Ecclesiastes 6:1-9 There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: ² a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil. ³ If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. ⁴ For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. ⁵ Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. ⁶ Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place?

⁷ All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. ⁸ For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? ⁹ Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

INTRODUCTION

Our passage for this morning gives us the recipe for the most miserable life. Do you want your time under the sun to be as unbearable as possible? If so, you’ve come to the right place this morning.

In that regard, if I asked you to describe your idea of the most miserable life, what would you say? What do you imagine to be the key ingredients of your worst life now? What kinds of things would be in it and missing from it? Who would and wouldn’t be a part of it? What makes you most miserable?

For the Preacher, there are just two main ingredients for the most miserable life: (1) Unlimited blessings, (2) without God-given joy in them. I imagine the second ingredient (lack of God-given joy) was on some of your radars, but the first (unlimited blessings) seems entirely counterintuitive. I hope to help you see why these two things form a uniquely potent and miserable combination.

Before we get into it, you might (/ought to) be wondering why God would inspire a passage like this. Why would He give us, by way of the author of Ecclesiastes, the recipe for misery? It is, of course, NOT to encourage us to make use of the most miserable life recipe. It is to help us avoid it and escape from it. As we’ve seen several times in Ecclesiastes, the great gift of God in this passage is to warn us of the futility of pursuing satisfaction in places it is never long-found, so that we might not waste our lives chasing a mirage.

God allowed the Preacher the chance to try virtually every other means of satisfaction conceived by man—all the way to the end—in order to reveal to mankind not only where satisfaction is found, but all the places it isn’t as well. Again, this is a great gift. O, that we’d all accept it and never know the most miserable life!

The big idea of this sermon is that the most miserable life is the life that has access to every possible under the sun source of joy, found them all insufficient/empty/hollow, and has not been given the gift of joy in God. The main takeaway, therefore, is to fix our eyes on Jesus, the greatest treasure.

A HEAVY EVIL (1)

Continuing with his theme of telling of the evils he’s observed (five previous times), in the opening line of our passage the Preacher shares yet another. This one makes his stomach turn more than all the other stomach-turning things he witnessed. He describes it as “lying heavy on mankind”.

¹ There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind…

That’s an unusual expression in the OT. It occurs only three other times (and only twice outside of Ecclesiastes).

In Psalm 88, one of the Sons of Korah laments, “My soul is full of troubles and my life draws near to [death]” (88:3). He cried out to God for help, therefore, but as he did, he confessed that “Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves” (88:7).

In Isaiah 24:1, Isaiah promises God’s judgment on the entire earth, “Behold, the Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.” In the midst of mankind’s every futile attempt to escape this judgment, God’s wrath continues to fall upon them such that, “The earth staggers like a drunken man; it sways like a hut; its transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and will not rise again” (24:20).

And a bit later in Ecclesiastes (8:6), the Preacher returns to his famous theme from chapter 3 (“for everything there is a season…”). He writes, “For there is a time and a way for everything, although man’s trouble lies heavy on him.”

In each case, the idea (of “lies heavy”) is that of a great, emotional/spiritual burden. Man is faced with a situation that seems to be too much to bear. For various reasons, he feels as if he is being crushed by his circumstances.

That’s the same basic sense in our passage for this morning. The Preacher saw another evil under the sun, one that felt like it might crush all humanity. It is both heavy and universal. What is that great evil? It is, once again, a combination of two, seemingly opposite things.

Having Everything You Want (2a)

The first ingredient is a truly surprising one for most of us: “… ² a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires…

The beginning of this great evil (which, as we’ll see, leads to the most miserable life) always begins with having everything you wish you had. The Preacher summarizes all the desires of man in three broad categories: Wealth, possessions, and honor.

Wealth

The question the Preacher puts in front of his readers over and over is “’How much?’ How much wealth do you think you’d need to be really happy?” We can’t take Ecclesiastes seriously and not acknowledge that all of us have a number in heart, if not in mind. So, what’s your number?

Is it just enough not to have to worry about your basic needs for the rest of your life? Just enough not to have to work anymore? Enough to live comfortably? Enough to live lavishly? Enough to change the world?

