The Question of Wisdom

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We are in the midst of a series focused on Ecclesiastes, which is, without a doubt, a very difficult and confusing book, so much so that many people have wondered what Ecclesiastes is doing in the Bible in the first place. I’ve suggested that we could think of the author of Ecclesiastes as a kind of professor. You could imagine him as the chair of the philosophy department at NYU, perhaps wearing a black turtleneck and thick, dark-rimmed glasses. He likes to go to independent films and see existentialist plays in Greenwich Village. He easily could have been a New Yorker. He's brash, and he's bold, and he tells it like it is. He's not afraid to get in your face, and he doesn't care if he offends you.

So he's a professor, but a particular kind of professor. He's not a lecturer. He's more like a seminar leader who relies on the Socratic method. He's not providing answers; he's asking questions. He's not offering advice about how to live your life or how to become a better person; no, he's asking questions in order to get you to think. And that's what makes him a little eccentric, because he refuses to settle for the trite, superficial answers that we often give to the big questions of life. As a result, he comes across as more than a little depressing, because he offers a rather bleak view of human existence — especially if you take God out of the picture.

That's why this book is so confusing. Because if you're a religious person, you might read Ecclesiastes and assume that Ecclesiastes contradicts everything that's written in the rest of the Bible. Or if you're not a religious person, you might pick up Ecclesiastes, and you start reading it, and you think to yourself, who needs this? If I want to feel bad about myself and about human existence, I can just read Arthur Schopenhauer or something. I don't need the Bible.

So it's a difficult and confusing book. But what you have to see in order to understand it rightly is that this professor is not trying to drive you to despair, but rather he's seeking to point you to the only source of hope. Ecclesiastes asks the questions to get you thinking, and then the rest of the Bible will provide the answers. And that's why Herman Melville, the author of “Moby Dick,” went back to Ecclesiastes time and time again, and he said that Ecclesiastes is the truest of all books because it offers an unflinching glimpse at life as it really is.

Now, as we've seen, the professor of Ecclesiastes sets out on a quest to see if he can find any kind of meaning, purpose, or significance in life. Last week we considered his pursuit of pleasure, and this week we turn to his pursuit of wisdom. Can wisdom provide us with the meaning, the significance, the satisfaction that we're looking for? So as we open to Ecclesiastes 2, I'd like us to see what we can learn about: 1) the longing for wisdom, 2) the limits of wisdom, and 3) the lifeline to wisdom.

¹²So 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. ¹³Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. ¹⁴The 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. ¹⁵Then 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. ¹⁶For 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. ¹⁷So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 2:12-17

The Longing for Wisdom

First, let's consider the longing for wisdom. We read last week how the professor engages in a failed experiment in the pursuit of pleasure, and now in verse 12, he tells us that he's turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. Now, when compared to folly or madness, all of us would choose wisdom every time. But what is it? What do we actually mean by wisdom? Well, a simple definition would be that wisdom is the art of living life well. Now let me explain.

Sometimes people associate wisdom with knowledge, but actually wisdom goes beyond knowledge. Now, wisdom assumes knowledge. If you don't know about a particular subject, you're not going to be very wise about it. But on the other hand, it's also very possible that you could know a lot about a subject and still be a fool. Because it's all head knowledge; you don't actually know how to apply it to the concrete realities of life. So for example, you might know all the fine points of theology, but you don't know how to apply it to your own heart, and that makes you a fool. You've got all this knowledge, but perhaps you come across as abrasive or domineering. You rub people the wrong way because you don't know how to relate to people; you just want to be right. So wisdom involves knowledge, but it goes beyond it.

Sometimes people also assume that wisdom and morality are one in the same thing, but wisdom goes beyond morality, because there are so many situations in life that require wisdom but to which morality doesn't really apply. So there is a sense in which, yes, we need to be discerning, but discerning of a particular kind in order to be wise. So it goes beyond morality. Discernment is not really about the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong. Lots of people can tell the difference between right and wrong. That's not so hard. True discernment is not the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong; true discernment is the ability to tell the difference between what is right and what is almost right. And that's what really matters in everyday life.

