I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Part 2

A story is told about an elderly man who lived in Europe, who every week would go down to the train station and give chocolates away to children who were coming and going with their parents.

People who watched him commented on how faithful and consistent and generous he was, and how he was an example of how to spend your older years thinking of others, not yourself.

And they were right.

But only a few knew the true story: decades earlier, during World War 2, that man had been a little boy at that very train station on the day his mother was taken away to a concentration camp. Standing alone in grief, a stranger had given him a piece of chocolate. Every time he went down to the station, he was remembering that day and passing on to others the kindness shown to him.

That's a beautiful story. Unfortunately, I don't think it's a true story, but it does illustrate this idea that there are layers of meaning to many of the things we see. One layer to that story is just a nice old man being generous by handing out chocolate at the train station. That layer is true and meaningful. But then we go deeper to a whole other layer about his backstory, and our understanding deepens and we see even more of what's really going on.

There are layers of meaning to many passages in the Bible as well. Layers and layers and layers. We can read it and draw conclusions, and those conclusions might be right. But they we dig deeper and we open up whole new layers of meaning that help us see what's going on in an even deeper and a richer way.

That is what we're going to see today as we come back to Ecclesiastes and look at the very same passage that we considered last week. We're going to see a whole other layer to this passage that takes us even deeper than we went last week.

Just as a recap, last week we followed along with Qoheleth as he explored joy or pleasure. He's on a quest to discover what's good for people to do with their few days under the sun, and he wonders if just feeling good is the goal.

So he drank lots of wine and enjoyed lots of different women and built lots of cool stuff and tried his best to enjoy himself as much as he could. But at the end, he looked back and said: "It's all meaningless, mere breath."

And last week we talked about the pointless pursuit of pleasure, and how foolish it is to chase after things that feel good for a moment but are gone as soon as a puff of smoke.

Qoheleth's Quest & Israel's Story

Today, as we dig deeper, we want to start by asking the question: what made it possible for Qoheleth to be able to pursue pleasure like he did? How did he find himself in the spot where he could devote himself to a quest like this?

How does a king find the time and space to seek out by wisdom all that is done under heaven? Where does he get the resources to build great works, or to build his own garden of Eden, or to amass for himself the treasures of kings and provinces like we heard last week?

The answers to these questions will help unlock our understanding of what's going on in these passages and even in this whole book.

And to answer these questions, we need to go back. We need to go back and retell the story of God and His people, starting in the garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lived in abundance and peace and fellowship with their maker. It was paradise.

And then they rebelled against their maker, and were sent out, east of Eden, where they had to carve a life for themselves out of the hard ground. Where thorns and thistles tore at their skin and their food only grew by a constant input of pain and sweat, until finally they returned to the ground from which they came. For, as God had promised, "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Gen 2:17).

And so, on a particular day, the Lord called a man from the land of the east and brought him into a far country, a land that was "well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord" (Gen 13:10). And “The Lord said to Abram… ‘Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you’” (Genesis 13:14–17).

Two chapters later, God defines the land promised to Abraham as being "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18), an important detail we'll see in a minute.

In an ironic twist, there is a famine in that luscious land, and so Abraham's descendants go to Egypt where, despite oppression and injustice, they are fruitful and multiply just like God told Adam and Eve to do.

And in faithfulness to His promises to Abraham, the Lord brings Israel up out of Egypt, and meets them at Sinai where He enters into covenant with them. He promises to bring them back to the land he gave to Abraham, where, if they obey Him, they will experience no ending of blessings. Listen to these promises made to them from Leviticus 26:

“If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Leviticus 26:3–12).

A generation later, as the children of that people gathered on the plains of Moab just across the river from their new home, these promises are repeated and recorded in Deuteronomy 28.

These are just incredible promises, aren't they? If we read them in the context of the story, what do we see here? We see God promising to turn their land into something like the Garden of Eden—abundant, fruitful, bursting with life and provision. Like in the garden, He himself will walk among them there. They will be fruitful and multiply and fulfill the mandate given to Adam and Eve.

