12 I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 
14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, 
all is vanity and a striving after wind.
15 What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. 
I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
— Ecclesiastes 1:12-18, ESV

Introduction

Solomon, son of David, is one of the most significant persons in human history and Holy Scripture. 

He is one of the famous four pairs of persons who loom larger than life over the ancient days of the Old Testament.  In Abraham and Jacob, we have the father of Israel and the grandson who sired the twelve tribes.  In Moses and Joshua, we have the giver of the word of God and the leader of the people of God who led them into the promised land. In David and Solomon, we have the warrior king who subdued the territory and the king of peace who built the temple.  In Elijah and Elisha, we have the most powerful prophet in the land, who never died, succeeded by the prophet who got a double portion of his power, and could raise the dead even after he died.

Only one of these eight great men turned out to be a disappointment, Solomon.  The Bible is very candid about his rise and fall, his successes and his failures, his unique wisdom and his unabashed stupidity, his great faith and his lack thereof.  Overall we value Solomon greatly, if nothing else for the great contribution he made to the Bible.

Solomon’s life pours out over the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.  He is credited with writing at least a couple of the Psalms and most of the Proverbs.  His earliest contribution was the Song of Solomon, a striking allegory of love, marital and spiritual.  His last was the book of Ecclesiastes, a journal of regret over what went wrong, with sage advice on how to make it right, especially with the Almighty.  

So let us introduce ourselves today to “the preacher,” endowed with great “wisdom,” who looked “under the sun” and witnessed nothing but “vanity and a striving after the wind.”

Exegesis

The Preacher

The author calls himself “the Preacher,” “Koheleth” in Hebrew, “Ecclesiastes” in Greek, which was transliterated into our English language.  It is the title of a significant one who speaks to an important assembly.  Solomon refers to himself with this title seven times.  Perfect.  

In the first verse of the book he claims to be “the son of David, king in Jerusalem.”  This could be any descendent of David.  However, most believe it to be a certain one, Solomon, literal son of David and Bathsheba, who loved to exercise his gift of gab in front of assemblies in Israel. 

David and Solomon, father and son, were so much alike and altogether different.  They were both anointed by God.  They were both kings of Israel, the third and fourth, respectively.  They were both children of God, by the covenant of grace through faith in the Lord, who chose them and revealed Himself to them.  

David was a doer, while Solomon was a talker.  David was a lover, and loved one woman the wrong way, hence Solomon’s birth.  Solomon was a lover on steriods, who loved all women the wrong way.  It is written he acquired seven hundred wives plus a harem of three hundred mistresses.  That’s about one new woman for every two weeks of his adult life.  Oh, the jokes the Babylon Bee makes about Solomon’s love life!  

David was a man after God’s own heart.  Solomon was the man who let his heart go astray.  With Ecclesiastes, however, he tries to bring it back to where it belongs, in the hands of a perfect, loving, forgiving, and sovereign God.  We should listen to what the Preacher preaches.

Wisdom

We listen to Solomon, in spite of his follies, because we are led to believe that no one was ever wiser than him.  “Wisdom” is as word spoken five times in this text and thirty times overall in Ecclesiastes.  While most people have to gain wisdom, Solomon had it given to him.

2 Chronicles 1:7-13 records a unique experience with God when Solomon was granted a wish.  It was almost like a scene from Aladdin and the magic lamp.  However, Solomon was Jewish, not Arab, and God is no wish-granting genie, in spite of the false claims of the prosperity gospel.

Solomon did not wish for long life, and did not attain it.  He died relatively young, after assuming the throne in his late teens or early twenties and reigning for forty years.  He did not ask for riches, although he received them in abundance during his reign, much of it through burdensome taxation.  He did not ask God for revenge against his and his father’s enemies, he took care of that himself.  What he did ask for was wisdom, supreme knowledge formed by observation and experience, which he would have otherwise lacked at the time.  

Like they say, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.  Solomon’s last word, in this text, on the wisdom he had been given, is “sorrow.”  His great thirst for knowledge and experience nearly drowned him in a sea of sexual immorality and pagan religious rituals.  Ecclesiastes is a lament, a regret, a warning.  Solomon says his great wisdom brought him great grief, because he came to understand how futile and worthless things can be “under the sun,” a phrase key to understanding this text and the whole of Ecclesiastes.  

Under the Sun

Solomon said he’d seen it all, “everything that is done under the sun.”  We find this phrase, “under the sun,” twenty-seven times in the twelve chapters of Ecclesiastes.  Obviously, it is significant.  

“Under the sun” is a real and symbolic place.  In reality, it is human existence, life on earth, the process of being born, growing up, having a vocation and enjoying recreation, having children and grandchildren, growing old, and eventually dying.  In Solomon’s figurative poetry and prose that produced Ecclesiastes, life lived “under the sun” is a life lived without God, without grace, without the promise of the glory existing above the sun.  

