A Fruitless Search

David Poland

Ecclesiastes: Life in a Broken World • Sermon • Submitted 3 months ago • Presented 3 months ago

Ecclesiastes 1:12–18

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Sermon 3 in a series through the Book of Ecclesiastes

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Transcript

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 44:1-16

Psalm 44:1–16 ESV

O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old: you with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted; you afflicted the peoples, but them you set free; for not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them, but your right hand and your arm, and the light of your face, for you delighted in them. You are my King, O God; ordain salvation for Jacob! Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down those who rise up against us. For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me. But you have saved us from our foes and have put to shame those who hate us. In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah But you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies. You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoil. You have made us like sheep for slaughter and have scattered us among the nations. You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them. You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us. You have made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples. All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face at the sound of the taunter and reviler, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:20-21

1 Corinthians 1:20–21 ESV

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

Sermon:

Good Morning Church!

I was glad when they said to me let us go and worship in the house of the Lord!

Truly, as much as i'm grateful and was grateful to be able to go be with my family for my granddad’s Funeral... I'm not a fan of preaching to A computer screen as i record the sermons. And i truly missed being here with you all. So, I'm excited today to be back in person to be able to share god's word with you all.

And as we start, let's start with a little bit of a review of what we've covered in Ecclesiastes. We've seen, who is writing: It's the preacher. The son of David, Solomon probably, And he was teaching us that all the world is vanity... all of it. Everything we do, everything we set our mind to, everything we commit our heart to, it's all vanity... “vanity of vanities”.

And then in the in the opening poem, he went through how the way the world works illustrates its vanity the sea is never full, the sun never ceases in its eternal circuit in the sky... There is vanity in the way we do things, because there's nothing new under the sun. There's no remembrance of things that have already come. In the future we will all be forgotten. All of this is vanity.

And now as we turn our attention to Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verses 12 through 18. The end of chapter 1,

The bulk of the book of Ecclesiastes will here start. And the preacher will begin to teach us through the things that he have has learned and done and experienced. And this in a lot of ways is what makes the book of Ecclesiastes so unique, And beautiful.

By way of example, at the church Desiree and I met at, we worked together in the youth ministry. We were volunteers, college-age kids, helping. Mostly that helping was just to be with and hang out with the youth. And the youth pastor there was a very kind and sweet man. A man who loved the kids that he oversaw and loved the lord. Which to me are the two most important qualifications for any youth pastor. But there was one thing that this youth pastor struggled with And that was that he had lived a very, very sheltered life. He was raised in the church. Grew up in the church never really experienced the world. Graduated and went to a christian college, got a christian ministry degree then straight to work in the church. And so his experience with the world. Was rather limited.

And so often kids would come up to him with problems and trials and troubles. And though, he could offer sound biblical advice. There's a lot of ways that he couldn't necessarily relate to, or maybe it is more right to say that he would not always fully understand the kids.

The preacher of Ecclesiastes does not have this issue.

He is able to, from the depth of his experience in this world describe for us the pain of this earth. But also he is able to give to us what god has said. These are lessons learned in the crucible of life. The preacher Solomon speaks to us as one who has been there, done that and got the certificate of participation. And so he speaks with an heir of authority on these topics. And so, when he says, I've tried this, I've done this. I've been there. We know he's telling us the truth.

And so the first place we start and what will be looking at today is wisdom. He sought wisdom, he's gained wisdom. He's been wise, he's been, in fact the most wise And yet he still willing to tell us Vanity of vanities ALL Is vanity.... Yes even wisdom.

Ecclesiastes 1:12–18 ESV

I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And 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. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. 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.” 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. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

These are the words of the lord for us this morning. Let's open. With a word of prayer.

Our father in heaven. We thank you for today. We thank you for your grace and your mercy. We thank you for your goodness towards us. We thank you for all of the things that you show us and teach us, we thank you for the privilege of being your people. And so today we come before you humbly asking you to speak to our hearts and minds. We do pray that you would give us understanding. But here a more full, a deep understanding of who you are of what you've done and what you have called us to be and do. We pray that you would speak to our hearts this morning. I pray that we would be those people who hear your word and are changed. It's in jesus name, we pray. Amen. And amen.

