Ecclesiastes 2 — The Quest For Meaning

Text — Ecclesiastes 2:1 – 3:9
Subject — Quest
Theme — The quest for meaning
Proposition — In Ecclesiastes 2 – 3:9 the teacher goes on a quest for meaning and finds two dead ends in his quest.

Purpose — Therefore having gone on a quest, with the Teacher for meaning this morning and having found three dead ends in a quest for meaning let us praise God that because He has united us to Christ, we walk in the ways of the covenant and so find meaning where the Teacher, speaking as a covenant breaker, could not find meaning.

Introduction

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 have and find meaning. Because we are in covenant with God, “in His light we see light.”

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.

For example, just this weak I was corresponding with someone I hadn’t spoken to in 30 years about this issue of finding meaning. I suggested, as I am teaching here, that meaning can only be found by presupposing God.

The response I received from this old acquaintance was,

“Isn’t it possible that knowledge and meaningful experience naturally evolve from consciousness and require no other preconditions? That knowledge and meaningful experience were not created and set out for consciousness to acquire but rather are created by consciousness?

Here we hear the voice of the covenant breaker that we so often hear in Ecclesiastes. Meaning is not derivative or dependent upon God but naturally evolves from consciousness. Meaning is created by one’s own evolved consciousness. Thousands of years later men are still evading God in order to have meaning independent of God.

And through the voice of the teacher in Ecclesiastes man outside of covenant with God continues to look for meaning.

In Ecclesiastes the Teacher’s purpose it to make clear that man’s life in the world is without foundation if he refuses to reckon above all with God.

We remember from last week that in the Teacher’s “burden of God” statement (1:13) 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.

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.

This morning we are taking a look at three areas the Teacher explores in terms of finding meaning. In these areas of pleasure, labor, and wisdom, that we are looking at this morning, the Teacher does not communicate that these are evil in and of themselves (vs. 10). The point emphasized here is that these otherwise good gifts have no meaning if they are taken up as having meaning in themselves alone. He comes to this conclusion as a Son of the Covenant viewing the areas as one who has been given covenant eyes to see what the conclusion of the Covenant breaker must be.

I.) Humanist Wisdom Pursues Meaning in the Context of Pleasure And Finds A Dead End (2:1-3, 10)

Hedonism — This is a school of thought that teaches that the achievement of pleasure is the highest good. We often hear it capsulized in the idea of “eat, drink, and be merry.”

That Hedonism was thought to be an answer for meaning can be seen in an ancient Egyptian song. The following is a song attributed to the reign of one of the Intef kings before or after the 12th dynasty, and the text was used in the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.

Let thy desire flourish,
In order to let thy heart forget the beatifications for thee.
Follow thy desire, as long as thou shalt live.
Put myrrh upon thy head and clothing of fine linen upon thee,
Being anointed with genuine marvels of the god’s property.
Set an increase to thy good things;
Let not thy heart flag.
Follow thy desire and thy good.
Fulfill thy needs upon earth, after the command of thy heart,
Until there come for thee that day of mourning.

Likewise the Teacher might have written,

He built his soul a lordly pleasure house
Wherein at ease he did dwell
He said, “Oh my soul make merry and carouse”
Dear soul, for all is well”

For the Teacher this meant Mirth, Spirits, and in vs. 10 he says he did not with-hold from His heart any pleasure. Yet weighing knee deep in this pursuit he concludes that there is no meaning apart from God.

Proverbs 25:16 is an interesting verse … “If you find honey, eat just enough – too much of
it, and you will vomit.”

In other words, even good things, in abundance, will eventually make you sick.

Of course we have seen this pursuit of finding meaning in pleasure continue full steam in the latter half of the 20th century. Hugh Hefner built his Playboy Empire. Drugs and Alcohol have proliferated in pursuit of a pleasure that allows one to drop out from this reality. Multiple Marriages combined with Multiple divorces have characterized our culture’s mad pursuit of pleasure. The gaming industry which is a multi-billion dollar industry is pursued in the name of pleasure. Our obsession with sports and entertainment outlets to the neglect of all other considerations reveals that 21st century man is still characterized as one who seeks to find his or her meaning of life in the pursuit of pleasure.

Now, pleasure, in and of itself, is not evil, as it is practiced consistent with God’s Law-Word, but pleasure will not give meaning if it is pursued as an end in itself as the Teacher tells us.