Solomon’s tone in much of the book was captured by the most famous song by the leader of the most famous band in history:

Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try.
No hell below us,
Above us, only sky.
Imagine all the people,
Living for today.
— John Lennon

Lennon’s tone in the song is optimistic.  Without God, religion, and the specter of an afterlife, we could all get along and enjoy a life of peace and prosperity.  I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Imagine.  It has a musical arrangement that is hauntingly beautiful and lyrics that are humanitarianly hopeful.  But, it is a pipe dream, for it leaves out the crookedness of man and the redemptive power of God totally out of the equation.  

Solomon imagines life without God when he refers to “under the sun.”  Unlike Lennon, Solomon was pessimistic.  The prophet, preacher, and theologian understood the depravity of man, for he indulged himself in it whole hog.  He grasped the concept of eternity, and knew most men are going to end up on the wrong side of it.  Therefore, he proclaimed a life without God, a life lived totally “under the sun,” is brief, sinful, futile, and without reward.  

He had a phrase for that lack of reward, too.  

Vanity and a Striving after the Wind

Did you ever know, or perhaps you know now, a real blowhard.  You know, someone who constantly talks about themself, who lies and is delusional about what they’ve done and what they intend to do?  We call them “full of hot air.”  Solomon called it “vanity and a striving after the wind.”

These words are common in Ecclesiastes as well, so we’d better get used to them.  “Vanity” vainly appears twenty-six times, more than twice per chapter.  It translates a Hebrew word meaning either selfishness, futility, or, ironically, wind.  Another Hebrew word for wind closes the phrase “striving after the wind.”  Such wind blows eight times in the book and serves as figurative language for the brevity of human life or perhaps the eternality of the Holy Spirit.  

It is easy to see what Solomon saw when he chose these words to dominate parts of Ecclesiastes.  A life lived apart from God is selfish, ultimately worthless, and will not end well.  And though everyone wants to live forever, eternal life without God or grace cannot be grasped.  Human beings cannot change what is “crooked” and “lacking” in their lives and they cannot catch the Spirit.  The Spirit catches us, usually when we stop running from God.  Somewhere along the way, Solomon stopped running and sat down to write Ecclesiastes.

Interpretation

In the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, the “Preacher” is preaching a warning.  He is pessimistic about most of the people he has observed during his short lifetime.  Perhaps the old Seinfeld quote is a true proverb after all, “People, they’re the worst!”  

It is “wisdom,” godly wisdom, that people without God lack.  Wisdom is given and wisdom will grow in Ecclesiastes, ultimately personified in a prophesy about the Messiah, who alone can redeem life from the futile and make it wonderful.

“Under the sun” is the antithesis of the kingdom of God.  The kingdom of God exists everywhere and in every person in whom God is king.  In the New Testament sense, it is where and in whom Jesus Christ is Lord.  “Under the sun,” however, is where we all live at least temporarily, but lost people will remain there forever.  

Therefore, a life lived without faith and submission to God, without faith and repentance in Jesus Christ, is a wasted life.  

Application

Take the time to listen to “the Preacher,” your Pastor, and any person who offers advice that is God-centered and based on the inspired and infallible word of God.  Preaching gets a bad rap in our day, but preaching is indispensable for every day, for an abundant and eternal life.  

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
—  Romans 10:14, ESV

God will probably not give you “wisdom” in the same way He gave it to Solomon.  You will have to work for it.  You will have to handle Holy Scripture to gain it.  You will need the Holy Spirit to manifest it in your life.  

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
—  2 Timothy 2:15

Strive for the life you cannot see.  Do not settle for just living “under the sun.”  “’Tis only one life, and it will soon pass, only what’s done for Jesus will last.”  This is true.  Examine your eggs and your basket.  Seek the right kind of treasure.  

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 
— Matthew 6:21, ESV

Refuse to allow “vanity and a striving after the wind” to be your legacy.  Consider and commit to something else Solomon wrote:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
— Proverbs 3:5-6, ESV

Conclusion

I first read Solomon at the age of twenty when I became a Christian.  I posted Proverbs 3:5-6 on the bulletin board above my collegiate desk.  I’ve tried to live by it ever since.  Of course, I’ve lacked wisdom and gotten stuck under the sun many times, but the warp and woof of my life is above it, where God reigns, where Jesus Christ is Lord.

Now this old baseball player is in the late innings, having followed Jesus from my twenties into my sixties.  I do not know when the final out will come, but it is much sooner now than when I first went to bat for Christ.  I want to win in the end, which is why I’ve been drawn lately to Solomon, especially to Ecclesiastes.  

Let me beg you now.  Give your life to Christ if you have not already done so.  It is the only way to live above the sun, both now and forever, and live an abundant and eternal life.  Trust in His saving grace with a truly obedient faith.  Or else, your life will have been totally wasted.  This is what the Preacher, and this pastor, is trying to say.