Solomon, the preacher Solomon here. Spent his life. Seeking to find knowledge. And wisdom. And then seeking to find in that knowledge and wisdom, meaning and purpose in life. If we remember back to Solomon's life and we go back and we read in, in first kings, like when he's becoming king, and god comes to him, What do you want? Ask me what you want and i'll give it to you. and Solomon request is a good one: “I want wisdom. I want to know how to lead my people.”

God answers that he will get that and more because he answered in this way. I'm going to bless you, says God, abundantly. So, you'll be wise and you'll have all of the other things that other people might have asked for. But now Solomon, the most wise man to ever live, is now coming to the end of his life. He's coming to the time where he's able to sit back and reflect. Maybe he sees the trouble brewing as he looks on his kids. Maybe he sees and he knows, and he has experienced in great detail, the pain of his wayward time with all of his wives and so he starts to think back and the first place he thinks on is his wisdom.

And maybe, he begins to think, maybe in my wisdom, maybe in seeking to find all of this wisdom, there i have found the meaning of the purpose of life, the universe and everything, But ultimately, what we find is this: In searching for all of your purpose and worth and value, even if you are looking in something as praiseworthy as wisdom. This is a fruitless Search.

And ultimately i think in our text, we see three reasons why wisdom can't get us to where we want to go. Wisdom, in and of itself, seeking after knowledge seeking after wisdom, having all of these things it cannot get us to ultimately where our souls long to be. But, why?

I Have, again, three points for us that i think help. The first is wisdom teaches us. And shows us that all is vanity, because

We can't fix. Everything.

For many of us, maybe you're like me. Your desire in life is to help people fix things. People come to you with issues and you are the guy that can fix it. For me, part of why i love being a pastor In fact, Is i endeavor and i love to help people fix thier lives.

I was grateful for the opportunity to go out to Pittsburgh partly because yeah i got to do a couple sermons at funerals... and those are often some of my favorite sermons. But ultimately, because i was able to be a help to my family. I hope in some small way, i was a comfort to my aunts and uncles and even my cousins. I hope that through the words that i said i was able to bring some comfort and and fix in some small way, not through my own strength or might, but through the holy spirit working through me, but fixing some small way, Some of the pain and troubles that that the whole family was experiencing in this time.

I was able to assist my my aunt who's been tasked with taking care of cleaning up the apartment. And doing those things, i was able to be hopefully be one who could help fix things. And as a pastor this is why i love my job. I love when people come with problems and trials. But very quickly in my life and especially in my ministry, i had to learn this: I can't fix everything. I can know all of the scriptures, I can know all the right words. I can know all of the truths in all of scripture and I can try to apply that to certain situations and certain times. And here's the truth. I can't fix everything. Some things are just broken.

All of the things we do under this sun verse 14, says it's vanity. It's striving after the wind.

Sure, i can help counsel someone through this heartbreak. But what's going to happen when they have another one? As this person is struggling, maybe they lost their job. I can bring help and counsel here, but this isn't the last pain that they're going to experience. We can't shelter ourselves, and we can't shelter one another from the pain and heartache of the world. An ultimately, we know the truth of the proverbs that the preacher gives us in the middle of this text.

Ecclesiastes 1:15 (ESV)

What is crooked cannot be made straight,

There's certain things that just can't be fixed. There's certain hurts and pains that that do not just magically go away because we say, the right verse. There's certain pains and troubles that don't just drift off into bubble gums and rainbows. Because, oh, Oh yeah, i never thought of it that way. Some things just hurt some things just stink. Sometimes life is crooked and broken and sometimes we can't make it straight. There's no amount of wisdom that can fix that. And so trying to find all of your purpose and all of your words and all of your value in wisdom, is a fruitless search says the preacher. Because you can't fix everything.

And in fact some things are so broken you can't even START to fix them.

This is part of what i think is being said with this “what is lacking cannot be counted” half of this proverb.

So first, there's some things that are so bent and crooked we can't make them straight. We can't fix them, but there's other things that we can't even start figuring out how to start fixing them. Because what's lacking can't be counted. We can't even make an account of how broken some of these things are. There's not enough wisdom to fix all of the problems and trials and troubles of the world. So wisdom can't give us all the meaning and purpose and hope in life. We can't fix everything.

