Wisdom's Bitter Beginning

Call to Worship: Psalm 37:3-6 // Prayer

Adoration: Ancient of Days, we praise you for your Power and your Love: we delight in you, because the sum of all your perfections is a beauty far beyond our sight and thought but at the same time a glory which we see in the face of Jesus Christ. We commit our ways to you. We trust you, for you have acted in Jesus for our salvation, and we know that you will act again to make all things new.

Confession: And because we have committed our ways to you, we also come to you with our sins: that in spite of your goodness, we have chosen evil. We have been impatient, prideful, anxious, foolish, thoughtless, selfish. Our sins weigh much more than we know: Father, forgive us, for we have sinned against you.

Thanksgiving: And you have said to us that you have forgiven all our guilt and cleansed us from all our sin through your Son’s death in our stead: we rest ourselves in this with joy. And you have said that in his resurrection, you have raise us to new life and the certain hope that we will one day behold your glory face-to-face: we hope in this with joy.

Supp: And as we walk through this weary world, we ask that you would increase our joy; and specifically, we ask for Jeff and I, entrusted by you with the shepherding of this congregation — you know our weakness; please assist us with your mercy — give us steadfastness in truth, humility in leading, wisdom in decisions, that your name might be glorified in this congregation // and we ask also for an increase in the joy of the saints at Harvest Community Church; ask we ask that the gospel would go forward with power from us, so we ask that it would go forward with power from them // Father, through them and us and every other gospel-preaching congregation on the Westside, we ask for the salvation of many thousands from among the lost in our community — the power is yours, and you can do it; we only ask that you would equip all of your people in this city and make us obedient to the commission your Son gave us! // and we ask even beyond this, by your grace and power, to equip the saints in Japan, that they might carry the shame of your gospel with great honor, and share it with boldness, that the light of your gospel might grow and shine in that country // and now, as we turn to hear Word, please help us with this wonderful but difficult book of Ecclesiastes, that we might truly grow in its wisdom...

Family Matters

Summer Fridays at Scholls - full schedule in Bulletin, mark the dates!

June 14 – Movie and Hot Dog Feed @ Scholls: Riot and Dance (Earth)

June 28 – BBQ and Fellowship Night @ Scholls

Purpose of the movie nights:

Discipleship — these are high quality documentaries, both cinematically and spiritually. Very encouraging.

Outreach — these will also be an excellent outreach and/or evangelism opportunity: you are encouraged to invite folks who say they are believers but don’t belong to a gospel-preaching church, and folks who don’t claim to be believers at all.

So take as many extra flyers from the back as you think you’ll use...

Music ministry lunch May 19th shortly after the service, anyone who participates in our music ministry highly encouraged to come… if anyone else is interested you are welcome to come, just let me know first for logistical purposes

Benediction

2 Corinthians 13:14 ESV

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Sermon

Read: Ecclesiastes 1

Intro

Ecclesiastes is a heavy book. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” It’s a troubling first line.

Maybe you find the book fascinating, but don’t know what to do with it. Or, maybe you're repelled by it: with all the trouble on your shoulders, why add the gloomy thought that your work gains you nothing? Or, maybe you find yourself asking, “With such a gloomy message, why is this book even in the Bible?”

Well, there’s a logic in the book that we’re going to see as it unfolds:

The path to Joy is through Wisdom

The path to Wisdom is through Sorrow

So, paradoxically, the path to real joy begins with sorrow — and that is the path of Ecclesiastes.

You know, I have a highly developed sweet tooth. Put a cup of tea or coffee in front of me, and my first instinct is cream and sugar — as much as I can justify! But if you sit down with a cup of coffee and a pastry, you’ll actually ruin your experience if you sweeten the coffee too much. The greatest delight will come if you leave the coffee bitter, and allow your taste buds to experience the contrast between that bitterness and the buttery sweetness of the dessert.

Life in this fallen world is like that, too. If you try to over-sweeten it, both joy and wisdom will escape you. But if you are willing to let your soul taste the kind of bitter thoughts we’ll see in Ecclesiastes, that bitterness will lead to wisdom. And when you savor that wisdom, you will find a real and sturdy joy in it also.

And I wanted to begin with this thought so that you know where we’re going — what it is that we are trying to gain from Ecclesiastes. I want you to have the goal of wisdom and joy in mind as we start, because the first chapter of the book — our text this morning — may be the book’s most bitter section. But the goal of this section is to start us down the path of wisdom.

And the Preacher does this in three steps:

First, he illustrates that we gain nothing from all our labor, our toil, our work that we do.

Second, he shows that we fix nothing by all our toil.

And third, he shows that even wisdom itself cannot deliver that illusive success or satisfaction we seek.