Let's imagine that you're deciding between two jobs. Or actually, let's make it more interesting. Let's mix things up a little bit. Let's say you're deciding between two people. You go up to the sixth floor after a Sunday worship at Central and you enjoy the meal that we prepared, and you meet two people who you think you could possibly date. You're attracted to two people. Which one should you choose? This requires discernment. Now you decide to date the one to whom you think you're more attracted, but it turns out that was a mistake. You're a fool. One of these relationships would have flourished, but the other one is going to fail. Why? Because you're just not the right person for one another. And it's only afterward when you look back on the situation that you say, I was such a fool. But you couldn't see it in advance.

So wisdom goes beyond knowledge. It goes beyond morality. It requires the ability to discern between what is right and what is almost right. And it also involves the ability to imagine a variety of different possibilities. Let's say you're confronted with a problem. Some people can only see two possible options; you think of it in a binary kind of way. But a wise person might see not merely two options but 10 different possibilities for how to pursue the path forward. And that's wisdom: the ability to imagine possibilities.

Let me give you an example of a failure of imagination that led to an incredibly foolish event. This took place on November 9, 1970. A massive dead whale that was 45 feet long and weighed eight tons washed up on the shore of Florence, Oregon. Now at that time, the Oregon State Highway Department was responsible for managing the coast. So these state highway officials now have a massive, rotting, smelly problem on their hands. So what are they supposed to do? Well, the highway officials get together, and they think to themselves, well, this whale is too big for us to bury, and it smells way too much to try to carve it up and cart it away. So what are we going to do? And the highway engineer says, I've got it. I know what we're going to do. We're going to treat this massive putrefying whale the same way that we would handle any other large obstacle on a highway, like a boulder.

So what does he do? He gets 20 cases — half a ton — of dynamite, and places it underneath this whale, and he decides that we're just going to blow this whale to smithereens like a boulder, and then we'll allow the seagulls and the scavenger crabs to clean up the mess. Now, word gets out that this is going to happen, and it's like a massive spectacle. So all kinds of people show up for the event. Families are making a picnic out of it. People are inviting each other out on dates. Let's go see the exploding whale. And the moment arrives, they do the countdown — you can watch this; there is an actual video you can go see — and then the explosion goes off, and everyone is just laughing and cheering. They're oohing and aahing as there's this cloud of sand and fire and smoke. But then as this cloud reaches 100 feet in the air, there's a moment where it's almost as if time stands still. And then the laughing and the cheering turns to screaming, and people realize they need to run for cover, because now huge massive pieces of whale blubber and guts and blood are raining down upon them. And literally, it took weeks to just get the smell out of their clothes or out of their hair. There was a chunk of whale that was as big as a refrigerator that landed on a car and completely smashed it a quarter of a mile away. I've always wondered how I could use this story in a sermon, and it wasn't until today that I finally came up with a reason to share it. But you see, that was a foolish, foolish decision because it represented a failure of imagination.

So wisdom is the art of living life well, and it goes beyond mere knowledge or morality. It requires the ability to tell the difference between what is right and what is almost right, and to imagine more possibilities than what we might at first think. And that, of course, is what we long for. We want to master the art of living life well. We want to know how to thrive and to flourish in the midst of the complex realities and the complexities of life on this planet. And so the professor of Ecclesiastes says that he wanted to learn everything he could about wisdom and folly and madness in order to experience the good life. And he concludes, therefore, in verse 13, that wisdom really is better than folly in the same way that light is better than darkness. And that's as far as it goes, but that is standard fare. That's the kind of statement you would find all over the book of Proverbs. It's the kind of thing your grandmother would tell you: You should seek to be wise, because it's good for you. It's for your own good.

The Limits of Wisdom

But then the professor starts to dwell on this, to think about this, to reflect on this a little bit more, and he realizes that there are limits to what wisdom can do. Wisdom in this life can really only get us so far, because he begins to say in verse 14, “... 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.” Now, what's he talking about? Why is he saying that the same event will happen to us all? Why is the wise person really in no better of a position than the fool? What event is he talking about? He's talking about death. The professor realizes that, if everyone is going to die — the wise one and the fool alike — then who cares? What difference does it make? At the end of the day, is the wise one really any better off than the fool?