And part of the reason we can't fix everything is more fundamental. Solomon spent his been his whole life trying to seek and understand and gain wisdom and knowledge, but here's the problem: You can't know everything.

You can’t KNOW everything

it is not just that you can't fix everything. You can't know it. Solomon spent his life. Speaking to his heart he said: “I have acquired great, wisdom surpassing all who are over jerusalem before me. And my heart has experience of wisdom and knowledge.” I've been there, he is saying, I've been the most wise man i I've known all, really, that there is to know. But that's not true. Because you can't know everything.

Verse 17. I applied my heart to no wisdom. We can know wisdom. On the other hand, there's madness and folly. In the end, It's not much difference.

The difference, Solomon says, between having all knowledge and madness and folly, That difference is like a striving after the wind... you'll never get there. We can't know everything. If you were to be a nerd like myself, and read some philosophy of science and other nerdy things you will come across a rather ostentatious idea. There's this thought that philosophers will often sort of toy with, and it goes like this: If you could know The position of every molecule in the universe. Some say you would be able to adequately predict The way that the entire universe would unfold forever. That the universe... this is the argument, they would make… the universe is nothing more than a causal chain. And this causes this, causes this causes this. And if you could go back and you could understand the, the tiny ways that all the molecules are interacting right now, you'd be able to see forever in the future.... or so They say.

So there's a lot of problems with this. Here's the first you can't know that no one can ever know that our tiny frail human brains can't do that, but even if we were to say, sure, you can know that... here's the real problem: Our tiny created, brains can never grasp the depth of the infinite mind of our creator. So of all the things that are valuable, We really can't know everything.

In the men's bible study Last year, we went through Tozer's knowledge of the holy where he discussed a lot of the attributes of god. And one of the things he said in this book that stuck with me, is there are some things about god that only god can know and only god will know. God is infinitely, great infinitely mighty infinitely loving infinitely just and we cannot ever know that. We do not have the ability to grasp the infinite because we are finite.

We cannot know everything. And so as we set our mind to find wisdom, And we think through our problems and our trials, and our troubles, and we think through the things we're going through... Maybe we think: “well if i just know a little more i'll study a little more at school. I'll learn a little more here. I'll take this class over here and that will fix my problems”. Trust me, that will not fix everything because You can't know everything. And you can't know enough to get over every trial and trouble and problem you have. And so wisdom seeking to find more wisdom and knowledge. As a way to to find purpose and meaning in life, the the preacher says here: “Good luck. You can't know everything.” And so that that hole inside of you that that thinks well if i just need to know a little bit more, i just need to know a little bit better. It will always be there. Because you can't fix everything. You can't know everything, but here's the worst part. We can't even understand everything.

We cant UNDERSTAND everything

It's not just that we think. Well if i had this knowledge, well, then i'll be okay. If i have this knowledge then i can figure it out. Even if you have all the right knowledge, And you have the wisdom even to apply that knowledge. Here's the point: You're not going to be able to understand all of the ways that god works in all of the things that he does. And in fact, the more wisdom you gain, the more understanding you try to get, You may find yourself in a position where you're even more “Up the creek without a paddle.”

Ecclesiastes 1:18 (ESV)

For in much wisdom is much vexation,

We can gain all of this wisdom and knowledge and understanding. But we won't understand everything. This week. By way of example. I hopped online to pay my mortgage. On the first... That's what i do. And I sat down and thought: That’s more than i think it should be. So, i go open up the bill: here was the message: We did your escrow analysis. And your escrow went up… like a lot.

Well, that doesn't make sense. I mean, i understand it goes up sometimes and we've all seen the way everything's going up. I know my taxes went up a little bit but What's going on? So I hop on the little live chat feature there to figure out what is going on.... Okay. Well, The reason you're escrow went up is because your taxes went up this much and your insurance went up this much. And so you owe us this other amount.

In principle I understood this, but I had a problem... i was very confused. Because when you add a (increase in taxes) plus b (increase in insurance) what this one up plus what this one up that doesn't equal c (how much the escrow went up).

Oh, well, it's because you have a minimum amount that you have to have in your escrow account, okay? That makes sense. But i still don't understand how a plus b, doesn't equal c. And over the course of like two. Because i was doing the like live chat feature. The person i was talking to basically just said the exact same words and like five different ways and this did bot bring to me greater understanding. I simply could not Understand. This got to the point where i said, okay, let me tell you what, i think you're saying, And then you tell me where i'm wrong.

