Ecclesiastes Two:12-17

Sermon Notes

I’m going to start off by telling you a story about a great mind who lived in the early 1800s in Denmark. Soren Kierkegaard was a theologian, poet, and social critic. However, what I think is probably most awesome about him is that last night on Jeopardy he was a question. He was also what most people consider to be the first existential philosopher. He was one of the first guys to ever formally think about life and ask questions about why we exist. This is what existentialism means, why did God create people in the first place. These are some of the questions that Kierkegaard tried to answer. God doesn’t need people so why did he make people? What is the real meaning of life? One of the things I really respect about this guy is that he understood a relationship with Jesus. In fact he came to know Christ personally while he was attending Our Lady’s Church in Copenhagen, Denmark. The preacher of the church was a guy by the name of Bishop Meister. While there Kierkegaard heard the Gospel, responded to the Gospel and Jesus Christ changed his life. In the 1800s Denmark, the established church taught that the only way to get to Heaven was to be a member of the church. Kierkegaard was one of the first people to argue that a relationship with Jesus alone would get you into Heaven. Now when you know Jesus of course you should be going to church; but, don’t put going to church ahead of knowing Jesus. As a result many people hated him. He made a couple statements that I don’t completely agree with but one of the things that Kierkegaard said is this famous statement. I want to frame our discussion from Ecclesiastes today with this quote. He said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” When you get to the end of your life and you look back over all of the circumstances and all of the events of your life that when it starts to make sense. The problem is that life has to be lived forward. So what we’re going to do is go to the end. I mean the ultimate end of things. We’re going to go to your funeral. We will work away backwards today, as we talk about life-and-death.

I. Death is senseless without Jesus

Let’s review where we are at in the book of Ecclesiastes. We’re five weeks into the study. We’ve learned the word Ecclesiastes refers to a teacher or a preacher. He’s trying to teach us something. For two chapters now he’s described a picture of life without Jesus anywhere in it. The teacher or Ecclesiaste is saying when Jesus isn’t in the painting of your life inevitably you start to become the center of the painting. When you are at the center of the painting life is miserable. We’ve referred to this as a broken worldview. When you see the world without Jesus in the equation there is something wrong with your worldview. Right now Pastor Alan Smith is teaching a worldview class to help people put Jesus back in the proper place in their lives.

We’ve learned from Solomon up to this point that he’s tried to turn to wisdom to find some meaning in life but it let him down. Then he turned to pleasure, specifically to whiskey and women, but it let him down. Last week we saw that he turned to stuff and that didn’t do it for him. Finally he tried work and even work left him disappointed and wanting more. Solomon, the ecclesiastical preacher in this book, is basically saying you can’t find meaning anywhere if you try to find it apart from Jesus Christ. Today he turns his attention to life-and-death. He says he tried it all and it all left him wanting more.

Ecclesiastes 2:12-16
12 So I decided to compare wisdom with foolishness and madness (for who can do this better than I, the king?). 13 I thought, “Wisdom is better than foolishness, just as light is better than darkness. 14 For the wise can see where they are going, but fools walk in the dark.” Yet I saw that the wise and the foolish share the same fate. 15 Both will die. So I said to myself, “Since I will end up the same as the fool, what’s the value of all my wisdom? This is all so meaningless!” 16 For the wise and the foolish both die. The wise will not be remembered any longer than the fool. In the days to come, both will be forgotten.

Both the wise and the foolish are marching to the grave, so are you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Essentially Solomon is saying I’m glad to be buried right next to an idiot and there’s nothing that anybody can do to stop it. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, doesn’t matter how foolish you are, all of us are heading in the same direction. The idea of foolishness that he used here was the idea of making bad decisions and taking bad decisions to the extreme. So he uses the phrase light and darkness to compare wisdom and foolishness. By darkness he’s talking about intentionally doing wrong and not caring at all about the consequences. Not caring how bad this is going to hurt you. Not caring how bad it’s going to hurt the people around you. What’s worse not caring how bad this will hurt you in the future. Can you see a lot of your friends or a lot of the people that you know who don’t know Jesus in this statement “Don’t care how I live. Don’t care about the consequences of how I live because if this life here on planet Earth is all that there is what’s it matter? I’ll just do whatever I want anyway.”

