Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 (All is Vanity)

Introduction

It was 1978 (just shy of 50 years ago now) when Kenny Rogers first sang about a Gambler who offered some life advice to his fellow train-rider. Many of you know the song… For some reason, it’s one of my youngest son’s favorites right now (Malachi loves it).

“You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” “You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table; There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.”

If you do know the song, can you remember the conclusion? Do you remember the dying gambler’s view of living life and finishing well? Near the end, he says, “Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving… is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep… because every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser… and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

I think there’s a lot of honesty in this song. Some days, life may feel like it’s going really well… like we’ve got a winning “hand.” But other days, we might wish we could “fold” or give it all back and start over with something new.

And any of us who have ever thought seriously about our own death have probably hoped that it would be painless… and that we wouldn’t have to suffer a long and protracted demise… like slowly but surely dying of some fatal disease (ex: Micah wanted to join the military so he could probably die fast).

During the good days or weeks or months or even years, we don’t want to think about death. We don’t want to think about hardship or affliction or loss. We know our good times might end at any moment, but we’d like to go on pretending that they never will… thank you.

And yet, don’t we savor the good times even more when we remember that they might be gone soon? Aren’t we more grateful for our blessings when we remember they are gifts… and not expectations?

The book of Ecclesiastes is practical, honest, and confrontational. It’s about real life, unmet expectations, and the grim reality that death comes for us all (Oh, joy, huh? Aren’t you glad we’re going to be walking through this book?).

It’s practical, because the wise “Preacher” writes the way people commonly feel or think in this life under the sun (whether they’ll admit it or not). Everyone can relate at some point to the “Preacher’s” sense of futility or vanity.

Ecclesiastes is honest, because it speaks with raw candor about some of the most socially awkward topics that people often avoid. The “Preacher” talks about the pleasure of wealth and success – it is good to have more money than you need, and it’s better to be successful than not. The “Preacher” also talks about the emptiness or absurdity of wealth and success – more money often means more problems, and success is a fleeting experience at best.

So too, the “Preacher” values wisdom over foolishness and diligence over laziness… but he’s also frustrated that everyone meets the same end… sooner or later… and the timing seems arbitrary.

…Maybe “the best” anyone really can hope for is “to die in their sleep.”

But this is what I mean when I say that Ecclesiastes is confrontational. The “Preacher” confronts us with wise words that are meant (as I understand them) to be an invitation to “enjoy” life as a gift, regardless of our circumstances (which are always changing – sometimes good and sometimes bad – and unpredictable).

There is a sense in which all of life IS vain or absurd or meaningless – the Hebrew word is “hevel.” And there is another sense in which all of life IS a gift from God to His creatures under the sun. Both of these are true (all is hevel, and all is gift), and neither one overturns or contradicts the other.

However, it matters a great deal how we choose to receive the life God gives us. If we receive it as vain or absurd, then it will most definitely match our expectations. But if we receive life as a gift from God, then… well… even the bad days will give us experiences of joy and pleasure… and opportunities to obey God with gratitude and reverence.

Let’s begin our study through this book that sometimes feels like a killjoy in hope that we might actually experience more joy and hope in this life under the sun.

Scripture Reading

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 (ESV)

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. 6 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. 7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

8 All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9 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.

10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”?

It has been already in the ages before us. 11 There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

Main Idea:

Life in this world is (in a real sense) vain and empty, but we may (nonetheless) enjoy our lives as God’s gifts, and we ought to eagerly anticipate the world to come.

Sermon

1. Thesis: All is Vanity (v1-2)

There’s a real sense in which life in this world is vain or empty or meaningless or futile.

In these first two verses, we’re introduced to the book’s author and his thesis – the argument (at least part of it) that the author makes throughout the book.

The main title or label for the author of the book is “the Preacher” – or “Qohelet” (in Hebrew) or “Ecclesiastes” (in Greek). The word (in both Hebrew and Greek) means to gather an assembly, and “the Preacher” of Ecclesiastes is like a philosopher who wants his students to gather ‘round for a lesson.

In v1, “the Preacher” says he’s “the son of David, king in Jerusalem” (v1).