Now this was a question that was deeply personal to Leo Tolstoy, so perhaps he could help us with this. When I worked as an RUF campus minister at Northwestern University, I befriended Gary Saul Morrison, who is perhaps one of the leading experts on Russian literature, and he granted me the opportunity to sit in on his lectures based on “The Brothers Karamazov,” “Anna Karenina,” and “War and Peace.” He has suggested that “War and Peace” is the greatest of all novels, and Leo Tolstoy is the greatest of all novelists — because Tolstoy was the wisest student of the human heart.

In 1879 and 1880, Tolstoy wrote “A Confession,” which was sort of his own spiritual biography. He talks about how he was born and raised and baptized in the Orthodox Church, but by the time he was 16, he stopped praying and he stopped going to church, and he really cut loose when he was a young person. He lived a life of folly and madness, and he recalls his youth with regret. He says that he was guilty of lying and stealing and promiscuity and violence. He claims that there was no crime that he wasn't willing to commit. But eventually he put his youth behind him, and he made it his ambition in life to perfect himself — intellectually, physically, morally. He read all the great books in order to become wise, and he wrote rules for himself in order to become moral. He said that he sought to become better. He wanted to be more famous, more important, more rich, and wiser than anyone else. And for a while, it seemed to be working. He became one of the most celebrated authors of his day.

But then he began to experience moments of bewilderment that completely perplexed him, because amidst all of his success, he would find himself wondering, why? What's the point of it all? Now he chose to get married, and the new circumstances of his happy family life distracted him from this ultimate search for meaning. He focused his energy on caring for his family. But then these doubts, these thoughts, these questions would creep back in with ever greater frequency, and they demanded answers with even more insistency. So at one point in “A Confession,” he says,

When considering plans for the education of my children, I would say to myself: “Why?” Or when considering how the peasants might become prosperous, I would suddenly say to myself: “But what does it matter to me?” Or when thinking of the fame my works would bring me, I would say to myself, “Well fine; so you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Moliere, or than all the writers in the world — and so what?” And I had absolutely no answer…

Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?

So he retells the story of an old Eastern fable, and in this fable there's a traveler who suddenly is overtaken by a wild beast, and so in order to escape the beast, he hides in a dry well. But when he jumps into the well, he sees that at the bottom of the well there's a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. And so the traveler clings to this little twig that is sticking out of a crevice within the wall of the well, and he holds onto it for dear life. He knows that he can't climb out or he'll be eaten by the beast, and he can't drop down to the bottom of the well or he'll be devoured by the dragon. So he's clinging to this twig, but it's only a matter of time before his strength will give out and he will fall to his death. But while he's holding on to this branch, he sees that there are two mice — a black mouse and a white mouse — that are running around this branch, slowly gnawing at it, and before long, that twig will break. But before it does, he observes that there's a little honey in the leaves of this branch, and so he reaches out and licks them with his tongue, and the honey gives him a certain sense of satisfaction, but only for a moment, and he knows that the moment won't last. And as Tolstoy shares this fable, he says, that is me. He explains it like this,

In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure… Those two drops of honey, which more than all else had diverted my eyes from the cruel truth, my love for my family and for my writing, which I called art – I no longer found sweet… The white mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging … And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.

And then Tolstoy, as the master student of human nature, asks the ultimate question:

Is there any meaning in my life that will not be annihilated by the inevitability of death that awaits me?

Well, he searches for an answer to that question in all the branches of knowledge and science. He examines all methods of possible escape. But no matter where he looks, he reaches the same conclusion of the professor of Ecclesiastes: All is vanity. And in fact, in his Confession, he quotes the professor — he quotes this very passage that's before us today.

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…

What's the point of pursuing wisdom if you end up being just as dead as a fool? Who cares about your legacy? Because you won't be remembered for long, and you won't be around to see it. So stop dreaming of some wonderful legacy that's going to give your life meaning now. Both Tolstoy and the professor reach a point of deep despair and disillusionment: “I hated life.”

