand as we sing

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Psalm 23, a psalm of David. Be seated as we go into the

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Sermon on Ecclesiastes, so I'll ask you to stand in a bit, but I'm going to go through some introductory things as a reminder, and also some new information.

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All right, so we're getting into the beginning of chapter 2.

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Last time we went through some of the stuff for Solomon's background, we read some of the things from Solomon's life and the way that the

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Lord had prospered him, and we also talked a little bit about the book, but it's a book that's hard for people to get, and the reason it's hard to get in part is because the commentary tradition on the book of Ecclesiastes is so confused.

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The book of Ecclesiastes, oftentimes commentators will seek to read the book as though everything

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Solomon says somehow is the Christian worldview, but he says things that plainly contradict each other in the same book, and what he's doing is something that if I were to try to summarize for you as briefly as possible using another place of scripture what he's doing, it would be, if you go to the bottom of page 2 of the handout,

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I quote for you there, Proverbs 26, verse 4. And so the book of Ecclesiastes, written by Solomon, inspired by the

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Holy Spirit, does two things. It goes back and forth consistently between these two.

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We're told by the same man, inspired by the same Holy Spirit, do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.

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Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

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So what is this about? What does that proverb or set of proverbs mean?

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Really it's two proverbs. It's two proverbs, one by the other. And one says answer a fool according to his folly, and the other one says don't answer a fool according to his folly.

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So you go, which one is it Solomon? Well it's both. And it's not a contradiction.

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And the reason it's not a contradiction is because we have to understand answering a fool according to his folly in two different senses.

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The first one, when it says do not answer a fool according to his folly, the rest of the verse helps us to define what is meant.

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It says, lest you also be like him. So here's what's being said.

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Do not answer a false philosophy or theology by adopting the presuppositions of that false view.

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Because if you do accept their presuppositions, you will become like them.

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How does that happen? It happens, for example, when we try to prove to unbelievers on their own terms the existence of God or the definition of God or that the

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Bible is true or something like that. When we try to take something else and have it be the highest authority and have it over the word of God, what we do is we end up becoming like the fool.

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We adopt his folly. And by adopting his folly, we start to destroy the

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Christian worldview and the Christian system. Because when we put something over scripture, even if we still say we believe the scriptures, we're going to still take this thing that we say is higher than it, take this thing that we prove the scriptures by, and we're going to start to warp the scriptures to make sure they fit with that higher authority.

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So that's answering the fool according to his folly in a way that's forbidden. And the warning is, if you do that, if you adopt his presuppositions and argue with him on his own terms, you will become like him.

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Now on the other side, there's answering a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

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What does that mean? This means that when we answer the fool without adopting his view as authoritative, we say, well,

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I'll tell you what, if your view were true, it would contradict itself in this way.

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If your view were true, it would lead to this conclusion that you don't want to accept.

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And so the idea here is you adopt the position of your opponent for the sake of showing its internal inconsistencies and the conclusions that it leads to that the other party doesn't want.

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Now I can't find another name for this, but the name I'm about to offer you for that is very confusing to people.

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The name of that is an ad hominem argument. What it means is you're arguing, adopting the position of the other man.

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Most people will tell you an ad hominem argument is when you argue saying that the other person, you say, well, this other person, you know, you throw something negative in.

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This person lied one time, and therefore what they're telling you now must be false.

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Or this person is a manufacturer, and so it's in his interest to argue the point, and therefore what he's saying can't be true.

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So if you're talking about tariffs, you go, a manufacturer wants high prices, so he can charge more. If he's advocating for tariffs, he's not really making an honest argument, and therefore he's wrong because he's a manufacturer.

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So that's abusive ad hominem. So there's ad hominem, which is adopting the position of your opponent to show its conclusions and to show absurd conclusions they don't want to accept or to show internal contradictions, and there's abusive ad hominem, which is, you know, you're ugly, so you must be wrong.

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Abusive ad hominem is bad argumentation. Adopting your opponent's position to evaluate its conclusions is a legitimate argument strategy that the

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Bible itself commends to us. So when we look at the book of Ecclesiastes, the short form of this proverb, or these two proverbs, do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.

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Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. That's giving to us the move that's happening every place in the book of Ecclesiastes.

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In some places it's saying, here's the Christian worldview. It provides meaning. And then it's saying over here, here is an anti -Christian worldview.

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It makes meaninglessness. If you want meaning, you must have the

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Christian worldview. If you're okay with meaninglessness, have fun with that.

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And then he emphasizes how fun it is. It's like grasping for the wind. Totally worthwhile activity.

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So this book is largely this answering the fool, and the question is, what kind of answering of the fool is happening?

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Is he answering according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own conceit? Or is he not answering the fool according to his folly, to avoid being like him, and to show him the way he ought to go?

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And that's what we're always trying to figure out. So when people always read this book through, and just say, okay,

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Solomon's explaining the Christian worldview, and Christianity means that everything's meaningless. Everything's vanity.

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And that's totally legitimate from a Christian worldview. That leaves a lot of people questioning how to retain motivation or godly ambition.

