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December 16 - December 26, 2022
What did the fall of Solomon—and the fall of Israel—mean? The surprising answer is that it meant nothing—vanity. Like all sin and unbelief, it came to . . . nothing.
the sovereign God alone gives the power to enjoy this parade of vanity. Without an understanding of the Almighty, and without seeing His attributes, nature, and character, the world is nothing but an ongoing vexation of spirit.
“Under the sun” is the realm where vanity reigns and should be understood as this world, considered in its own right.
For those who fear Him, He gives the gift of being able to actually enjoy this great big marching band of futility—the tubas of vanity bringing up the rear. God gives to a wise man the gift of watching, with a pious and grateful chuckle, one damn thing after another.
When he understands, and not until then, a man may eat his bread, drink his wine, and rejoice. He may work hard, digging a hole that another will someday fill up. If he is a wise man, he will know that this work is vain and he will rejoice in it anyway. This is the gift of God.
Whenever anyone announces that there is no such thing as truth, a listener should always wonder if the speaker believes his expression to be true.
We should let the Word do its work before we hasten to make Ecclesiastes a grab bag of inspirational quotes.
God is the One who gives things, and God is the one who gives the power to enjoy things. These are distinct gifts . . . just as a can of peaches and a can-opener are distinct gifts. Only the first is given to the unbeliever. The believer is given both, which is simply another way of saying that he is given the capacity for enjoyment.
vanity does not refer to an absolute meaninglessness. We see now that it refers to an inscrutable repetitiveness.
As sure as the sun rises, men will continue to make the same mistake except for those to whom God gives wisdom.
To be wise, a man must know his limitations. “All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it” (v. 8). A wise believer is a man who knows the length of his tether. Only through the wisdom which God gives can he come to enjoy this limitation, this restriction, this vanity. And while a wise man may come to enjoy this vanity, even he cannot really express it.
There is a purpose behind this meaninglessness—it is the purpose and intent of God that sinners cannot straighten what He has made crooked.
Man cannot straighten what God has made crooked. Contrary to our modern evangelical apostles of uplift, God has given us “sore travail” (v. 13).
Perhaps we may find a savior in comedy. But the ubiquitous laugh track behind all our sitcoms provides a fitting commentary for our times—it is nothing but a great comedic cattle prod, which considerately tells the herd when it is supposed to overflow in jovial mooing. Time to laugh, says our invisible master.
If Christ did not rise from the dead, then the most sensible thing to do is eat and drink and have as good a time as a meaningless bit of protoplasm can have.
Drunkenness is of course as empty as the bottle afterwards. The New Testament puts drug use in the same class—hollow.
We seek peace through eliminating the very idea of a moment’s peace.
Satisfaction cannot come from anything within man’s power.
The gift of God does not make this meaninglessness go away; the gift of God makes this vanity enjoyable.
Man cannot be thought of as an artesian well. Nothing inherent in him enables him to enjoy his creature comforts. He has no innate capacity to enjoy. Further, this is God’s doing—God is the one who has imposed this inexorable law upon us (vv. 24–25). Who can enjoy even his food apart from God?
Joy is a crowning gift of God in this meaningless world.
We are given the privilege of experiencing joy here, in the midst of ongoing disobedient and imbecilic chaos. Joy, yes, but mirabile dictu, the joy is here.
What is the hallmark of wisdom in this fallen world? The answer is joy at the end of the tether. But before we can learn joy at the end of the tether, we must learn the strength of that tether. The Lord is God and we are not.
Now the days of our lives are in the hands of God.
When looked at from our vantage under the sun, everything (including the ebb and flow) is vanity. But when we remember that God has placed all things where they now are, everything (including the ebb and flow) is beautiful (v. 11). A careful reader looks ahead to verse 14. God does all this that men should fear. A man who reads without trembling has forgotten the living God.
Because this doctrine stinks in our nostrils, we are apt to study arguments to find a way out. But God only promised a way of escape from every temptation, not from every unpalatable doctrine.
Who can say that his life ended because God glanced away for a moment? When men are thrust into the maw and grind of war, the fools among them think they are shaping their own destiny. But every arrow, every bullet, follows the path ordained for it before the worlds were made.
A time comes to weep; a time comes around when we laugh. Our tears of grief, and the occasions of them, are from His hand. So is the laughter (v. 4). “I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (Is. 45:6b–7). When calamity comes, and the tears follow, the Lord was in it. When rejoicing brings relief, the Lord was in it. This doctrine has a hard edge and more than one person has cut himself on it. But denial of the doctrine does not remove the light and darkness, the peace or evil. It just removes
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The problem of evil is one which torments urbane thinkers in philosophy departments around the world. I suggest that some hardy believer, at the next faculty dinner, should rise and propose a toast—to the problem of evil. There will be a great blessing in it.
Prosperity is His gift, and so are stock-market crashes (v. 6).
The commotion of the stock market reveals the hubris of man better than few other things. We believe we can pump up the Dow forever and make money at a fine clip forever . . . but we cannot. The cycles ordained by God for everything in this fallen and silly world will come around again, and many a millionaire will go white in disbelief. “How could this happen?” Friend, look at the world. How could it not?
A man who embraces evil simply finds himself a tool in the hand of the Almighty. A man who rejects evil and follows wisdom finds himself a son in the family of the Almighty. The one option not offered us is that of thwarting and restricting the purposes of God.
“Why, O Lord, dost thou not deliver us from the secularists?” Of course, the answer is that we haven’t stopped voting for them. We are like those who want to be delivered from drowning so long as they get to stay down at the bottom of the pool.
Only a fool entrusts a man with real power over his fellows when that man does not fear God.
In the last analysis, scientism can only measure how fast we rot. Knowledge of the final judgment and how men as men will stand there before a great throne does not come from dissecting frogs.
Men will always be men, but apart from an acknowledgment of the final judgment, they cannot hope to give a reasonable account of themselves as men.
the gift of God bestows knowledge of our life after death.
the gift of God bestows comfort.
A wise man hates all forms of envy.
the gift of God bestows satisfaction in your own toil.
A man works hard to make a pile and doesn’t stop to ask a very basic question—why am I doing this?
the gift of God bestows companionship.
the gift of God bestows acceptance with Him.
We should welcome the silence of despair. Human despair has no authority to contradict what God gives to us. It may only contradict what it experiences, i.e., life under the sun. Without God and without His Word, what can we say about such things? We have to be silent. We must despair . . . of our despair.
Obviously, at least two things can interfere with our understanding of the glorious truth of who God is. The first is how we think about God, and the second is how we live before God.
Being a prayer warrior—what an awful phrase for a wonderful thing!—is not the same as chattering, glibness, garrulousness, and so on. Believers need to learn to offer few words first.
Dreamers like to talk, and talkers like to dream. Pay what you have vowed, because God takes no pleasure in fools. You do not want to set God against you in your work. Fear the Lord.
The prayer of the wise seeks the favor of the Lord upon the work done.
Men who build empires frequently find themselves holding a grizzly bear by the ears. The more they do, the less they are able to do. The more control they amass, the less control they have. The more power they acquire, the more powerless they feel. This is because the vanity of increase, the futility of silver and gold, has a life of its own. A man may work hard to acquire money, only to discover at the end of the day that the money actually acquired him. Few men have wealth, and even fewer control it when they do.
Ditch diggers, Solomon tells us, sleep better than the anxiety-ridden rich (v. 12). A rich man who is a fool is destroyed by his own blessings (v. 13).