And yet we continue to embrace pleasure as a way to find meaning.

Ravi Zacharias says something that we here in this wealthy nation should take special note of:

“I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.”

II.) Humanist Wisdom Pursues Meaning in the Context of Work Achievements And Finds A Dead End (2:4-11, 17)

Many have been the men who have emptied themselves into their work. They are commonly referred to as “workaholics.” The Teacher toyed with finding meaning in just such a manner but the end was despair.

I suspect we are seeing this kind of thing repeated today.

A news release from The Conference Board reported in its most recent periodic poll that only 45 percent of workers in the U.S. were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest level in the 23-year history of the poll.

I suppose there could be a host of reasons why workers in the US are not satisfied with their jobs. One of those thought certainly could be the reality that ultimate meaning can’t be found in ones work.

The Teacher found here that what initially gave a rush finally, in the end, failed to fulfill.

“At age 45, Hughes was one of the most glamorous men in America. He courted actresses, piloted exotic test aircraft, and worked on top-secret CIA contracts. He owned a string of hotels around the world, even an airline – TWA – to carry him on global jaunts.

Twenty years later, at age 65, Howard Hughes still had plenty of money – $2.3 billion to be exact. But the world’s richest man had become one of its most pathetic. He lived in small dark rooms atop his hotels. Without sun and without joy. He was unkempt: a scraggly beard had grown waist-length, his hair fell down his back, his fingernails were two inches long. His once-powerful 6’4” frame had shrunk to about 100 pounds.

This famous and powerful man spent most of his time watching movies over and over, with the same movie showing as many as 150 times. He lay naked in bed, deathly afraid of germs. Life held no meaning for him. Finally, emaciated and hooked on drugs, he died at age 67, for a lack of a medical device his own company had helped to develop.”vii

A Chinese billionaire who converted to Christianity was asked “Why did you convert?”

This was his answer — “All my life I have spent my time climbing the mountain of wealth and success and when I finally got to the top…I looked around and nothing was there.”

Jesus once said, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26)

III.) Humanist Wisdom Comes To Some Conclusions Regarding Wisdom & Folly Apart From God (2:12-16)

Even for the Covenant breaker (the Humanist) their Wisdom will discern a difference between Humanist Wisdom and total Humanist folly (14), even though as sons of the covenant we might say the difference is only one of degree. Be that as it is the Teacher, speaking with as one with Humanist Wisdom begins to despair.

By introducing the idea of death, quite apart from saying anything about God in vs. 16 the Teacher has brought us to the end of anything called Wisdom that does not reckon with God. Wisdom, so called, apart from God ends in death just as folly apart from God ends in death. Apart from God, when matters are viewed in the long term there is no advantage whatsoever in being comparatively Wise as juxtaposed with the fool.

And so, we see that apart from God there is no meaning. The fool is as well served as the so called wise. Only by viewing life in light of God can we find meaning.

His despair deepens as he reaches conclusions regarding Wisdom as that Wisdom exists apart from God (17-23) and here we begin to see a muscular Nihilism in his despair. Nihilism is the denial that there is any meaning with the presence of a general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realizing there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws. Nihilism then is what we read in vs. 17-23.

The Teacher says that given these truths of man without God He hates life (17). Already he has lost patience with this pursuit.

RJR has said at this point,

“Even as patience is associated with hope, so by implication the loss of hope means impatience. When we have no hope, both waiting and tribulations become meaningless to us, and we cannot patiently endure them.”

So the Teacher has lost hope speaking with the voice of the covenant breaker and in losing hope he has lost all patience and in that loss of patience he declares his hatred for life.

And well he should. Man apart from God should hate life. This is the end of all men who try to live with themselves as their God when they consistently follow that philosophy to its bitter end.

However, what often happens with this kind of man is he seeks to bring that hatred to everyone else. He hates life and so all the world must hate as well.

In 2:24-26 the Teacher shifts from his exploration of man’s end and man’s conclusions as one apart from God (2:14-23) to a few words regarding life having meaning if one is a Son of the covenant who understands life in light of God. The only answer to the despair of 2:14-23 is to reckon with the reality of the God of the Covenant. 2:24-26 reveals that the pursuit of meaning in the context of pleasure and labor, can only be found if one presupposes the God of the Bible.