She said, okay. So i type it all out... It was Pretty big block of text....And her response was: “No, you understand it, right.” So now I am more frustrated… if i understand it, Then why doesn't it make sense?

Eventually i called You know, forget this, this live chat's not working. So, i called the escrow company. Okay? Why, help me here, can you help this make sense? And they were able to walk me through it. Ultimately, for those of you who desire the end to that story.. it Was because it doesn't matter what a plus b equals… What matters is when we project out to when the lowest time is which will be when this bill comes out, it's going to go to this far negative and so you have to get enough to get there plus the minimum levels in your escrow account.... okay, It finally made a little bit more sense to me.

But her is the point, I spent hours. Trying to understand. How my escrow was working. And in this case, when i got to the end of it, thought i understood that Didn't change the fact that my bill went up. It didn't fix everything. And in fact, even though i could say right now and i could sit you down, i think i could explain what's going on. I don't fully have a full understanding. Wisdom here. Doesn't necessarily help me pay my mortgage bill. Understanding here doesn't fix the underlying problems.

Now that's sort of a quaint, cute example, but many of us can think of more tragic ones...

We've all experienced the pain of “Yeah, i understand. But still hurts. I'm still vexed.”

I mean, i can look out, i can see natural disasters: hurricanes tornadoes tsunamis earthquakes. I can see those things. And i can say, “i understand.” Yeah, this is all a result of the curse, the curse caused this. I can know and read where Paul says all creation groans under the weight of sin. I can understand that. I'm still vexed. Still hurts. It's still painful. I mean, I can understand that in genesis God said, “if you eat of this tree, you will surely die.” And so, when i go to funerals, And we see the reality of death strike us. Sure i can understand. Still vexed. I Still don't fully understand. We're still left questioning why. We're still left with this pain in our heart.

Wisdom, understanding, having all the knowledge doesn't fix the pain. It doesn't erase from our lives, the hurt, and the trial and the trouble. And in fact, sometimes the more we increase our knowledge, all we're doing is adding more reasons for us to be sorrowful.

Ecclesiastes 1:18 ESV

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

We've all experienced the depth of pain of this world.

Wisdom... No matter how much we have, no matter how much we gain, no matter how much we put our heart to, no matter how much we apply it to our lives, It won't fill the need of our soul. It's a fruitless search.

So what do we do? I have two answers to that. One directly from the text I think, the other is let's apply some biblical theological reflection to this thought.

The first one is probably the more practical one. You can't fix everything. So, don't try.

You can't know everything. So quit making that your goal.

You won't understand everything. That's okay.

Because none of these things, the writer of Ecclesiastes, Solomon is getting us to see, None of these things are our end result. It doesn't matter that you can't fix everything, doesn't matter that, you can't know everything. And in fact, admitting that, realizing that lifts the burden of your heart to try to do this and be this and know this and understand this for you and for everyone around you.

Sometimes It's okay Just to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn. You can't fix everything. We can't know everything.

Sometimes the best course of action for us is we face trials. And those around us face trials is to give them a shoulder to cry on as we both weep together because the world is broken. I think that's the application from the text but here's one more thought, i'd like to give you:

Wisdom is good. It's good to know things, it's good to try to fix things. None of these things ,in and of themselves, are bad. But the point. The purpose. What the writer of Ecclesiastes is driving us to see. Is that wisdom cannot fill the void in your heart. Wisdom cannot offer in and of itself Pure comfort and hope. Those things only come through jesus christ.

Jesus, in his death and resurrection conquered all of the enemies of mankind. Sin and death included. We can't fix everything. Jesus can and did.

We can't know everything. We are frail and we have We have.. A roadblock in our mind called our finitude that cannot grasp the infinitude of God. Jesus, The second person of the trinity, god himself, Knows Everything. Trust in him.

We can't understand everything. So trust in our great high priest, the one who, we said this earlier, upholds the universe by the word of his power he does. Trust in him.

When things are going wrong, when we don't know, we can't figure it out, when whatever it is, we're facing… Don't look to your own strength and might and wisdom rather look to your perfect savior. He will deliver us.