We started Ecclesiastes last Sunday. We met the Preacher in verse 1. We heard his big idea in verse 2, “vanity of vanities.” Hevel was our key word, meaning breath/vapor. Life under the sun is fleeting. It’s subject to futility. And the inconsistencies this side of Eden can get absurd. Wisdom sees life’s futilities and navigates them by fearing God and enjoying his gifts.

We also heard a poem about life under the sun. But today we shift from poetry to autobiography. The Preacher takes a quest. He wants to discover, 2:4 says, “what is good for the children of man.” Where should we look for true, lasting gain? Maybe you’ve found yourself on a similar quest.

I remember Jim Carrey—in 2016 he announced the winner for Best Motion Picture Comedy at the Golden Globes. He’s introduced as “two-time-Golden-Globe-winner, Jim Carrey.” He steps to the mic, the applause settles, and he says, “Thank you. I am two-time-Golden-Globe-winner Jim Carrey. You know, when I go to sleep at night, I’m not just a guy going to sleep. I’m two-time-Golden-Globe-winner Jim Carrey going to get some well-needed shuteye. And when I dream, I don’t just dream any old dream. No sir. I dream about being three-time-Golden-Globe-winning actor Jim Carrey. Because then I would be enough. It would finally be true; and I could stop this terrible search…for what I know ultimately won’t fulfill me. But these are important, these awards…”[i]

You catch his humor. But the reason we chuckle is that he’s touching on truth. We are searching for fulfillment, for the good life. And in our search, we often tell ourselves, “If I just had greater knowledge, then I’d be able to solve life’s mysteries.” Or “If I just worked harder, if I had more pleasures, then life wouldn’t feel so empty.” Or “If I could just control my future, then I’d be fulfilled.”

But in our passage today, we encounter a man who had it all, tried it all, and still couldn’t escape vanity under the sun. Whatever is fleeting cannot fulfill—that’s what the Preacher discovers on his quest. Let’s read it together. 

¹² I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. ¹³ 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. ¹⁴ I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. ¹⁵ What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. ¹⁶ I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” ¹⁷ And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. ¹⁸ For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. ¹ I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. ² I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” ³ I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. ⁴ I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. ⁵ I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. ⁶ I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. ⁷ I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. ⁸ I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. ⁹ So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. ¹⁰ And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. ¹¹ Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. ¹² So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. ¹³ Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. ¹⁴ The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. ¹⁵ Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. ¹⁶ For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! ¹⁷ So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. ¹⁸ I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, ¹⁹ and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. ²⁰ So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, ²¹ because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. ²² What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? ²³ For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. ²⁴ There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, ²⁵ for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? ²⁶ For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Verse 12 begins like verse 1 did: “I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem.” Given this title and the following context, we’re meant to think of King Solomon. First Kings forms the backdrop to our passage. There we learn how God blessed King Solomon with “wisdom beyond measure,” “with breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore.”[ii] Also, his riches were such that “no other king compared with him.” The weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents—worth $2.5 billion today. Solomon “made silver as common in Jerusalem as stone.” He “excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom.”[iii]

Yet five times in our passage he compares his great achievements to “striving after wind.” Life under the sun failed to give him the fulfillment he tried to gain from it. If that’s true for someone like Solomon—with resources, wisdom, and power that you’ll never know—what does that mean for us in our own quest for gain?

The Quest for Gain in Wisdom/Knowledge

Let’s find out by looking at the first part of Solomon’s quest. Verses 12-18, Solomon’s quest for gain in wisdom/knowledge. Verse 13, “I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.” When he says “wisdom,” we might race to wisdom as “fear of the Lord.” Ecclesiastes will address that later. But here “wisdom” is more limited. Derek Kidner describes it as “the best thinking that man can do on his own.”[iv]

God blessed Solomon with superior wisdom. In 1 Kings 4, “People of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon.” From trees to animals, from architecture to philosophy, from production to foreign relations, “Solomon was wiser than all others.” Using that wisdom, he searched “all that is done under heaven.” What does he find? “It’s an unhappy business that God has given the children of man to be busy with. I’ve seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.”

