Ecclesiastes 2 Devotional
By Pastor Lawrence

In his desire to seek out all that is done under heaven, King Solomon recounts his pursuit of pleasure, accomplishments and wisdom in order to find some sort of meaning to dispel the vanity of life.

Starting with the pursuit of pleasure, Solomon indulges in laughter, women and wine but finds that his enjoyment of pleasure is continually fleeting and unsatisfying. Afterwards, he oversees vast building projects and grand landscapes while amassing great wealth, but again the pleasure is fleeting and a sense of bitterness pervades his heart, for he realizes that he must leave both the fruit of his labor and the wealth of his riches to someone else who will not cherish it nor sustain it. Next, he turns his heart towards wisdom, but even wisdom itself cannot escape the certainty of death, so that pursuit also seems to be merely striving after wind. Consequently, Solomon realizes that any pursuit of meaning in and by itself leads only to vanity, so he concludes that any search for significance and true delight comes only through a right relationship with God who is the giver of all life and meaning.

One need not suck out all the marrow of life in order to find joy and contentment in the world; rather, fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore can be found continually at the right of God. In other words, it is not the stuff of earth that brings delight, but the fittingness of being right with God that enables us to perceive beauty, enjoy goodness and find enduring truth and meaning. Apart from our fellowship and dependence upon our Maker and Redeemer, there is only crookedness and the bitter consequences of the fall. We may still taste something of God’s goodness and delight apart from this relationship, but it only leaves us with an aching yearning for more and more in the stuff that cannot satisfy. This relentless pursuit for earthly joy causes our hearts to make vain idols out of every creature and every aspect of God’s creation, and this only leads to more disappointment and despair.

On the other hand, for the person who seeks first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, even the mundane acts of eating and drinking, along with one’s daily toil, become delightful and meaningful under the shadow of the glory of God. Indeed, God rewards those who seek Him, not only with eternal bliss in the life to come but with simple yet profound delight even in the shadowlands. Of course, all of this only comes through the one mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who left the joys of heaven and entered into our cursed world to restore the hope of glory and true joy in the Lord. Because of our bentness toward and slavery to sin, we are not capable of pursuing true joy by ourselves. It is only as we enter into the eternal joy of our master that we enjoy our temporary service here on earth.