The Insomniac's Folly and the Rest of God Text: Ecclesiastes 8:16-17
Introduction: The Exhaustion of Unbelief
The book of Ecclesiastes is a divine gift to us, a splash of cold water in the face of all our feverish attempts to make sense of the world on our own terms. The Preacher, Qoheleth, has taken us on a grand tour of life "under the sun." This phrase is key; it describes the world as it appears to the man who refuses to look up. It is the vantage point of horizontal, godless observation. From this low altitude, life is a chasing after the wind, a puff of smoke, a vanity of vanities.
Modern man is particularly susceptible to the Preacher's diagnosis. He believes that with enough data, enough processing power, enough sleepless nights in the lab or the library, he can finally crack the code. He thinks he can put the universe on a spreadsheet and make it all add up. He is the ultimate insomniac, staring at the ceiling day and night, trying to solve the problem of reality without reference to the one who spoke it into being. The result is not enlightenment, but a profound and wearying exhaustion.
But the Preacher is not a nihilist. He is a realist, and his realism is designed to drive us out of ourselves and into the arms of a sovereign God. He shows us the dead end of human wisdom precisely so that we will stop trusting in it. He demonstrates the futility of our own endeavors so that we might find rest in the finished work of God. This passage is a culmination of that argument. It is a direct confrontation with the pride of the philosopher, the scientist, the pundit, the man who thinks that if he just tries hard enough, he can figure God out. But God's providence is not a puzzle to be solved; it is a reality to be trusted.
Here, the Preacher contrasts the frantic, sleepless striving of the would-be wise man with the profound, humbling mystery of God's work. It is a lesson in creaturely limitation. It is a call to put down our calculators and our anxious charts, and to simply fear God and keep His commandments. This is the only path to sanity in a world that, from our limited perspective, often seems insane.
The Text
When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the endeavor which has been done on the earth (even though one never sees sleep with his eyes day or night), and I saw every work of God, I concluded that man cannot find out the work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not find it out; and though the wise man should say, "I know," he cannot find it out.
(Ecclesiastes 8:16-17 LSB)
The Sleepless Search (v. 16)
The Preacher begins by describing his own exhaustive, all-consuming effort to understand the world through observation.
"When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the endeavor which has been done on the earth (even though one never sees sleep with his eyes day or night)..." (Ecclesiastes 8:16)
Notice the intensity of the effort. He "gave his heart" to it. This was not a casual hobby; it was his life's central project. His goal was to "know wisdom" and to "see the endeavor," the business, the toil, the whole frantic machinery of human life. He is describing the empirical method, the attempt to derive ultimate meaning from the raw data of human experience.
And the effort required is total. It is a 24/7 job. He speaks of the one who "never sees sleep with his eyes day or night." This is a picture of obsession. It is the man who believes that the answer is just around the corner, if only he can work a little harder, stay up a little later, analyze one more data point. This is the modern academic, the political strategist, the anxious news junkie, all burning the midnight oil in a desperate attempt to get a handle on the chaos, to find the pattern in the noise.
But this sleeplessness is a spiritual condition. It is the restlessness of a soul that has not found its rest in God. It is the anxiety of the man who believes it is all up to him. If he is the one who has to figure it all out, then he dare not sleep. He is trying to be his own providence, his own god. This is the very opposite of the peace that Christ promises, the peace that allows a believer to lie down and sleep, knowing that his heavenly Father is the one who is truly awake and at work (Psalm 121:4).
This verse sets up the problem. Man, in his pride, dedicates himself with a religious, all-consuming fervor to understanding the world on his own terms. He sacrifices his rest, his peace, his very well-being on the altar of his own intellect. He is a man on a quest, but as we are about to see, it is a fool's errand.
The Unfindable Conclusion (v. 17)
After this exhaustive, sleepless investigation, the Preacher arrives at a firm and final conclusion.
"...and I saw every work of God, I concluded that man cannot find out the work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not find it out; and though the wise man should say, 'I know,' he cannot find it out." (Ecclesiastes 8:17)
This is a devastating blow to human pride. The conclusion of the most intense search for wisdom is that wisdom, in this ultimate sense, cannot be found by searching. The "work which has been done under the sun" is God's work. It is His providence, His grand, overarching narrative. And the Preacher declares it to be inscrutable. It is beyond our pay grade.
He leaves no room for exceptions. He says "man cannot find out." He doubles down on this: "Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not find it out." Hard work is not the issue. Brute intellectual force will not get you there. You can throw all the resources of humanity at this problem, and you will come up empty-handed. The creature cannot reverse-engineer the mind of the Creator. To attempt to do so is like a character in a novel trying to psychoanalyze the author. It is a category error of the highest order.
Then he takes aim at the expert, the professional wise man: "and though the wise man should say, 'I know,' he cannot find it out." This is a direct shot at the gnostic, the guru, the man who claims to have the secret key. The Preacher says his claim is a bluff. He is pretending. The man who says he has God's entire plan figured out is the one who has understood nothing at all. True wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, which is to say, it begins with humility. It begins with acknowledging that He is God and we are not.
This is not to say that we can know nothing. God has revealed Himself in His Word. The "secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever" (Deut. 29:29). Our job is not to pry into the secret counsel of God's sovereign decree, but rather to faithfully obey His revealed will. We are given a lamp for our feet, not a searchlight to illuminate the entire cosmos. We are called to walk by faith, not by sight, and certainly not by exhaustive intellectual comprehension.
Conclusion: Finding Rest in the Mystery
So where does this leave us? If the world is a baffling place and God's work is unfindable, should we throw up our hands in despair? The unbeliever does. The man "under the sun" looks at this reality and concludes that life is absurd, a tale told by an idiot. His sleepless search ends in the blackness of nihilism.
But for the believer, this very truth is the doorway to profound peace and true joy. The fact that we cannot find out the work of God is a glorious liberation. It means the weight of the world is not on our shoulders. We are not in charge. We are not the ones who have to make it all make sense. We have a Father in heaven who "worketh all things after the counsel of his own will" (Eph. 1:11), and He has assured us that "all things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom. 8:28).
The world sees a tangled, chaotic mess. The believer, by faith, knows that every thread is woven into a beautiful and intricate tapestry by a master artist. We don't see the full picture, and we are not meant to. Our frantic, sleepless attempts to see the whole design from our position on the back of the canvas is the very definition of folly. God is telling a story, and every trial, every confusing providence, every seemingly random event is a chapter in that story. And because the Author is good, the story will have a good ending.
Therefore, the Christian can sleep. He can work diligently, love his wife, enjoy his food and drink, and trust God with the results. The Preacher's conclusion is not despair, but a call to simple, humble, joyful faith. The whole duty of man is not to figure everything out. The whole duty of man is to "Fear God, and keep his commandments" (Eccl. 12:13). In this, and only in this, will the insomniac soul finally find its rest.