Every one of us is at least tempted toward imagining an amount of money that would make us genuinely happy. Again, what’s yours? There’s no number too high. It doesn’t matter what it is, you get it.

But the point of this passage is that the beginning of this heavy evil is having every cent you desire.

Possessions

At the same time, the main point of wealth in Ecclesiastes, as we’ve already seen, is the fact that it is the primary means of getting the under the sun things we want. The value of a society’s currency isn’t the currency itself (the mineral or paper or digital wallet). The actual value is what it represents: the ability to exchange it for whatever we want.

The second, and more important question we need to ask, then, is: What do you really want to make you happy? If you could have anything and everything money can buy, what’s on your list?

Kids, go ahead and make a list right now of every toy, game, gaming system, pet, candy, musical instrument, technology, piece of sporting equipment, and anything else you want. The list can be as long and expensive as you want since you have all the money you need.

Adults, tell the truth, it’s not all that hard to imagine a life of genuine joy if you had the perpetual ability to get whatever you want, whenever you want it, is it?

Non-stop 5-star vacations? Beautiful cabins in all your favorite places around the world and a private jet to get you there quickly? Enough land, wherever you want it (certainly on a trout stream), to build your dream home and enough guest houses for everyone you want to stay as long as they want? A personal doctor to come to you whenever you need and access to the best healthcare on earth? A private chef? The best hunting land imaginable with a personal game warden and forest manager to tend it? Your own private library with a first-rate librarian and all first-edition books? All of those things?

Again, the point of this passage is that the beginning of this heavy evil is having every single thing you desire.

Honor

The third and final category of mankind’s desire mentioned by the Preacher is “honor”. Reputation, importance, glory, and distinction are the words most closely associated with this. To be honored in this since is to have the esteem of others. People will be amazed by you. So what kind of honor would make you truly satisfied?

Do you want to be honored for being the best military general, the world-record holder in whatever events you want, the champ and MVP of whatever sports league you want, the first to walk on Mars, the most prolific author, the most creative artist, the most original musician, the leader who brings about world-peace, Boone and Crockett record holder in all the animals; perhaps the best homemaker, poor-helper, orphan-adopter, preacher or evangelist (good and godly occupations)?

If you could have whatever kind of honor you want and however much of it you want, where would you want to get it from and how much do you think you’d need to make you genuinely and persistently joyful?

One more time, the point of this passage is that the beginning of this heavy evil is having every honor you desire.

Now imagine having all that you want of all three of these things (wealth, possessions, and honor). As I said, for most of us, it’s really hard to imagine not being genuinely happy with any one of them. It seems inevitable with all three, right? Far from a recipe for evil and misery (much less the greatest evil and the most miserable life), this seems like the recipe for the best life, doesn’t it?

Without the Power to Enjoy (2b)

While it’s probably not obvious why the first ingredient is part of the recipe for evil and misery (it will be soon), the same can’t be said of the second. On the surface, it makes a lot more sense.

¹ There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: ² a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil.

We saw last week, and in chapter 2 before that, that true joy requires two gifts, not one. It requires something (like wealth, possessions, or honor) and the ability to enjoy the thing. And both gifts are from God.

A quick note. When the Preacher says that “God does not give him power to enjoy them,” that is not the same thing as saying that God takes away some innate ability that man has. Sin is such that the ability to delight in good things is not native to any of us since the Fall. Anyone who has it in any measure, has it from God. And if a gift is anything, it is undeserved. No one has the right to complain that they haven’t received a gift.

That said, not having the God-given ability to enjoy whatever we have is certainly a grievous and heavy evil and a part of any miserable life. And, as the Preacher mentioned, that is only compounded if we lose our things to a stranger who, for some reason, can enjoy them.

The familiar point is that there are no things in the world, nothing under the sun, that is able to satisfy on its own. The main point of the last half of v.2, then, is that apart from the second gift of God’s joy, it doesn’t matter what or how much we have (money, possessions, honor, or anything else), we will not be able to find delight in it.

THE MOST MISERABLE LIFE (3-6)

So, the two key ingredients to heavy evil are having whatever you want and lacking the gift of God to enjoy them. The key to this passage and sermon, however, as is the case with any recipe, is not the individual ingredients. The key is the combination of them. The heaviest evil requires all of our earthly desires combined with the lack of God-given power to enjoy them. When mixed together, they are exponentially more powerful to create misery than either by itself.