The Lifeline of Wisdom

So you see, the professor of Ecclesiastes provides us with this ruthlessly devastating critique of the pursuit of wisdom. And at first glance, it seems like there really is no hope. There are no answers to the big questions. All we're left with is death and despair. That's what it seems. But if that's the conclusion you draw, well, then it shows that you have missed the professor's point. We long for wisdom because light is better than darkness — wisdom is better than folly — but we see the limits of wisdom, because wisdom can only carry us so far in light of the reality and the inevitability of death. And what we need, therefore, is a lifeline to wisdom — and that's what God throws us. He throws us a lifeline to true wisdom, and that is what the professor of Ecclesiastes wants you to see.

At the end in verse 17, he says, “I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.” Now, on the one hand, we have to remember that when he uses this phrase, “under the sun,” he's speaking of universal human experience. He's saying that this is what life is like on earth. Wherever the sunlight hits, this is what life is like. So no matter where you look, this is what you're going to find. You're going to find these common, universal, baffling enigmas to human life. But on the other hand, he also uses that expression, “under the sun,” to describe a particular vantage point. He's referring to a perspective on the world, a perspective on life, that fails to take into account God — the one who is above and beyond the sun.

So if there is no God, then it's true. Everything is meaningless. It is just a chasing after the wind. But if you put God back in the picture, then everything changes. You know what this is like? It's a little bit like trying to solve a math problem, but you're missing one too many variables in order to solve it, and therefore the problem is unsolvable. But if you were to place that missing variable back into the equation, then everything else falls into place. That's what the professor is trying to drive us to see.

And that is what Leo Tolstoy discovered. He searched all the branches of knowledge and science to find an answer to that question. He was looking for some answer that would help him overcome the seeming senselessness of life. And eventually he found what he was looking for, but he found it in the most unexpected of places. He was pursuing true wisdom, but he didn't find it among the sophisticated intelligentsia. But rather, he found it among the poor uneducated peasants of Russia. And what did he find? He found faith in Jesus. And he says he was inevitably led to acknowledge that there does exist another kind of knowledge, which is faith. And he adds, that only in faith can we find the meaning and the possibility of life.

So let me draw out some of the implications of this source of true wisdom in terms of our past, our future, and our present.

Past

First, let's consider the implications for our past. Now look, if you can imagine that there actually is a God above and beyond the sun — a God behind this universe who's responsible for everything that we see — then that God would know how life works best. He's the designer. And if we want to live life well, we should follow that guidance. And that, of course, is why God has chosen to reveal himself to us in history, in the Scriptures, and ultimately in the person of Jesus; he wants to impart to us the wisdom so that we might attain the art of living life well. And this is why wisdom is so important. Because if you ignore that wisdom, if you choose to try to find a wisdom of your own, if you try to go your own way and to break all the rules, it's not just wrong, but you're going to prove yourself to be a fool.

Let me give you an example first offered by the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. He said if you wanted to, you could take the watch off of your wrist, and you could use that watch not to tell time but to hammer nails. But what's going to happen to that watch? You're going to break it. And why are you going to break it? Because you violated its design. In a similar way, if there is a God behind this universe, then he has designed us a particular way. He's made us for a purpose, and if we go against the grain of our design, we're going to destroy ourselves. And that, of course, is the story of the human condition. It's not just breaking the rules; it's foolish because we're ignoring our design. And when you violate your design, you blow up your life. You self-destruct. It leads to spiritual death. And that's why the psalmist, in Psalm 14 and Psalm 53, tells us that the ultimate fool is the one who says in his heart there is no God.

