In previous studies of Ecclesiastes, we have called the author of this unique book The Seeker. In chapter one, The Seeker introduces his thesis that all is vanity. We have delineated his characterization of life as a treadmill existence, because of the way he himself describes the endless, busy, meaningless world of existence. In Chapter 2, the focus sharpens. The Seeker shows what can, and cannot, be learned from the personal experience of the one man who "has done the whole scene." The Seeker enumerates a list of the pleasures and achievements that he had experienced in life. Many of them were very pleasant and extremely enjoyable, but they were all short lived. There was not a single thing that gave the man any true and lasting satisfaction.

One of the first lessons we can learn from his narration is that getting things and enjoying them are two different matters, both of which are gifts of God.

"Thus we must conclude that even the most mundane and earthly things of life do not lie within man’s grasp to donate to himself. The source of all good, contrary to the expectations of most systems of humanism and idealism, cannot be located in man. "He doesn’t have it," as the old saying goes. It is all beyond him. Rather, it must come from God. Man must get accustomed to realizing that if he is to receive satisfaction from his food and drink, that satisfaction, like all satisfaction, must come from God." (Ecclesiastes - Total Life, by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Moody Press, p. 45)

The writer of Ecclesiastes was both king and teacher. He had wealth, power, freedom, knowledge, and wisdom without limitations. He was neither a rich simpleton nor a poor genius. He had all the resources and all the abilities necessary to qualify him to evaluate reality. There were no excuses if he did not find that for which he looked.

The author’s choice of words in 2:12 demonstrates that he means for his experience to be definitive for all men. If he, with all his power and resources, could not find it, it does not exist for anyone to find.

Then I turned myself to consider wisdom and madness and folly; for what can the man do who succeeds the king? —Only what he has already done. (Eccl. 2:12, NKJV)

The Seeker is not just out on a lark looking for fun. He knows that temporary pleasure is a bubble; he is looking for lasting satisfaction. His goal is reality, truth, and the ultimate meaning of life. He wants an accurate explanation of the world around him and his place in that world. He is also looking for power in his struggle with his inner self.

At the outset, in 1:13-15, The Seeker warns us that the pursuit was in vain. We must not come to an erroneous conclusion based on the brevity of 1:13-15. These verses are brief, not because The Seeker was casual in his quest for the meaning of life, but because they are a summary of the means that he used in his pursuit. The Seeker was so thorough in his search that he uses the word devoted to describe how he studied and explored with every ounce of his strength as he sought for truth. His endeavor was not like that of a person who worked forty hours a week and carefully planned his weekends. His efforts were full-time. All of his energies, resources, and waking hours were spent in studying, exploring, testing, and analyzing life. The conclusion he reached is the same one at which every honest secularist arrives, even though the secularist often will not admit it.

In 1:16 - 2:11, The Seeker takes us through the journey that he took. We looked at his attempt to gain insight from human wisdom in a previous article ("Part Four," October 2004, Vol. 11 No. 1). In 2:12 - 2:26, he shares the lessons he learned from his journey ─ all is meaningless─ life is not really worth living. The Seeker’s pronouncement in 2:22-26 is both honest and frustrating.

What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. (NIV)

The author is not condemning any of the things that he mentions. He is telling us that when we live for them, any of them or all of them, they become our gods, and, as the Seeker so painfully discovers, they make very poor gods. Trust in gods that cannot deliver ultimately leads to disillusionment and futility.

In 2:24, 25 the Teacher traces the problem to God. He even sees God as giving the problem of utter futility to the sons of men. Paul, in Romans 8:18-25, says much the same thing as he addresses the futility to which creation was subjected as a result of Adam’s sin. This subjection was not by its own will, but by God’s will.

Genesis 3:16 describes how thoroughly sin reversed the God-ordained roles for men and women established at creation. The helpmate becomes a competitor for the throne and the protector becomes a tyrant. Women use their need and right for nurture to force men to give them what they want. "If you loved me, as God tells you that you should, you would give me what I want." Men use their God-ordained responsibility to be the leader as justification to force women to be their personal slaves. "Scripture says that you must do whatever I tell you. You must submit to me." Sin destroyed everything. The creature who has lost God would now use everybody and everything for his own ends. Interpersonal relationships are subject to futility.

