What Profit Does Life Have? Ecclesiastes 1:4-2:26
One of the main questions in the book of Ecclesiastes is, what profit does life have? After paying close attention to details of phrases and words that are repeated throughout the book of Ecclesiastes to better understand its message. Let’s focus on this question.
We will see a poem and an experiment on which the preacher will base his teaching as he tries to answer this question. First we will pay attention to the poem found in Ecclesiastes 1:4-11.
Poem of Life
The preacher begins speaking of God the Creator and his creation; he mentions generations, the sun, and the limits of the waters. Reminding us that we do not control any of these things that maintain order in the world we know, but that God is the one who sustains his creation.
Starting in verse 8, he leads us to contemplate the fall we see; he refers to the fact that all things are wearisome; we can see the relationship of this expression with the curse on Adam in Genesis 3:17-19.
This curse that the Lord placed on the earth and on Adam’s work will make work arduous; the earth to obtain its fruit requires more work than was expected before the fall.
If you remember the previous lesson, we talked about how this life under the sun does not compare with the expectation of the design that the Lord had established in creation. This is what the Preacher has been meditating on in this poem.
In life according to God’s design, our actions were supposed to be full of fruit, of blessing, but due to the fall, all that changed. Now it appears that nothing makes sense, and work is wearisome. Much work and little fruit or temporary fruits.
In verse 9 we see a well-known phrase from the book: “There is nothing new under the sun.” This is a reality when we look at history, fashion, music, or culture—we will notice that there is nothing really new. Clothing fashions, for example, return every few decades with some different details.
Even the most impressive technological advances are based on something that has existed before. On many occasions they look at creation and use that design from God the Creator to search for new applications of this technology that appears to be innovative but is not.
Nothing new under the sun?
In the previous lesson we also mentioned that at first glance the message of the book of Ecclesiastes seems to be fatalistic; however, it is not. When reading the rest of God’s Word, we will see that in reality there are two things that will be new, not from our part but from God’s part.
The first we see in a verse that is quite well known, 2 Corinthians 5:17:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 (CSB)
The Word teaches us that if we are in Christ, we will be a new creation. So if you have put your faith in the Lord, if you have recognized that you are a sinner who needs salvation and that salvation comes only through Christ, you become a new creation.
You become something new under the sun. Even though we live on this earth and in this fallen world, we live differently. We live seeking to please Him and longing for the life that exists above the sun.
This new way of thinking and living is given to us because we have an understanding of that eternity that the Lord has put in our hearts. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) So that is the first thing we can see as new under the sun: the Lord, when we put our faith in Christ, makes us new creatures.
The second new thing we read in the Bible that will be done that has not yet been done we see in Revelation 21:1-8. In this portion of the Word that I invite you to read, we read about the restoration of God’s creation, where we will have a New Heaven and a New Earth.
Such restoration will be fulfilled in the perpetual kingdom of God, where we will be with Him as His people dwelling with Him, and that moment will be without the intervention/limitation of sin. There will not be that separation, and we will have reached what we so long for from this side of eternity, under the sun.
So the Preacher is contemplating that there is no fruit, no meaning in life, due to the consequences of the fall. For Adam and Eve, that consequence was seen drastically with their exit from the Garden of Eden and the curses pronounced by God.
For us today, and what the preacher was experiencing, we see it as a life without meaning, without real or lasting fruits.
However, the poem does not end on that sad note; it ends giving us hope that although our eyes do not see anything new, the Lord has promised to make a new heaven and a new earth to restore his design, and that is what we should long for.
Experiment: What profit does life have?
Let’s fix our attention on verses 1:13-2:26, where we will see the experiment carried out by the Preacher. Doing so will help us understand the details of the rest of the book.
An experiment can be simple or complex, but in general we can reduce an experiment to four steps. We begin by observing what is happening, and from observing, a question arises. To answer that question, we must carry out certain actions that offer us findings or results that lead us to answer the question that arose from observation.
Observation
What has the preacher been observing?
