Ecclesiastes 1:15 says, That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.  Solomon discovered that all his knowledge could not make human nature straight.  Humanity without God is indeed crooked.  He could not make himself acceptable to God through knowledge, and neither can we .  He lacked the ability to fill the want in his life.  We today will find that the more we know, the more we realize that we do not know that much.  What we should be wanting is a right relationship with God, and nothing material can satisfy this wanting.  We still realize our lack of ability to understand all the workings of the world.  Likewise, the more we have of the things of the world, the more we want as a rule.  Verse sixteen says, 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.  Solomon looked inside himself and did a self evaluation of his estate and his wisdom compared to others.  I don't believe he was doing this to brag, but simply to compare himself to the rulers before him.  We today need to look to our own heart, to examine our innermost being, to see if we have been looking for purpose in the things of this world instead of our relationship to God.  If Solomon, with all his knowledge and riches couldn't find it, neither will we .  Verse seventeen says, And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.  Solomon looked for the answers not only in wisdom, but also in madness and folly.  People today look for happiness in many things that are foolish, such as excessive use of alcohol and drugs, but they soon find these do not satisfy.  Verse eighteen says,  For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.  Solomon warns us that if we are looking to our wisdom alone for happiness and purpose, we are only going to increase our sorrow.  We will never gain enough knowledge or wealth to be satisfied without God.

 Ecclesiastes 1:12 says, I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.  Solomon had been speaking in generalities, and now he was going to share his own experiences.  We can talk about the world today and how bad it is in general terms, but the most effective witness we can share is what God has done in our life.  Until we accept God as Lord of our life through Jesus Christ, we will continue to see the world as a futile, hopeless place.  Solomon was king of Israel, but now he was speaking to the people as a spokesman for God.  No matter how important we may be in the world, ultimately it is our relationship with God that matters.  Verse thirteen says, 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.  People today are seeking to understand everything done in the world.  We here in America are much more educated in general than ever before, but most still do not even know enough to acknowledge that God created and sustains the world.  Solomon was not condemning learning, but only saying that all his learning took a lot of effort and did not bring satisfaction to his life.  No matter how much worldly wisdom we gain, we will never find satisfaction outside the understanding of Who God is.  Verse fourteen says, I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.  Again, Solomon was not condemning work or saying that we shouldn't do our best in everything that we do.  He was saying ultimately that our works on earth will pass away.  We may believe that we are so important in our job that if we leave everything will fall apart, but once we leave, we are surprised at how quickly we are forgotten.  Everything we do in this world is temporary, but as God's followers that shouldn't cause us to feel defeated, because we are working to serve God and not the world.

Ecclesiastes 1:10 says, Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.  This is a continuation of what was last said.  We may think we have come a long way since Solomon's time, but we still chase the vanities of the world.  Those things that we felt were such great inventions twenty years ago are now outdated, but the new things are still just rearrangements of what God gives us.  We cannot look to our own knowledge and understanding to find purpose in life, and that has always been and always will be the case.  Verse eleven says, There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.  A few people are remembered today for things done in the past, but most are completely forgotten by nearly the whole world.  Whole civilizations disappeared from the world and were forgotten.  If this life on earth and our achievements here are where we place all our time and hope, we need only to look to how quickly nearly all people are forgotten to realize how vain that hope is.  Again, this is not to say that we are to feel hopeless or worthless, but we are to put our hope and faith in God.  He will never forget us.  Many people have been attempting to make themselves smarter and greater than God since the beginning of the world.  Adam and Eve sinned because they thought the could know more on their own than by following God, and that has been the same for everyone, except Jesus, ever since.  Today, there are people who think they have so much knowledge that they disprove the existence of and need for God.  Just as Solomon said those centuries ago though, it is all based on vanities, on nothingness.

Ecclesiastes 1:7 says, All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.  Rivers have been emptying into the seas since the beginning of time, but the rivers still flow and the seas don't overflow.  We can believe that a cosmic accident caused this to continue, or we can believe this phenomenon is the result of an intelligent design.  We, as followers of Christ, have to acknowledge it as the creation of the only true God.  Verse eight says, All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.  Most things that we want reguire labor to achieve.  We often call everyday life the art race.  We are busy attempting to get the things we see or the things we hear about, but we are seldom satisfied very long once we have them.  We are not satisfied with just seeing and hearing about things, but feel we must have them.  It becomes a vicious cycle of vanity, or notingness.  If we are never satisfied with what we have, or even the things we do, then we are always wanting more, more, more.  Yet, nothing ever satisfies.  As followers of Christ, we need to learn to be thankful for what God blesses us with and realize that the things of this world are all temporary, but our relationship with God is everlasting.  If we are truly following God's will for our lives, we will not see life as a continual working to satisfy our senses.  Verse nine says, The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.  We are always hearing about something new, but the laws of nature never change.  We may feel that we are the smartest, most advanced people in the world, but so have many, many other generations that have gone before us.  God set the world, the universe, in motion, and no matter how smart we feel, it is still the same world and universe.  Even with all the technology of today, there really is nothing new under the sun.  We either accept that God created it all and placed us in the midst of it, or we deny Him and feel that we don't need God.  Whatever new that comes along, it is built from what God created and relies on His laws of the world.