Many have taken this as a reference to Solomon – that quintessentially wise man, who was David’s son and king in Jerusalem… a man who experienced all of life’s pleasures from the seat of Israel’s throne. Solomon certainly did have the ability to experience what “the Preacher” observes here, and Solomon also had the wisdom to teach a philosophy of life as “the Preacher” does.

Some Bible scholars (however) say (for various reasons) that Solomon is probably not the author… that it was some later figure in Israel’s history.

For my part, I don’t think the message changes… whether Solomon wrote it or not. No one is clearly named as author, so we don’t have to be dogmatic.

At any rate, “the Preacher’s” thesis or argument is our main interest, and it is quite surprising to find such an affirmation on the pages of Scripture.

Now, it seems to me that the author’s argument is not as simple as he states it here at the beginning. There are features of the book that reveal something more than a pessimistic or stoic or nihilistic perspective. But we must (I think) grapple with the negative assessment presented to us here.

“The Preacher” says (in v2), “Vanity of vanities” or “Meaningless! Meaningless!” (NIV84) or “Absolute futility” (CSB) “All is vanity” (Ecc. 1:2). Friends, there’s a real sense in which life in this world (or life “under the sun”) IS futile or vain or meaningless… and “the Preacher” confronts this reality head-on.

Before we consider more of this opening argument, let’s first acknowledge that there is a ring of truth to this bleak assessment… and we can hear the minor key in a lot of what we’ve experienced for ourselves… in this life under the sun.

What’s the point of working hard… if all the reward can be taken away by one arbitrary accident, one scheming thief, one negligent co-worker or employee, one cold-hearted boss, or any one of a million uncontrollable factors?

What’s the point of gaining knowledge or living wisely… if fools sometimes strike it rich, if idiots sometimes get the promotion, or if tricksters and wicked men sometimes seem to have it better than the best of men?

And even if there were a consistent pay-off for hard work and wise living in this life under the sun, what’s the point of striving for it… if life itself can come to such an abrupt end without warning or reason? If good men and bad men both die the same, if wise men and fools both sometimes meet their end far sooner than they’d like… then what’s the point?

Isn’t it all vanity? Isn’t it all meaningless? Isn’t it all futile?

Friends, if you live long enough, you will likely feel or think this way… for a moment… for a season. Some of us may be thinking or feeling this right now!

There is much more that the Bible might say to us (if we do find our own thoughts echoed here), but I think we can take comfort in at least a couple of things from this opening perspective of “the Preacher.”

First, we can take comfort that the Bible knows where we are. God’s word knows us better than we know ourselves, and Scripture doesn’t shy away from the hardest subjects or questions of life.

Second, we can take comfort that wise men have felt and thought like this before us. Our miserable perspective is not new, and we aren’t unique. Even if we are dealing with a temptation to despair today, we are not alone.

The fact is that we all face the vanity or absurdity or futility of life under the sun, and it is good and healthy for us to acknowledge it for what it is.

We are not afraid to acknowledge life’s limitations and hardships.

2. Evidence A: Nothing Changes (v3-8)

Our main passage today includes two questions and a litany of poetic lines that present two main conclusions or reasons for life’s vanity.

The questions: “What does man gain by all the toil which he toils under the sun?” (v3). And “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new?’” (v10).

Let’s consider the first one here.

After all the “toil” or “labor” (KJV) or “effort” (NET) that we experience in this life, what will be our “gain” or “profit” (KJV) or “benefit” (NET)?

The “Preacher” seems to say, “Nothing, really… because nothing changes.”

“A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (v4). The “sun” comes up, and “the sun goes down,” and then it starts the same cycle again (v5). The “wind blows” from every direction, and “around and around goes the wind” (v6). So too, the water flows from “stream” to “sea,” but “the sea is not full,” and all the water just keeps on flowing (v7).

It is as though the “Preacher” is saying that we (i.e., people) might as well be like the “sun” or the “wind” or the water in relation to the “earth.” We see all this activity – the sun rising and falling, the wind blowing and the water flowing – but when all is done, it just starts back over again… and nothing changes.