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And the reason is because it's totally incongruous with Christianity. Everything is not meaningless.

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Everything is actually maximally meaningful, because God will bring everything into remembrance for judgment.

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It has everlasting consequences. So that being the case, we have to, as we're reading through things, understand where is

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Solomon showing us the folly of foolishness? And where is Solomon showing us the glories of wisdom?

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And he goes back and forth between them. So at the top of page one, you'll see that Ecclesiastes is an apologetics book.

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It's an apologetics book. What do I mean by that? It focuses on giving a rational defense of the faith, giving a rational defense of Christianity, and it's doing it mainly zoomed in on what we call the discipline of ethics.

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Ethics is the study of the good and how to get what's good. So the book of Ecclesiastes is focused on how do we identify what's good, what's worth getting, and how do we grow in possessing it?

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So it's going to deconstruct any other view of what's good. And so I believe

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Ecclesiastes provides for us a list of attributes of the good, which is

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God, and contrasts God as the good and the knowledge of him as man's possession of him with other views.

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And it gives us basically an inventory of arguments that we can use to destroy every false view, which, you know, for men, generally, the immediate thought is, that's awesome.

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I'm going to destroy people with facts and logic. And that sounds fun, and you think

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I'm going to tear down other people, and the combative nature of it, of apologetics and evangelism, is typically the initial sense of value there.

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And with women, the general response is, I don't want to be fighting people, and so there seems to be less value there.

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But let me remind you of something. Apologetics is first and foremost for you.

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The question is not how do you just defeat people on the street, or how do you defeat people on the internet?

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They must be defeated. But in addition to defeating them, the important thing is, how do you deal with your own doubt?

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How do you deal with your own unbelief? In the quiet of night, as you sit upon your bed, and you are troubled by something, do you have answers?

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Are you able to subdue the unbelief in your own heart, and to argue with yourself?

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If you are worried that you're not zealous enough, one of the things that dampens zeal is doubt.

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When you are certain of a thing, it increases your zeal.

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If you think something is maximally important, and maximally certain, that generates zeal.

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And so we want to be certain, and we also want to view God as maximally important.

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And that is how we can see our zeal increase. So this book will help you to have a zeal for the holiness of God, and to seek to glorify him.

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Now there are three basic questions that every philosopher has to answer. What's true? What's real? What's good? The book of Ecclesiastes has some interesting places where it deals with truth, but it's not the focus.

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Although it's arguing about what's true in terms of what is good, the focus of the argumentation is on what's good.

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Also, the nature of reality. There's a lot about the nature of reality in terms of how things work.

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When you read the book of Proverbs, it's got lots of statements about blessings that God brings, and the way in which things work in God's universe.

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And when you read Ecclesiastes, it seems to point out lots and lots of things where it says the universe doesn't seem to work under the government of God in the way that Proverbs seems to lay it out.

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As opposed to generally there being blessing for honoring legitimate authority, and blessing for being careful to do honest commerce, and blessing for honoring

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God, and blessing for this, and blessing for that. Instead, it seems that there's no difference between the righteous and the wicked, and the same thing happens to both.

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And you go, whoa! Did the same guy write both books? Yeah, the

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Holy Spirit inspired both? Solomon wrote both. What's happening in Ecclesiastes is

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Solomon is going to show us how that perspective happens and why it's wrong.

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And he's going to say, some people walk around named Mr. Worldly Wise Man, and they sound and seem like they're really smart, and their skepticism and their less than optimistic outlook seems to be very learned.

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And that learned perspective from a worldly position is something that can tempt us to despair and skepticism and a negative, pessimistic outlook.

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And so Solomon shows us how to overcome those things. The Holy Spirit does that through this book.

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So the focus on what is good is extremely important, and that's what the book does.

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And the answer we talked about last time, we went to the end of the book, remember, we cheated, we skipped to the conclusion, we said that this is the whole of the matter.

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Fear God and keep his commandments. Remember, we talked about the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So what's being said there is you should know

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God, and then you should apply the knowledge of God, which is to keep his commandments.

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So the knowledge of God and the knowledge of his law, and applying that, that's the good life.

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Now remember, we talked about how Calvin starts out the Institutes with these two pieces, right?

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He says that all true and sound wisdom really is made up of the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man.

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And we talked about how the Dutch called that the double knowledge. Does that sound familiar at all, the double knowledge? Double Dutch, the double knowledge.

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Okay, now what we have with the double knowledge is this idea of the knowledge of God and of man.

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And how do we know what man really is? The law of God shows us what we really are and what we're really made for.

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It shows us what we are as a mirror, that we need a savior, that we are sinful, and it shows us what we're designed for.

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The positive duties of the law shows us what we are made to do. And so when we're acting according to how

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God designed us, we're acting according to the law. So the only way we can have certainty about the nature of man is by God revealing it in his word.

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And so when we receive the law of God, it shows us what we're supposed to do, we're made for.

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So when we talk about the book of Ecclesiastes, remember last time I gave you this header of there's under heaven and there's under the sun, and those are major interpretive cues.