He recalls the theme of vanity from verses 1-11. We discussed how the Hebrew word (hevel) included not just the idea of “fleeting” but also the idea of “futility.” God kept his word to Adam. God plunged the world into all kinds of frustrations. Verse 14 reflects on that reality. Because of sin, God has given the children of Adam an unhappy business. And his point is that no matter how wise you might be, you can’t fix what’s broken—at least in any ultimate way.

That’s why he cites the Proverb in verse 15: “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.” Later, in 7:13, he says, “Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked.” Some things in life you’ll never be able to fix or figure out—injustices that won’t rectify; conflicts that won’t resolve; budgets that won’t balance; governments too twisted to unravel. God has subjected this world to certain deficiencies that your knowledge will never fully fix.

Nor can wisdom help you escape what hurts. That’s his point in verses 16-18. “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…”

Notice, he’s not just using wisdom; now he’s assessing wisdom and its opposites. The point is that he’s left no stone unturned—wisdom, folly, and everything in between. He took the philosophy class. He tested other worldviews. He passed the exams, he wrote the dissertations, he lectured in the halls. When the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon, it says “She tested him with hard questions.” And Solomon “answered all her questions; there was nothing hidden from the king that he could not explain to her.”

Wouldn’t you love that—a mind capable of answering life’s toughest questions? “If only I knew more about ____, then I’d be satisfied.” Have you ever thought that? The world says things like, “Knowledge is power.” “Education is the key to success.” But Solomon says, “I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.” Why? Verse 18, “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” In this life under the sun, the more you know, the more you hurt. Solomon wrote that before we had phones alerting you every hour to some tragedy.

Now, the answer is not “ignorance is bliss.” That’s not his point. Elsewhere in this book, he will speak of the advantages of wisdom and knowledge. But don’t go in thinking that by gaining more wisdom you’ll become immune to the world’s vanity. Under the sun, even something as good as wisdom has limits.

The Quest for Gain in Pleasures/Projects

Maybe, then, it’s in pleasures/projects. Solomon’s quest takes us there next in verses 1-11. Verse 1, “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’ But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, ‘It is mad,’ and of pleasure, ‘What use is it?’ I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.”

Picture Solomon sitting at a nice dinner, swirling a glass of fine wine, listening to the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Nate Bargatze. He gives himself to drink, to fun and games. Yet all the while he keeps his wits about him. He’s deliberate, intentional—in some ways standing outside himself to observe the true effects of this hilarity and this alcohol. “Is it here that I will find the good life?” Nope.

What about great works? In verse 4 on, he mentions houses, vineyards, gardens, parks, all kinds of fruit trees, pools to water the forest of growing trees. The wording evokes features from Eden: garden, fruit trees, gold. Solomon is trying to rebuild an Eden of his own. But notice, even as he does it, he can’t break from his sin in Adam: “I built houses…for myself. I made gardens for myself…I made pools for myself…I gathered silver and gold for myself.” He’s repeating what every generation attempts to do—use God’s gifts for selfish gain. But it’s certainly no lasting gain.

Some of you might be seeking your fulfillment in something this life can give you. Or, if you’re not trying it, maybe you’ve entertained thoughts like, “If only I had more money? If only I had more sex? What if I tried drinking with my friends at school? What I really need is the latest iPhone. What I really need is a better house, a different spouse. What I really need is people to serve me for once. Then I’ll be happy.”

Ecclesiastes is saying, “Don’t even bother.” Solomon has already gone there. He lived the dream. He had the servants, the sex, the silver, the singers—he “kept his heart from no pleasure.” And you know what he found? Verse 11, “all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” He reached out to grasp gain, and all the works of his hands slipped right through his fingers.

The Quest for Gain Despairs before Death

So, he turns again to consider wisdom. Like when you’re searching for the car keys: “Not in the bag, not on the hook, not on the counter, not on the dresser.” So, we go back to the bag, even though we emptied it earlier. “Maybe I didn’t look carefully enough,” we think. Likewise, Solomon returns to wisdom in his quest.

Lo and behold, he does find some gain. Verse 13, “I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.” Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. The wise see where they’re going. They don’t stumble and fall. Under the sun, wisdom has clear advantages over folly. We’re making progress…

So we thought. Just as he did in 1:4 and 1:11, Solomon can’t shake the reality of death. “The same event happens to all.” “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool!”

