“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. Then 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. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 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. 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! So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. 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 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. 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, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 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.”

Of the three books we have written by Solomon, Ecclesiastes can sometimes seem a bit jarring and almost out of place. Song of Solomon, attributed to be a writing of his youth, has an almost giddy tone. The language is highly poetic, romantically charged, and emphasized with themes of longing, hope, and great joy. Proverbs, while considerably more sober than Song of Solomon, is still a book characterized by hope – it is a work of someone who has sought wisdom and found her, who cautions against the destruction found on the paths of wickedness, foolishness, and laziness, and who excitedly applied the discernment that God has given him to all that comes before him. Then we arrive at Ecclesiastes and what once seemed quite hopeful is now a message with the central theme that life is short and we’re all going to die. But if we actually read what Solomon is saying, if we attend to the context of what the old king is writing and what he has written, things fit into one cohesive piece. Solomon is not some bitter old man who woke up one day and decided that everything was terrible. He has lived a life of great passion, he has lived a life marked by the discerning wisdom that God blessed him with – he has presided over Israel from the seat of the holy city, and has watched as it grew into an unparalleled lavish and prosperous nation… and he’s going to die. He’s going to die just like everyone who has ever lived before him, and his wisdom and kingly grandeur don’t change a thing. His dark observations that we read in Ecclesiastes aren’t a departure from what he’s written previously, it’s their natural conclusion. It’s good to live with joy and exuberance in your youth, it’s good to live out your days with the refined mind and seasoned intellect of the wise – but if that’s all you’ve got, if your days under the sun are spent in service to nothing but yourself, material gain, and enjoyment, then they tally up to nothing more than passing vapor when your days come to an end. The cornerstone, the founding principle and ultimate aim, as we’ve seen before and will continue to return to, is God. A life lived to worldly pursuit and understanding may seem well and good in the moment, but a life lived to God is good today, tomorrow, and forever. Last time we looked at the selfishness of man and a life devoted to oneself – now we continue in this same vein, but we begin to see, not just the fruitlessness of mortal existence, but the bitterness and disquiet that results from days and years spent in pursuit of the wrong things, and how they grow into a truly empty harvest.

Seeds of Vanity that Lead to Grief

1. The Grief of Human Wisdom

“So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly.”

There are three distinct differences between someone who is wise, someone who is crazy, and someone who is a fool – Solomon, his mind sharpened to a keen edge by the divine blessing of God, applies himself to consider and understand them all. The answer he arrives at may seem painfully obvious, but oftentimes obvious answers still merit consideration. What you claim to know isn’t worth much if you’re not able to give any reason or evidence as to why you know it. So Solomon considers, and as we read, he comes to the reasoned conclusion that it is overall more beneficial to be wise than to be a fool – this certainly makes sense, as the wise may move with discernment, while the fool bounces his way blindly through life. Yet all three – the wise, the mad, and the foolish – are unified in their temporal nature, as the wise man dies, the madman dies, and the fool dies, and none of their works endure upon the face of the earth, they’re all vapor.

“For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done.”

As Solomon himself wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:9, there is nothing new under the sun. This statement proves to be a sober look at the past, but also a prophetic statement of the future, as the succession of kings that come after him, despite their differences all repeat the pattern that he himself has illustrated – which is the same as his father David, and Saul before him – most had some successes, some acts, be they great or small, that honored God, and yet they all transgressed in some ways – some in extensive wickedness and perversions, some in what may look like relatively minor actions, but regardless they all revealed themselves as sinners, as holding in their hearts some degree of rebellion before God. Scan through 1 and 2 Kings and just read the first few sentences concerning each king – there are those like Hezekiah and Josiah, both kings of Judah, both of whom Scripture says,

“And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the ways of David his father…”

In 2 Kings 18 and 22 respectively. Then there are kings like Ahab who reigned in the northern kingdom of Israel, of whom 1 Kings 16:30 says,

“And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him.”

And Manasseh, another king in Judah and the son of Hezekiah, of whom 2 Kings 21:2 tells us,

“And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel.”

Most kings fell somewhere in between the two extremes, with most trending more toward wickedness than righteousness, and all stumbling in some capacity. Hezekiah, for all his faith and rightness before God, was overly hospitable to the foreign empire of Babylon, and laid groundwork for the future suffering and destruction of Jerusalem. Josiah, for all his obedience and work to reestablish the Law among the people, died in battle, rashly fighting an enemy that he had not been called to oppose. Every king had their own works, be they good or evil, and yet every king strayed in some way, and all met a mortal end where their time and influence on the world ceased.

“Then 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. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 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. 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!”