Solomon said he took it to the extreme. He would be saying to us today that if he couldn’t find satisfaction in all of this stuff you wouldn’t find satisfaction either because you don’t have a fraction of the resources that he had. He took it all wisdom, foolishness, money, sex, and power to the extreme and it all left him wanting more. So this brilliant mind, Kierkegaard said, “The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor to be read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.” You don’t find real pleasure in stuff, promotions or paychecks. The real pleasure in life comes from the simple stuff. It comes from being known. That’s why we make such a big deal about community groups. You can sit in here and listen all you want but it’s when you get into community with other people that they get to know you. Real pleasure comes from loving others. Real pleasure comes from following Jesus. The other stuff of life it doesn’t do it for you. Solomon then tried two things and compared them with each other. He took them to the extremes. He tried madness and foolishness. He tried wisdom. In the end he realize they both end up in the same place.

I consider myself a connoisseur of quotes. I’ve been collecting quotes for a couple of decades now. My second favorite quote of all times is often credited to John Wayne and he used it in the movie the Sands of Iwo Jima. The John Wayne quote says, “Life is tough, but it’s even tougher if you’re stupid.” This is what Solomon is saying. He looked at life from the perspective of the wise without Jesus in the equation. He looked at life from the perspective of the fool without Jesus in the equation. Here’s what he learned, life’s tough and it’s even tougher if you’re stupid. And, in the end we all end up in the grave and no one remembers your name. So let me ask you, is this true? When you die will no one remember you? In Solomon’s day there were no printing presses. In Solomon’s day nobody wrote down the deeds of men and women. No one wrote your name down so basically when you died the people who knew you were the ones that kept your reputation and memory alive. When they died you cease to exist. In our day we live in the age of the printing press and the Internet. Stuff stays online for a billion years. Even then Solomon is saying a million years from now no one will know what you did on planet Earth and no one will care. The reason why that’s the case is because God didn’t create you for here. We looked at this in the last sermon series on Heaven and Hell. God created you as an eternal being with an eternal home in mind. This place that we’re living in is temporary. Solomon says people are going to forget you. It doesn’t matter what you do their going to forget you.

I’m going to tell you about two funerals that I preached. The first funeral that I preached more than 20 years ago was for Mr. Perry Kent. Mr. Kent lived in a small little country home in Hardin County, Kentucky. He had a very simple upbringing. He was a man who loved his family, loved Jesus and loved Jesus’ church. When Mr. Kent passed away his family asked me to conduct the funeral. This was the first funeral I’ve ever done in my life. The building was filled to capacity to honor this man. His wife, children and grandchildren were all there and many friends and family. All of them were passionate followers of Christ. I still remember it like it was yesterday. During the funeral the family asked us to play the song Wayfaring Stranger. When we played that song during Mr. Perry Kent’s funeral the people worshiped Jesus because this man was a wayfaring stranger on earth now inheriting the reward of a lifetime of faithfulness to King Jesus. It was beautiful!

Years later when I was an Army chaplain I was tasked to do a funeral for a World War II veteran. I had a chance to see this guy’s World War II record and I was amazed what this man did for our country. I met with his wife and asked her what she wanted me to say, what were some of his favorite verses of Scripture, and was there any songs she wanted sung in his honor. She said she really didn’t care what I did. In fact she didn’t even want to have a real funeral only a graveside service. The next day at the graveside was his wife, the funeral director and myself. This man lived for almost 90 years. He had children and grandchildren but nobody was there. I preached this man’s funeral to just the wife. I’ll never forget when the funeral was over with I could almost see a sense of relief in this woman’s face. The relief was that he was finally gone. When I was driving away from the funeral I got this overwhelming impression the funeral director was there because he had to be, I was there because I had to be, and she was there because she had to be. Nobody in the world wanted to be at this man’s funeral. I was thinking what a pathetic and miserable result of a life lived on planet Earth. Three people at his funeral and none of us wanted to be there. Solomon in Ecclesiastes was saying if you live like a fool you end up in the exact same place as live like your wise. All of us are marching to the grave and you can’t do anything to stop it. What you can do while you’re here on earth is make an impact in people’s lives for Jesus.