So here's the problem: We try to find a wisdom apart from God, we don't take him into account, he's not part of the equation, and that leads to death, not life. That leads to folly, not wisdom. It leads to darkness, not light. But the wonder of the gospel is that Jesus — the truly wise one — came and died for fools like us. And the Apostle Paul never got over this. In 1 Corinthians 1, for example, he says what did the ancient Greeks seek? They sought wisdom. They were looking for sophistication. They were looking for intellect. They were looking for some kind of wisdom to help explain the world and to overcome the fear of death. He says the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. And to any person living in the Mediterranean world, the thought that God would become a human being and then die on a Roman cross was not only considered scandalous or obscene or grotesque; it was sheer madness. It was ultimate foolishness. And yet, Paul says the foolishness of God is wiser than human beings, because this is the only way that God could blot out our past. Jesus, the truly wise one, dies in our place — in the place of fools — in order to forgive us for all of our foolish mistakes and failures. All of our foolish actions, he bears them himself upon the cross so that we might be forgiven. He dies so that we might live.

Future

But Jesus says the true source of wisdom not only deals with our past, he also deals with our future — he has secured a future for us. The professor says that if we're all going to die, then it really doesn't matter if you're wise or foolish. But what if death isn't the end of the story? What if death doesn't get the last word? What if we're going to live forever? You see, the message of the Gospel is that Jesus not only died, but he rose again, and God has promised to do for us at the end of history what he did for Jesus in the middle of history. He's going to raise us up with new physical bodies to enjoy life with him in a new physical world, which means you're not going to lose your individual identity. You're not going to lose your memory. You're not going to lose your relationships. You're not going to gain all the wisdom that you have gained in this life. And that imbues everything with meaning. Nothing will be lost, nothing will be wasted, but actually it all will last into eternity.

Present

And if that's true, then that means that Jesus, the source of true wisdom, also fills the present with fresh meaning. See, here's the best part: Jesus not only forgives us for our past failures and opens up to us a new future; he also offers us his very self in the present so that we might know the way of wisdom by sheer grace. See, at the end of 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says that Jesus has become for us the wisdom of God. The wisdom that we're looking for is not something out there, it's not something abstract, it's not something that can be intellectualized. No, wisdom is a person. Jesus is the wisdom of God.

And so Paul picks this up again in Chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians, and he asks the question, who knows a person's thoughts except for the spirit of that person within them? Who really knows what another person is thinking except their own spirit? I mean, think about your relationships with the people that you know best. I met my wife, Ashley, when we were 18 years old. We've known each other a long time. We've been together for almost 30 years now. Most of the time, I can probably guess what Ashley is thinking or what she's about to say — but not always. Even after 30 years, she might surprise me. I know I surprise her. The only one who truly knows the thoughts of another is the spirit within them. The only way I could really know with any certainty what Ashley's thinking, what she's dreaming, what she's imagining for the future is if she tells me, if she reveals herself to me, if she opens up and shares.

And here is the wonder: That is what God does for us. But he hasn't just revealed himself in history, or in the Scriptures, or in the person of Jesus. When you put your faith in Jesus, God promises to put the very spirit of Jesus within you. The Spirit of Jesus dwells within you, which means that he's not asking us to just grope around in the dark trying to find some wisdom on our own. No, he gives it to us as a gift of his grace. We have the very spirit of Jesus. He says we have the mind of Christ. And therefore Jesus, the true source of wisdom, makes us wise by his grace when we lay hold of him by faith.

So if you want forgiveness for all of your past foolishness, and if you want to embrace a wisdom that will inform your life now and which will last into eternity, then you don't need to look any farther than Jesus. Put your trust in Jesus, the one who is the very source of wisdom. Jesus is the wisdom of God.

Let me pray for us.

Father, as we come to this table this morning, we acknowledge that we all long for wisdom. We want to master the art of living life well, because we want to experience the good life. And we do acknowledge the limits of earthly, worldly wisdom; it'll only carry us so far, especially given the reality of death. And so we pray that you would throw us a lifeline. Throw us a lifeline in and through the person of Jesus, the source of all wisdom, and help us to put our faith and trust in Him, so that we might experience true wisdom — so that we might become wise, not only now, but for all eternity with you. We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen.

Sermons

Ecclesiastes: The Enigma of Life Under the Sun: The Question of Wisdom

Related Resources

The Longing for Wisdom

The Limits of Wisdom

The Lifeline of Wisdom