You know, when I was growing up… and even for a good bit of my adult life… a lot of people in the western world seemed to think of themselves as the last of humanity. Whether Christian or not, nearly everyone seems to have thought that their generation was living at the end of history.

One way or another, all the old ways were past, and we would soon experience either utopia or annihilation.

A lot of Evangelicals thought that Christ would return right away, and so they lived as though the world was coming to an end… and the biblical millennium was about to begin.

A lot of secularists thought that a new world order would establish global liberalism and stability… or that a global catastrophe would kill everyone – maybe famine, maybe over-population, maybe global warming, or maybe a giant asteroid or even aliens from space would come to wipe us out.

Some of us may remember that about 40 years ago Edgar C. Whisenant (a NASA rocket engineer and Bible prophecy enthusiast) published a book called “88 Reasons Christ Will Return in 1988.” And when it didn’t happen, he published another book the following year, “89 Reasons Christ Will Return in 1989.”

And Hal Lindsey died a couple of years ago at the age of 95, but who can measure the impact of his book “The Late Great Planet Earth” (published in 1970)? It certainly influenced the crazy-popular “Left Behind” series (published in the 1990s and early 2000s) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

From the secular side of our American culture, the 1980s and 90s gave us movies like Mad Max (a brutal survivalist in a post-apocalyptic world) and Outbreak (where a team of scientists try to find a cure for a disease that’s killing everyone) and the Terminator franchise (where machines try to exterminate humanity after artificial intelligence becomes self-conscious).

…I’m still withholding judgment against the Terminator plot… AI is getting pretty wild these days.

The point is that western man (and certainly Americans) has apparently concluded (at least for a while) that he is living at the end of history. But the author of Ecclesiastes reminds us that our lives are more likely to end with an unnoticeable whimper than a worldwide blaze of glory.

It may be that Christ will return before you die, but what if He doesn’t? What “gain” is there for us here and now after all the “toil” or “labor” (KJV) or “effort” (NET) that we experience in this life? What really changes? What have we actually accomplished? What have we done that will truly last?

The poetic affirmation of v8 seems to sum it up. “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (Ecc. 1:8).

In the end, we may work, we may explore… we may observe all there is to amaze us, we may hear every good melody this life can sing for us… we may eat and drink our fill… but our bellies will never be full, our eyes never satisfied, and our ears never content.

Friends, this vanity or absurdity or futility of life under the sun is a feature of living after the Fall of Genesis 3 and before the glory that is to come for all those who love and trust the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our discontent can sometimes (maybe often!) be sinful, but there’s a reason why life under the sun feels lighter or shorter than it ought to be.

We were made for more! We were made for a weighty and glorious relationship with our God, and we were made for a world unmarred by the sin, corruption, futility, and death that we see all around us and experience within us.

The “Preacher” of Ecclesiastes will go on in this book to tell us that there is actually much “good” we can truly “enjoy” even in this life “under the sun,” but we must begin by accepting the limitations of what is “good” in this fallen world.

Brothers and sisters, we would do well to put down any notion that we can change the world, that we can solve some global problem, or that we can leave this world behind substantially better than we found it.

After all the “toil” or “labor” (KJV) or “effort” (NET) we experience here, if our main focus is on THIS WORLD, then we will be sorely disappointed. Nothing really changes; all remains the same; and there is no true satisfaction in the fleeting pleasures of this world… Indeed, “All things are full of weariness.”

3. Evidence B: No One Remembers (v9-11)

So, the first of our two main questions today is “What does man gain by all the toil which he toils under the sun?” (v3). And “the Preacher’s” hard-but-honest answer is, “Nothing really… because nothing changes.”

The second question is like the first, but there’s a bitter irony in the Preacher’s” answer to this one. In v10, “the Preacher” asks, “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new?’” (v10).

And his answer might be stated something like this: “No, nothing is new; but no one remembers the past, so they don’t learn or admire or progress from it.”

See it there in v10-11. “The Preacher” says, all “has been already in the ages before us” (v10). In other words, “Nothing is new.”

But see v11. “There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.” In other words, “No one remembers the past, so they don’t learn or admire or progress.” No one will remember you, and they won’t learn from your mistakes or benefit from your successes or knowledge.