I want to tell you about something that happened here on Sunday that was miraculous. I’m not joking when I use this phrase miraculous. I have been preparing for several weeks to preach this sermon and several weeks ago a prominent member of our school’s faculty father passed away. Many of the folks here on our campus went to Mr. Starkey DuPree’s funeral. Ricky Smith remembers vividly the statement was made about this man at his funeral. So, here’s what was miraculous, I made this statement on Sunday morning and his widow was in our church for the first time. I saw her not two minutes before the service began and told her that she wouldn’t believe who I was going to talk about. At Mr. Starkey DuPree’s funeral the preacher said, “The easiest funeral in the world to preach is someone who has lived for Jesus. Because they’ve already preached their funeral in the way they lived.” Basically what Solomon was asking was if all of us end up in the grave why bother? What’s the big deal anyway? What’s worth living for? When you die it’s all going to leave you empty if this here on Earth is all that there is.

II. Life is hopeless without Jesus

You just got from Nick a little card and a pencil. You see there’s a real headstone up here on stage. If Solomon’s funeral were to be conducted at the end of verse 16 here’s what would go on Solomon’s headstone. It would be just three words and this would be his summary of life. “I hate life.” Solomon had it all, tried it all and it left him miserable. He hated life if he was living it without Jesus in the equation.

Ecclesiastes 2:17
17 So I came to hate life because everything done here under the sun is so troubling. Everything is meaningless—like chasing the wind.

Solomon got to the point that he said he hated life. It was nothing but trouble. He found no pleasure. He tried money, power, and women but none of it worked for him. Here’s why. When you pull Jesus out of the equation of life, which is where 80% of our city lives, inevitably you start to take the place of Jesus in your life. And, like I said to you all last week, you are a miserable god to worship. You know it and I know it. When you start to take the place of Jesus life starts to become miserable. It starts to become meaningless. It starts to make you want more. More than you’ll never find here on planet Earth.

The last thing that Kierkegaard said that I want you hear is, “Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.” I want to do something for me with the piece of paper and pencil you were given. I want you to think hard about this question and to be totally honest. You’re not going to hand this in or show it to anybody else unless you want to. I want you to answer this question. What do you want people to say about you at your funeral? What do you want somebody to write on your tombstone? There’s not a whole lot of room so you can’t put a paragraph on this tombstone. On the back of that card I want you to summarize what you want somebody to say about you at your funeral. Think about it for second and write it down. Okay, so is this is the way that you’re living right now or do you want somebody to lie about you at your funeral? I have been to funerals where I know and everyone in the room knows what they’re saying about that person is a bald-faced lie. They know it and all of us know it. I made a conscious decision a long time ago that as a pastor I will stand before a holy God for what I say at a funeral. So, I will never lie about a person if I don’t know it to be true about them. In fact I won’t say anything about them if I don’t know it to be personally true myself. Instead of talking about them I’ll talk about Jesus at the funeral. The question I really want you to think about is if they knew you well, I mean really knew you, would people say about that about you?

The second question that I want you to write the answer down to is if they really knew you what would they say about you? You already wrote on that card what you want them to say but what would they have to say about you if they couldn’t lie and they knew you really well? Write that down on the bottom of the card. Nobody’s going to see this but you and Jesus. I want you to think about this for just a second. Are those two statements identical? What you want people to say about you at your funeral is that the way that your living right now? If not, you have no business asking them to say stuff like that about your funeral.