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Under the sun is not acknowledging God as the highest thing, but instead just kind of looking around at a naturalistic, materialist world.

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Versus under heaven, under the reign of Christ, under the reign of God, under the throne of heaven ruling us.

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And so when we're thinking about things under heaven, we're going to recognize that God is a good and that God's glory is his attributes.

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And what God has done is he has made the world for the purpose of glorifying himself.

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So his goal, he made all things to show his glory.

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And history is a story to show his glory.

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So those are the things that we recognize God's purpose. Now man is made to glorify

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God, and he's going to glorify God whether he wants to or not.

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Wanting to is way more fun, because when you want to, you glorify God by enjoying him.

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If you don't want to, you glorify God by being punished for your sins. So when

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God gives you faith, he causes you to recognize that God is good, that his word is authoritative, and that his law shows you what is good.

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So to be given a saving faith is to be given an understanding and belief in the reality that God is the definer of good and evil, and his law shows us the good life.

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Now the way we grow in possessing the knowledge of God, or possessing the good, and possessing

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God is by knowing God. God is truth, and by knowing him, by knowing the truth, we grow in our possession of him.

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He is infinite. We will never have all that there is. God is inexhaustible. And so we will always be learning about God.

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You will always learn more truth about God. And as you increase in the knowledge of God, everything else becomes more beautiful.

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The contrast between good and evil becomes deeper. The realities of what

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God is doing becomes more clear. The way in which we are supposed to do things becomes obvious.

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All of these things, and the way that God works in history becomes visible. You start to see the hand of God in his working and doing things for his glory and for the good of his people.

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And instead of history being a cycle, you start to see it as the progress of God in accomplishing his goal.

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Now, page two. We're either going to glorify and enjoy

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God, or we're going to glorify God without enjoying him. Glorifying God and enjoying him is the good life.

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Glorifying God without enjoying him is the bad life. And sixth, men ought to glorify

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God, not just as individuals, but as a group with a corporate goal.

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And the way we accomplish that corporate goal is as the church. The city of God, the church, works together to fill the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

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That working together is how

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Christ accomplishes his purpose of causing the earth to be filled with the knowledge of himself.

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To have him be all in all. And so he fills the church by his spirit with the knowledge of himself, and he fills the earth with his church.

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These things are the things that we need to see in terms of purpose and meaning in contrast to the meaninglessness of the other world views that Solomon puts forward.

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So Solomon argues that unless you start from the Christian system of thought, your life will be inevitably meaningless.

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That's what he's arguing. Now Pastor Philip Kaiser has a great quote about this book.

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He says, every book of the Bible has a strategic purpose for its placement in the canon. And the purpose of Ecclesiastes is to be a textbook on proper biblical presuppositional apologetics and how to answer a fool.

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Proverbs has already given the first part of that paradigm by clearly presenting a biblical worldview that explains all of life.

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When that's rejected, Ecclesiastes then shows the foolishness of the fool. So there is a purpose even in the order of these books.

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And at the end of this book, he sends you back to the book of Proverbs. Remember that? He talks about how he's written all these Proverbs, and so it reminds us to go back and read

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Proverbs. And this book does not just answer the foolish atheist.

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It also is an apologetic against the Christian who leaves God out of most compartments of his life.

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That right there, that sentence is really important. I remember reading through and there were some difficult passages that I couldn't quite get because it would mention

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God and at the same time mention meaninglessness. And I had to wrestle through that and I realized, oh, these passages are talking about when somebody acknowledges

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God with their lips, but in their thinking, they're not actually thinking about the glory of God or how to use this thing for God's glory.

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And so we can profess Christ and then leave him out of an area. That happens, for example, when people are ashamed of the

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Bible for politics or ashamed of the Bible for education or ashamed of the

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Bible for any place where they want to bring in some other authority to teach them the good life in that zone.

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So it's an apologetic against the Christian who leaves God out of the most compartments of his life. That's going to leave you empty too.

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It's an apologetic against secularism. It's a powerful argument against anything that aims less high than Christ calls us to aim for in the

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Sermon on the Mount. Seeing God's kingdom and his righteousness rather than seeking after all the things in which secularists try to find satisfaction.

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So again, this book is showing us, do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.

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Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. Now there's a few principles that I tried to lay out.

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I mentioned these, but I didn't have a handout for you. I wanted to give these to you in writing because I think it will help you as you read the book of Ecclesiastes yourself and you're trying to interpret.

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Now, here are principles. First of all, remember the whole book is breathed out by God. There are few books of the

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Bible that I have read commentaries on that as often as commentaries on the book of Ecclesiastes try to just basically explain away things by saying this part's not written by God.

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It's shocking how many of the commentaries try to deal with stuff by basically saying this isn't

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God's wisdom, this is Solomon's, because there's so many things that are difficult in the book.

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And if you don't understand these contrasting life under the sun versus life under heaven, you're going to be tempted to do that in your interpretation of the book.

