"Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense."
"Vanity is truly the motive-power that moves humanity, and it is flattery that greases the wheel."
"Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity."
Mark Twain ( a man very familiar with the Bible but one who constantly made it clear he despised the God of the Bible): "There are no grades of vanity. There are only grades of ability in concealing it."
Solomon's response to Twain in Proverbs 18: [1] Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. [2] A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.
Next to Jesus Christ, Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived and his Book of Ecclesiastes (by many scholars' thinking) is his greatest writing.The book doesn't start on a happy note. Solomon begins, "The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. [2] Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."
The first definition of vanity in the Oxford Dictionary is, "That which is vain, futile or worthless; that which is of no value or profit."
"So what Solomon is saying is, 'This is the most pointless of things that are pointless. It's the most empty and worthless of all the things that are worthless,' " explains Columbus, Ohio preacher David Reid.
"Notice something about how the book ends in Ecclesiastes 12:8: 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.' The book starts out with that theme and ends with it.
"At the very end of his book, he concludes there is something that is not vanity: [13] Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
[14] For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
"But what he's saying is the vast majority of human activity is pointless, worthless, empty. I like a quote by John C. Maxwell, a well-known commentator who's written a lot about leadership: 'You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.'
"If you were to fast-forward 10,000 years, what of the things in your current experience will still remain? Nothing you can see or touch because this earth is going to dissolve; it's going to melt away with a fervent heat.
"All of man's creations, his buildings, his efforts, are not going to endure. Paul writes in II Corinthians 4:17-18: [17] For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
[18] While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
"In your experience, really the only things that are going to exist are the things you can't see. To put it simply, there are three basic things that are eternal. No. 1 is God, No. 2 is the souls of men and No. 3 is the Word of God.
"The relevance of understanding this spiritual reality should inform how we invest our time. Have you ever heard the phrase 'rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic'? How much time should you spend putting the deck chairs in proper order? The answer is none. The whole vessel is about to be submerged. What does Paul say you can take with you? Nothing.
*****
"Ecclesiastes 1:3 says, [3] What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
"The question is what do we benefit from all the hard work we do? The phrase 'under the sun' is a phrase that appears only in the Book of Ecclesiastes and it appears 29 times. I would suggest to you the book is written from the viewpoint of the wisest man who lived based upon his perception 'under the sun.' In other words, apart from revelation God gave.
"How do you really know things that are spiritually true? Do you figure them out because you have impeccable logic? You can't.
"I Corinthians 2:14 says, [14] But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
'That's a fascinating verse. What it means is you can take the smartest lost man there is--the most knowledgeable, most intelligent, most well-read--and what spiritual understanding is he going to have? The answer is none because spiritual understanding comes from the Spirit of God.
"Again, Solomon is writing from the perspective of the wisest man, but apart from God's revelation. In other words, it's the following thought experiment: If you take the wisest man who ever lived and he thinks through and searches out, 'How does life work? What should I be doing with my time? How should I invest this life?' . . . The Book of Ecclesiastes is Solomon's investigation into that subject and the conclusions he reaches."
"Notice something about how the book ends in Ecclesiastes 12:8: 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.' The book starts out with that theme and ends with it.
"At the very end of his book, he concludes there is something that is not vanity: [13] Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
[14] For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
"But what he's saying is the vast majority of human activity is pointless, worthless, empty. I like a quote by John C. Maxwell, a well-known commentator who's written a lot about leadership: 'You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.'
"If you were to fast-forward 10,000 years, what of the things in your current experience will still remain? Nothing you can see or touch because this earth is going to dissolve; it's going to melt away with a fervent heat.
"All of man's creations, his buildings, his efforts, are not going to endure. Paul writes in II Corinthians 4:17-18: [17] For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
[18] While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
"In your experience, really the only things that are going to exist are the things you can't see. To put it simply, there are three basic things that are eternal. No. 1 is God, No. 2 is the souls of men and No. 3 is the Word of God.
"The relevance of understanding this spiritual reality should inform how we invest our time. Have you ever heard the phrase 'rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic'? How much time should you spend putting the deck chairs in proper order? The answer is none. The whole vessel is about to be submerged. What does Paul say you can take with you? Nothing.
*****
"Ecclesiastes 1:3 says, [3] What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
"The question is what do we benefit from all the hard work we do? The phrase 'under the sun' is a phrase that appears only in the Book of Ecclesiastes and it appears 29 times. I would suggest to you the book is written from the viewpoint of the wisest man who lived based upon his perception 'under the sun.' In other words, apart from revelation God gave.
"How do you really know things that are spiritually true? Do you figure them out because you have impeccable logic? You can't.
"I Corinthians 2:14 says, [14] But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
'That's a fascinating verse. What it means is you can take the smartest lost man there is--the most knowledgeable, most intelligent, most well-read--and what spiritual understanding is he going to have? The answer is none because spiritual understanding comes from the Spirit of God.
"Again, Solomon is writing from the perspective of the wisest man, but apart from God's revelation. In other words, it's the following thought experiment: If you take the wisest man who ever lived and he thinks through and searches out, 'How does life work? What should I be doing with my time? How should I invest this life?' . . . The Book of Ecclesiastes is Solomon's investigation into that subject and the conclusions he reaches."
(new article tomorrow)
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