So, in 2:24-26 we see the deep clouds of depression part and the sunlight of hope enters again. If man will reckon with God … if man will live in light of God man can have hope. If man will receive his pleasure and labor as from the hand of God (24) and understand them in light of God man no longer has to be one who hates life. Man’s life can have meaning but only as one who lives as submitted to God. The Teacher can have enjoyment like no other because he receives what he receives from the “hand of God.”

Notice when God is submitted to, the pleasure and the labor that found so much despair suddenly change to matters that find joy unspeakable.

Vs. 26 gives us a strong hint that the way we are understanding the text is correct. God deals with His covenant people in one way and he deals with those outside the covenant in another way. The last phrase in vs. 26 “this too is meaningless … a chasing of the wind” refers then to God’s non arbitrary judgment upon the efforts of the sinner … efforts that have been chronicled earlier.

Conclusion

Re-cap

Prominent Communist On Communism And Christianity

“We hate Christians and Christianity. Even the best of them must be considered our worst enemies. They preach love of one’s neighbor and mercy, which is contrary to our principles. Christian love is an obstacle to the development of the Revolution. Down with love for our neighbor! What we want is hate…. Only then can we conquer the universe.”

Anatole Lunarcharsky — 1875 – 1933
Russia Commissar of Education

There is a great deal of hate for Christians and Christianity swirling around and a great deal of that hate is coming from thinly disguised Marxists.

Characteristics Of A Collectivist Order

You can identify a move towards a collectivist order by seeing the surge towards

1.) Uniformity

Everything must be the same. Remember the Collectivist State is like a Machine and in order for Machines to work they have to be standardized. Standardization in the social order is just another word for Uniformity. The cogs may differ slightly in what the cog’s role is in the machine but all cogs have the same value and worth. (Except of course the Elite running the machine.)

2.) Amalgamation

Everything for the State … nothing outside of the State.

Amalgamation, also serves the end of uniformity. Amalgamation is the process by which uniformity is arrived at. Like a mulligan stew all distinctions among the leftovers must be eliminated by being thrown into the same stew. Amalgamation is arrived at by everything moving down to the least common denominator. This amalgamation process is what Van Til referred to as “integration downward into the void.” Amalgamation explains our current preoccupation with denying gender roles and now even gender distinctions. Amalgamation is typically pursued in the name of “fairness.” Another example of amalgamation in our culture is the “no student left behind program,” in our Government Schools. The program amalgamated the superior students downward to the level of the inferior students as the superior students were not allowed to press ahead at their speed so that they may be yoked to help those slower students. The results has been that no student has been left behind because all students were amalgamated into the left behind status.

3.) Bureaucratization

Since the Collective runs everything there must be a bureaucracy to do the running and then a bureaucracy to make sure the bureaucracy, that is responsible for the machinery, is indeed running the machinery. Then of course there is the bureaucracy to keep an eye on all the cogs to make sure they are not being un-cog like. The collectivist state because of uniformity and amalgamation must have Bureaucrats whose role it is to ensure that everyone is remaining Uniform and that everyone is being amalgamated.

4.) Militarization

It is a police state and so someone has to make sure that everyone stays in line. Keep an eye out for how the local police and County Sheriff become increasingly militarized in their approach to the citizenry. Means of resistance of the citizenry are eliminated.

5.) Centralization

Orders come from on high. Jurisdictional spheres are eliminated. Planning is done by the State and not by the individual. Prices and wages are set. A Borg like existence begins to predominate as the society is identified with and as the State. Formerly mediating institutions are subsumed into the state.

6.) Proliferation of Law

The collectivist state proliferates law so that its citizenry can’t possible know what is legal and illegal. This allows the collectivist state to instantly negate any citizen who isn’t uniform and doesn’t amalgamate. The collectivist State simply arrests said citizen and charges them with any number of laws that are on the books. This allows the State to become the complete arbiter of law. Every citizen is guilty of something whenever the State desires for them to be guilty.

Dominion As Functional Image

Typically when the discussion regarding man as the Image of God begins the emphasis almost immediately falls on ontological categories. The Westminster Larger Catechism, when speaking about the Image of God begins with the ontological categories,

Question 17: How did God create man?

Answer: After God had made all other creatures, he created man male and female; formed the body of the man of the dust of the ground, and the woman of the rib of the man, endued them with living, reasonable, and immortal souls; made them after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness,and holiness; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it, and dominion over the creatures; yet subject to fall.

