MEANINGLESS (PART 4)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly.

What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done?

I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both.

Then I said to myself, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.”

For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die!

Ecclesiastes 2:12-16

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Throughout the Book of Proverbs, you will find stark contrasts made between the matter of wisdom and foolishness. Solomon and the Lord drive the point home that one needs to make wisdom a priority and avoid foolishness. Look again at several of those proverbs:

A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son brings grief to his mother. 10:1

The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin. 10:8

The wise store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin. 10:14

A fool finds pleasure in wicked schemes, but a person of understanding delights in wisdom. 10:23

The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice. 12:15

Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. 13:20

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. 14:1

A fool’s mouth lashes out with pride, but the lips of the wise protect them. 14:3

I could go on but the point is clear. Good and righteousness comes from wisdom while sin and wickedness is the by-product of foolishness. They couldn’t be more different, couldn’t be less in common, each with totally dissimilar motives and outcomes.

And yet, in today’s passage from Ecclesiastes, the same Solomon who brought you these compare and contrasts proverbs comes to the realization that maybe being a wise man doesn’t separate you all that much from the fool. Look again at his words:

Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly.

What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done?

I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both.

Then I said to myself, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.”

For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die!  Ecclesiastes 2:12-16

So is Solomon contradicting himself? Is he changing his mind about the merits of wisdom over foolishness? Does he really believe that wisdom is meaningless?

The answer to all three questions is “no”. Let me explain.

As we have seen already in Ecclesiastes, the common theme is Solomon wrangling with the ways of the world against the ways of God, his wisdom leading him to see his world through different lens, through the lens of God Himself. Wisdom will take anyone to that place when a person chooses to submit and surrender their will and way to His, when they allow Him to provide His knowledge and discernment on all matters of life.

In this instance, Solomon’s epiphany on life from the wisdom of God was that a wise person will end up experiencing the same worldly fate as the fool. Both will die and both will eventually be forgotten. Wisdom separates a wise person from a foolish one during the days they are alive but there are no wise or foolish dead people. They are just dead people. Thus, wisdom in and of itself can be seen as meaningless when taken in the perspective of worldly death for it will not ensure a person lives forever.

I’m sure there are more than a few people in the world today who see themselves as being wise and/or have been touted by the world as being wise. They find themselves on a higher intellectual plane than anyone else and carry themselves as such. But in the end, they will eventually find themselves without breath or heartbeat anymore and could be buried in a plot right next to someone who couldn’t have lived a more ridiculously idiotic, irrational life. Two people, two different moralistic approaches, one common outcome. With only wisdom, there is no future hope for them just as there is no future hope for the fool.

To live beyond the worldly lives we have been given, there has to be something more, something of greater meaning than anything the world offers, something greater than wisdom or anything else.

That something is a someone - and His name is Jesus.

Can you see where anything outside of Jesus is meaningless? Nothing this world offers will ever offer you what you gain through a relationship with the One who loved you and valued you so much that He was willing to be nailed to a cross where He willingly died to pay the price for your foolishness and all the times you felt you were wiser than Him or His Father, your Father God.

Thus, if you want to live this life knowing that you are heading toward a meaningful outcome, you have to die to self and allow Jesus Christ to live within you. You have to allow His life to be your life for He and He alone is the only way to eternal life with God (John 14:6).

Jesus puts the true meaning in life, now and forever more. Only a fool would reject Him.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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