Living in a Dream World

Introduction

New series inspired by book by David Gibson.

I’m going to die.

Leeann Zody’s death. Saw her just a few weeks ago. Talked with her and her husband on the golf course. Knew she had some heart issues. Knew she was on the waiting list, but it never crossed my mind she would die. She was too young. She was playing golf. Yet now she’s gone.

That’s the point of Ecclesiastes. How do we make sense of this messy, broken world where young mothers die and dictators live long and prosperous?

It begins by blowing up the little dream world we live in where we expect everything to work out the way it is supposed to - at least in our minds. We all live in this pretend dream world.

We hope that if we get the promotion, see our church grow, or bring up good children, we’ll feel significant and leave a lasting legacy behind us.

We think that if we change jobs or move to a tropical climate we’ll break out of the humdrum tedium and ordinariness of life.

We think if we move to our new dream home we’ll be happy and never want to move again.

We believe that if we end one relationship and start a new one we won’t feel trapped. We pretend that if we were married, or weren’t married, we would find happiness.

We believe that if we made just a little more money we would be satisfied and be content.

We believe that if we can just get through this week’s pile of washing and dirty diapers and shopping lists and school runs and evening meetings, next week will be quieter.

we believe that time is always on our side to do the things we want to do and become the people we want to be.

But we’re not God. We’re not in control and we will not live forever.

If this sounds depressing, it’s not. The book of Ecclesiastes is a gift from God to help us live in the real world. It blows up the little dream world we live in and jolts us into realizing that the world is messy. Life doesn’t always work out like we want it to.

The Meaning of Vanity

Need to understand what the real meaning of “meaningless” or “vanity” is. The Hebrew word is “hebel” and it is more accurately portrayed as “breath” or “breeze”. The Preacher is saying that everything is a mist, a vapor, a puff of wind, a bit of smoke. It’s a common biblical idea.

Psalm 39:5–6 NIV84

5 You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath.Selah 6 Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.

Psalm 39:5-6

Psalm 144:3–4 NIV84

3 O Lord, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him? 4 Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow.

The Preacher is saying, “The merest of breaths… the merest of breaths. Everything is a breath.” The rest of the book is about unpacking what this means, but here are some ways to grasp where he is starting.

Life is elusive and short

What happens when you blow out a candle. How long does the puff of smoke last? You can smell it and see it. It’s very real. But it’s also transient, temporary, and vanishes quickly. It comes and goes without a permanent impact or lasting impression on the world.

Not only is the smoke transient; it is also elusive. Try to grab the smoke, put a bit in your pocket and keep it for later. You can’t get your hands on it. It is a real physical thing, and yet it dodges your fingers as soon as they get near it; the very attempt to hold it blows air at the smoke and speeds its disappearance.

Ecclesiastes is a book about how life seems to elude our grasp in terms of lasting significance. We can pour our whole life into something, and it might succeed - or it might fail. Think about it: How much control do we really have over whether our job is secure, how healthy you will be, what will happen to interest rates and home prices, over whom you will meet and what you will be doing ten years from now?

The Key Question

Ecclesiastes 1:3 NIV84

3 What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?

This question is the key to the opening of the book. Everything else that follows in verses 4-11 is intended as the answer.

The implied answer is nothing. From a life full of labor and toil under the sun, people gain absolutely nothing.

The word “gain” conveys the idea of something left over, remaining at the end. That’s what’s at stake in the question of verse 3: at the end of my life, what will the surplus be? What will I leave behind that will count as a lasting monument to all my efforts?

Well, we see what’s happening to monuments these days. The truth is that I leave only one thing behind, and that’s the earth I used to live on, remaining right where it was when I first arrived, only now it spins without me.

When you read through verses 4-10 the point is that everything either goes around and around, or it comes and goes; it rises and sets; what has been will be again; what has been done will be done again; what is present will soon be past.

The point is that life is repetitive. It has a pattern just like the seasons. They come and go.

We Live in Denial

All of this sounds too depressing, so the temptation is to reject this perspective. After all our life is full of new things - new technology, new accomplishments, new babies, new discoveries.

But this misses the point. The Preacher doesn’t mean no new things are ever invented for clearly that’s not true. But these new things are just manifestations of age old yearnings of the human heart.

Consider space travel. We went to the moon and new NASA is making plans to travel to Mars. From Mars it will be another planet and when we conquer this solar system we’ll want to reach the next star. The is just the modern version of the age old human desire to explore and find out what’s over the next hill or across the next ocean. This yearning to know more and see more has been with us since God created humanity.

Under the Sun

Many commentaries suggest that Ecclesiastes is about what life is like without God. It has not eternal significance. They interpret the phrase “under the sun” to signify a non-believer’s perspective.

If that’s true, then surely the Christian way of looking at life is different. If I’m a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t that change everything?

It is true that knowing Christ does provide a whole new angle - the true angle- on what it means to be alive. We will see as we go along how the Teacher points to this. It’s certainly true that for the Teacher the world under the sun is not all there is, and we will learn from him things that will radically alter our perspective on this life.

But in the beginning the Teacher is not commenting on life without Christ. He’s talking about the world as it is. It’s reality. It’s the same for everyone, Christian or non-Christian.

In Scripture, the sun is a marker of time and the phrase “under the sun” refers to a now rather than a there. It’s a way of saying that for as long as this earth lasts, in this period of time, this is how things are. This side of eternity life is a breath. We do the same things over and over in a world that that repeats itself over and over, and then we die, only to be followed by our children who will repeat the pattern and meet the same end.

Being a Christian doesn’t stop this from being true, but it should make us the first to stop pretending that it isn’t true. The single question that runs throughout Ecclesiastes is this: If we won’t live forever, or even long enough to make a lasting change to the world, how then should we live. The whole book is about unpacking this answer.

Conclusion

If all of this sounds somewhat fatalistic and depressing, then come back. The teacher is going to show us what we should and should not expect out of life. He is not just saying there’s no gain after we’ve chased the wind; he’s going to teach us that there’s no need for the chase in the first place.

Going to leave you with this thought: What is the most important person or thing in your life? What are your hopes, dreams or aspirations? If they came to be, would you really be any happier? Would you be any closer to God?