Let me tell you a fascinating story I came across. This woman is amazing and I’d love to have a chance to meet her here on planet Earth but I can’t wait to meet her when I get to Heaven. Martina Purdy was a news journalist for the BBC. Not only was she a journalist but she was a television reporter and political news correspondent for the BBC reporting from Northern Ireland. So this is as good as it gets in the journalism industry. She had a major life transforming experience not long ago. She told her story just a few weeks ago at St. Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry, Northern Ireland. She said when she grew up as a little girl all she wanted to do was to be a journalist, make a lot of money and get married. Working for the BBC as a news correspondent on television means that she was making a ton of money and had worldwide fame because this news agency broadcasts all over the globe. She said she loved what she was doing and took great joy in it. It was satisfying to her until eight years ago when she took a holiday to the country of Peru. When she was there she was assaulted personally by the poverty, the needs and the hurts that she saw in the country of Peru. When she came back to Northern Ireland where the BBC posted her she couldn’t get Peru out of her mind. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t stop seeing the poverty and the hurt that she experienced in Peru. She fought it for about eight years until she couldn’t fight it anymore. She said she thought about becoming an aid worker after her career was over but she realized as she took an honest look at her life that she was living a selfish life. She said, “I had a sense that I had a really easy life and I wanted to have a more meaningful life and do more for other people.”

While she gave her testimony at St. Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry, Northern Ireland, she said she made the decision to leave the BBC and journalism to join a convent and to become a nun. This freaked everybody who knew Martina out to the point that when she called the politicians that she routinely reported on for the BBC, they were speechless and after a long pause on the phone they asked her if she was crazy? She said when she told her family that she was becoming a nun her family’s first words were, “Are you drunk?” Her colleagues said there must be something wrong or that she had been brainwashed. So they went to the convent under the guise of doing a story about her for the BBC. The real intent was to capture her, do an intervention and rescue her from the convent. However, when they saw how peaceful and happy she was, they left disappointed. Martina ends her testimony with this, “People asked what was I running away from? I told them I’m not running away from anything I’m running to someone.” Then she said, “There’s really only two possibilities. I have either had a supernatural experience with the living God who made the universe or I am crazy.” The last thing she said was, “And if you have no faith, you have lost your faith or it’s hanging by a thread and you haven’t had a supernatural experience with the living God who made the universe, it’s easier to believe that I had flipped out.”

Martina Purdy is wiser than Solomon because she figured out where real meaning in life comes from. You can try as hard as you want. You can of paint as much into the picture of life as you want, but if Jesus isn’t in that picture it’s going to leave you empty. In fact life and death themselves are going to be meaningless if Jesus isn’t in the picture. What are you living for? Is it Jesus and his glory or are you living for something else? If someone were to preach your funeral tonight would they say that a man or woman who was passionately devoted to Jesus Christ and lived for him? Or, would they have to write on that headstone that you lived for something else and it left you wanting more?

Next Steps

• I am not ready to die because I don’t know Jesus as my Savior. Today, I turn from my sins and trust in his death and resurrection for the promise of eternal life.
• I have not been living with the end in mind. Please pray for me to live my life for Jesus’ glory.
• I need to learn more about the meaning of life. Please get in touch with me about Pastor Alan’s Worldview class.

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think people are going to say about you if you died right now? What would you want them to say about you? Are those two things the same? (In other words, are you sure people are going to say about you what you wish they would say about you at your funeral?)
2. Have you ever written down or discussed with someone exactly what you want at your funeral? If so, whom? If not, will you commit do it soon?
3. Read Psalm 116:15. What does this verse suggest about how God views the death of his children?
4. During a funeral, is there a difference between someone who knew Jesus and someone who didn’t? If so, what is the difference?
5. Is it really true that everyone will be forgotten? Explain your answer.
6. What brings you most joy in life? Would you still be able to enjoy life as much if that was taken away from you?
7. Pray that we would live our lives this week for Jesus’ glory.