Chuck Larsen

Wisdom brought no satisfaction to Solomon. Pleasure brought no satisfaction to Solomon. So he moved on. Next, he tried Alcohol. Ecclesiastes 2:3 says, “I decided to cheer myself with wine and have a good time. I thought this might be the best way people can spend their short lives on earth.” Actually, this sounds like a very popular view that’s also prevalent in our culture. “Miller time” is the best time! He then went on to mention sex, materialism, power, and prestige before he wraps up the conclusion that was the same for all his endeavors. It’s found in Ecclesiastes 2:13. It’s the same conclusion his passage began with in Chapter 1, verse 14. He says, “It was like trying to catch the wind – of no use at all!” Again, the word for wind might also be translated as “breath.” If so, as many OT Scholars suggest, it would picture our attempt to grasp our breath on a cold morning.  I remember walking corn fields in late fall looking for pheasants while carrying a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun. Your breath was so visible on those early mornings that it looked like you could grab it. But, of course, you could not.

One of the best poetic descriptions of the failure of alcohol or drugs to bring significant meaning and happiness in life was written by A. E. Houseman a century ago. Next to Rudyard Kipling’s verse, Houseman was my favorite poet. He writes, “And alcohol does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man. (In the preface to Paradise Lost, Milton explains that he hopes to explain why God does what He does in this world.) Alcohol, man, alcohol is the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think. Look into the pewter pot to see the world as the world’s not. And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past: The mischief is that ’twill not last. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair (the place where alcohol was brewed) And left my necktie God knows where, and carried halfway home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; the world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet; and nothing now remained to do but begin the game anew.”

Wine failed, and so did wealth. No one had the wealth that Solomon had. What exactly was Solomon’s net worth? Exactly how rich was he? One commentator argues that there has never been a human in history that had so much gold and silver. He ruled in Israel for 40 years, and it has been estimated that he brought in 1.1 billion dollars each year. The kings of Arabia and the governors of the surrounding provinces all brought tribute money to Solomon as well as nations as far away as Egypt and Ethiopia. He also collected heavy taxes from his own people. Gold, silver, ivory, apes, monkeys, and peacocks were received every three years from his business partnership with Hiram, King of Tyre. No one has ever had Solomon’s wealth. Yet it, too, left him unsatisfied. Neither wine nor wealth will make life satisfying in the long run. We’re created with a deeper need, and that’s communion with the God who made us. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In Him do we find purpose, meaning, and true satisfaction as we walk the trails in this valley of tears.

People with money often tell us it won’t make you happy. But I always think, “I’d like to find that out for myself.” In Ecclesiastes 2:16-18, Solomon says he hated life, work, and wealth. Then, he proceeds to explain why he hated it all. He gave three reasons. First, he hated it because you can’t keep it! A Jewish proverb says, “There are no pockets in shrouds.” Of course, the American saying equivalent to that is, you’ve never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul! I know that you can’t eat money. But in our society, it will buy what you need to eat. It won’t keep you warm but will pay the utility bills. One writer called money something that “may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven and as a universal provider of everything except happiness.” Solomon lost his happiness when he sought to find meaning and purpose in wealth! It’s the case for us all.

The second reason Solomon hated it all was that you can’t protect it. Since there are no pockets in shrouds and no U-Hauls with hearses, we have to leave everything behind. We have no idea what’s going to happen to it when we’re gone. Solomon spent years building a united kingdom. He brought all twelve tribes together to rule the world under a unified nation that became the greatest country, the wealthiest country, and the most powerful country in the world. Yet, when he died, he left it to his children. Solomon didn’t know what would happen to the kingdom when he died, but he knew it would be out of his hands. Rehoboam, his son, destroyed it all! He also killed all of Solomon’s other sons! (See 1 Kings 11:41f). I would argue that it doesn’t make a lot of difference how specific you get in your will you can’t protect any of it when you’re gone. Solomon resigned himself to this truth. We all must learn to cooperate with the inevitable.

The third reason that Solomon hated all this and felt such great despair is that he realized that we can never fully enjoy it all as we should. The more we have the greater the responsibility. The more we have the more we need to worry about. It takes hard work, dedication, and a lifetime spent in grief, travail and often many anxious and sleepless nights. For what? Ecclesiastes 2:22 says, “What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun?” Then he finally lifts the veil of depression and despair in verse 24 when he says that God is the great giver of it all and one of the greatest gifts he gives us when we enter into a faith relationship with Him, is the gift of joy and contentment with our lot in life. Warren Wiersbe says, “Apart from God, there can be no true enjoyment of blessings or enrichment of life. It is good to have the things that money can buy, provided you don’t lose the things that money can’t buy.” Money can’t buy me love, but God offers it freely on the cross of Calvary: God so loved the world, that’s us! We need but to receive it. John tells us that all who receives Him, Jesus; they are blessed with the gift of becoming children of God.