Imagine. One day, your loved ones will watch your casket lower into the earth. They will weep and walk away as the backhoe comes to fill another hole. At the reception afterwards, people share stories remembering your love for family, your integrity at work, your generosity to the poor. Maybe they put on your tombstone, “Wise and Faithful.” But right next to yours is another tombstone. Months before, they buried a fool. She wasted her days on parties and bad relationships. And you’re both six feet under.

Does that disturb you? If it doesn’t disturb you, you’re not taking his words seriously. The Preacher says, “I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.” “Ah but wait!” you say. “Surely what I leave behind counts. My fortune, my retirement, my legacy, everything I worked for—surely that will remain.” Don’t count on it.

Verse 18, “I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill [success] must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.”

You can work all your life, late nights, grinding your fingers to the bone, getting more done than anybody else—but in the end, you cannot control what happens to all you work for. We don’t have to look far beyond Solomon to see this play out. Solomon dies. Rehoboam reigns. Ten-twelfths of the kingdom gone in a year. What are you trying to gain from all your toil? Whatever is fleeting cannot fulfill.

True Fulfillment Comes through One Greater Than Solomon

We need something that lasts, something unshakable. In the Ancient Near East, kings often published their achievements, much like Solomon does here. As one scholar put it, writings like these showed “that the king was extraordinary, indeed, better than anyone else; they were supposed to enhance respect for the king and memorialize his achievements forever.”[v] But here’s the big difference with Ecclesiastes. Even the one king who truly surpassed all others in riches and wisdom—even he couldn’t escape the vanity. Death eventually put an end to his wisdom and his achievements. If that’s true for someone like Solomon, how much more for the rest of us.

Brothers and sisters, we need someone greater than Solomon to solve our despair; and that someone is Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “The queen of the south came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here” (Matt 12:42). Colossians 2:3 says that “in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”—and not simply the kind of wisdom to live the good life; Jesus had the kind of wisdom that began with the fear of the Lord.

Jesus did not live to please himself—he said, “I always do the things that are pleasing to [the Father]” (John 8:27). His wisdom didn’t look like amassing the world’s treasures and buying slaves to cater all his wants. Wisdom didn’t take Jesus around suffering; it took him through it for our sake. Jesus’ wisdom took the form of a slave; and he served us even to the point of death on a cross (Phil 2:7). Weak and foolish as it looked to mere human wisdom, Christ’s cross became for us the power of God and the wisdom of God—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor 1:30).

More than that, all Jesus’ works produce lasting results. Death ended it all for Solomon. Not so with Christ. All that he toiled to gain—it endured, because death couldn’t hold him in the grave. His reign is forever. His riches are forever. And one day, when his kingdom floods the earth with God’s presence, he will straighten all that is crooked. He will remove all sorrow.

Where, then, are we supposed to find fulfillment? Where can we find true and lasting gain? Where can we find what’s good for the children of man—to use the words of 2:3? Not under the sun, but in a relationship with the One who is above the sun.

Perhaps you have been on your own little quest for what’s good. Perhaps you’ve tried to find fulfillment in the same things Solomon tried. Or maybe life’s pleasures have become another way to smother that despairing voice inside your head: “I hate life.” Or maybe you’re pumping your schedule full of overtime, so that you don’t have to stop long enough to consider what all you’ll eventually lose.

Ecclesiastes is saying, “I know you’re tired. I see your despair. But you don’t have to keep living this way.” God has provided an answer for you in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is the good you’re looking for. He is God’s answer for the children of man. Come to God through him. And when that’s true—when you know God and come to God through Jesus—he transforms how you relate to things under the sun. The things of this world take on a whole new meaning…

Make Your Soul See Good in God’s Gifts

Which brings us to our last point. Notice Solomon’s conclusion in verse 24, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.” The Hebrew behind the word “better” in verse 24—it’s the same word behind “good” back in verse 3. Also, the same Hebrew word is behind “find enjoyment” in verse 24—literally, “make his soul see good.” In other words, at the end of his quest, it seems that Solomon now understands what’s good for the children of man.