And so his core thought is, “Human toil is vain.” Human toil is vain — and recognizing that is the first step on the path of wisdom

Explanation of Vanity/Vapor/Striving After Wind

But before diving into this, we need to stop for a moment and ask, what does this royal Preacher mean when he says the word “vain”? What kind of vanity his he talking about?

When we say, “vain” in English, we mean something like, “futile,” or, “pointless.”

You might think of carefully planting a row of delicate flower starts right before a heavy hail storm destroys them,

or spending two hours washing and waxing your car… right before totalling it in an accident.

The time and money you spend gained you absolutely nothing. It was in vain.

That’s close to the preacher’s meaning in the word “vain” in Ecclesiastes. But there’s another important element to it. You could also translate that word, “smoke” or “vapor”.

And the idea is, life is like a wisp of smoke or cloud of vapor. You can see the smoke rising from a pipe; you can see the mist of your breath on a cold morning. But if you stretch out your hand to grasp it, it goes right through your fingers. You can’t shape it, control it, or direct it. It escapes you. And then it is gone.

So when the preacher says, “vain” in Ecclesiastes, that’s the idea he’s getting at: not that life and work are utterly meaningless, but rather that they are a like a vapor: short lived, ungraspable, ineffective, and in that sense, vain.

With that in mind, verses 2 and 3 sounds something like this: “Vapor of vapors,” says the Preacher, “vapor of vapors! All is vapor. What does man gain by all his hard work in this life?”

Nothing Gained by Toil

And of course, the implied answer is: nothing. All the difficult toil of all the work you do in this life gains you nothing.

Now, that may seem wrong to you: “Wait a minute. I work and bring home a paycheck. I build something worthwhile, and people use it. I wash the dishes and they are clean. I mow the grass and it looks nice. I read a book and I gain knowledge.”

How can the Preacher say, “Man gains nothing by his toil?”

He can say that because he’s asking the question from a more ultimate perspective: no generation is actually able to go beyond what came before it. Every generation in this age is doomed to repeat the same basic triumphs and losses as every previous generation, and in spite of all the work that any one generation does, that basic truth remains in place. Mankind’s hard work makes no real gain from generation to generation.

[Transitory man] Let’s see how the preacher explains this. Listen again to vss. 4-7:

Ecclesiastes 1:4–7 ESV

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

What’s he saying?

Here’s the earth: it’s been around for ages since any of us were alive, unchanged. And yet for ages, a generation has been born into the world only to fade out and be replaced by another, and then another, and then another.

And as the preacher looks at this, he sees it reflected in the natural world: just as the Sun rises only to need to rise again the next day; just as the wind blows only to return and blow again; just as all rivers flow into the sea, but the sea never fills up — so also all the efforts of every generation are the same —

beautiful new buildings which will be ruins in two or three generations;

righteous governments, hard won by their founders, destined to be corrupted or overthrown;

all accomplishments, large and small, bound to be replaced and lost to history...

And so the preacher says:

Ecclesiastes 1:8 (ESV)

All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it…

In other words, the truth of this is so wearying to the soul that I can’t truly express it in a sermon. All of the hardest and best work of each generation is vain, like a vaporous breath on a cold morning.

[No satisfaction] And just to make sure we don’t skate by this, the preacher nails it down with two applications. First, none of our work brings true satisfaction:

Ecclesiastes 1:8 (ESV)

…the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

Notice, this verse implies that the eye and the ear were made for better sights and sounds than what we can get for them “under the sun” — sights and sounds which would bring joy rather than weariness

But there’s the frustration: the very best efforts of every and all generations have been aimed at satisfying the eye and the ear, and have utterly failed to produce that satisfaction — have failed to break beyond the bounds of this crooked and unsatisfying world.

And so all the attempts of the toil of every generation to produce true satisfaction have been vain.

[Nothing new] And second, none of our toil produces anything truly new. Vss. 9-11 explain:

Ecclesiastes 1:9–11 ESV

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

So, no generation comes up and does something which is actually new. But hold on — is that really true?

As modern people, we’re used to thinking the exact opposite. From our viewpoint, humanity has been on a path of progress for many centuries, and our current generation is more advanced and better off than all previous generations in almost every way. To our thinking, we really are doing a lot of new things.

So who’s right? Us, or Ecclesiastes?

Well I suppose that, in some ways, we are doing a lot of new things: lighting-fast communication; wonderful new medical technologies; a much greater level of comfort from a material perspective; and much more

But what kind of “new” was the preacher actually talking about, when he said that no generation actually does something new?