Genesis 3:17-19 describes how the good and perfect environment became a hostile enemy. The ground that had produced good plants now produces thorns and thistles. Labor that had been pleasant is now painful. Man, who had lived harmoniously with his environment, is now in constant competition with it. He is now at odds with everything and everybody, himself, his wife, the physical environment and especially God Himself. Humanity’s relationship to the physical world is subject to futility.

Romans 8:18-25 refers to these results of man’s apostasy. This explains the frustration in Ecclesiastes. This shows why we must look past the sun to find any hope. Only there will we see eternity and the great change that will be wrought by sovereign grace at the return of our Lord.

Note verses 20 and 21 in Romans 8 carefully.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (NKJV)

God himself has subjected all things to frustration or vanity. The frustration is part of the judicial judgment of God. If man can find true meaning and satisfaction as a rebel in a hostile environment, then rebellious man can evade justice and defeat God’s purposes.

Imagine for a moment, a spoiled brat who destroys great works of art, expensive furniture, and priceless jewels for fun, because of his ignorance and selfishness. That is exactly what fallen man does with God’s creation. He takes the greatest gifts that God gives and destroys them while he gathers garbage and junk in the expectation of finding something tasty and satisfying.

Suppose a genius had made the greatest computer possible and you stole it. When you got home, you discovered that you could not use it. The man who built the computer made it impossible to understand and use without key passwords. Since it was impossible for you figure it out those code words, you could not use the computer. You would be frustrated because you would know what the computer was capable of doing, and yet you could make it do nothing. You would push the on button and the screen would read, "If you admit that this computer is mine because I made it, and come and ask my forgiveness for stealing it, I not only will forgive you for stealing it, I also will give you the passwords and even let you keep the computer. I even will teach you how to run it." If you remained in your rebellion and kept trying to start it on your own, you would just become even more frustrated.

Paul, in Romans 1, shows that man would rather be the center of total chaos, than to admit he is a dependent creature, yea, a sinful dependent creature who needs grace. God has written eternity in man’s heart in such a way that he cannot totally escape God no matter how hard he tries to do so. (We will see this in Chapter 3). Man knows that he is different from the animals, despite all of his loud claims about evolution. He knows better, but will never admit it until God, in sovereign grace, opens his eyes.

The world will grow worse and worse in proportion to its deliberate and conscious attempt to be autonomous from God’s authority. The more "free" from God man becomes, the more controlled by sin and self he will be. The more God gives man over to sin, the worse life on earth must become. It is a terrifying thought, but nonetheless true, that God rewards sin with sin. Although we see personal instances of redemption that radically change one person at a time, the ultimate redemption of all creation awaits the second coming of Christ. Then, but not until then, the entire order of nature as we know it will be changed. The Bible describes this as a new heaven and new earth.

In 1:12-18, we saw the utter failure of wisdom to satisfy the secularist ("Part Four"). Can a person escape pessimism and despair by the acquisition of wisdom? Verse 18 answers a resounding no. So far, The Seeker’s wholehearted search ends exactly where it started ─ totally empty. The irony is that the more one learns about reality, the more ugly and unbearable it becomes. That is because the world is upside down and sin rules. Reality is very painful when one looks at life without a God-ward focus. Asaph attests to this in Psalm 73, where he records his struggle with bitterness when he considered the easy life of the wicked. When he viewed life from an under the sun perspective, his efforts at moral purity seemed futile; the wicked prospered, while the innocent and upright suffered.

Chapter 2 continues the record of The Seeker’s vain attempts to find meaning and satisfaction in life. One writer has labeled this section "The Failure of Pleasure and Accomplishments." If you try to hide from life’s real problems by squeezing all of the juice out of a given pleasure in life, the juice turns sour.