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Now the whole book's breathed out by God. Secondly, Solomon is the preacher or the philosopher or the apologist,

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Koheleth, sometimes people spell that with a Q, Koheleth, but that's a Hebrew word that's translated as the preacher.

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And so the word Ecclesiastes is a

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Greek word for that, it's the one who's preaching in the ecclesia, or in other words, the ecclesiast, the churchist, the church man, so this idea of a preacher, the one who's calling out.

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Now Solomon's the preacher, he's the philosopher, he's, you might call him the apologist, he's the one arguing.

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Now this book is an apologetic that answers the fool according to his folly and also doesn't answer the fool according to his folly, just like we're told back in that proverb that I quoted earlier.

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It does, it bounces back and forth, so you need to understand that. So this, this book doesn't just go in a straight line, okay, there's, there are arguments that you can read that are very straightforward and they just flow in an obvious way.

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It's like the Nile River, it's just going straight to the sea. There are other arguments that are like the

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Amazon, and they go side to side to side to side to side to side, but it eventually gets to the sea.

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This is like that, this weaves back and forth between the fool's position and the wise position, and if you read

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Augustine, he's very much like that, and Augustine's Confessions is the closest book that I know of, and I mentioned that to you,

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I believe, last time. If you've never read Augustine's Confessions, I strongly encourage you to read it or get the audio book of it and listen, and he's walking through his life, and it's written as a prayer, and he talks to God and is examining his own life in a prayer, and talking to God about how he, looking back, sees the hand of God in his own life, bringing him to faith, and then preparing him for work, for the glory of God.

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And so, when Augustine's going through here, he's making points, but he kind of digresses off to the side for a while, and then he comes back, and so this weaving action of going away from the main point to make it deeper, and then coming back.

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And so, you find that also in platonic dialogues, which will give you far less utility than reading

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Augustine, but this is a Solomonic monologue where he is going back and forth, like Augustine, cleaning stuff.

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Now, Solomon wrote this book late in his life.

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He wrote the Song of Solomon early, he wrote Proverbs after that, and the

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Song of Solomon he wrote, apparently being monogamous with his first wife before he entered into a marriage with Pharaoh's daughter, and before going into polygamy.

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So we have Proverbs and the Song of Solomon as being laid out beforehand, and Song of Solomon rejoices in godly

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Christian marriage, and Proverbs rejoices in the wisdom of God and the purposes that God gives to us in life.

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Now, point five on here, the word vanity, remember the book starts out with vanity of vanities?

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Okay, we have that, and what happens is that word, hebel or hevel, is used 38 times, and it's used as a goad over and over again to show how, apart from the

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Christian worldview, you're left with meaningless nonsense garbage in your thought, and the only place for you to get the treasures of wisdom and knowledge is in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so if you're satisfied with garbage, have at it. That is the point that gets made over and over again.

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You're stuck with this meaningless, useless garbage. That's what the vanity is.

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Uselessness, meaninglessness, boredom, guilt. And so there's nothing to have there, it's just this awful condition.

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As opposed to profitable life, meaningful life.

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Now, under the sun is used 29 times, again, that's the perspective that denies the rule of God and the sufficiency of His law for choices.

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Under heaven is living under the rule of God, and it keeps in mind two things, it's providence, and it keeps in mind

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His law word, and then the goal also of glorifying Him. And I've already explained to you how

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God gets referenced, and sometimes it references this idea of God as actually the goal or the purpose of life, but sometimes there's also putting

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God on as kind of an ornament, and it mocks that when you join God with something else to make both of them kind of on the same shelf.

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And then again, wisdom as the goal. The way you possess God is by knowing Him, and so there's the double knowledge, the knowledge of God and of His law, and that is the focus of what's worth doing, and that's the conclusion at the end of the book.

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So those principles, if you keep those in mind, and you study through the book, it will help you to avoid a bunch of awful conclusions, or kind of just scratching your head and going,

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I have no idea what the book means. These things will help you to avoid reading it in that way. So now,

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I go with me to page four, and let's stand for the reading of God's word.

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Ecclesiastes chapter one, verse one, and I'll be reading through to about the middle of chapter two. The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

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Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What prophet has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?

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One generation passes away, and another generation comes, but the earth abides forever.

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The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose.

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The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north. The wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit.

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All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place from which the rivers come, there they return again.

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All things are full of labor, man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

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That which has been, is what will be. That which is done, is what will be done.

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And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, see, this is new.

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It has already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after.

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I, the preacher, was king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven.

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This burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised.

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I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.

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What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered.

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I communed with my heart, saying, look, I have attained greatness and have gained more wisdom than all who were before me in Jerusalem.

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My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge, and I see my heart, I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.

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I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind, for in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

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I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure. But surely, this also was vanity.

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I said of laughter, madness, and of mirth, what does it accomplish? I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine, while guiding my heart with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives.

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I made my works great, I built myself houses, I planted myself vineyards, I made myself gardens and orchards,

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I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools, from which to water the growing trees of the grove.

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I acquired male and female servants, and had servants born in my house.

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Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before me.