In context, he was talking about something which is able to genuinely satisfy the eye and the ear; to genuinely break humanity out of the vaporous cycle of ‘a generation coming and going’ — the cycle that we’ve been stuck in since the fall; something which can genuinely straighten out the crookedness of the world.

And in that sense — for all of our technological advances — we’ve done nothing new.

And I don’t mean to beat this to death, but the preacher’s perspective is so different than our own, that I think we need to really drill into this. Think about some of our accomplishments:

Social media, which has both allowed for wonderful connections with distant friends, and at the same time caused an epidemic of loneliness in our society;

The automobile, which allows great travel in short amounts of time, but has made us statistically less likely to travel across the road to the neighbor’s house

Medical technology so good that c-sections have become as safe as natural births; and at the same time babies have become much less safe, as we use modern technology to snuff out the lives of about 800,000 unborn children each year

Cell phones, which — if you hang out with folks from my generation — make you likely to see many faces you’d otherwise not see, but also likely to stop looking at the faces around you.

Artificial Intelligence, which will probably end up making us all a little dumber by the time we’ve been using it for a whole generation

And I could go on here. And the point isn’t that our new technologies have made us worse off. Rather, the point is that, in spite of our new technologies, we’re really still dealing with all the same old issues we’ve had before. They’ve just been repackaged in computer screens and modern comforts. There’s a lot new under the Sun… but really, there isn’t anything new. We’re just another generation that’s come, and that will go, without fixing the crookedness of the world.

[Contrast w/ Solomon’s reign]

You know, up until about 150 years ago, everyone said that Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon. And then a scholar came along and said that it wasn’t Solomon. And even though his arguments have been overturned, for some reason the majority of scholars still don’t like the idea that Solomon wrote it.

Looking at the objective evidence, thought, Solomon is the most likely author — he’s the son of David who was king over all Israel from Jerusalem, and who was known for his wisdom.

And the point of that is to say — this book was probably written by a King who ruled over Israel at the height of its power and glory. No Israelite generation before Solomon’s had seen power, prosperity, peace and glory as there was in Solomon’s day. And yet, even after seeing all of that, Solomon wrote, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

But even more he wrote,

Ecclesiastes 1:11 ESV

There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

Even New York Times best sellers which have not yet been written are already doomed to be forgotten.

I don’t know how many of you drive on River Road regularly. There’s a very old house there, just north of Rosedale Road. It’s abandoned, overrun with blackberries. It looks to be about a century old, two stories with large gables. I wonder what children grew up in it? How many countless meals were cooked in its kitchen? How many family memories were made in it?

When I first moved out here, it was mostly still standing. But some time in the past couple months, a big part of it collapsed, and now you can barely see it from the road. I wonder, in 50 years, will anyone even remember it was there?

And then there’s my own house. Filled with voices and toys and food and busyness — and a thousand little projects to do to make it nicer for the family. Will it also be gone and forgotten a century from now?

local congregations… fade away?

The bitter truth is this: we have already forgotten so much of what came before us, and even the things we haven’t done yet will be forgotten by those who come after us. Our very best work only repeats what came before, and humanity makes no actual gain through it. It is vapor. It is vain.

And so, all the labors of mankind fail on two counts: they neither satisfy nor are new. They are only a quickly vanishing repetition of what came before. And to gain the wisdom and joy this book offers, we must be willing to see this.

Nothing Fixed by Toil

***Now, someone might hear all this and say, “OK. So maybe our labors are unsatisfying and temporary within our own life times. But does that really make them vain? If everyone does the right thing in small ways for several generations, can’t we really make the world a better place or something?***

[Unhappy Business] Well, what does Solomon say?

Ecclesiastes 1:13–15 ESV

And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

What is crooked about this world cannot be made straight; what is lacking in this life cannot be counted. Death, aging, war, disease, societal problems, decay, natural disasters, blights… the list goes on.

And all the busyness of humanity — all our most diligent work — doesn’t even begin to change the world’s crooked nature. Our toil is vain in that way also.

And that’s a bitter picture. But I want you to notice something in those verses:

In vs. 13 he says, “It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.” What’s that talking about?

In vs. 15 it says that what is crooked cannot be made straight, but in 7:13 he says, “Who can make straight what God has made crooked?”

So why is the world crooked? And why is our toil in vain? Because of something that God has done.

To understand this, we need to think back to the first man, Adam. Adam was given not an unhappy business as we just heard, but a joyful business from God. He was to rule over the world with joy on God’s behalf. That’s what he was created for! But he turned against his Maker, and so God placed a curse on the earth which changed Adam’s joyful business into an unhappy one. This curse is described in Genesis 3:17-19, where God says

Genesis 3:17–19 (ESV)

...cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

So the unhappiness of our business is this: that because of sin, we live in a cursed world — or as Solomon calls it, a “crooked” world. We were designed to rule over the earth with joy. But instead, we struggle our way through it with hardship until we finally return to the dust we came from.