If you have vinegar and baking soda separately, that’s not much. It’s only when you combine them that you get a significant reaction. It’s the same with the Preacher’s two ingredients.

Before explaining that more fully, there’s another combination the Preacher invites us to consider first. There’s another combination that seems like it might produce a more miserable result than that.

It is the combination of having nothing at all—no food, no money, no friends, no earthly good—and no contentment from God. Both combinations sound bad, but having neither of those things sounds worse than having all of the first and none of the second, doesn’t it?

To highlight the grievous evil of that combination, the Preacher uses the tragic example of a stillborn child in vs.4-5.

⁴ For [a stillborn child] comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. ⁵ Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything…

From the Preacher’s perspective, the worst parts of having a stillborn baby are that she never gets to feel her mother’s touch, breathe a breath, see the light, hear her name spoken, express her personality or abilities, or even know anything about the world in any ordinary sense. From the Preacher’s under the sun perspective, a stillborn baby is the epitome of lacking both ingredients.

In a more ordinary sense, we’re meant to imagine the sick, starving, dying man on the street with no one to care for him, to feed him, or to tend to him in his sickness.

Tragically, that isn’t hard for me to do. Years ago, I had a collapsed lung and was taken to the University Hospital. While I was waiting on surgery, they had me in a room with a homeless man who was having a good deal of trouble remaining conscious. His liver was failing and there was nothing anyone could do. He had no earthly possessions and, worse yet, he had no loved one to be with him and care for him. Just hours after being moved into my room he passed away alone. I can’t say for sure where he stood in relation to God, but from every outward appearance he lacked both ingredients.

I asked you at the beginning to consider what kinds of things would constitute the most miserable life. I imagine your answer would include several of those things.

Again, that combo seems worse, doesn’t it? The stillborn child and my hospital roommate’s situations seem worse than someone who is lacking God’s gift of joy, but having an overabundance of money, possessions, and honor, right?

A big part of the point of this passage is that the Preacher’s emphatic answer is “No!” We find that answer in the larger context of the stillborn child example. In it, he compares the stillborn child to a man who had the best the ancient world had to offer—many offspring and long life—but not God’s gift of joy.

Picture a man who “³ …fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial…

The Preacher echoes the same sentiment—with a bit of added detail—a few verses later.

⁶ Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place?

The Preacher describes a man who fathered a hundred children over two thousand years (supernatural amounts of the first gift), but had not joy in those things (none of the second gift) (“his soul was not satisfied with life’s good things” and “he also has no burial” and “yet [he] enjoy[s] no good”).

If such a man existed, would he be better off than a stillborn child (or the man in my hospital room)? It might seem like it, but the Preacher’s dispels us of that misunderstanding: “I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.” Having neither gift is better than having all of the first and none of the second.

The question that leaves us with is: How is that so? Why would that be? V.5 sheds light on the Preacher’s perspective.

⁵ [a stillborn child] has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than [the man with everything].

“’Better to miscarry at birth,’ says one commentator, ‘than to miscarry throughout life.’ The stillborn child [unlike the man with everything except the ability to enjoy it is better off in that she] never has to endure pain, or see suffering, or struggle with the guilt of conscious sin” (Ryken, PTW, 142).

Again, in a more ordinary sense, we know that when we have nothing, there’s at least the hope of something.

The man in my hospital room might have thought, “If only I could just get a cup of water or a bite of bread or someone to show me the smallest measure of kindness.” A person in that position probably has a long way to go to learn that he needs two gifts, not one. But it is the gap that gives hope (false as it is). When you don’t have anything at all, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to imagine that happiness might come with even the smallest something, and the smallest something doesn’t seem impossible to come by.

In other words, the person with nothing and no God-given joy is better off in the sense that they at least have some measure of hope to cling to—misguided as it is. As tragic as it is, it’s like the person who feels OK, even happy, going into the doctor for a regular checkup only to find out that he has terminal cancer. He wasn’t actually better off before he knew, but he certainly felt better off.