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I also gathered for myself silver and gold, and the special treasures of kings and of the provinces.

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I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments of all kinds.

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So I became great, and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem.

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Also, my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them.

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I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure. For my heart rejoiced in all my labor.

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And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done, and on the labor in which

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I had toiled. And indeed, all was vanity, and grasping for the wind.

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There was no prophet under the sun. You may be seated. Now jump back with me to page four.

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Verses one to three, we talked through last time. It talks about the authorship of the book. This is Solomon.

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It reminds us of the fool's perspective, right? It starts with the antithesis. It starts with the false view that everything's meaningless.

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And it lays out a strong case for it. Cuz it's trying to lay out for us, you know, the problem that we have to deal with is not just a problem of how do you get saved.

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Not just a problem of answering some simple question. The problem is, how is meaning available for everything that we do?

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How do we make it so there's not a space, not a single thought, not a single activity or time that's meaningless, vain, fruitless?

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And the problem isn't just how do we find a few things. The problem is, every philosophy, except for Christianity, is gonna lead to the conclusion that everything's meaningless.

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And so this is a huge intellectual problem. And it has huge psychological results.

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If everything's meaningless, then everything gets boring. And all that you're stuck with is boredom and guilt.

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And you go, why do I even feel guilt? Because if everything's meaningless, then there's no right and wrong. And then the emptiness of seeking to fill that void.

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And you're gonna pursue excess to fill that up.

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But it's not gonna solve the problem. So this is the problem that exists.

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And as Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.

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And that's what's being talked about. When Augustine says that, he's talking about, we're always searching for something good.

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We're always searching for something to satisfy. We're always searching for something that will answer the void.

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But you will find no place to rest until you find the

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God of the Bible. So the fool's answer, everything's meaningless.

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So question, verse three gives us the big question. What profit, what utility, what use, what goodness is there that a man can get for all of his labor under the sun?

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And the answer is none. Under the sun, under the perspective of any philosophy except for the biblical system, the answer is none.

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And this is going to show us how to deconstruct every other philosophy. And how they lead to meaninglessness.

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And at the same time, bolster and defend meaningfulness for Christianity.

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So then we had in verses four through eight, there's a list of cycles.

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Remember, there's the cycle of life on earth, one generation to the other. The cycle of the sun, it rises and goes down, rises, goes down, rises, goes down.

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The cycle of the wind, it's moving around. The cycle of the water cycle, which

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I think elementary school's sole purpose in the public school system was to make sure that like three years were spent in the water cycle.

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I don't know, I remember studying the water cycle a lot in elementary school. Maybe that was just me, I don't know.

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But the water cycle, big deal. But life, if it's just like the water cycle, water leaves the sea, rains, rivers go to the sea, it's just this repetition.

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And so there's a wearisomeness. If everything that happens on the earth, all things are full of, it says labor, but another translation there is wearisomeness.

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All things are full of wearisomeness. And if you don't have a

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Christian worldview, it's just a wearisome cycle. That's what

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Buddhism leads to with reincarnation, it's just a wearisome cycle. Interestingly, even fake

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Christianities like Rome, you just get on this sacramental treadmill and it's a wearisome cycle.

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Need to get forgiven again, not sinned again, mortal sin, going to go to hell, got to go through the process of auricular confession and penance and have my baptismal grace reestablished by taking the mass.

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Just a wearisome cycle. Every false philosophy is a wearisome cycle and there's no progress apart from God's plan and progress.

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And then at the end of it, it says the eye is not satisfied with seeing or the ear filled with hearing. And so this is the hedonic treadmill that I've got to find the next pleasure, got to find the next pleasure, got to find the next pleasure.

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And then you either get it and you're bored because all you're getting is pleasure and it just becomes boring. Or you can't get it and you're frustrated, right?

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So these are the wearisome cycles that get displayed there. So those things, that list right there is a really powerful list.

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These are the arguments for why is everything meaningless. And frankly, if you look at that, that's an observation of the world where you go, across generations, across one lifetime, the natural order of stuff.

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Yeah, it all kind of just seems like a meaningless cycle. And apart from the invisible providential hand of God towards the goals that he's promised, what answer can you have without a certain word from heaven to tell you the goal?

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And to tell you that it will be accomplished. Now, go to page five.

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That which has been is what will be. That which is done is what will be done. There's nothing new under the sun.

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Is there anything of which it may be said, see, this is new. It's already been in ancient times before us. There's no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after it.

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If you don't remember history, you're doomed to repeat it. He's saying, but people don't remember anything.

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And we just kind of do the same stupid stuff over and over again. Now, this is the cycle of history if there's no progress.

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The Christian believes in progress, not just some secular humanist progress, not progressivism towards an undefined goal.

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We believe in progress to the accomplishment of dominion and the accomplishment of the great commission.

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The filling of the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. The maturing of the church and the expansion of the church.

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We believe in progress in the conquest of the king of kings over the whole world.

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That's the progress that we can see. Where 12 disciples is now hundreds of millions of people who know

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God on the earth. Some a little, some a little more.

