In our last article, we introduced the theme of the Book of Ecclesiastes and covered chapter 1, verses 1-7. The key phrase in the book is under the sun. Ecclesiastes records the fruit of a lifetime spent in a serious and sincere search for meaning and truth. It faithfully recounts the sum total of man’s best efforts to discern the meaning of the visible world without considering the revelation that God has given of himself in his Word. We saw that the writer’s thesis was "meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless." Such a message must lead to the utter futility expressed in verse 3, "What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?" If everything is without meaning or purpose, then why bother with anything?

For clarity, we will define some words that we will be using. Definitions are essential to true knowledge. Until we can define something clearly, it is questionable if we really understand it. Definitions and presuppositions go hand in hand. Our basic presuppositions determine everything else that we believe. If our basic presuppositions are wrong, then everything built on those presuppositions is wrong. If our belief that the Bible is the trustworthy Word of God is false, then we are fools and the unbeliever is right. Of course, the reverse also is true! This is precisely Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20. Heaven and hell hang on the right presuppositions.

The terms we will define appear on television newscasts as well as in newspapers and magazines. It is necessary to understand these terms if we are to understand the world in which we live. These words do not occur in the Book of Ecclesiastes, but the philosophy and world and life-view behind them is precisely that which the writer of Ecclesiastes addressed. You may be tempted to say, "I am not interested in philosophic words and terms," but believe me, you face the reality of these terms every time you go to the grocery store, watch television, read a book or newspaper, and even when you go to church. We need to know what these words mean in order to understand what the news media reports, what politicians express, and above all, what the Word of God communicates in the Book of Ecclesiastes. The Book of Ecclesiastes, as no other book in the Bible, lays out in living color, the philosophic arrogance and blindness of our present society. If we understand Ecclesiastes, we will:

Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes could be those of a twentieth-century secularist. His method of searching for truth and reality, and the conclusions he reached are identical to those found in the never-ending list of self-help books on the best-seller list. Listening to the Seeker in Ecclesiastes is like watching the top ten popular music videos on MTV. The outlook and utter frustration of Ecclesiastes is the same philosophy of despair expressed in the literature and art of twentieth-century secularism and existentialism, as well as that of twenty-first-century postmodernism. "I’m OK and you’re OK" may appear to mean we are both all right, but in reality it implies that neither of us, nor anyone else, is really okay, simply because there is no such state as okay. What is all right for you is not necessarily satisfactory or acceptable for me.

We must understand the biblical perspective behind the Book of Ecclesiastes as well as the world and life-view of the society in which we live. Understanding presuppositional thinking enables us to foresee the probable results of actions that spring from various ideologies.

R.L. Dabney was a presuppositional thinker who wrote an article at the time of the women’s suffrage movement. Dabney was not against the movement or voting rights for women, but he was opposed to the basic arguments used to promote the movement. He predicted ten specific things that were sure to follow if the thinkers of his day left the basic presuppositions of the argument unchallenged and did not show them to be dangerous. All ten of his predictions proved true, even though others scorned him and accused him of fear mongering. Dabney was no prophet with a crystal ball, he merely recognized that if you choose ‘A’, then it is inevitable that ‘B’ must follow.

I was a pastor in Canada when the United Church of Canada declared that homosexuality was an acceptable lifestyle. Twenty years later, that denomination was dismayed when an avowed homosexual wanted them to ordain him. The Methodist and Episcopal Churches in the United States face the same situation today. The issue of homosexual pastors was settled when the church consented to homosexuality as an approved lifestyle. It was only a matter of time before our culture developed practices in keeping with the logical conclusions of permissible homosexuality. As our society works out more and more of the logical conclusions of that position, they deny more and more biblical truths.

The attitude of utter despair experienced by the Seeker in Ecclesiastes was inevitable once he adopted his under the sun world and life-view. We must understand that drugs, alcohol and loose sexuality did not produce our present perverse society. Our society needed those things to fill the pain of an empty and meaningless life. Everything the world offers by way of diversion is like a giant aspirin tablet. Aspirin does not cure what causes a headache; it merely dulls the pain. Our society’s philosophy has produced the same kind of a "vanity, vanity, all is vanity" Hollywood-fantasy world in which the Seeker wandered for most of his life. That philosophy also gave our society the giant head and heartache it tries in vain to cure apart from a return to the true and living God.