God is promising to bring them back to Eden in many ways, except for one big one. There is one key aspect of the curse on Adam that these promises do not address. I wonder if you've noticed it? I wonder if they noticed it? If you're not yet sure what I mean, hang on because we'll get there in a moment.

But before we get there, we need to remember what happened in the story after this point. They people get to the land, where they enjoy rest for a short time. And then they begin to disobey the Lord, and they miss out on these great covenant blessings, and instead they experience the covenant curses that we didn't read this morning but probably remember from the book of Judges: war, oppression, lack of food, lack of peace.

There are brief times where they taste how good things could be. But before long, they're chasing after other gods and they are being cursed instead of blessed.

And eventually, after going round the mulberry bush for years, and being saved by God time and time again, the people request a king. Though their request is evil, God means it for good. He is going to give them a king who will lead them to obey God, so that they might enjoy the promised blessings of the covenant.

If we read Psalm 72, the first three verses show us this three-step connection between a righteous king, leading the people in righteousness, and therefore the people enjoying the abundant blessings of the covenant.

“Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice! Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness!” (Psalm 72:1–3).

Verse 3 is not changing the subject or just saying "Oh ya, that would also be great." No, the mountains of Israel bearing prosperity for the people is what God promised them would happen when they walked in obedience to His covenant, which the king would help them do.

And this started to happen with David. Much of David's reign was doing catch-up work of dealing with the enemies of God's people on all sides. He was almost constantly at war. That's why so many Psalms are about deliverance from his enemies. 2 Samuel 21 talks about his final battle with the Philistines, where he grows weary and almost does, and David's men say, "you're done going out to war with us."

And that's one of his last exploits before he is old, and there are squabbles over the kingship, and finally Solomon is made king in his place. And under Solomon, thanks to David's long wars, Israel is at rest and finally enjoys the fullness of the covenant blessings promised so long before.

If you have your Bibles, take a look at 1 Kings 4:20 and following, which describe the reign of Solomon in the rich language of covenantal blessing.

“Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea" says verse 20. That's telling us the promise given to Abraham was fulfilled. "They ate and drank and were happy." They are enjoying all of the promises of provision given through Moses. Verse 21: "Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life” (1 Kings 4:21).

Solomon's territory, for the first time in Israel's history, lines up with the borders promised to Abraham. And verses 22 and following go on to describe the incredible wealth and abundance Solomon enjoyed, once again in keeping with the promises through Moses. Verse 24 and into 25 reads thus: “And he had peace on all sides around him. And Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, all the days of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:24–25).

The covenant promises are being kept. Peace and security and prosperity on all sides. And Solomon knew it. In 1 Kings 8, after he completes the temple and assembles the people to dedicate it, “…he stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice, saying, ‘Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant’” (1 Kings 8:55–56).

Solomon is right. All of the promises spoken by Moses about prosperity and security have been kept.

And now super-wise and super-rich Solomon is king over a super-peaceful people. And what does he do? What does a king do who isn't off fighting battles all the time?

1 Kings tells us that he spoke proverbs and songs, and studied the natural world, and spoke wisdom to all the peoples of the earth who came to hear of his wisdom (4:34, 10:23-25). He built the temple and a palace and other incredible buildings in Jerusalem and other cities (5:1-7:51, 9:10-25). He sent out sailors to bring him back exotic treasures, and built cool stuff with all of the gold that came his way (9:27-28, 10:14-22). He married hundreds of women and collected hundreds of concubines (11:1-3).

In other words, he did exactly what we've been hearing about in Ecclesiastes the past few weeks.

And he could do that because of all of these covenant blessings. He had all of this wealth because of God's covenant blessing of prosperity. He had space to pursue wisdom and build great works because God's covenant blessing of peace. Everything he enjoyed, everything he experienced, he experienced as a recipient of these promises.

This is absolutely crucial to understand Ecclesiastes, especially chapter 2. Solomon could pursue pleasure in these different areas precisely because he was king over a nation enjoying a super-abundance of God's covenant blessings.

Solomon might have been the first person in history to enjoy all of these promises in their fullness. Israel had never enjoyed the covenant blessings as much as they did in Solomon's day, and as the king, he got the cream of the crop. And so he could drink and build and collect and enjoy himself, soaking in the best of the best of what had been promised to Moses, and enjoying it all to the max.