Eat…drink…make your soul see good in [your] toil. Huh? How did he go from saying, “I hate all my toil” to saying, “a person should make his soul see good in his toil”? That whiplash has led some to conclude, “Ah, this is nothing but mere resignation: ‘Might as well live it up; life’s hard and then you die.’” But I don’t think that’s right—it doesn’t square with the seven times this book commends (and sometimes commands) the enjoyment of the world as gift. Yes, the Preacher despairs about all that’s groaning. But that doesn’t mean the answer is cynicism or nihilism. Rather, the limitations of life under the sun open his eyes to the way the things of this world can be enjoyed—as gifts from the only One in whom our true fulfillment can be found.

To use an analogy from C. S. Lewis—they are like shafts of light pointing us to the sun. The goal isn’t the shaft. The shaft directs us to the source.[vi] Likewise, warm apple pie, a seared ribeye, cool lemonade in August, rains that open the topsoil, beautiful sunsets, holding your spouse’s hand, the pleasures of intimacy, the laughter shared with friends, the paycheck you receive, the home you have, the job you will drive to tomorrow morning, the knowledge to do your work with excellence, the child who hugs your neck, the music you sang this morning—all gifts that point to your generous Creator.

If anything, this should surprise us in a world full of sin. If one sin hurled creation into the futilities we now experience, what does it say that our God gives us anything at all. Yet every day “he does good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” Put your hand on your chest. Do you feel the thud? Ecclesiastes is saying two things at once—one, you’ve only got so many left; two, every one of them is a generous “gift-gift, gift-gift, gift-gift.”

What are you going to do with them? What is good for the children of man? Recognizing God’s extravagant grace and enjoying his gifts. The Preacher tells us: “This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from [God] who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” You might have noticed, but the Preacher hadn’t mentioned God since 1:13. Now he mentions God six times in three verses. The point? Apart from God you can’t enjoy anything in life as it’s meant to be enjoyed. You will only strive and strive to gain something for yourself; and in the process, you will despair and forfeit everything.

Verse 26 says, “For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.” What is vanity and a striving after wind? Busying yourself with all sorts of stuff apart from God. It’s taking his gifts, and instead of seeing them as shafts of light from the Giver, we make them all about us. We turn life into a vain pursuit of gain instead of aiming to please God with the things he gives.

The apostle Paul takes this same approach in 1 Timothy 6:17. How does he instruct wealthy Christians? “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” That sounds like Ecclesiastes. Life isn’t about the riches you can accumulate; it’s about God, who gives us everything to enjoy. And when you approach life this way, you take God’s gifts and enjoy them for his sake.

Some of you might be thinking, “Uh, won’t this lead to overindulgence?” If anything, over-indulgence is the result of not enjoying God’s gifts for what they are but trying to get from God’s gifts what they can never give. That’s why Paul goes on to say, “[The rich] are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”

Have you taken hold of that which is truly life? Or do you find life to be a “striving after wind”? Are you frustrated with life and telling yourself things like, “I hate life.” Ecclesiastes was written to help you—to help you make your soul see good. Where are you searching to find fulfillment? Where are you looking to find what’s good for man? Whatever is fleeting cannot fulfill. But God is not fleeting. He is our fulfillment. He gives the ability to enjoy life as gift, even with all its frustrations under the sun. Come to him through Jesus Christ and you will find what is good for the children of man. You will find that life isn’t about striving for gain; it’s about receiving as gift all that God gives.[vii]

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[i] Quote by Jim Carrey still accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd6LYZrkEqQ.

[ii] 1 Kgs 4:29, 33, 34.

[iii] 1 Kgs 3:13; 4:26; 10:14, 23, 27.

[iv] Derek Kidner, Ecclesiastes, BST (Downers Grove: IVP, 1976), 31.

[v] Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes, AB (New Haven: Yale, 1997), 144.

[vi] See C. S. Lewis, “Meditation in a Toolshed,” accessible at http://ktf.cuni.cz/~linhb7ak/Meditation-in-a-Toolshed.pdf.

[vii] See David Gibson, Living Life Backwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 37, who concludes, “This is the main message of Ecclesiastes in a nutshell: life in God’s world is gift, not gain.”