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And there's this pouring out of the Holy Spirit that's occurring. Increasing knowledge, increasing gifting, increasing work being done.

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The church advances, it grinds the empires of the earth to dust. Without progress in history, history is a cycle.

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Without Christ, there is no newness. There's no renewing.

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Without Christ, there's no progress and there's nothing new, no advancements.

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Without God making progress, preserving the corporate work of the church through time, and bringing all things to remembrance of the day of judgment, there's no hope of anything but doomed repetition of mistakes.

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But God advances his church and God matures it.

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And God causes it to grow. And God causes more and more to be accomplished.

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And he does it not just on a grand scale, he does it in a minor scale for you.

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He does it in your life to sanctify you more and more. That the sins that used to dominate your life are now things that you forgot, even used to enslave you.

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Sins that once troubled you daily are sins every now and then you're reminded of.

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You have battles you're fighting now, you have sins to put off now, but there is progress that God has accomplished already in your life.

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And he will continue to give progress. Now, verse 12,

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I, the preacher, was king over Israel and Jerusalem and I set my heart to seek and search out my wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven.

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That's him returning to wisdom, that's the wise answer. This burdensome task, right, this task is huge, it's an enormous thing.

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To search and to seek out by wisdom all that's done under heaven, everything that God is doing, you're not gonna learn it all.

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On the day of judgment, there's this grand display of how God did all this stuff.

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And he brings everything into judgment and he shows the beauty of the story and how he used things.

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When he calls things to remembrance, it's for the display of his glory. And he will show us work that he did and forgiveness that was extended and justice that had to be given to punish wickedness.

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And he will do all of that to show his greatness, his glory. And so we are to search out and to seek out by wisdom, which can only come from God's word, concerning all that's done under heaven.

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We're supposed to meditate on the word and apply the word to everything that we confront in life.

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To interpret all things in light of the heavenly throne. This burdensome task

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God has given to the sons of men by which they may be exercised. What are we made for? What work are we called to do?

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We're called to know God and to think about God in relationship to everything he's made.

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Now, this is the wise man's answer. The life is about seeking the wisdom of God and all that God is and does.

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We're to search out the knowledge and plan of God. We want to see his rule. We want to see his glory.

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Unless he shows us by his word and spirit, we will never see it. Man has this task as an individual.

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Man has this task as a group. And those who are committed to joining this work are the city of God.

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They make up the visible church. Now, that commitment might be a commitment by covenant passing across generations, or it might be profession with your mouth.

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They join into that visible body that is set for that work.

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Those who reject the work are the city of man. The world is distinct from the church.

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And this theme is what Augustine's great work, The City of God, is about.

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Is this contrast of the two cities and the work that they do. And one of the things he emphasizes is, even if the wicked pile up silver -like mountains, they pile it up for the elect.

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They build cities for us to enjoy. These cities that are full of dead men become cities by evangelism that are filled with living men.

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And so there's this contrast of the two cities, and there's the work to be done. Go to page 6, verse 14.

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I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.

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From the perspective of a non -Christian, from the under -the -sun perspective, the fool's answer is that there's no differentiation of things.

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There's no meaning. If you've seen one thing, you've seen them all. It's all vanity and grasping for the wind, right?

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Somebody says, like, yeah, you've seen one car, you've seen all the cars, right? He's like, oh, that's kind of not true. I mean, there's, some cars are different.

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They're a little, they're different. You go, well, you've seen one thing, you've seen all the things. Do you see how that is like a maximal flattening?

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If you've seen, you know, things, I've seen things. When I saw one thing, all the things, basically the same.

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But this is, this is the idea here, that there's no differentiating between things.

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This is Heraclitian flux. This is, there's no defining of categories.

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We can't tell the difference between a boy and a girl. We don't know the difference between right and wrong. It's all just gray.

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That's boring. You have a horrific, boring, and stupid worldview.

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Everything's meaningless to you. That's dumb. That's fake and gay. That is silly.

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Seem like you're not worth paying attention to. When a philosophy leads into everything is the same.

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I've seen it all because I've seen a little. That means there's no difference between things.

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Verse 15, what's crooked cannot be made straight and what's lacking cannot be numbered. Do you see the hopelessness, the nihilism, the meaninglessness there?

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What's crooked cannot be made straight and what's lacking cannot be numbered. The turn of phrase that you find in the book of Ecclesiastes is amazing.

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When you're feeling despondent, when you're feeling like you can't get anything done, like this comes to mind to me a lot.

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This like, whenever I'm feeling hopeless, I'm like, what's crooked cannot be made straight and what is lacking cannot be numbered.

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It describes really well the whole like, everything feels wearisome. And then you go, well,

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I need to repent because without God to make straight, nothing ruined can be made straight, but God makes the crooked things straight.

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Without God, we can never even know what's missing. We can't number what's lacking. We cannot be aware that something's wrong.

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We can be aware that something's wrong, but we cannot know what's lacking. There's no progress bar where there's no goal.

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So the knowledge of God is the true good for man. And it's transformative.

