Last week we sought to lay out that much of what Ecclesiastes is doing is giving a negative apologetic on where to find meaning. By that we mean that with Solomonic wisdom the preacher examines different avenues of life on where meaning might be found and once examining those avenues, with both the tools and resources to make a thorough examination, he concludes that no absolute meaning can be found in those avenues (1:13).
However, we also sought to show last week that this negative apologetic is being done from the vantage point of one who is outside the covenant. The Preacher himself is a child of the covenant but he is reporting with the voice of one who is outside the covenant. Periodically he will return as a spokesman as a child of the covenant but in great segments of this treatise he speaks as one outside the covenant in order to conclude at each turn that for those outside the covenant, all is vanity of vanity — a chasing of the wind.
Godless learning yields cynicism and skepticism (1:7-8)
Godless greatness yields sorrow (1:16-18)
Godless pleasure yields disappointment (2:1-2)
Godless labor yields hatred of life (2:17)
Godless philosophy yields emptiness (3:1-9)
Godless eternity yields a lack of fulfillment (3:11)
Godless life yields depression (4:1-2)
Godless religion yields dread (5:4-7)
Godless wealth yields trouble (5:12)
Godless existence yields frustration (6:12)
Godless wisdom yields despair (11:1-8)
We said his purpose throughout is to remind his listeners that to stray from the covenant is to invite the crushing burden of the curse upon them without any hope. We contend then that the purpose of the book is to expose that the man who is outside of covenant with God, because of his separation from God, can find no meaning in life. Life lived apart from God leads to the kind of intellectual schizophrenia that yields existentialism, nihilism, and all other sorts of meaningless philosophies.
This then forces us to understand that man’s problem presented in Ecclesiastes is not a problem of finiteness. It is not the case that all men can find no meaning because they are finite. No, the problem presented in the book of Ecclesiastes is that man is a sinner. Sinners can not find meaning.
Man is born seeking meaning in all he goes about
He desires to understand it all, from beginning to the end
He labors to quench uncertainties raised by constant doubt
But apart from God in Christ, it’s just a chasing of the wind
Meaning comes from outside of us, and is never ours to make
Wisdom is a gift of God, given to those who seek his face
“The Wise” are ones who handle all for their Redeemer’s sake
Who understand that creatures must keep the creature’s place
Let us talk briefly then about this idea of meaning that the Preacher, speaking with the voice of a covenant outsider, finds so elusive.
To arrive at meaning would be to arrive at something that can serve as a lens through which all of life can be understood and then ordered. To arrive at and find meaning in any one thing would mean that one thing would become the organizing principle by which every thing would find its place.
Illustration — Puzzle.
You have all these disparate puzzle parts. What you need in order to bring them all together into a meaningful whole is some kind of universal by which the different parts can be understood. This is what the teacher is looking to find as he looks at matters through the eyes of one outside the covenant.
As we begin to examine Ecclesiastes again, we emphasize again that only in the covenant … only as in Christ can we find meaning. Because Christ is the answer to our sin problem, Christ is the answer to our epistemological problems. Those in Christ can find meaning in all that the teacher couldn’t find meaning in, because in Christ they have a person who can bring all the different parts of our lives together to make a meaningful whole. Because we are united to Christ “in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden,” (Colossians 2:3) we can find and have meaning.
The problem of man outside of Christ who desires meaning is that he is seeking to find meaning all the while defying the one, who alone, can give meaning.
And through the voice of the teacher man outside of covenant with God continues to look for meaning.
As we come to this section (1:12f) we note
I.) The Task The Teacher Set For Himself
The Teacher takes up the task of knowing and understanding all of reality.
Here he speaks as one who is both inside and outside the covenant I believe. I say this because to this day the task of those in the covenant is to take and have dominion as Stewards under God. So, when the teacher says that he gave himself to “Seek and search out wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven,” I take him to say that he is taking up God’s charge to take and have dominion.
However, keep in mind, that even fallen man can not escape this dominion enterprise since dominion taking is an inescapable concept. Those outside of the covenant could theoretically as well take up the task of Seeking and searching out wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven.
So the comment here about seeking and searching could be taken up by those by faithful and faithless. And there will be many times that the Teacher speaks with the voice of the covenant breaker about the lack of success of finding meaning in this task, and there are periodic times that the Teacher speaks with the voice of the covenant keeper about the success in finding meaning in this task.
We must applaud the Teacher’s aim here. He seeks to understand all that is done under heaven. There is in this man no compartmentalization of reality. He seeks to understand all things in light of who God is and alternately to show that there is no understanding of anything apart from presupposing God.
That this task to understand all of reality and to not compartmentalize life into things governed directly by God and things governed indirectly by God, is consistent with what some of our wise men have told us in the past,
” … The field of Christianity is the world. The Christian can not be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. The Christian … can not be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the Gospel.”
J. Gresham Machen
In similar tones Abraham Kuyper could likewise say,
“Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!'”
