Chasing After the Wind: Ecclesiastes 1 and Why Success, Pleasure, and Approval Never Satisfy

In the first episode of the Sermon Notes Podcast’s new series through Ecclesiastes, Chasing After the Wind, Jay Strother and Brian Ball sit down to talk through Ecclesiastes 1 and the question that drives the entire book: if the wisest, wealthiest, most powerful man in history couldn’t find satisfaction in success, pleasure, or achievement, what makes us think we will? They walk through who likely wrote Ecclesiastes, how it fits into the canon, and why Solomon’s own story — a strong start, a slow drift into idolatry, and a hard-won return to God — maps so closely onto the book’s message.

Much of the conversation centers on the Hebrew word hevel, translated “vanity,” “futility,” or “meaninglessness” depending on your translation, and pictured as mist or a breath on a cold morning — real for a moment, then gone. Jay and Brian use the image of a three-story house to frame the book: the ground floor is life “under the sun,” which can feel random and unsatisfying; the second floor is Solomon’s repeated call to receive today’s life as a gift from God; and the top floor is the reminder that God is sovereign over everything we can’t make sense of. From there, they trace the thread forward to Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15, showing how Ecclesiastes’ honest wrestling with futility ultimately points toward the hope believers have in Christ.

The episode closes with an encouragement not to read Ecclesiastes as bleak or fatalistic, but as a gift from someone who tried everything the world offers and wants to spare others the same disappointment. As Jay puts it, the choice Solomon leaves us with is really just one of two options: a firm foundation of unyielding despair, or God himself.