Ecclesiastes 1:4 says, One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.  There have been many, many generations to pass away since Solomon's time, but the earth indeed remains.  That doesn't mean that each generation doesn't have a responsibility to be good stewards of the earth, since that was God's plan from the beginning.  Neither does it mean we are to worship the earth.  It is God's creation for each generation to use, so we need to insure that we live in a way that the next generation has the best world we can leave them.  We may look back on certain time periods as being the greatest, but we need to work so that the next generation can be the greatest.  When we feel that the future is only going to get worse, so why bother, we are not living up to God's calling.  God did not task Adam and Eve to have dominion over the world and then for every generation after them to not be concerned about it.  We still have the same task today.  Verse five says, The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.  The world, and even the universe, continues to function as it was created to do.  Solomon, with all his wisdom, wealth, and power could not change that.  We need to remember today that no matter how bad the world may get, God still controls the universe.  After God pronounced His creation as good, nothing changed, except for man.  Though pronounced as very good, mankind alone was given free will.  Even though our free will has led to all the evil in the world, the world continues to function by God's law set in place at creation.  If we begin to feel that we have all the answers and the ability to do anything, then just try to stop the world from turning.

Ecclesiastes 1:1 says, The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.  Solomon identifies himself, if not by name, at least by description.  He calls himself the Preacher, and he was by nature of the fact that he was presenting God's word to the people there.  Solomon had been guilty of sinning against God, but God had restored him.  Matthew Henry says there is none better to preach than someone who has been restored to God in spite of their sins.  That would include all followers of Christ.  He didn't put the fact that he was the son of David or the king first.  When we reach out to the lost world today, we must first identify ourselves as those who proclaim God's word.  Who our parents are nor our standing in the world are important.  Presenting the word of God accurately is what we are called to do.  Verse two says, Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.  Solomon was sharing God's truth.  When he looked to the things of this world for happiness, it all amounted to nothing.  We look in vain today to find happiness anywhere other than in the will of God. Solomon was indeed one of God's people, one of the most successful in the eyes of the world, but he said it all amounted to nothing.  We may be one of God's people and very successful in the eyes of the world, but if we are putting all of our effort into maintaining or gaining more of the world's riches, it will all come to nothing.  Verse three says, What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?  Solomon was not saying that we shouldn't labor, but that labor and all that we get by it can never satisfy the soul.  Only our relationship with God can do that.  If we reach the point where all our efforts, our labor, are spent to gain the things of this world, it all amounts to nothing.  I don't want to belabor the point, but we must work for heavenly things for our labor to have any value.  The things we do for God are what bring value to our life.

I am going to go from the book of Jonah to the book of Ecclesiastes.  Jonah ran from God for fear of success in getting the people of Nineveh to follow God.  Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes turned from God because God had blessed him so much he felt he could do anything he wanted to at times.  Matthew Henry says that people waited around to hear his wisdom.  Solomon was one of the richest and wisest men who ever lived.  His wisdom came from divine revelation and his riches as a blessing from God, but he often forgot that in his life.  We today need to look to God for wisdom, and acknowledge Him when blessings come our way.  Solomon seemed to often think he could find happiness through the things of this world, but as his life began to pass away, he realized how wrong he was.  This is not a call for us to give up hope, but for us to realize that what we do for God is what really counts.  If we look to our own wisdom, then we have every reason to despair, but if we look to God for wisdom, we will realize that material things are not what make us happy.  There are those today who feel that knowledge is the answer to the problems of the world, and that if they learn more about the world and how it works, they will find happiness in this world.  They can never find enough truth, though, because they don't look to the author of truth, God, in faith.  Some people look to material wealth for happiness, but again, they never gain enough wealth to be satisfied.  Drug addicts did mot start out to be addicts, but to find happiness, or at least momentary escape from the pressures of this world.  Solomon shares with us his conclusions as we look at the book of Ecclesiastes.  We as followers of Christ need to acknowledge that what Solomon said then is still true today.