Francis Schaffer said that the popular music of our generation will reveal the climate and nature and wisdom of each generation. As I’ve been studying through Ecclesiastes, I’ve been relating the truths written by Solomon over 3000 years ago to songs I remember in my own generation. It seems there are plenty of songs that attempt to do what Solomon did, find meaning and purpose in life, but come up with the same answer: vanity of vanities. It’s useless, and under the sun, there is no true meaning and purpose from the purely human perspective. Every evaluation in every generation of man’s purpose in life always leads to the same conclusion:

“The Answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind…” Peter, Paul & Mary.
“You may as well try to catch the wind…” Donovan
“It’s dust in the wind; everything is dust in the wind…” Kansas

In Ecclesiastes 2:17, Solomon wrote: “Everything is meaningless, like chasing the wind.” (New Living) “I had been chasing the wind.” (Good News) “…Everything here on earth is useless, like chasing the wind.” (New Century) “When I looked, I saw nothing but smoke, smoke and spitting into the wind. There was nothing to any of it, nothing” (The Message). From man’s perspective, that’s absolutely true. But God has a plan and a purpose for all life! The conclusion of it all is one must trust God. In a trusting relationship with Him, it will all come together. Man will never understand the puzzle of life outside of a personal relationship with God. Further, man will never really find fulfillment in life outside of a relationship with God. So, in Ecclesiastes 2:24-26, Solomon concludes with several observations. “So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that this pleasure is from the hand of God. For who can eat or enjoy anything apart from him?” Even in the middle of much despair, confusion, and disillusionment we can find joy.

There was an old cartoon in which a publisher tried to convince Charles Dickens to change the opening sentence in one of his most famous novels, “A tale of two cities.” “Mr. Dickens, either it was the best of times or it was the worst of times. It can’t be both.” Phil Ryken says, “But of course it can be both, and often is. We live in a world that is cursed by sin (see Genesis 3:17–19), but it is also a world that God created essentially good (see Genesis 1–2) and that he has visited in the flesh and is working to redeem through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. Thus we experience joy as well as sorrow, especially if we know God in a personal and saving way.”

Pete Seger is credited with writing the song “Turn, Turn, Turn.”  It was written in the 1950s but was not set to music until 1962. Seger did a rendition of it, as did the Limelighters in the early sixties, but neither took off. It was in 1965 that the Byrds put it to a contemporary rock sound that it made it all the way up the charts to #1 on the American Billboards. I graduated in 1965, and our yearbook committee chose it as our theme song for the class. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 was the theme passage for our class. Pete Seger, who got all the royalties, wrote only one word of the song. That word was “turn.” He repeated it three times (Turn, Turn, Turn) as the chorus after the verses that were penned 3000 years ago by Solomon. The passage uses the word “time” twenty-eight times.

According to Phil Ryken, Plautus wrote about the tyranny of time, “Bemoaning the stress caused by the latest device for keeping time, the Roman playwright said, ‘the gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours! Confound him who has cut and hacked my days so wretchedly into small pieces. Confound him who in this place set up a sundial.’” How much worse is it for us today? We all wear watches to keep close track of what time it is so we can meet our next appointment or accomplish our next mini-mission. I remember the story of the missionary who moved to the jungle to reach a very primitive tribe. The tribe’s people referred to him by a particular word that he could not understand. When he got a translator, he told him that the natives had given him a name that he didn’t understand. He then asked what the name meant. The translator laughed and said it means, “The one who wears his god on his wrist.” Like most Americans, the missionary always checks his watch before doing anything. We are indeed slaves to time.

Ecclesiastes 3 begins with, “There is a time for every purpose under heaven.” It is followed by the repetition of the word “time” 28 times in 14 pairs of perfect opposites. Looking at these opposites, we might notice that they cover the entire gamut of the human experience. However, we might also notice that there is a “purpose” expressed. Each event has a sovereign design and order, beginning with “a time to be born and a time to die.” God is sovereign over birth and death. Once a year, we celebrate what is known as the “Sanctity of Life Sunday.” Ronald Reagan established that back in the 1980s. Its focus is to draw our attention to the fact that God, and only God, has the power to start or end life. Reagan believed that life began at conception. Each conception is a miracle. Think of all the circumstances that must take place for any particular person to be conceived. It’s not just sex! Abraham and Sarah had sex thousands of times (I’d expect), as did many other couples in the bible who never conceived a child. Each conception is a miracle planned and purposed under a sovereign God’s mighty hand who establishes a “time to be born” and “a time to die.” Life from conception to death in God’s time is sacred.