The first word we need to understand is the word secular. It is the consistent and thorough application of practical atheism to all areas of life. Secular is the opposite of sacred or religious. It is a total nonreligious approach to life. Since there is no God, there is nothing sacred. A true secularist cannot be content until he has removed every reality and symbol of God and religion from public life. The only reality that exists is what you can touch, taste, see, hear, and smell. It is to life what WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) is to a computer monitor.

Secularism is a conscious attempt to understand and explain life without any thought of or reference to God. It is the life under the sun perspective of the Seeker in Ecclesiastes. It is the Russian experiment of deliberate atheism for over forty years. It is the present official religion (and it is a religion) of both the government and society in the United States today. This explains our present society’s attitude to former President Clinton’s "mistakes." You cannot charge a person with sin if there is no such thing as sin. Our society was only being consistent with its convictions that there are no moral absolutes. It is why ninety percent of American women believe abortion is wrong for them, but become outraged when anyone says that it is wrong for someone else. When news commentators refer to the secularization of our society, they mean this attitude and mindset.

The word secular denotes that which is worldly or opposite of sacred. As early as 1846, it described the doctrine that bases morality solely with regard to the well-being of humankind in this present life, to the exclusion of belief in God or an afterlife (The Oxford Universal Dictionary). Today, it has come to be associated with an anti-sacred mentality wherein religion has no rightful or appropriate place in modern society and culture. Actually, the secularist views religion as the cause of all our modern ills.

The second word we must define is humanism. Humanism is the worship of man for his own sake. It is similar in some ways to secularism. Humanism is concerned with merely human interests: loving our neighbor, helping the human race, etc. Humanism, as a philosophy of life, and being humane in your attitude and treatment of other people are two different things. Christians ought to be humane; their behavior and disposition towards others ought to befit a human created in the image of God—kind, courteous, and civil. They ought not to be humanists. The humanist believes that individual human beings are the fundamental source of all value, and human beings have the ability to understand—and perhaps even to control—the natural world by careful application of their own rational faculties. Humanism is committed to the belief that man is good. It denies the depravity of man and therefore fails miserably at every turn.

The third term is secular humanism. This brand of humanism is currently in vogue. It differs from the earlier classical humanism of Dante, Erasmus and others. The modern secular brand of humanism is a naturalistic, and hence anti-super-naturalistic, rationalistic and atheistic approach to life, truth, faith and meaning. Apparently, the only absolute truth in secular humanism is that there is no absolute truth.

I was preaching in a college town when a young man walked angrily out of the church service. He waited outside after the service and was almost angry enough to fight. He insisted that I had no right to say dogmatically that Christ was The way, The truth, and The life. The young man had no objection to Christ being "A" way or "A" truth. He insisted that we could not be dogmatic about anything, since everything is an open question. He kept insisting that there is no absolute truth. I said, "Are you telling me that I cannot be absolutely sure about even one thing?" Without hesitation he replied, "That is correct." I then asked him, "Are you sure about that?" He replied, "I am positive." That is precisely the position of the modern secular humanist; he is positive that you cannot be positive about anything.

If the secular humanists are right and there is no God, then we indeed live in a closed universe where self and sin reign and death ends all. If under the sun is all there is, then the secularist is right when he says, "He who dies with the most toys wins." The entire story has been written and there can be nothing new added. No new birth; No answer to prayer; No life after death; No real or lasting change; No Holy Spirit; No forgiveness. Therefore, there is NO HOPE. We will come back to this point. Realities for the believer are childish daydreams to the secular humanist.