Friends, almost everyone knows the saying, “Those who don’t learn or know history are doomed to repeat it.” But every generation seems to think they are the first to know, they are the first to discover, they are the first to struggle, they are the first to endure, they are the first to really address this problem or that solution.

There is a chronological snobbery that seems endemic to fallen humanity. We know that many generations have come before us, and we know something of what those previous people did and said and accomplished, but we think of ourselves as so far advanced from their primitive and ignorant state that we pat the foolish dead on their proverbial heads, and we tell them “We’ll take it from here.”

And (let this sober us a bit) so will be the perspective of our grandchildren and the generations that follow. They will read about the people of our nation and culture (at least some nerdy historians and sociologists and political theorists will), and they’ll wonder how people like us could be so embarrassingly wrong, so pitifully backward, so miserably unadvanced.

Why would we expect them to do so much better than we have done?

Nothing really is new under the sun, but we foolishly imagine that our cunning, our advancement, our strength, our creativity is special… it’s novel… it’s the best thing to come on the terrestrial scene since God made order out of chaos.

Friends, not only does nothing in this fallen world every truly change – human nature stays the same, nations rise and fall, and the same miseries and woes make their circuit – but no one will remember… we haven’t learned the lessons our ancestors have showed us, we don’t avoid their mistakes, and we don’t build upon their successes (not their true and substantial ones)… and neither will those who come after us… they will endure the same wearisome life under the sun.

4. Life as Gift and Anticipation

Now, what we’re considering today is raw honesty about life under the sun, and it’s probably been a bit of a downer.

I’d say that I’m sorry, but I’m not really. In fact, I think the book of Ecclesiastes is meant to make us feel this way.

For non-Christians, the book of Ecclesiastes is designed to stick your nose in the futility of life under the sun so that you will long for something better. What are you doing with yourself? Why are you spending so much toil or effort to squeeze so little pleasure and no lasting joy out of life?

What are you really gaining? What improvement are you making in the world? And who will remember anything about you in 50 or 100 years?

Don’t waste your life! Don’t just live and die and be forgotten! Don’t miss out on the true joys that God gives to His people… both in this life and in the one to come.

For Christians, the book of Ecclesiastes is designed to draw our gaze above the circumstances of our lives under the sun… so that we will both receive the life we have as a gift from God… and also so that we will more eagerly anticipate what God has promised to all who love and trust in Christ.

When we feel that life is not what it ought to be, we are right!

And yet (as “the Preacher” of Ecclesiastes will tell us later), there are many goods we can enjoy right here in this life because every day and every circumstance is given to us by the God who made us, the God who loves us, and the God who means for us to know Him and enjoy Him and serve Him.

If we will keep this in mind, then we can find genuine joy and real gain even in this life under the sun.

But the emphasis I want to lead toward right now is the way this fallen world ought to push us to anticipate the life that is to come.

Friends, since Genesis 3, humanity (and the whole of creation) has been under God’s curse. The reason this life isn’t all it should be is because of sin and all of sin’s effects.

The Bible teaches us that “creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it,” namely God Himself (Rom. 8:20). Indeed, there is a sense in which “creation” is “groaning” under the conditions at present and desiring the renewal that Christ will bring on the last day (Rom. 8:22).

But the apex of God’s plan and purpose to “subject” this world to “futility” and “bondage” … and then bring it to the status of “freedom” and “glory” … is not the mere improvement of creation, but the “revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:18-21).

And we can know this is true, because God Himself has entered into this life under the sun, and He has suffered the worst of sin’s curse, and He has conquered death… showing us all that His renewal of all things has already begun.

In the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son has lived as a real man in the real world. He was subjected to hardship, temptation, and even death. But when Christ suffered in this way, He did it… not for His own sins or deficiencies… but for the sins of those who would look to Him with faith.

Because Christ lived, unrighteous sinners like us can receive His righteousness. Because Christ died, my sin-debt and yours is paid in full. And because Christ was resurrected from the grave, we can know that we too will conquer death… if we will simply trust Him for it.