But Death

And when do you suppose it sunk in? Was it early on in his life, shortly after God's gift of wisdom? Was it after a few years, a walk about sunny Jerusalem one day, holding hands with his latest wife? Was it an ache or a pain in his back, the sight of some wrinkles in a polished brass mirror?

At some point, Ecclesiastes wants us to understand, Solomon realizes that, despite enjoying the best of all of these blessings, he was still going to die. And that would be it.

Because for as amazing as these covenant promises were, and as close as they brought things back to the garden of Eden, God's promises to Israel were all confined to this life. All of these blessings stopped at the moment of death. Though the earth may have been abundant while they lived, nothing God promised to Israel changed their fundamental destiny to return to the earth.

Solomon, at rest for long years, is finally able to soak in this in and realize that he who dies with the most covenant blessings still dies. That covenant breaker and covenant keeper end up in Sheol together. That rich and poor, righteous and wicked, wise and foolish—they all get levelled out in the end.

If we think of God's covenant with Israel like a mountain, Solomon is one of the first men to make it to the top. He enjoys the best of what was promised. But he realizes how temporary even these blessings are, how short-lived all of this God-given pleasure is, and so he stands there staring up at the sky saying, "This is it? This is all that there is?"

And as far as he knew, that was all that there was. And so there was nothing more, nothing better to do, than just to enjoy what you had as long as you had it.

Nothing Better To Do

And I believe that's really the thrust of those passages that we read last week, where Qoheleth tells people there's nothing better to do than enjoy the temporary blessings of the covenant as long as they could.

We want to think about these passages for a minute because they really come to life when we think about them in the context of the covenant. Think about 2:24-25:
“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?”

What I want to suggest is that eating, drinking, and finding joy were specific covenant blessings. If you were an Israelite, eating and drinking were things that you could only do if you were walking in covenant faithfulness enjoying God's covenant blessings. Because otherwise, you'd be experiencing God's covenant curse of famine, like the people did so many times, and there wouldn't be a lot of eating and drinking going on.

Back in 1 Kings 4:20, we read that under Solomon's reign, “Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and drank and were happy” (1 Kings 4:20).

In other words, they were soaking in the covenant blessings of being made sand on the seashore and being given abundant provision.

And they were happy, which comes from a word that's used many times in Deuteronomy for the joy they were told to enjoy when they gathered in Jerusalem for religious festivals or when they reflected on God's abundant provision for them (Deut 16:15, 28:47).

And that's why these three words are found together several times throughout the Old Testament to refer to Israel's enjoyment of God's covenant blessings (Isa 22:12-13, Isa 65:13-14, Neh 8:12, 1 Chr 29:22).

And Ecclesiastes would have us picture Solomon, looking around at his people eating, drinking and being happy, soaking up these temporary blessings, and he realizes that it's all mere breath and it's all going to be over so quick, and they're going to be buried in the dirt like everybody else, but what else are they going to do? They might as well enjoy what God has given them.

“And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun” says 8:15.

But don't think that any of this is going to last. “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going” (Ecclesiastes 9:7–10).

Enjoy these temporary blessings, because even if they're gone like a puff of smoke, they're all we're getting.

Was Qoheleth Right?

Once again, we want to ask the question: was Qoheleth right? As he looks at the best that God had given his people, and says "this is it?", as he lives the dream and yet cries out "I still haven't found what I'm looking for," as he overflows with blessings but still aches for more, is he right to feel this way?

I believe the answer is yes. I believe that Qoheleth has actually stumbled on to the biggest secret in the Old Testament, hidden right there in plain sight.

The secret is that these promises God gave to Abraham and Moses were never meant to be the end of the line. They were never supposed to be it. They were never supposed to satisfy people's aching souls.

Because, as Paul explains in Colossians 2, all of the food and drink and festivals were but shadows of the things to come; "but the substance belongs to Christ" (Col 2:17).

The blessings of the Old Covenant were always just shadows on a cave wall, cast by the approaching saviour. Qoheleth was simply one of the few to get close enough to the shadows to realize that that's all that they were.

