In one of the most perplexing books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes, we are introduced to “the Preacher,” a king in Jerusalem—perhaps King Solomon—who set out to discover what was worthwhile in the short space of his life.
Despite being called “the Preacher,” his perspective is one of secular man, looking around at the things that can be observed “under the sun” (Eccl. 1:3, 9, 14). The conclusion he comes to again and again is that everything is “vanity” or “a striving after the wind” (Eccl. 1:14). There is a futility to life, he says, that takes the air out of every endeavor.
In the first two chapters, the Preacher considers three paths that some think lead to life—the same paths that many of us walk today in our search for meaning.
Is There Life in Worldly Wisdom?
I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. (Eccl. 1:13)
Is there life before death? The Preacher begins by looking for life in the way of wisdom. He supposed, as many do today, that a sufficient education could equip him to live well.
But he realized that more knowledge creates more problems: “In much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Eccl. 1:18). In any case, he adds, the wise person and the fool will both be dead one day, so what’s the point? “I said in my heart, ‘What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?’” (Eccl. 2:15).
The wisdom of the world, it turns out, doesn’t solve all our problems. Why is it that a society that put men on the moon can’t stop wars on the ground? Why is it you can find bright doctors standing outside of the hospital nursing a cigarette? The reason is as simple as it is challenging: Education can inform us, it can improve us, it can do great and valuable things for us, but it can’t change our human nature.
Is There Life in Pleasure?
Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. (Eccl. 2:10)
Is there life before death? The Preacher also sought it on the path of hedonism. He seemingly set up pleasure as his top priority. He ignored the judging gaze of God and of other people and made the most of opportunities for wine, women, and song. He even found pleasure in his “toil,” living out the adage that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.
Yet, as Robert Burns has observed,
Pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts forever.1
Or, in the words of a different sort of poet: “I can’t get no satisfaction.”2 Pleasures are immediately attractive, holding out every prospect of delight. But, the Preacher realized, grasping for pleasure is like grasping the wind. It is instant bloom, instant fade; it is like snow that immediately melts away as it falls on a rolling river.
Is There Life in Materialism?
I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. … I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. (Eccl. 2:4–5, 8)
Is there life before death? The Preacher also sought for it on the path of materialism, gathering up every trapping of wealth available to him.
Most of us are consumed by the thought of what we have and don’t have. Our work follows us home in the evening, and our portfolio—or lack of one—keeps us up at night. We may find ourselves haunted by the sense that we haven’t really “made it,” that we’re not as professionally or financially successful as we hoped to be, that we’re not as secure as we feel we need to be.
The Preacher had it all, but “all” was not as fulfilling as he had imagined: “I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity” (Eccl. 2:11). He looked around him and came to the realization that—in the words of the Frank Capra film of the same name—“you can’t take it with you” (Eccl. 2:20–21). All he had gained was a source of stress without providing happiness: “What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest” (Eccl. 2:22–23).
Is There More Than What’s “Under the Sun”?
I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. (Eccl. 2:17)
In response to all these things, the Preacher flirts with a kind cynicism: There’s no point. There’s no purpose. If there’s a God, He doesn’t care. All of life’s promises are empty.
Cynicism may be a response to disappointment, but ultimately, it is a kind of moral rebellion. The denial of God’s existence or goodness leads us to disregard right and wrong. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’”—and justified by this belief, “they are corrupt, they do abominable deeds” (Ps. 14:1). As Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov puts it, if God is dead, then all things are permissible.3 There is no life in this kind of cynicism! It is an embrace of death.
What the Preacher needed to realize—and eventually found—is that the answer to life is not “under the sun” at all. He needed to stop looking down and look up! “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth,” he says as he brings his book to a close (Eccl. 12:1). “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccl. 12:13–14).
That expectation of judgment may not be encouraging as we think of all the ways we’ve sought meaning—or the ways we’ve rejected it. But the story of the Bible is that human beings have turned their backs on God even though He gave them everything to enjoy and all they needed to live rightly. The first man and woman, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God’s command and ate from the tree He had forbidden, and they set out on a path where life cannot be found.
What the Preacher needed to realize—and eventually found—is that the answer to life is not “under the sun” at all.
All of us walk that path. “All we like sheep have gone astray,” declares the prophet; “we have turned—every one—to his own way” (Isa. 53:6). We say, “I’ll be my own god. I’ll run my own life. I’ll do my own thing.” But ultimately, apart from God, we will find ourselves one day saying with the Preacher, “All is vanity.”
What can we do? We can find life in Jesus Christ! Because though we have strayed from God into sin, “The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6).
Jesus is the eternal Son of God, who became a man to take us from our empty existence and restore us to God’s eternal purpose. By dying on the cross, Jesus took the punishment for our evil deeds and invited us into the family of God. What He offers is not a religion but a relationship of trust and forgiveness. He doesn’t ask anyone to earn their acceptance with God; He offers it to us as a gift.
To take hold of the life that is truly life demands at least this: that we understand that Christ died in our place, taking the punishment of our sin. In the awareness of such immense love, we can lay down the arms of our rebellion, give up our dead-end paths, and say, “Lord Jesus Christ, forgive my sin. Fill my life. Make me all that You desire for me to be.” And it is in that transaction that we move from the realm of simply existing into the realm of truly living.
This article was adapted from the sermon “True Living” by Alistair Begg.