In Ecclesiastes 2:1-3, The Seeker turns from wisdom to mirth, from rationalism to romanticism

I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. (KJV)

From 1:18 to end of chapter 2 (thirty-two verses), The Seeker uses the words, I, me, and my, over fifty times. Notice the self-centeredness in just one verse.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; and this was my reward from all my labor. (Eccl. 2:10, NKJV)

The Seeker immediately tells us exactly what he got for all his self-efforts.

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. (Eccl. 2:11, NKJV)

These statements describe the sure and certain conclusion of anyone who tries to understand life and reality without acknowledging God. Here is the sum total of the under the sun philosophy that trusts only its own wisdom. This describes Eve’s approach when she turned from God’s way and went her own way. Her action did not stem merely from a desire to have personal knowledge of good and evil, it came from a desire to be like God (Gen. 3:5, 6). The knowledge of good and evil was knowledge by personal experience, which Eve thought would enable her to be autonomous from God. She would be free to choose for herself, instead of following orders about what she could and could not do. That tree would enable her to be free to make her own decisions.

The Bible describes the person who wants to be free from God’s control as the fool of the Book of Proverbs. He is the man in chapter one of Romans who deliberately turns away from God’s revelation and staggers down the path of ungodly behavior to the place where his conscience no longer can tell the difference between right and wrong: the place where he does not feel the least shame in the most wicked lifestyle.

After the failure of wisdom, The Seeker tries a new direction. He rejects wisdom for its own sake and embraces folly (2:3). I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life (KJV).

The Seeker’s idea of folly is philosophically similar to today’s counterculture. Historically, a culture moves from romanticism, where people think with their hearts, to rationalism, where people reject emotions and follow reason, or brains, alone. When romanticism and rationalism fail, a culture rejects them both and seeks spiritualism. This may take the form of out of body experiences, including mystical and strange states of consciousness induced by drugs; yoga; and other practices of eastern mystical religions. When this fails, and it always does, a culture then moves into the form of Nihilism that deliberately cultivates the ugly, the obscene, the absurd, and the ridiculous. This is the sick, dark, destructive, and weird world of MTV. It manifests itself in the strange dress, outlandish hair, bizarre looks, loud music and screaming speech of today’s pop culture. To people steeped in this worldview, the weird and ugly is reality, because their world has no ultimate meaning or absolute truth. Sick, destructive humor results from their inner hatred of reality and anything that confines their freedom to "do whatever I please, whenever I please, with anyone I please."

The Seeker’s quest for folly does not mean that he is looking to have irresponsible escapades, as many with no wisdom are. The words madness and folly in Scripture do not usually indicate mental oddness, but deliberate moral perversity. This man’s actions are thoughtful and deliberately controlled. Any resulting mad mental frustration is part of the judicial judgment of God. This exchange surfaces again as God deals with Nebuchadnezzar after Daniel interprets the king’s dream of a tree. Daniel tells the king that God has decreed the events that will occur, and pleads with him to repent. Nebuchadnezzar, like modern man, responds by doing all in his power to evade any thought of God. His response was a bigger and better party as a means of getting his mind off the truth.

One of the tragic mistakes that people commit is to think that alcohol, drugs, and pornography have produced the wicked society in which we currently live. It is actually the other way around. Our society has produced those things as essential means to kill the pain of an empty and futile life. If our culture, believing as it does, did not have drugs, booze and unbridled sex as distractions, it would finally find suicide the only acceptable option. The sinful pleasures of the world are like a giant aspirin tablet that hopeless people keep taking to kill the pain of a meaningless life. Like real aspirin, the world only kills the pain; it never touches that which causes the problem. As the problem gets worse and the pain gets deeper, more and more aspirin are required to dull the pain.