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It takes the crooked things and makes them straight. The knowledge of God, the truth is power to sanctify, to bring change.

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It is the power to work against evil and for good. The knowledge of the truth gives us power to rule ourselves well, to overcome the flesh.

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The knowledge of God gives us power to transform what's around us. It gives us power to overcome our enemies.

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God knows what's not rightly formed, what's crooked, and he forms by his word and spirit that which is malformed.

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Do you see how much hope that gives compared to what's crooked cannot be made straight?

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What if instead, no, Christ transforms things? He renews things.

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The knowledge of God and of his law is comprehensive. It includes all deliberate human activity. It brings every thought captive to Christ.

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There must be no area where we're left with meaninglessness. God knows what's lacking, and his law shows us what's needed to fill the void.

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Do you see how different that is from what's lacking cannot be numbered? God created and took what was empty without form, and he filled and gave form.

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You hear that with creation? And he gives us the command to fill and form things in terms of dominion, or to fill the earth, and we're to form it, we're to subdue it.

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Go to page seven. I communed with my heart, saying, look, I have attained greatness and have gained more wisdom than all who were before me in Jerusalem.

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My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge, and I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.

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I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind. Okay, so what happened here?

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He's saying in his heart, I'm pretty great. Done some great things. Reached a great place.

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I'm doing very well. And so as he examines himself, he says, you know, also, I'm pretty wise.

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Hot stuff over here. I've learned a lot of things, and in fact, you know,

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I'm greater than all who came before me in Jerusalem. Just being honest. My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge.

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So that's what he said in his heart. And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.

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What's that? He set his heart to know wisdom. Okay, good. And, uh -oh.

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To know madness and folly. In other words, he said,

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I've got wisdom. Wisdom's great and everything, but what if I added to it madness and folly?

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I perceive that this also is grasping for the wind. So he's giving us the conclusion at the beginning of the experiment.

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He's saying this was the result. It was like grasping for the wind. It went badly.

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So having obtained much wisdom, Solomon started to be discontent with wisdom. It's our duty to keep going, to keep adding to, and to keep preserving what has been attained to.

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But Solomon grew weary in doing good. As he ran far ahead of others, he started to slacken in his efforts.

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Imagine that. If you're running a race, and you just blow everybody else away, and you're just, like, way out there, right?

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You're trying to beat everybody. It's a mile race. You're a half mile in, and everybody else is a tenth of the mile through.

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You go, wow, I'm gonna slow down. And as you slow down, and stop giving your attention to making progress, your progress reduces.

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You can understand the temptation when you get ahead of people to slow down.

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He started to think that wisdom, the knowledge of God and of his law, was not sufficient. And he started to think that he needed to add some folly to the mix.

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Maybe it'll make things better. The folly he chose to add was to see the knowledge of God and of his law as needing something added to it.

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But this was a fruitless task, and a grasping for the wind. He just set the stage for the rest of the book.

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Verse 18, what's the lie he believed as to why he needed to add something else? Because in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

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So what causes Solomon's discontent? The fact that wisdom causes grief, or another translation could be offense.

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It makes you see evil. It makes you see evil. The wiser you are, the more sin you see.

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When you're walking around dealing with a bunch of foolish people who don't know anything, they have no idea what the difference is between their right hand and their left hand, and the sin that they do without even knowing is like constant.

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And so you walk around amongst people who are fools, if you have wisdom, and you start to get offended, you go, oh no, oh no, stop, nope, do not do that, no.

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And this constant sinning that's going on around you, you just start to pull your hair out going, what is going on?

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And you're trying to figure out how many rebukes can I give? Can I talk fast enough to stop all the bad things?

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So with much wisdom, a lot of offense is seen. And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

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The word sorrow there can be translated as pain or suffering. You increase in knowledge, and you increase in pain or suffering.

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You see the crookedness. You see the lack. You know, it's like people who are living in broken conditions oftentimes don't understand how good it could be.

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But when you have the law of God to tell you how good it can be, the broken conditions, you just see the pain.

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So we get the answer to this initial, this initial effort of what he tries to do, to how he tries to manage his desire to add something to wisdom at the beginning of chapter two, and he says,

01:00:09

I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure. But surely this also was vanity.

01:00:16

He tells us the result of the experiment. Notice this, I'm going to test you, heart, with pleasure. He's testing, he's experimenting.

01:00:23

Pastor Shortley told us earlier about the word testing and how it could be used in different ways. Here's one of these uses of this idea of being tested.

01:00:31

He's testing his heart. He's experimenting with his heart to see, if I add pleasure seeking, how will that do?

01:00:38

Will that increase the value of wisdom? Will that improve my condition? But the test was folly. When you make a false good and place it together with the true good, it displaces the true and makes meaninglessness reign.

01:00:53

So verse two, I said of laughter, madness, and of mirth, what does it accomplish? Yeah, it doesn't accomplish anything.

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He's finding that when he was happy with mirth, when he was just pleasure seeking, it didn't resolve the thing.