The gravest evil and the most miserable man, then, is the one who lacks God’s gift of joy and for whom there are no further rocks to look under to find it. The most miserable person is the one who has been relieved even of the possibility that something within his grasp might satisfy. He is most miserable precisely because he’s tried every under the sun remedy, found them all to be hollow, and had hope evaporate with each new empty attempt until there was none left.

Since none of us have received our every earthly desire, and never will, the Preacher’s insight is truly a gift, if we will receive it. It is like the loudest fire alarm or city storm siren, warning us of imminent danger. If we have ears to hear, we will flee from this greatest evil and most miserable life.

But that leaves us with another, critical question: Where do we flee to, to avoid this heavy evil and most miserable life? I’ll come back to that at the end. First, let’s briefly look at vs.7-9 where the Preacher drives home his points.

DRIVING THE POINT HOME (7-9)

To drive home the point that having our every earthly desire met is only to have more desire, the Preacher wrote,

⁷ All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.

We work to get money for food, and the best case scenario is that we get enough money to get the best, most nutritious food. But then we eat it and it’s gone and we need to work more to get more money for food, so we can eat it and on and on and on. It never ends.

Of this, my favorite commentator wrote, “[Under the sun] desire is always stronger than satisfaction” (Ryken, PTW, 139) and “Our longings never go away for long” (140). Wise words.

To drive home his point that absent God’s gift of enjoyment, it matters little what else we have (wealth, possessions, honor, or even wisdom), the Preacher wrote,

⁸ For what advantage has the wise man over the fool?…

…and…

⁸ … what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living?

The wise man might avoid certain common pitfalls, but his heart is no more glad for it without God’s help. Likewise, the poor man might be wise enough to see the problems rich people have and avoid them, but poverty isn’t the answer to unfulfilled longings either; it’s merely the source of different unfulfilled longings.

And to drive home his point that nothing on earth can satisfy by itself, the Preacher wrote,

⁹ Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Our eyes are always looking for the next thing, hoping that it will satisfy. This is why husbands with beautiful, godly wives look at other women. This is why a kid with three gaming systems can’t imagine happiness without the Switch 2. This is why a woman with a closet full of clothes she had to have, has to have more clothes. This is why guys can never have enough tools, fishing rods, technology, or ATVs. No matter what we have, apart from God’s gift of joy, our appetites eventually wander to something else. It’s crazy and futile, the Preacher saw.

Again, then, getting all of those things and more and more and more, apart from God’s gift of contentment and joy, is the heaviest evil and the most miserable life. It is one without joy or hope for it. Knowing that, Grace, flee! Run away form that empty, deadly pursuit. Stop chasing satisfaction, rest, joy, and contentment where it isn’t found. You’re wasting your life if you don’t. You’re making yourself miserable.

THE GREATEST GOOD AND THE MOST MARVELOUS LIFE

But if we are to flee from the greatest evil and find the most marvelous life, where do we go?

Certainly, with this passage in mind, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy,

1 Timothy 6:7-11 … we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. ⁸ But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. ⁹ But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

¹¹ But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.

Flee from the pursuit of sin and the things of earth as ends of themselves and run to righteousness and the things of God. But how do we do that?

Rather than fixing our eyes on under the sun things, let us lift them to the things above; to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith; the King of kings and Savior of the world. Of that, Paul wrote,

Colossians 3:2-4 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. ³ For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ who is your life [and salvation and joy] appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

God’s gift of joy, joy that transcends money, possessions, and honor, comes through faith in Jesus and the indwelling of His Spirit. To trust in Jesus is to have your sins forgiven, to be reconciled to God, to be named and made holy, to have the love of God and the full and eternal joy of body and soul in Him.

The Preacher was right in more ways than we can even understand. At the same time, he couldn’t have known either the full measure of the problem or the solution. By God’s grace and through His Word, however, we do. We know that Jesus is the greatest treasure and the One through whom all other treasures find their proper place.

Once again, then, as we just sang, let us turn our eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and as we do, the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. Let us turn our eyes to the heavens, Grace. For our King will return for His own. In full assurance that when He does, every knee will bow and every tongue will shout, ‘All glory to Jesus alone!’—the greatest good and the most marvelous life.