When we read Romans 1, we see how a creature, designed to be a prince, deliberately chose to act like a pig. What we believe always proceeds and causes the attitudes we have; attitudes produce acts and behavior. We are what we think. If we think wrongly, we will live wrongly. All ideas have consequences. Feelings do not float in the windows to become part of our emotions; they grow out of the things we believe. If we believe in our hearts that we are worthless, then we will soon start feeling worthless, and in a short time, we will start acting as if we are worthless. As Christians, we must learn to bring our minds and emotions under the control of Scripture. When we feel that there is no hope, we must ask, "Who is telling me there is no hope?" Surely God does not say, "Romans 8:28 does not apply to you." It is neither the Word of God nor the Holy Spirit that convinces us that the grace of God is not enough. We must learn to think God’s thoughts after him. We must bring our thinking and our emotions under the control of the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit. A sinner’s view of God must change before he can change his view of reality, which then will result in a change of lifestyle.

Look with me at The Seeker’s list of accomplishments in 2:3-11. It is quite impressive.

I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine, while guiding my heart with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives. I made my works great, I built myself houses, and planted myself vineyards. I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove. I acquired male and female servants, and had servants born in my house. Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before me. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasures of kings and of the provinces. I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments of all kinds. So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; and this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. (Eccl. 2:3-11, NKJV)

"Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure …" In this amazing statement, The Seeker clearly presents his all-consuming goal. He is determined to find true meaning and satisfaction at any price or with any amount of effort. Can you imagine some of the parties that took place in Solomon’s palace? It is hard for us to envision the possibilities contained in these sentences. When we remember who wrote this, and we consider all of the assets, financial, physical, and mental, that he possessed, we barely can begin to list the possibilities. Note the frequent occurrence of the word myself in 2:1-8. This is the cult of self. All that counts is my needs, my feelings, my liberty, my rights, and my happiness.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be able to have anything at all, regardless of cost or inconvenience, that you wanted? Anything that your heart desired or your mind conceived would be yours for the asking. There would be no limitations or roadblocks of any kind put on any of your desires. This describes the Seeker’s situation. He could do exactly whatever he pleased, whenever he was pleased to it. He had no boundaries and was free to indulge in whatever struck his fancy. He made all the rules.

If you could be in that position, do you think that would guarantee that you would be satisfied and truly happy? If having all you ever wanted could not satisfy your heart, and you know it could not, then what could? Be sure you realize what The Seeker is saying. He never experienced a dull moment in any day or felt frustrated by any unfilled longing or desire. Life was one constant good time of doing what ever he wanted to do. Imagine yourself in The Seeker’s place; your whole life is a continual party. That is exactly what the Seeker had!

What would the average person today describe as a good time? What would he consider a recipe for happiness? How would you describe it? Does laughter prove that you are having a good time or is it only a temporary diversion?

Samuel Johnson, the famous English writer, received the privilege of a personal tour of a very wealthy man’s estate. His host showed him vast barns and herds of every kind of animal. He saw paintings, jewelry, ornate decorations, furniture, rugs, and every form of famous art from all over the world. Finally, the man, obviously very proud of his possessions, asked, "Well, Johnson, what do you think?" Johnson thought a moment and responded, "These are the things that make it hard for a man to die and leave it all behind." As I have said before, you will never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.

Shortly after the above episode, the wealthy man did indeed die. A friend inquired, "Johnson, that man was a friend of yours; do you have any idea of how much he left when he died?" Johnson replied, "All of it."

We could call 2:11 "The morning after the night before."

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. (NIV)

There will be a final morning after for every person that ever lived. Even if hell were no more than a vivid memory of the arrogant unbelief that led a person to turn away from the true and living God and look to a sin-cursed world for hope, it would be a torment indeed.

The Seeker relentlessly confronts the secularist with the fact that in the secularist’s world of "no-absolutes," there is one sure absolute that he cannot deny, and that is death. However, he does not stop there. The final blow to the ego of the self-sufficient man is the realization that he cannot control what happens to all his attainments. Not only is he unable to take his toys with him, he has no guarantee about who will play them after he is gone.

Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have rule over all my labor wherein I have labored, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity. (Eccl. 2:18-19, KJV)

We must understand that the Seeker is not condemning wealth. We may own five cars, as long as none of them owns us. His point is that the material goods we acquire while on earth remain on earth after we die.

Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Phil 2:9-11 (KJV)

To be continued.