However we want to note here that the WLC not only lists the ontological realities of man as the Image of God, but it also lists one of the functional realities. Man revealed himself as God’s Image by what he did. Man revealed himself as God’s Image bearer by having dominion over the Creatures.

The Scripture teases out this functional dynamic of man as Image bearer by saying,

Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The emphasis here, regarding man as the bearer of God’s Image, falls on functionality more then ontological correspondence. This is not to say that the ontological aspects of man as the Image bearer of God are not true. It is merely to say that the emphasis in Scripture (as we shall see) is on the functional aspects.

Adam and Eve were charged with reflecting God’s Image by “ruling” over the creation. In doing so they would be imaging God as the Sovereign Ruler over all. The rule of Adam and Eve, there in the Garden, was to be an ectypal shadow of which God’s rule was the archetypal reality. Just as God, in creation, subdued the chaos, exercised regency, and filled the earth, so Adam and Eve were to Image God, upon God’s command, by subduing, ruling, and filling the earth by being fruitful and multiplying.

Genesis 2:15 hits this theme again,

15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

The idea of dressing and keeping the garden would include the idea of serving and protecting it. The Garden thus becomes a kind of Temple Sanctuary in which Adam as a High Priest and Eve, as his help-meet, were placed in order to Image God in the pleasurable duties that were laid upon them as Image Bearers. That the Garden is a Temple Sanctuary is seen by God presence in the Garden and His communion with Adam and Eve.

Though not explicitly stated in the text, Adam’s failure as High Priest over God’s Temple Garden is seen in his failure to serve and protect the Temple Garden. With Adam’s failure to keep the serpent out of the Garden Sanctuary Adam’s is unfaithful to the assignment to serve and protect the Temple Garden. The immediate consequence of Adam’s failure to Image God was the loss of the woman, who was given to Adam to Image Adam. Adam’s failure in Imaging God led to the failure of the Woman to Image Adam. The Serpent, having eluded God’s covenantal ordering by eluding Adam’s serving and protecting role, seeks to continue to upset God’s covenantal ordering, circumventing Adam’s authority by eliciting Eve into joining him in creating a New World Order. Adam has failed in the Imaging task of Dominion to which he was called and in his failure he Images the Serpent. (The Serpent gained traction by way of deception and soon enough Adam is practicing deception by hiding from God and by blaming the Woman God had given him.)

Adam, as God’s functional Image bearer, has failed with his attempt to seize God’s place. Subsequently, Adam will reap what he has sown as seen in Eve’s curse to be always grasping for Adam’s position instead of being content as Adam’s Image bearer. (“Your desire shall be for your husband [i.e. — for his position] and he shall rule over you.”) Because of this dominion, filling the earth by being fruitful and multiplying, and a reversal of the Serpent’s hold will have to be restored by another Adam who always is content to be the express image of His person.

Before pushing on here, let us note that this functional Image bearing of Adam was not divorced from his ontological Image bearing. Obviously Adam could not serve and protect the Temple Sanctuary, could not bear hegemony as God’s Steward King, could not be fruitful and multiply apart from true knowledge, righteousness and holiness, which characterized the ontological correspondence between Adam as the creature Image bearer and God as the uncreated Regent. Man cannot do (functionality) what he is not.

However, before the successful eschatological Adam arrives (that is, the Adam who is all that the failed 1st Adam was commanded to be) other Adam models arise and fail at being faithful functional Image bearers of God.

Observations

1.) Man is a Imaging being. Imaging is an inescapable concept. Man will either Image the God of the Bible and His Christ or he will Image some other false God (Idol). There is no neutrality.

2.) Failure in Adam’s Imaging God meant failure in Adam’s created Image (Eve) imaging Adam. Failure in the creature Creator relationship always means failure in the creature creature relationship.

3.) Lex Talionis (the punishment fits the crime).

Adam reaps with Eve (her constant desire for his position) what he sowed with God (a desire for His position).

