Ecclesiastes 2- Book Status

Read Ecclesiastes 2

In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul writes something so profound for a Jew that I'm sure that he was shocked when he came to this revelation: Everything is permissible, but not everything is good. What this means is that we're allowed to do anything we want, that is from the freedom we have in Christ, but not everything that we can do is good for us, for our relationship with Christ, and a lot of what we want to do is still sin. Paul counters this with Romans 6 by saying that we died to sin, and are made alive in Christ. We call ourselves Christians, yet if we go with the idea of "everything is permissible" and we take advantage of that sinning without thought of the consequences then we are still slaves to sin and are still dead in our transgressions. A part of becoming a Christian is maturing, and realizing that while we have freedom to do things, we know what is good for us and what is bad for us, and we choose the good, because God our perfect father has told us what is good and we do our best to follow his directions.

Why am I talking about all of this? Well first off I have to make sure I'm not going to give anyone permission to sin without a care in the world. If we have died to sin and came alive in Christ then we are to live like it. Second, this is what the first 11 verses of Ecclesiastes 2 talks about.

Solomon writes how he has tried everything: he lived with the motto of "enjoy yourself" and saw how laughter is nothing but madness and pleasure has no purpose in the grand scheme of things. He tried to cheer his body with wine and looked for anything worthwhile to do on the earth. He had everything anyone could ever ask for, he was the greatest king who had ever ruled Israel, there was none like him. He took whatever he wanted and squeezed as much happiness and pleasure out of everything.

Then verse 11 we see he says that throughout it all he was guided by wisdom, and everything he did, everything he had, all the happiness and pleasure that he had in his life, it was all pointless.

He looked at how he could do anything, yet saw that not everything was good for him. He saw that it was all pointless.

After Solomon saw all of this he looked at the actions that were wise and the actions that were folly in his life, and he tells of how wisdom is more beneficial for us than folly (and most of his actions were folly). We should stick with the things that are good and beneficial for us, just as we should stick with the light as opposed to the dark because in the light we benefit more.

This idea brings us to a passage in John 3.19-21. Light has come into the world, and our actions are seen by all, both good and bad, wise and foolish, spiritual and fleshly. When we accept the light and come into it for the world to see us, we are made clean. We can see what we are doing (Ecc. 2.14) as can the world, seeing that we glorify God through our actions. Those who cling to the dark think they can hide their actions, but God sees all. The fool clings to the darkness, and can't see what he's doing, he doesn't fully understand the effects of sin in his life.

But in the end, the same thing happens to the wise and the foolish, those in the light and those in the dark.

Both will die.

We move on to verse 15, and are presented with the question, "What is the point of being wise then, if we die just like the foolish?"

There is none. But this brings up Pascal's Wager. Quick summary of what this is, a guy named Pascal said that if a man lives his life for Christ: Loving God, serving others, doing everything he can to glorify God, and then dies and find out there is no God, no heaven, no hell, then all he lost was finite things, earthly things, but he still lived a good life. So what benefit do we have for living a life of wisdom? Well we can at least say that we lived a good life, but we have faith that a life of wisdom is what God wants us to live, and if we live that kind of life, with the knowledge of Christ and faith in his blood, we can be called sons of God.

**Side Note: There's a lot more to this stuff, but it will take far to long to actually get into with everything else that needs to be addressed. After I get done with Ecclesiastes I will go more in depth with some of these issue.**

So there is no difference between the wise man and the foolish man, both will die and both will be forgotten, so all we do is pointless. This realization that Solomon has pushes him to hate life. He hates everything that he has done because after he dies it's just going to get passed on to whoever comes after him, someone who hasn't worked for it or earned it.

He gives up trying to be happy with the things that he has done, he knows that everything that he has worked so hard for is pointless for him because he can't take it with him when he dies. This brings up more ideas from Jesus, Matthew 6.19-24, which I think should be after 25-34. Matthew 6.25-34 has Jesus telling us to not worry about how we're going to eat, or where we're going to live, or how we will survive, if we seek first God, we'll be taken care of. Then 19-24 tells us not to store things up here on earth because they will be destroyed here. Instead we should keep our treasures in heaven, where they can't be destroyed.

Two final things to talk about for this chapter.

Verses 24-25: There is nothing better than a man enjoying life. C.S. Lewis writes, "God cannot give us happiness and peace a part from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." (I want to say that's from Mere Christianity, but I can't remember where I read it, I just have it written down.) We can see throughout scripture that joy comes from God, a simple example being the Fruit of the Spirit. When we receive the Spirit, when we receive God, we gain a multitude of things, one of which is joy. It is only in God that we may find this joy and truly enjoy life. And our life is work, walking, talking, breathing, serving, careers, school, all of this is work, and everything we do should glorify God. Everything should be worship, and when we worship God in all we do, we enjoy all that we do.

Verse 26: Those that please God (worship God) are given wisdom, knowledge, and joy. But in chapter 1 we see that wisdom and knowledge bring  sadness, how can they bring joy then? Only with god do we gain joy. By putting God in our work from 1.13, understanding the works of men, we find that all that we do for ourselves is pointless, but all we do for God is worthwhile, and we begin storing treasures for ourselves up in heaven, and we please God. Then we we please God we gain more wisdom, knowledge, and joy.

So what does all of this mean? Everything that we do for ourselves is pointless. We gain money, buy houses, cars, tv's, game systems, and whatever else we want, but they all fade away. They're all pushed aside as soon as the newest thing comes out (prime example is Apple products). So instead of working for yourself, gaining things that will just fade away, work for God. Store for yourself treasures in heaven, making God happy with your actions. These are wise actions. Live a wise life.