This is the way the preacher is viewing the matter. All of life, and all things in life must be brought into relation to the Covenant. As Biblical wisdom applies to all of life, the Teacher takes up the task of knowing all of life.
We might add, as a kind of aside here, that this task to seek and search out wisdom concerning all that is under heaven is why, historically, Christians have always been HUGE supporters of Christian education. It also explains why it is the case that wherever the Gospel has been planted and taken root, literacy soon follows. Christians, being dominion takers, have always understood that dominion begins with the kind of learning that the Teacher sets out to undertake.
II.) The Source Of This Task Taken Up
The source of his task is God.
“What a heavy Burden God has laid on men, by which they be exercised.”
Many have thought that this statement is a statement of despair.
Instead, what may be being communicated here is his beginning premise.
It may be the case that by talking about this “heavy burden God has laid on men” what the Teacher is communicating is that his investigations must have a God centered orientation. If “fearing God” is a conclusion that he ultimately comes to, (12:13-14) then this heavy burden of God laid on men, that he mentions, is just the recognition that in all his knowing he has to presuppose God.
In this “heavy burden of God” statement the Teacher is acknowledging God from the outset as the one who is the source of his task and the one, in whom alone, his task can find traction. So, this heavy burden imposed by God is imposed for a discernible reason … it is imposed to challenge man’s self proclaimed autonomy from God.
We would also say though that for the one outside of the covenant the attempt to understand all of reality apart from God is indeed a “heavy burden of God.” Even though the idolater might seek to find meaning apart from God such an attempt is still a heavy burden God has laid on men.
And the book continues from here both as one who speaks as one trying to escape this burden of God by knowing autonomously and one who embraces this divinely sanctioned burden by knowing as one who thinks God’s thoughts after Him.
These words … “What a heavy burden God has laid on men” thus become a sort of thematic string we find throughout the book. To quote Michael Kelly from his commentary “The Burden of God”
“Each major section of the book … shows this theme returning again and again in order to underscore God’s absolute predominance over the life of man. It is this fact with which humanistic man in his wisdom does not wish to reckon, but which the book will make plain that he must. Man in his rebellion would dispense with God. the Teacher’s purpose is to make clear that man’s life in the world is without foundation if he refuses to reckon above all with God. Because man stands under God’s curse he must be made to take account of the fact that it is God Who is both the cause of the condition that troubles his life as well as the solution.”
And so to the covenant breaker this heavy burden imposed by God is a burden that will break him and send him flying into despair, but to the covenant keeper this heavy burden imposed by God is bearable because the work of finding meaning can be successful to the one in covenant.
III.) The Beginning Conclusions Regarding This Task
In vs. 14-18 we find a beginning conclusion regarding the task taken up.
I believe that the Teacher’s observations are pointed at the one outside of covenant. The teacher is making some conclusions about the wisdom of man apart from God. He is telling us some truths regarding humanistic wisdom — that is the so called “wisdom” as it exists apart from God.
Because of fallen man’s depravity his wisdom
15 (What) is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
Until this burden imposed by God, upon the one outside of covenant, is relieved by viewing all matters in light of God, his wisdom will be lacking in ways that cannot be counted as well shall see as we move through the book and he is a thing crooked that cannot be made straight.
Vs. 16 – 18
16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
These verses can be spoken from the position of both one within the covenant and one without the covenant.
As spoken from the perspective of the one outside the covenant it is the logical conclusion of all the searching he might make. “Wisdom” and “knowledge” gained apart from God frustrates and fails and is seen as a chasing of the wind.
As spoken from one inside the covenant it is an admission that there is a powerlessness in his wisdom because even though he might expose the vanity of the one outside the covenant he is unable to do anything about this so called “wisdom.” And so with the increase of this knowledge comes a increase of sorrow.
Really … truer words have seldom been spoken. If God has been pleased to give his saints a unique insight into his reality more often then not there is a frustration that has to be worked upon all their lives. The frustration is born of not being able to clear the fog in others so that others can see what God has opened up their eyes to see. There is for the one inside the Covenant then, a sweet melancholy, we might call it that is driven by the frustration of being given by grace alone wisdom only to see it refused by so many others with all the attendant consequences.
Illustration — C. S. Lewis — The Last Battle
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at! Never thought we’d come to this.” But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:
“Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being takers in that they cannot be taken out. But come, children. I have other work to do.”
For one inside the covenant who cares about people what else can there be but a finding that
18 (For) in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
How can one who has seen God’s reality and has been given grace to have insight into meaning not have much vexation with much wisdom and much sorrow with their increase in knowledge when they look at people surrounded by a reality that is a smörgåsbord of meaning and who instead merely see life as meaningless turnips, straw, and donkey juice?
Conclusion
Re-cap
Next Week
The three avenues of meaning that the Preacher examines that we want to touch on next week is the search for meaning in pleasure, work and wisdom.
I.) The Pursuit of Meaning in the Context of Pleasure
II.) The Pursuit of Meaning in the Context of Work Achievements
III.) The Pursuit of Meaning in the Context of Wisdom
Return to Covenant Position