The fourth term is deism. This is a belief in the existence of a god, with rejection of the idea of revelation beyond the natural world. A deist would be a religious secularist if those were not contradictory terms. He will use what Francis Schaeffer calls "God words." Those are words used to produce an effect, but that have no concrete meaning. These God words are meant to arouse certain feelings, but never to convey objective facts. The Environmental Movement that seeks to save God’s Creation does not mean by that terminology that they really believe that God literally created the earth. When they use the word god, they do not necessarily mean the creator God of the Bible. When a movie star, or politician, says, "God bless you all," they could mean anything. The phrase may refer to nothing more real than Santa Claus!

The deist bases his belief in a god entirely on reason, without any reference to faith, revelation, or institutional religion. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, advances in the natural sciences often fostered confidence that the regularity of nature reflected the benevolence of a divine providence. This confidence, together with a widespread distrust of the church, made deism a popular view in England and on the continent. It made it possible to say you believed in God, when in reality you had disrobed God of every vestige of deity.

The deist believes that God (some kind of power or whatever) created the world and left it to run under the control of natural law. This is the "big clock" view. The deist denies God’s personal and sovereign control over the world and its events. There can be nothing new inserted into the universe (See Ecclesiastes 1:8-11). There is no new birth, no answers to prayer, and no divine intervention of any kind. The world of reality is a closed system whose only hope or help is man himself. A deist is really a religious atheist in practice. The key words in defining deism are impersonal God and natural law.

Three things characterize secularism, humanism and deism: (1) An impersonal God, if there is one at all; (2) the total rule of natural law without any super-natural intervention; and (3) the universe as a closed system. What we see under the sun is all there is! We are locked in—there is no outside help. There is nobody "out there."

The fifth term is nihilism. Nihilism is defined as negative doctrines in religion and morals. The root word nihil means a thing of no value or worth. This differs from humanism, which posits a value on human life, even though that value may have been arbitrarily assigned, and from deism, which values the natural world as sufficient to explain our existence. Where secularism believes that morality should be based on the well-being of humankind in this present life, nihilism believes that there is no morality and the well-being of humanity is irrelevant. A nihilist rejects all religious beliefs and moral principles and believes that nothing can be known or communicated. This philosophy is becoming increasingly prevalent in our society.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 gives us a good description of the fruit of nihilism. "That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘See, this is new?’ 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." (NKJ)

1. No new circumstances – "What has been…"
2. No new human endeavor – "What has been done…"
3. No hope of significantly changing anything – "There is no remembrance of either former or future things…" only the eternal "now."

Nihilism can be understood in several different ways. Political Nihilism works itself out in an attempt to destroy existing political, social, and religious order in order to achieve future improvement. Conditions in the social order are so bad as to make total destruction of everything and everybody desirable for its own sake, independent of any plausible reconstructive program. George Bush, Senior was defeated (for better or worse) when the Democrats persuaded the country to turn to nihilism. "Anything is better than what we now have. We cannot stand four more years of this." "Ethical Nihilism or moral nihilism rejects the possibility of absolute moral or ethical values. Instead, good and evil are nebulous, and values addressing such are the product of nothing more than social and emotive pressures" (Alan Pratt, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm). It fosters the belief that there is no objective truth or any real ground for hope of any kind. All I know for sure is how I feel, and I feel utterly hopeless.

"Existential nihilism is the notion that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, and it is, no doubt, the most commonly used and understood sense of the word today" (Pratt, Internet Encyclopedia). Life has no meaning. Nothing has meaning. The ends justify the means because there is no legitimate basis for any moral principle. One is free to indulge in whatever behavior one desires regardless of the consequences, because it is all meaningless.

According to nihilism, life is completely amoral, a conclusion that works itself out historically in such monstrosities as the Nazi reign of terror, various other genocides, and suicide terrorist attacks. Nihilism is the philosophy that drives irrational riots where people destroy their own neighborhood. Life in the Ghetto becomes so unbearable that "anything is better than this." Blow it up! Regardless of how the pieces fall, the situation cannot possibly be worse than it is now. Light the fuse, we have nothing to lose.

Nihilism is not saying that men forget, meaning that men do not learn from history. Rather, there is no valid history from which to learn anything. There is nothing to learn that can change the present situation. There is no enduring truth whether past, present or future in nihilism. All you have is now and how you feel about it. Look around! This is all there is or all that ever can be! It may make you feel utterly hopeless, but that is irrelevant, because nothing matters anyway.