God has made it crooked. And so, we are not able to straighten it out.

And again, this was not some suffering prophet who wrote this — it was King Solomon, who saw the height of Israel’s glory. Who accomplished more than him? Who made more progress in a single generation than him? Yet he tells us this: God has made the world lacking, and we are not able to fill it up — not even with the very best of our labors: Our toil is vain.

But what does our culture tell our young people? “You can change the world.” And especially, this is telegraphed to little girls, right? “Girls can change the world!” It sounds so good, and it is so foolish. I mean Solomon is spinning in his grave.

The world is crooked, and girls, you can’t straighten it. That doesn’t mean you should give up on doing good. Far from it! As we go through Ecclesiastes, you’ll see that you should do good! But you should not feel responsible for changing the world, because you can’t.

God is the one who has made it crooked.

But speaking of the world’s crookedness, Paul wrote this in Romans 8:20-21:

Romans 8:20–21 ESV

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

So God subjected the world to crookedness, but he did so in hope — the world is in bondage to corruption in this age, but it is destined to be set free in the next.

How so? Adam sinned and brought the curse; but the second Adam, Jesus, gave himself up to provide freedom for all who come to him — and when we who belong to him are finally glorified, then all creation will be set free as well.

And that’s when all who’ve trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of sin will begin the joyful business of ruling a world which is not crooked as we walk in communion with our God.

And we pray that day would come soon. And yet, for all we know, today is not that day. And so what what we need to day is not only the hope of that glorious future, but also wisdom for living life in this crooked present.

And that wisdom comes from owning this truth: that all the labors of mankind in this age can fix nothing of this world’s brokenness. All our work is like smoke and vapor.

Nothing Gained by Wisdom

***But someone might hear all this and say, “OK, so maybe all our labor is vain. But maybe the problem is that we’re foolish. If only we grew in wisdom, then we could get around all these limits that Solomon is talking about.***

Well if that’s the case, then Solomon would know — he had unparalleled divine wisdom. So what does he say about it?

Ecclesiastes 1:16–18 ESV

I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

So what does wisdom gain you? Frustration and sorrow. Why?

Because if it’s true wisdom, it will open your eyes to the futility of all the busy activities of mankind, and the bitterness of how short-lived and unfulfilling they all are.

Any so-called wisdom that points to mankind achieving a utopian future is just foolishness repackaged.

None of man’s toil — not even his quest for wisdom — can break past the crookedness of this world or the vanity of our labors. Human labor is vain.

Conclusion: Wisdom Begins with Knowing our Toil is Vapor

And brothers and sisters this is a hard, unsettling, bitter thought.

But once again, the bitterness of it is something that we need. Why? Because it is a bitterness that leads to sorrow, and as Ecclesiastes 7:3 says:

Ecclesiastes 7:3 ESV

Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.

In other words, the path to real joy lead through the road of sadness.

And so the fact that all human toil is vain is bitter. Yet, it is a bitterness that leads to a sorrow that brings wisdom, and this wisdom will lead us to a much more sturdy joy.

Or to put it this way, the world is a crooked place. And you can try to have joy by ignoring the crookedness of it, but that will be unstable at best.

Far better is a joy which recognizes the crookedness of the world and so the vanity of human work, and so is able to take simple joy in every gift provided by God. And it’s that kind of wisdom and that kind of joy which Solomon will unfold for us along the path of sorrow as we follow it through this book.

[invite men + musicians to come forward and serve the elements]

Lord’s Table

Now, as we turn to celebrate communion, let us remember: our Lord Jesus chose to endure the crookedness of this world. Though he is God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, yet for our salvation he took on flesh. And as he walked among us, he endured all the futility, vanity, and sorrow that we endure. And then, he went to the cross, and offered himself up as a sacrifice for our sin to bring us back into fellowship with God and to give us an inheritance in the new creation.

As we partake in the bread and the cup, we commune with him who died on our behalf, and so remember his sufferings and our forgiveness in him. In this we find joy and rest. But also, for this reason, these elements are only for believers. So if you are a believer who has already symbolized the beginning of your faith through baptism, and you are in good standing with your church, you are welcome to participate in the bread and the cup with us. But if you are not a believer, we ask that you refrain, and watch as we partake, and think about what these things mean: that Jesus gave himself up to death, so that if you come to him, you also will find forgiveness and life.

[‌Passing out the bread + Cup]

‌‌‌1 Corinthians 11:23-24 “…the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.””

1 Corinthians 11:25 “In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.””

‌1 Corinthians 11:26 “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”