Next Entry — Other failed Adam Image bearer models and the failure of Corporate Israel to be reflect God’s Image

R2K’er Advocates For Allowing Civil Rights Of Marriage To LGBT

After documenting how Europeans (particularly the French) can be pro on legalizing sodomite and lesbian approximation of marriage while at the same time opposing sodomite and lesbian couples raising children one young R2K’er offers this gem,

“Do the French point the way to a potential compromise? Increasingly most Americans are loath to restrict gays and lesbians from exercising the same rights associated with their relationships that married couples have. Yet the most persuasive public arguments against gay marriage continue to revolve around the interests of children. The evidence is solid (though minimized, due to the politicization of the debate) that children do best when raised by two biological parents – both the father and the mother. Of course, as far as adoption is concerned such an ideal is unattainable. Nevertheless, as much as possible it can be approximated.”

1.) Apart from presupposing the God of the Bible and His special revelation by what standard do we adjudicate “best” as in, “that children do best when raised by two biological parents.”

2.) Apart from presupposing the God of the Bible and His special revelation why should anyone care about children at all? Apart from the God of the Bible and His special revelation why even think that a family consists of a Dad, Mom and children? Why not three Moms, two Dads and children? Why not five Moms and one Dad and children?

3.) Here is a article that contends that studies reveal that children who grow up with sodomite and lesbian parents do not suffer, in the least, when compared to children who grow up with heterosexually normal parents. I choose to believe this study over the R2K’er studies. How is his appeal to Natural law going to defeat my appeal to Natural law?

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20051012/study-same-sex-parents-raise-well-adjusted-kids

4.) Is this R2K’er suggesting that people have rights to sin? Is this R2K’ers saying that God’s Natural Law teaches that sodomites and lesbians have the same rights to the civil rights of marriage as a heterosexual man and woman? Where do these rights for sodomite and lesbian civil rights marriage come from for this R2K’er? If God’s Natural law and His revealed law both teach the same thing, where does this R2K’er get off suggesting that sodomites and lesbians have a right to civil rights marriage as long as they don’t corrupt (in his opinion) children?

R2K’er

“The issue here is not a matter of religious morality. Christian teaching, like that of other major religions, is as condemning of heterosexual immorality (i.e., sex outside of marriage, unnecessary divorce) as it is of homosexuality. But the French remind us that this is not really what the political debate should be about. It should be about children and the vital social role of the family.”

1.) So, children and the vital social role of the family is not about religious morality? If this isn’t about religious morality then who cares about children and vital social role of the family? Is our R2K’er saying that the matter of children and the vital social role of the family is not a religiously moral issue? I presume that our R2K’er is saying that protecting children and the vital social role of the family is a good thing. How can we know what a good thing is apart from religious morality. Or maybe he is saying that it is a good thing that protecting children and the vital social role of the family isn’t determined by religious morality? But how would we know that that it is a good thing that protecting children and the vital social role of the family isn’t determined by religious morality without some religious morality?

2.) This R2K’er commits the common R2K fallacy that somehow political debates are not at their core religious or theological debates. Notice how he assumes that we don’t have to deal with religious morality when we are in a political realm that is cordoned and sequestered from the theological or religious realm.

R2K’er

“The fact is, if America is ever to become serious about rebuilding the social fabric of marriage and the family, government and the various institutions of civil society will have to be much more proactive in reestablishing the link between marriage and the procreation and raising of children. Yet there is no reason why this has to require the restriction of the legal or civil rights of gays and lesbians, let alone a focus on matters pertaining to homosexuality. In reality, rebuilding a culture of marriage and fidelity would step on the toes of far more heterosexuals than of gays and lesbians. The question is, are we willing to place the interests of children back at the center of our public discussions of sexuality, marriage, and the family?

Perhaps the heirs of the French Revolution have something to teach us after all.”

1.) Again … where does Natural Law teach that sodomites and lesbian have a right to normalize and legalize their sin?

2.) Some studies are being released that suggest that children being intimate with adults is a healthy thing. Why not promote the interests of the children is this way?

A Dutch study published in 1987 found that a sample of boys in paedophilic relationships felt positively about them. And a major if still controversial 1998-2000 meta-study suggests – as J Michael Bailey of Northwestern University, Chicago, says – that such relationships, entered into voluntarily, are “nearly uncorrelated with undesirable outcomes”.

Most people find that idea impossible. But writing last year in the peer-reviewed Archives of Sexual Behaviour, Bailey said that while he also found the notion “disturbing”, he was forced to recognise that “persuasive evidence for the harmfulness of paedophilic relationships does not yet exist”.

Obviously our R2K’er is allowing his religious bias to color his interpretation of Natural law.