And he ached for more. He knew there was more. In 3:11 he wrote, “he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” He ached for something that was more than mere breath, but he didn't know how to find it. And so he says again in verse 12, there's nothing better to do than enjoy these vain blessings while we can.

But oh, he ached for more. And he wasn't the only one. Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham himself “was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:10). He wasn't content with Canaan. He desired "a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb 11:16).

So yes, Qoheleth was right to be dissatisfied, given his vantage point. And Ecclesiastes is here in the Bible to help keep us dissatisfied with mere breath. To keep us from thinking we'll be happy if we just get a little bit more. To keep us remembering that we are not home yet.

And Ecclesiastes is here to help us rejoice when we read Hebrews 11:40, where we find out that God has provided something better for us. Ecclesiastes helps us feel the "finally!" when we read John 3:16: “‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’” (John 3:16).

Eternal life! Here is something solid to grab on to after all the vapour and smoke of short-term blessings. Here is some substance after all the shadow. Because Jesus died our death, and was buried in the ground, took the full weight of God's curse against our sin, and then rose from the dead, life is not just meaningless vanity.

The Reality of Eternal Life

And friends, that's really where we want to see as we consider what this book is saying to us. The promise of eternal life with Christ is more real than any gift God could give us here in this life.

It's so easy for us to get that backwards: to read the Bible and think that the physical blessings that God gave Israel in the Old Testament were more real, more substantial, more desirable than the spiritual blessings and promises that we've been given in the New Covenant. That what they had through Moses was better than what we have in Christ.

I wonder if this is one of the draws of the prosperity gospel. People read these promises of health, wealth and prosperity, and they think: man, that's where it's at. Maybe if I just pray hard enough, God will treat me like I'm in Old Covenant Israel and make me super rich too.

And maybe we're wily enough to avoid the more overt forms of the prosperity gospel, but are there subtler ways that we might still hang on to the idea that health, wealth and prosperity are really where it's at?

Might it show up in Christian young people who think that getting married, buying a house and starting a family is the goal in life, and once they've achieved that goal, it becomes their main source of identity.

Does this show up in Christians who, when their bodies get sick, act as if something strange is happening? Who, even into old age, get into a panic when they feel their health starting to slip away from them? As if physical health is the main thing?

Or maybe it shows up in Christians who, when they realize that Jesus isn't going to make them rich or healthy, just check out. Going to heaven will be great one day, but if Jesus isn't going to help me reach my goals in this life, I've got more important things to focus on.

Whether you are young, whether you are old, whether you are single, whether you are married, whether you have lots of money or little money, the great temptation for us all is to view the things of this earth as the real things, and the promises made to us in the New Covenant as just slightly less real, less important, less meaningful.

C.S. Lewis was right when he wrote, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

And Ecclesiastes totally flips the script and helps us see the mud pies for what they are. It helps us to see that the Old Covenant was not the glory days—those were the days of shadow. Those were the days of mere breath. In Christ we have the vacation at the sea—the true and better and far more real thing.

This is why Jesus can tell us not to lay up for ourselves “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” (Matthew 6:19–20).

Do you see how Ecclesiastes brings that verse into focus? Treasures in heaven are not less real than treasures on earth. It's the opposite. Eternal treasure is infinitely more real and lasting and substantial than any vapoury treasure we can touch in this life.

This is why Jesus can tell us to take up our crosses and follow him, telling us, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

It's no good to gain the whole world, because it's all vanity. Mere breath.

This is why Paul can tell us, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1–4).

Do you see how this verse is not telling us to turn aside from real things into woo-woo spiritual things, but to turn aside from smoke and shadow into true, solid, eternal reality?

So young people, don't seek worldly success and treasures like they are everything. People in the middle of your life, when dissatisfaction creeps in, don't set your hopes on something else, something more, something next. Those of you in the sunset years of your life, don't look on fading health or dwindling strength or shrinking resources like a surprise or an unexpected crisis. This life was always just a vapour. These are just the shadow-lands. Reality awaits.

Wherever you are at in life, let Qoheleth take you right up to the edge of all that this earth can offer you, and then let Christ take you past that edge into the eternal reality that He died and rose again to give us.

Let's celebrate that together as we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.