As I mentioned, verses 9-11 list some of the fruits of nihilism. The past can teach you nothing. It will repeat itself again and there is no way we can change it. In the words of the NIV, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Nothing new or different will come tomorrow. "Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time." Verse 11 reads, "There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow." You may re-write history but you cannot change it. Hitler was right when asked "What will history say of you" and he replied, "if we win the war we will write the history."

Existentialism is the doctrine that man forms his own essence in the course of the life he chooses to lead. It emphasizes man’s responsibility for making his own nature as well as the importance of personal freedom, personal decision, and personal commitment (From the Random House Dictionary of the English Language.) It is a philosophy that leads to despair and affects our society from top to bottom. Up until this century, all philosophies had two things in common. (1) They all believed there was such a thing as absolute truth. Every philosopher set out to find that one absolute truth that would explain reality and integrate all knowledge into an intelligent and clearly defined system. (2) They not only believed there was such a thing as absolute truth, they believed it was worth seeking and finding. They believed they could understand reality and make a significant change by applying the ultimate truth they discovered to all of life.

The philosophy of existentialism changed all of that. Existentialism said, "There is no ultimate truth. All we know for sure is that we exist in the now. Life is like a giant box that has no doors or windows. We have no way of being sure about where we came from, what we are doing here, or where we go when we leave here. All we know is the existential now in which we exist. There is no real past or future, but only now. All you can really know for sure is what you yourself can personally experience. All else is guessing and your guess is as good as mine."

In the eyes of an existentialist, the truly intelligent person is the man or woman who knows how to ask the right questions while fully realizing that there are no answers to those questions. In other words, once you realize there is no place to go then the smart thing to do is to relax and enjoy the ride to nowhere. The philosophy of existentialism is another facet of the life under the sun philosophy of Ecclesiastes. The Seeker could have been Jean Paul Sartre’s grandfather! A clear understanding of Ecclesiastes leads to a clear understanding of twentieth century life and philosophy.

The real problem with existentialism is that man cannot continue to live in the awful despair of facing an unknowable reality. Suicide begins to look tempting. Sartre recognized this and told his students the first day of class that suicide may not be the ultimate answer. Francis Schaeffer saw this same fact. After taking students through both an honest evaluation of reality and the biblical view of truth, Schaeffer would give them a razor blade and a Bible and say, "These are really the only two real options." Man does not like either of those options. His love of self and his pride refuse to let him bow and worship God, and his fear of death keeps him from suicide. He tries every means to escape reality, but all of his efforts are useless. Both Ecclesiastes and the modern history of man are a record of how futile those attempts are. They prove to be vain and meaningless. Man is trapped in a real but unknowable reality, and he hates every minute of it. He hears his chains rattle even as he boasts about being a free spirit. It is important that we see that this awful despair is inevitable because God designed it that way. You cannot live and play in his ballpark successfully while totally ignoring HIM. If a sinner could find genuine meaning and contentment in this life while living in deliberate and open rebellion to God, then that sinner has beaten God at his own game!

Every under the sun philosophical approach to problem solving has failed and will continue to do so. Newscasters and politicians can be very provoking. They keep saying in sanctimonious tones, "We must find a way to be sure this never happens again" when they know there is no way to stop it from happening again. We are locked into one of two options. We either return to God and his truth or we continue the march to more and worse chaos. The strange part is that secular man would rather be in total chaos as long as he is the center of attention than he would fall down and admit he is a sinful creature who needs help from God!

The alternative to under the sun philosophies is an over the sun philosophy. This approach to interpreting the events of the world around us is best exemplified by the biblical doctrine nicknamed Calvinism. Calvinism is another term that needs definition.