01:01:06

Verse three, I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine while guiding my heart with wisdom and how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives.

01:01:20

He's trying to use pleasure as a thing to help him to gain knowledge.

01:01:26

Have you ever heard anybody say, don't knock until you try it? Or, you don't know, you haven't been in my shoes?

01:01:33

Or, you know, you haven't experienced this, you don't understand. When you try to make experience the basis of knowledge and try to say, well, maybe

01:01:44

I can understand Christianity better by mixing in pagan experiences or pagan practices or hedonistic tendencies.

01:01:52

If I just mix them in, maybe it'll deepen my knowledge. Solomon tells you already, it's madness, it's folly.

01:01:58

It was a waste of time. It was a grasping for the wind. The experiment of mixing pleasure seeking with thoughtfulness is so common in history, it has a name.

01:02:11

The name of it is Epicureanism. Hedonism is this, you think about hedonism or barbaric hedonism where you just go,

01:02:19

I'm gonna go seek pleasure. I'm gonna get drunk. I'm gonna go spend too much time at a party. I'm gonna just seek whatever pleasures, maximize the night.

01:02:26

I'm gonna really enjoy the short term. And the next morning, you wake up and you remember bad decisions and you have a hangover.

01:02:34

That like horrific pain and regret compared, when next to the party, the two of them, you go, well, that's real bad.

01:02:41

The Epicureans thought, maybe we can intelligently manage the pleasure. I won't get just absurdly drunk.

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I'll just maximize enjoying the proper level of buzz throughout the whole evening and try to really enjoy things without going to excess.

01:03:00

Minimize the pain, maximize the pleasure, do this intelligently. We'll have a symposium where we talk and drink wine.

01:03:08

It's gonna be great. And so this effort to intelligently enjoy pleasure, Solomon says, it still doesn't work.

01:03:15

And you go, really, Solomon? I don't think you tried very hard. He goes, let me tell you what I did. I was super rich and verse four,

01:03:22

I made my great works. I built myself houses. I planted myself vineyards. I made myself gardens and orchards and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.

01:03:31

I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove. I acquired male and female servants and had servants born in my house.

01:03:39

Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before me. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasures of kings and of the provinces.

01:03:49

I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men and musical instruments of all kinds. Am I missing anything?

01:03:55

Are there any delights that you think maybe I should have experimented with that I left out?

01:04:01

That's what Solomon says here. He's saying, I did all the things.

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I had all the pleasures. I chased them all and I had all the resourcing to do it all.

01:04:21

So I became great and excelled. More than all who were before me in Jerusalem, also my wisdom remained with me.

01:04:27

In case you think anybody did better, they didn't. Mine was the best. And Solomon sounds like Donald Trump sometimes.

01:04:34

I did it best. The houses were huge. And so when

01:04:40

I did it, it was great. And guess what? I didn't lose my wisdom. I was consistently wise during the whole thing.

01:04:47

I was intelligently pursuing pleasure the whole time. Whatever my eyes desired,

01:04:56

I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure. My heart rejoiced in all my labor and this was my reward from all my labor.

01:05:05

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor which I had toiled and indeed all was going very well.

01:05:13

No, all was vanity. And grasping for the wind, there was no profit under the sun.

01:05:22

What's he saying there? He's saying, I thought I could take wisdom and pleasure and mix them together and hold on both, put them both on the top shelf, say

01:05:29

I'll maximize wisdom and I'll maximize pleasure and I'll get both of them maximally. And what happened is, pleasure displaced wisdom and it was not satisfying.

01:05:46

Doing everything he wanted for pleasure resulted in meaninglessness. And so he leaves us there, having deconstructed one.

01:05:55

He's gonna deal with pleasure more as we go on. But he starts by telling us, I've run the experiments, the results were not positive.

01:06:06

If you think chasing good experience is gonna go well, I have the experience to tell you, it doesn't.

01:06:14

The knowledge of God is the good for man. We exist to know him and to do what he commands.

01:06:21

That is the good life. There is suffering that comes with it and that suffering is testing. But that testing brings with it a greater weight of glory and joy is everlasting.

01:06:36

Comments, questions, objections? Mr. Nye. No, I meant law in the narrow sense of the commandments.

01:07:25

Because until you understand that you're condemned under the law of God, you don't understand your redemption, right?

01:07:32

So the mirror use of the law is not sufficient for salvation but it's a part of the necessary knowledge for salvation.

01:07:41

So I wasn't trying to give the fullness of what's sufficient for saving knowledge. You have to believe in the mercy of God given through the mediator in order to have a saving knowledge.

01:07:53

But it certainly includes a recognition of condemnation for law breaking.

01:08:10

Yes, sir. Great, let's pray.

01:08:18

Father, we ask that you would bless this teaching of your word, that you would cause us to know you more deeply.

01:08:24

We ask that you would help us to know how to answer the fool wisely, even if that fool is our own doubts, our own hearts.

01:08:33

We ask that you would help us to be able to be certain about the truth and to be valuing the truth and that you would give us great zeal.

01:08:43

I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. All right,