“I applied my mind to examine and explore through wisdom all that is done under heaven.”
Ecclesiastes 1:13 (CSB)
“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun and have found everything to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.”
Ecclesiastes 1:14 (CSB)
This is what the Preacher has seen: nothing in life makes sense; everything we do is fruitless in the end. The expression “pursuit of the wind” reminds us of the original word for vanity, that mist that is impossible to catch.
Question and Experiment
Seeing all this, the Preacher asks himself in 2:3 what is good under heaven for the sons of men to do during the numbered days of their life.
It is this question that leads him to experiment with different areas of life to find what is good or profitable for men to dedicate their lives to.
“I applied my mind to know wisdom and madness and folly; I learned that this too is a pursuit of the wind.”
Ecclesiastes 1:17 (CSB)
“I said to myself, ‘Go ahead, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy what is good.’”
Ecclesiastes 2:1 (CSB)
“I explored with my mind how to cheer my body with wine.”
Ecclesiastes 2:3 (CSB)
“I increased my achievements.”
Ecclesiastes 2:4 (CSB)
In chapters 4 through 8, we will see more details of this experiment and the different conclusions the Preacher reaches, but for this lesson, we see a summary.
Result
In chapter 2 itself, he gives us a brief summary of his conclusions, and we begin to see another glimmer of hope:
“When I considered all that I had accomplished and what I had labored to achieve, I found everything to be futile and a pursuit of the wind.”
Ecclesiastes 2:11 (CSB)
“And I realized that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly.”
Ecclesiastes 2:13 (CSB)
For, just like the fool, there is no lasting remembrance of the wise, since in the days to come both will be forgotten. How is it that the wise person dies just like the fool?
Ecclesiastes 2:16 (CSB)
There is nothing better for a person than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work. I have seen that even this is from God’s hand,
Ecclesiastes 2:24 (CSB)
Again, these findings do not seem very encouraging, but when looking at the whole, we will begin to see more clearly the hope that the Preacher is calling us to cling to.
It is true that what we have on this earth is temporary, and we have no security about the result of our work or what we have accumulated at the time of our death, which awaits us all. Likewise, pleasure is vanity because its results remain under the sun.
However, we see the distinction between the fool and the wise person. In an upcoming lesson we will dedicate more time to this distinction and how to apply it to our lives. Now I want you to look at verses 25-26.
The preacher begins to realize that although life under the sun is vanity and has no fruit or eternal meaning, there is a difference between the man who pleases God and the sinner who lives separated from God.
This brings something more to consider: contemplating human life under the sun but pleasing God and receiving the joy that the Lord has put in our heart.
There is something beyond what our eyes can observe; there is a difference between one who lives his life accumulating without taking God into account and one who strives but recognizes that everything comes from the hand of God.
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.”
1 Corinthians 10:31 (CSB)
The one who pleases the Lord does all things with the purpose of living for God’s glory. As the poem reminded us, God the Creator who created us human beings to live for his glory and to reflect his glory throughout the earth.
The fall has made that reality difficult and turned it into vanity, but let us not forget that there is something new that can be seen under the sun: our new nature that now leads us to please the Lord and appreciate His worth.
What profit does live have for you?
We must ask ourselves, How am I living my life? Am I simply eating, drinking, and enjoying, pleased with the result of my work in a vain way that has no effect on the rest of life or my eternity?
Or am I living, eating, working, and doing everything I have to do to truly rejoice? We can rejoice because everything we do, we do for God’s glory.
Let us ask the Lord to open our eyes to observe, as the preacher did, that everything we can dedicate ourselves to being on this earth is vanity and pursuing the wind.
May the Lord change our intentions to enjoy everything the Lord provides us, remembering that our greatest longing should be to live for God’s glory.
Thus life will cease to be meaningless and so wearisome because our joy comes from living for God’s glory with the hope that one day there will be something totally new for eternity with Him—that for which we were created.
In the next lesson, we will be studying the second poem in the book, known as the poem of time, and we will begin to address one of the main themes of the book, which is death.