A Calvinistic Christian believes in a God who sovereignly controls all things. God is holy, loving, gracious, faithful, and personally involved in all things. Key words for a Calvinist are "personality of God" and "sovereign control by God." Calvinistic Christians are often charged with believing that "what will be, will be, whether it is supposed to be or not." This is not at all what we believe. Some have wrongly responded to this caricature and said, "What will be, will be, only because it was supposed to be." However, that still does not correctly state what we believe. We believe that "Everything that has been, is now, or ever will be, was, is, and will be, only because God sovereignly ordained it and brought it to pass." No one can either hinder or hasten one single thing that God has ordained. As we will see in chapter three of Ecclesiastes, everything, without a single exception, has a specific time and purpose. The believer sees both good and evil as coming from God’s hand. They both serve a purpose (Romans 8:28). This awesome fact is a source of hope and assurance for the child of God and a cause of utter frustration and enmity to the lost man.

There are three things that characterize Calvinistic theology: (1) A personal God; (2) who is Creator of all things; (3) and who sovereignly controls all things, people, and events so they all move toward the end he has ordained for his own glory (Rom. 11:36).

If a deist (big clock person), a secularist (nothing sacred fellow), a humanist, and a nihilist had a debate with a Christian and only empirical evidence (what you can see, taste, touch) were allowed, the Christian would lose every time. Why? Read the Book of Ecclesiastes! If "Vanity of Vanity" is the true interpretation of life as we observe it from ground level, or under the sun, and the data derived from that observation is all the evidence we can use, we will lose every time! We will be forced to agree with the Seeker, "All is Meaningless!" We might as well drink or drug our way into oblivion or descend into nihilistic anarchy or apathy.

The Apostle Paul understood the futility of living life on an under the sun plane. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable" (1 Cor. 15:19 NKJ).

Think through what Paul has written. If the premise: "In this life only…" is true, then the only conclusion is, "We are of all men most miserable." What is the premise of the Seeker in Ecclesiastes? This life is all there is. The only hope we have is what we can see, taste, and touch. What is the certain and honest conclusion to that premise? We must conclude with the Seeker, "Vanity of Vanities - Meaningless, Meaningless."

Paul mentions a great word that we need to define. Notice the word hope in the Corinthians text. Because Christ is indeed risen, we, as believers, have HOPE! That hope is rooted in a factual and trustworthy history from which we may learn unchanging truth. The resurrection of our Lord is a historical fact and not a myth. The truth of that fact, when believed today, gives absolute assurance and hope for tomorrow. We are not talking about wishing, but about hope. Hope is not the same as wishing. A person misuses the word when he says, "I hope it does not rain tomorrow." He is wishing, not hoping. Hope is different from faith in that (1) faith looks back to the promise of God for its foundation and (2) hope looks forward in joyful anticipation to the fulfillment of the promise. Hope embodies not only the assurance that the thing promised will happen; it includes also the desire of having it happen.

Suppose a father warns his son that if he misbehaves and hassles his mother, he will receive a spanking when the father gets home from work. The son misbehaves and his mother says, "That’s it, I’m telling your father and you are going to be spanked." The boy has explicit faith that his father will fulfill his "promise." He knows punishment is coming; however, he does not keep looking out the window, hoping his father will come up the walk. He is not joyfully looking forward to what he knows for sure is coming next. This helps us to understand the text concerning the promise of Christ’s second coming. "And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3 KJV). A true faith in the second coming will produce a purifying effect in a believer’s life. A believer can lose his hope, but he cannot lose his faith.

Now think carefully! If there is no real history from which we can learn anything, and if there is no possible way of knowing anything in the future, is there any possible basis for having a valid hope of anything? NO! If in this life only we place all our hope, we are indeed in a meaningless and futile situation. We can feel the futility that the Seeker in Ecclesiastes describes so vividly.

An under the sun philosophy does not provide any expectation of justice. Most of us realize that most wrongs will not be made right in this life.

That is one-hundred percent correct IF there is no heaven or hell. Paul does not leave us to wonder if we have been the victims of some cosmic joke. He begins verse 20 of 1 Corinthians 15 with the word BUT. Thank God for his BUTS. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." That is real history! It really happened! It is not a myth or fairy tale. The firstfruits guarantee a full harvest. There surely is more to follow in the future. Count on it! The logic of faith gives us an attitude exactly opposite of the logic of the under the sun despair in Ecclesiastes.

