As we finish up Ecclesiastes Chapter 1, Solomon again reminds us the vanities of Wisdom:

Ecc 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.”

Ecc 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.

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

Knowing all there is to know doesn’t bring happiness instead it fills our brains with anxiety.  The more we learn about the world, the more we worry about it.  Universities have plenty of professors who are book-smarter than most of us, yet there is not peace in higher learning, instead usually angst…universities are endlessly protesting about one thing or another, which points to that final verse:

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

As we grow in knowledge of the ways of the world, we come to realize how broken it is.  God, who is all knowing, knew this as well, and He sent His Son Christ to die on our behalf as John 3:16 tells us: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.