If every man is born only to die, if the same fate awaits the wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked, what then is the point of living with any degree of restraint or conscience? If the grave is what we all look forward to, and a fading memory is all that we will leave behind, why not live according to our own whims? Why not eat and drink, fight and carouse, be enticed by the pleasures of the flesh, and chase after whatever dark fantasies your heart desires? Firstly, from a standpoint of pure practicality, the tyrant does not remain so for long. Attempting to aggressively force your way through life with no concern for the well being of others is a sure way to guarantee that you die alone, and likely sooner than you would have imagined, and this is what Solomon speaks to when he acknowledges that there is more benefit to wisdom than to folly. You may think your days of dark revelry enjoyable, but there is a cost to moving through life blindly, chasing flesh without restraint or regard. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 1:17–19,

“For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird, but these men lie in wait for their own blood; they set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain; it takes away the life of its possessors.”

There is a quantifiable benefit in living wisely – the atheist who doesn’t believe in God but lives a life “acted out as if God exists” is still in an objectively better place than the criminal on the run from justice, or the addict lying in the gutter. Regardless, all their lives will end the same, and while the wicked, the broken, and the foolish may operate in a state of delusion or blissful ignorance, the man who holds a degree of wisdom must contend and wrestle with why his eyes see, yet his heart cannot fully comprehend. There is a burden to wisdom of the flesh, a heavy weight to an understanding of the world, where you watch, as Solomon has, men live out their days striving with all their might after wind, and you understand the empty futility of it all, and the tragedy of wasted life that unfolds again, and again. Bearing this sorrowful knowledge in mind, if you’re going to live a life devoted to the pursuit of human wisdom, then you might as well live a life devoted to human debauchery – neither is enduring, and neither is ultimately honoring to God – for one imagines that you have no need for His true wisdom, and the other imagines that you have no accountability under His true judgment. What good is it to hold wisdom, to wield understanding if it is not both founded in, and grown up toward God? Again, looking to Solomon’s prior work, Proverbs 9:10 tells us,

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” is one of those verses that people will throw out without really thinking about what it means – but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fearing God does not immediately impart the fearer with an unlimited store of wisdom, it is knowledge of the Holy One, it is actively seeking God that fosters understanding. There is many a man who reveres God just enough to stay well clear of Him, living their lives running pointedly in the opposite direction, and they seek the things that gratify their flesh and avoid the righteous accountability of the Lord at all costs. But if you love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, if you have His Word bound as a sign upon your hand and a frontlet before your eyes, then wisdom isn’t just a tool in hand to use and manipulate as it suits your needs. James 1:5–8 tells us,

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

To be rooted in fearful, reverent wisdom and grown up in insight through blessed knowledge of God means that rather than being filled with bitterness and grief that comes from knowing the wisdom of man and the fruitlessness that follows, we are given the gift of eternal hope and aspiration through understanding that comes from God and God alone.

2. The Grief of Uncertainty

“So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. 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?”

We just read in Ecclesiastes 2:10,

“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.”

Here Solomon confessed to chasing the desires of his heart, to setting himself to task after task, and finding pleasure that was the reward for his toil. Now here we are, little more than a handful of verses later, and Solomon admits that he came to hate life and all his toil. Far from being a Biblical contradiction, what we read in today’s passage shows the fruitlessness of human works as they come full circle. They are a delight in the moment, but they do not endure. Jesus teaches during the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:31–34,

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

There is a very simple choice we are all afforded – we can either devote ourselves to the work of our flesh, we can worry and grind away at the toil of the world, fearing an uncertain tomorrow and a hopeless eternity, or we can seek the face of God, do the work that is His and trust in His provision. We can know that in Him today, tomorrow, and forever we are blessed to hold a certainty, having overcome the world and knowing freedom from the work that leads to empty vapor.

“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 must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.”

A future that is set in the flesh is one of uncertainty – what you seek to build and leave behind may prosper, or it may be burned to the ground, but there is no assurance, and there is no peace in this unknown. Consider the kings we read of earlier – Hezekiah reigned for twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. He sought the Lord, he destroyed the high places of pagan worship and 2 Kings 18:5–7 says of him and his character,

“He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the LORD. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the LORD commanded Moses. And the LORD was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered…”

The king who came after him was no stranger, but his own son, of whom we’ve already read,

“And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel.”

 Israel went from having a king of great obedience, only for the generation immediately afterward to herald rebellion and covet destruction. 2 Kings 21:3, 9

“For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them.” … “… and Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations had done whom the LORD destroyed before the people of Israel.”

