This book is about the futility of pursuing earthly goals, pleasures, and the details of life as a means of happiness or satisfaction.

Looking at the flyer in your bulletin called "What gives my life meaning?" In the list is "education". If we place "education" in the center of the circle we now have a visual of Solomon's heart.

Let me state clearly that I am not anti-education. Education is important. I tell young people that words are formed in the mind. There education provides vocabulary the rough materiel that build thought. If you only have 300 words in your vocabulary you cannot think. Stay in school. Go as far as you can go. Work hard at all times to learn.

So that no one would conclude or misconstrue what I am about to say, put in your notes that the first thing Pastor had to say is that Education is good. Education is beneficial.

Secondly, Education does not guarantee happiness. If you are educated it does not mean that you have a life of meaning or life worth living, or any happiness. Folk's I know this first hand for I work for Oakcrest High School and I meet a lot of unhappy, dissatisfied educators. The one thing they all have in common is education. What many do not have is happiness.

Now sometimes education is the means to some other end. In other words some are going to school in order to get a good job so that they would be able to earn a certain standard of living that they associate with happiness. Now it is education, later it will be a job, but in the end there will be no guarantee of happiness.

This is confusing.

Uneducated people aren't educated.
Uneducated people aren't happy.

Uneducated people are pursuing education to be happy.

On the other hand my experiences with teachers leads me to this:

Educated people aren't uneducated.
Yet, Educated people aren't happy.

On the other hand:

Happy people aren't educated. I know many people with just a High School diploma who are happy.
The educated people aren't happy. I know many educated people who are not happy.

So, where is happiness? Maybe Education holds the secret

1. His pursuit of wisdom 1:12-14.
2. His problems 1:15
3. His promotion 1:16
4. His personal misery 1:17

1. His Pursuit of Wisdom 12-14:

1:12 I, the Preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem.

1:13 And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with.

Solomon came to education for happiness and education gave him sore travail. Then in the senior year in graduate school he said:

1:14 I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun (I have my degree and my diploma), and behold, all (education) is vanity (the futility of striving after human wisdom in order to find happiness) and striving after wind.

The pursuit of education in order to find happiness is as useless as chasing after the wind in order to catch it. Actually this is a hilarious. A graphic picture of the effort expended with no results gained since no one can catch the wind by running after it. He used this phrase nine times (1:14, 17; 2:11, 17, 26; 4:4, 6, 16; 6:9).

His Problems

1:15 What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

Problems that Solomon could never figure out. Couldn't square a circle. He couldn't solve the mathematics of infinity. Solomon now crashes into the wall of his own intellectual limitations. His quest ended.

His Promotion

1:16 I said to myself, "Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge."

In spite of the setbacks, his accumulation of wisdom surpasses all the kings before him.

Notice the language. I said to myself. Self-induced misery. We are our own worst enemies. We do it to ourselves without any help from God or others. If you are unhappy who gets the blame. Start with yourself.

His Program (course of study)

1:17 And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind.

He majored in psychology and psychiatry, that is, madness and folly.

His Personal Misery

1:18 Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.

Education gave him a greater capacity to be unhappy. Here is his testimony. How many years was he involved in the pursuit of wisdom we do not know. Here is what we do know: he was more miserable than when he started out, " increasing knowledge results in increasing pain".

His pursuit of wisdom was as frustrating as chasing after the wind, and its acquisition, far from alleviating his depression merely increased his mental anguish and sadness of heart.

I want to be happy so I am (fill in the blank).

What is the principle:.

The futility of pursuing earthly goals, pleasures, and the details of life as a means of happiness or satisfaction. There is no happiness apart from walking with the Lord.