12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
15 What is twisted cannot be straightened;
what is lacking cannot be counted.
what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I thought to myself, “Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.
18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
the more knowledge, the more grief.
Solomon tried everything in his pursuit of meaning on the earth. Everything. With his incredible wealth and power nothing was denied him. He tried it all and it was all meaningless. Solomon pursued both wisdom and folly and found that there simply is no human answer to our frustration - what is twisted cannot be straightened. We can't fix it.
Mark Driscoll, in the same sermon I linked to yesterday, says (emphasis mine)...
And here’s why life is so tremendously frustrating. Verse 15, “What is twisted cannot be straightened.” You and I cannot fix ourselves. We cannot fix our world. People don’t know that. “I’ll fix it.” Good luck. ....I dare you to get anything fixed. It’s cursed. It keeps breaking. It keeps falling apart. It doesn’t matter what it is. We can’t fix it. We can’t straighten out the world. It’s too crooked and we can’t straighten it out because we’re crooked. We need to get straightened out first. That’s his metaphor for sin – crookedness. And he says as well, “Here’s the other problem. What is lacking cannot be counted.” We don’t have the material, the resources, the grace, the wisdom, the insight, the power to change things....
Verse 18 – here’s the big problem. With much wisdom, comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief. The longer you live, the more you see. The more you see, the more you know. The more you know, the more medication you need. Because the sadder you become.....
And there is a big difference between information and transformation. Solomon, in his great wisdom, had information. He understood the human condition, but he could not fix it.
It’s interesting, 900 some years later, after Solomon, comes Jesus Christ. Here’s the beauty. Here’s the good news. Under the sun, no hope. Who comes? God. God who’s above and sovereign, over creation. God comes into creation as one of us, into this crooked, frustrating, fallen, bent, collapsed web of life. He comes into it. He’s tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Everything that Solomon pursued, Jesus was tempted to, but in wisdom unlike Adam and in wisdom unlike Solomon, he resisted. And it’s interesting because at Jesus’ birth, some of the first people who come to worship him are Magi in Matthew 2. Wise men, like Solomon, pursuing the truth. What’s the meaning of life? What’s the point? Where’s the wisdom? And they end up on their knees worshiping the baby Jesus. Everybody who honestly pursues wisdom ends up kneeling before Jesus in worship.
And Jesus lives his life and he tells us something amazing in Matthew 12:42. He says, “Now one who is greater than Solomon is here.” Here’s his point. Solomon knew the problem, but he couldn’t fix it. He knew the world was filled with sin, but he couldn’t forgive sin. He couldn’t cleanse the stain of sin. He knew that people were crooked, but he couldn’t straighten ‘em out. He knew that the world didn’t have the resources it needed to be the kind of place that was declared good by God. But, Jesus did. Jesus came to right everything that Adam wronged and to answer all of the frustrations that Solomon articulated. And he was greater than Solomon because he was God, not just come to inform us, but to transform us. Not just to share in our sorrow and grief and suffering, but to die for our sin and rise in conquest over it. And it’s beautiful because the Bible says that then what happened is this. We are so crooked and the world is so crooked and Jesus was so straight, that he looked peculiar, so we killed him. We killed God.
And upon the cross, something miraculous happened. We’re told in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that God made him who knew no sin to become sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. We are told in Galatians that on the cross, he died for our sins and he redeemed us from our curse. We are told in Corinthians that in that moment, he gave us his righteousness and he gave us his wisdom, so we wouldn’t need to live as fools anymore. And the beauty of it is that my sin past, present, future, my rebellion, my folly, all of my wickedness, even if I haven’t done everything that Solomon did, I’ve thought about it, and in so doing, I condemn myself with my own conscious. Men here say, “I’ve been faithful to my wife.” You probably have a harem bigger than Solomon’s in your imagination. We’re all guilty as charged.
And the fact of the matter is this – Jesus dies for our sin. The wage for sin is death. He comes into creation to liberate and redeem all who come to him in faith. And Jesus Christ rises from his grave. He conquers our enemies of Satan, sin and death. And he begins the great reclamation project of connecting everything back to the Father. That tether that was severed and the creation that collapsed in its web, is now being untangled by Jesus and reconnected to the Father because life has no meaning. Life has no purpose, life has no goal, unless Creator and creation are reconciled. In every philosophy, in every religion, and every morality and every movement is an attempt to bridge the gap between man and God, but there is no hope of us rising above the earth. And so, God came down. God came down here to be with us. God came down here to die and rise for us.
Thank you Jesus, for coming down here to die for us, to rise for us, to bridge the gap between us and God, so that we can be reconciled to God, so that our life can have a purpose - in You.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
1 comment:
v 8 - For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
I can relate to that. I don't, by any means, claim to have much wisdom, but there are days where the world around us seems so sad and terrible, I don't know how we can stand it.
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