This wasn’t a vague matter of Hezekiah doing what was generally right and Manasseh doing what was generally wrong – Manasseh made a specific point to undo the work of his father, and to pursue a wickedness beyond that of the Canaanites that caused the land to vomit them out. David writes in Psalm 20:6–8,

“Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright.”

To place your faith in material wealth, the society to which you belong, the generation that will follow you, or anything that grows up and is established in the world is to surrender to instability and uncertainty. But when we trust in God above all else we are resting all that we are in His eternal provision instead of the illusion of strength that exists in the work of man. Again, Jesus teaches during the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:24–27,

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

Jesus doesn’t say this arbitrarily, it’s not some general suggestion, it’s the rock of irreconcilable Truth, and it’s something that Solomon has experienced enough to see and live out first hand. There is nothing but sorrow, vexation, and perpetual uncertainty in building upon the ever-moving sand of the world, but the Rock of Christ is an eternal and unfailing foundation forever.

3. The Grief of Opposing God

“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.”

Returning again to Jesus’ words during the Sermon on the Mount, He teaches in Matthew 6:19–21,

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

If all your work, all your toil is only to mortal ends, then it will end when flesh ends – even if what you’ve built survives the end of your own life, even if it somehow endures for a thousand generations, it will not survive the end of all creation. None of this is permanent – our entire, sin-stained universe is destined to be burned up and evaporated. If your foundation is the corrupt and impermanent sand of this world, then all that you are is destined to come to nothing. However if we do the work of Christ, if we live lives that are obedient and surrendered to God, then we walk out something that is not founded in flesh, not rooted in the impermanence that is the vaporous lives of men, but endures eternally. The options are not a life of neutrality or a life of obedience – you can’t think yourself neutral just because you’ve abstained from open heresy if you’ve lived a life that is devoted to the world and denied God the obedience and worship that He is due from all. So if your heart is filled with the weight of your earthly toil, if day and night you are consumed with the restlessness of mortal toil, then you plant seeds and bear fruit not just of hollow wisdom and uncertainty, but of opposition against the Living God.

“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, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 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.”

I should probably do a bit of course correcting, a little clarifying so no one takes what I’ve said so far to too great an extreme. I’m not saying that you can’t work, or that you shouldn’t work. Quitting your job tomorrow on the basis that the Bible says not to work is not only likely to put you in an uncomfortable financial position, it’s also not what Scripture is telling us. Paul states quite plainly in 2 Thessalonians 3:7–10,

“For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”

This is the man who, as a church planting, gospel preaching Apostle, also worked at times as a tentmaker to, as he states here, avoid being a financial burden upon those to whom he ministered. It’s not wrong to work, it’s not wrong to take enjoyment or satisfaction in your work – it’s not wrong to work hard, enjoy a meal, or take part in things that God has built into creation. But there’s a right perspective with which all these things must be approached – we may enjoy the creation, but our eye is always for the Creator. Paul states in Romans 8:31–33,

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.”

And he writes in Galatians 6:7–9,

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

There is a weariness that accompanies “goodness” of the flesh, for it has no purpose but seems to be momentarily, fleetingly good. But the goodness that comes from God, the work of His Spirit through His children is a work that endures forever. So those who live out their days on the earth as children of God dwell here as sojourners, passing through until we are delivered to our final home. And so we may enjoy elements of life as they are intended – if I give you food when you’re hungry, or a drink when you’re thirsty, if at the end of a long day you lie down in a comfortable bed to rest, all these things are small enjoyments along the way. The food, the drink, the bed, none of these things are your life, none of them is regarded as the cornerstone of your existence. They are blessings for the time we may enjoy them, and then they end and our lives are not diminished, because God in His constancy is the One who upholds us, not the transient experiences of the world. In Acts chapter 5 the Apostles are brought before the Sanhedrin, the council that ruled to put Jesus to death. The twelve are charged to cease teaching in the name of Jesus, which they boldly refuse, and the council, enraged, desires to kill them. It is then that the Pharisee and famous teacher Gamaliel addresses the council – he points to the religious movements that have been stirred up in the past and how all of them have failed. He concludes his speech, saying in Acts 5:38–39,

“So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!…”

To live a life devoted to God, to surrender self and know the freedom that exists in Christ alone is to be a worker in an unstoppable, eternal mission. The world may be made up of vapor, but the Rock of Christ will stand forever – as we read from Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” But for the sinner who is unrepentant and perpetually opposed to God, all they have is their toil, and what we witness play out eternally are the words of Jesus from Matthew 25:29,

“For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

The spiritual fruit of this life will one day give way to a perfect eternal harvest, but for those who have clung to the world, who have opposed God, they will leave a life of nothing to enter an eternity where they forever reap the fruit of grief.