November 2, 2025 - Ecclesiastes 1:12-18 - "Seeking and Finding Wisdom"

Ecclesiastes 1:12-18

"I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

The Preacher’s voice echoes through the ages: "I, the preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem." God put him there, and from that high place he began to seek out all that is done “under heaven.” He gave his heart, not just his mind, to know wisdom. Yet in the end, after all his searching, he declares that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. The more he looked upon the works of men, the more he saw the crookedness that cannot be made straight, the lack that cannot be numbered. What is wisdom if it leaves us still empty, still fallen, still vain? That's why the LORD declared in Matthew 6:23, ^"But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!"

There is a wisdom that belongs to this world, and God has endowed His creatures with it. It is the kind of wisdom that enables one to build, to heal, to govern, to invent. It is not of man’s making, but from the hand of God Who formed dust and breathed life into it. Yet even this wisdom cannot lift a soul heavenward, for it is limited to things under the sun. It may shine for a time, but it ends in death. All that is born of this fallen creation perishes with it. And so Solomon, taught by experience and by grace, turns his eyes upward.

There is another wisdom—a spiritual wisdom—that no man has naturally. It is not found by reason, effort or study. It comes from above. It is the Wisdom of God in Christ. To know Him is to know Truth. "To be found in Him, not having one’s own righteousness, but that which is of God by faith" (Philippians 3:9), is to have the Wisdom that endures forever. Without Him, man seeks after a god of his own imagination; but in Christ, the Light of God's Wisdom breaks into the darkness of our ignorance and pride.

Solomon’s heart, like ours, had to be humbled. When he was young, the LORD appeared to him in Gibeon and said, “Ask what I shall give thee” (1 Kings 3:5). He could have asked for long life, riches, or the death of his enemies, but instead he asked for an understanding heart. The LORD was pleased because He had given this cry of need to Solomon. Such a request did not spring from ambition but from need. Solomon confessed, “I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in” (1 Kings 3:7). That is the beginning of wisdom—to know one’s lack and to seek it in God alone.

So God gave him a wise and understanding heart, a heart that saw more deeply than the outward works of men. Yet in that same wisdom he came to see the vanity of all things under the sun. The more he knew, the more he mourned. “In much wisdom is much grief,” he wrote in our text, “and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” Knowledge of the world exposes its futility; knowledge of self reveals our corruption. All is vanity. The curse of Adam has touched everything—the earth groans, creation travails, the very air sighs beneath the weight of sin (Romans 8:18–22). But the LORD has subjected this vanity in Hope. The crooked cannot be made straight by human hands, but there is One Who came to make all things new. In Him, Righteousness is fulfilled. In Him, Wisdom is not a concept but a Person—“Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

To see ourselves rightly is affliction, yet it is mercy. God weans us from this world by showing us its emptiness, until our affection is drawn upward to where Christ is seated at the Right Hand of God (Colossians 3:2). True Wisdom is to be brought low and to cry to Him in Whom all the treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge dwell (Colossians 2:3). To increase in such knowledge is indeed to increase in sorrow toward ourselves because of our depravity, but a sorrow that ends in joy when blessed by the Spirit of God—the joy of knowing that all vanity is swallowed up in His Glory, satisfied in the death of Christ on the cross. Only in Christ alone is true, lasting satisfaction.