Paul continues with assurance that life and belief are not in vain. "And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Cor 15:49-58).

I remember preaching on this passage in a church where a woman in a wheelchair was sitting in the front row. She had a nerve disease that caused her to shake when she got excited. Her hands started to shake and she put one on top of the other to try to keep them still. Her feet started to jump up and down and she tried to put one on top of the other one. Finally she just gave up and started stomping her feet and waving her arms shouting, "Glory to God, it is true!"

The secularist, the humanist, the deist and the nihilist all mock every word in those verses in 1 Corinthians 15. None of them can taste a single drop of hope from these verses. These glorious truths are beyond their abilities to either perceive or enjoy. Their whole life is here and now, under the sun. They will cry out, "Away with your pie in the sky! I believe in the here and now!" They openly and loudly will mock the gospel in many circumstances. Did you ever notice that they do not mock either the gospel or the sovereignty of God at a funeral or in the emergency room at the hospital? I have never heard anyone standing by a grave and mocking the gospel about a risen Savior.

It is impossible to reject truth and still have valid hope. You can use any number of means to escape to a more palatable reality, but eventually, inevitably, you must come back to the real world. You can get spaced out! But you must come back to reality! You can stick your head in the sand! But you must come up for air! You can get on the fast lane. But there are no exits! You can have a real blast tonight, but you have to wake in the morning. If life under the sun is all there is, then the secularist, the humanist, the nihilist and the existentialist are right and Christians are the biggest fools that ever lived. However, we Christians feel we have a right to ask some obvious questions. If we are so wrong and the Christ-rejecters are so correct, why do they need so many pills, thrills, frills, constant changes of everything (including marriage, and live-in mates, face-lifts, implants, etc…)? Why does nothing bring them any lasting peace or joy?

What am I talking about? I am not just talking about the Seeker in Ecclesiastes, I am also talking about twenty-first-century existentialism. I am talking about the philosophy of despair; the total death of hope. I am talking about the same thing that is being written, sung, painted, pictured on TV and in movies almost twenty-four hours a day.

This is the age of despair! People feel like they live in a plastic society. "I feel unfulfilled in a meaningless life. I need to find myself and get in touch with the real me." The next time anyone gives you that "I need to find myself" diatribe to justify walking out of their responsibilities, smile and say, "With all my heart I hope you really find the real you. Then you will know what a really selfish and ignorant person you really are!"

We must constantly remember that under the sun is the life we see, experience, and try to make sense of without any reference to God. It is life seen from the point of ground level only. This will teach us some essential lessons. First, no matter what we do or seek, if we make that our goal or our god, it is meaningless and soon becomes vanity. You can hang Ecclesiastes 1:3 over every goal in life. At the end of every self-constructed tunnel, there will be a brick wall with a sign on it that says, "Dead end! You went the wrong way!"

Second, we must remind ourselves who this Seeker is, what his pursuit was, and how zealous and exhaustive his pursuit was. The Seeker was, next to our Lord, one of the wisest men who ever lived, one of the wealthiest man who ever lived, and one of the most powerful men who ever lived. His conscious goal was to find truth and reality regardless of the cost or effort. He was liberated, and without a single inhabitation.

In 1:13, the Seeker set his heart to experience anything he desired. "And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith."

In 2:10, he withheld nothing his heart wanted. "And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour."

You and I may gloss over every failure to be satisfied with some excuse. We always have a Yes, but … or an If only …

The Seeker had every resource, spent it all and still found nothing. He experienced everything the human heart can imagine and had only an empty heart to show for all his effort. There were no excuses for his failure except that what he so diligently sought did not exist where he chose to look. The Holy Spirit recorded this man’s futile efforts in order to show that if this man, with every possible advantage, could not find truth and reality in this world apart from God’s revelation of himself, then no one can. That is the message of Ecclesiastes. Remember these facts about the Seeker as we travel with him on his wasted trips down one blind alley after another.

Third, we must keep reminding ourselves that there is someone over the sun. We do not live in a closed universe; we are not alone and without hope. Our God reigns!

To be continued.