Rhythm and Blues; Week One
Rhythm and Blues
Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor
April 13/15, 2007
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Today we begin a new series called Rhythm and Blues, on the book of Ecclesiastes. Any R&B fans out there? Here is what this series is about: finding a rhythm, a way of life with God, that gives purpose and meaning and solidness in a world of blue. Today we are going to introduce the series out of Ecclesiastes 1, talking about both the rhythm and the blues. This series is going to be very real, very authentic, and has the potential to be highly life-changing and perspective-shifting. In light of that, let’s pray together and commit ourselves to God and to what he wants to say to us in this series. Pray.
Today we are talking about the rhythm and about the blues. First, let’s talk about the blues (start music). You know the blues, right? Some of you do. Life doesn’t always work out the way you want…it is hard to control, hard to predict. Building a solid life can feel like building sandcastles too close to the waves, about the time you have something that looks great, a wave comes and you are back to zero. Ever feel like that in life? If so, you can relate to the blues. And what the Bible teaches is that though we were created for perfection, we gave that up. When Adam and Eve voted for the path of sin in the garden, a vote that we have seconded with our own sins, that sin and death and frustration entered into the world. The world became a world of blue. You and I were made for perfection, but we don’t live in perfection. We live with the blues.
It’s like this: We’ll call it the honeymoon blues. Let’s say you get married to a girl or guy that seems to be Mr. or Ms. Right. And he or she decides to plan the honeymoon and surprise you with it. They promise that it will be awesome, perfect, almost too-good-to-be-true. You pack for it, anticipate it, can’t wait for it. In your mind, you are getting ready for something like this
Slide: __________ (lux pic)
That’s right, that’s what we are talking about! You know it is going to be awesome. Then the day comes…the wedding and then the honeymoon. You can’t wait to experience it, the luxury, the comfort, the amazement…and then you arrive, and
Slide: __________ (dump pic)
and it is not exactly what you had in mind. Is this a joke? This is a dump…a pay by the hour hotel…a place where they give you a key and a can of RAID…you go in and the bed isn’t even made up from the person who was there the hour before you. Your new spouse says, “Honey, we’ve got this place for TWO hours!” You’ve got the honeymoon blues (end music).
Let’s talk about the blues part of life, because you and I will never understand Ecclesiastes, or never even understand life, until we understand the blues from a biblical perspective. And the blues I am talking about, the Bible calls the fall, the fall of man that turned this earth into a house of blues, that brought in sin and death and futility. You and I, like Adam and Eve, were created for paradise, created for perfection, created for something like this
Slide: __________ (lux pic).
Yet, when Adam and Eve sinned, everything changed, and the world became something much more like this
Slide: __________ (dump pic).
Created for the Ritz Carlton, but we are now stuck with the Roach Motel.
In the book of Romans, God describes it this way:
Slide: __________ Romans 5:12
Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin… 5:12. The world before sin was perfect, but after Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God, sin and death entered the world, and as a result God cursed this planet.
Slide: __________ Romans 8:20
says, For the creation was subject to frustration (futility), not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it…(8:20). We were created for perfection, but we live in something that falls far short. That’s the blues part of this life. It doesn’t mean that everything in the world is terrible or that every relationship is going to be awful…but it does mean that everything in this world is tainted by sin and subjected to the curse, that futility runs through everything and discolors everything. With that in mind, we are ready for what Solomon will say about the blues. Take your Bible or the one in front of you, and let’s look at
Slide: __________ Ecclesiastes 1:1-2
The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!”
Now, this is a guy with a case of the blues. Before you try to cheer him up though, let’s hear what he has to say:
Slide: __________ . . . meaningless, meaningless . . . everything is meaningless.
The old King James version translated it with the word vanity, vanity of vanities is a phrase you might remember hearing. The Hebrew word translated vanity or meaningless is a word that literally means vapor, like steam or a cloud or water vapor…something that looks solid, but when you try to grab hold of it, it just dissipates.
Like a cloud. Let’s say you have never flown in an airplane before, and perhaps have never even seen one. You’ve grown up in the African bush, and you have always wondered about those white, puffy forms in the sky were all about. Maybe they are bouncy or solid, but curious. So, you get in this airplane and take off, and you are amazed. You are flying! You are of course nervous, and you are looking out of the window, and you see that the plane is flying right toward one of those white things in the sky. Surely, the girl who is steering this thing sees that. Surely she will avoid it. But you keep getting closer. If they keep going, you will go right into the white mass. You will crash our bounce off and fall out of the sky. You scream, you cry out, “We are going to hit the cloud…God help us! Tell the pilot we are going to hit the cloud! We are all going to die!” Then, whoosh, you fly right into it. You open your eyes and unclench your fists, and you are alive. You look outside the window as you are in the middle of this cloud, and there is nothing but water droplets, just vapor. It’s nothing. It looked like something solid, but it was just vapor.
Solomon is saying that is what life is like. All these things in life we strive for, that seem solid, things like marriage or career or ambition or money or even spiritual life, all seem so solid, but when you grab hold of them you realize it is all just vapor…nothing to it. All the things we strive for, just vapor. He’ll say why next. Let’s hear him sing the blues:
Slide: __________ Ecc. 1:3
What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? “Under the sun” is a common phrase in this book, and what he is talking about is life here under heaven on this cursed planet where the stream of futility runs through everything…where nothing is quite satisfying, quite good, an element of futility in all of it. What does a man gain or profit from all the anxiety and work and worry in this life? The implication is not much, just vapor. His song continues:
Slide: __________ Ecc. 1: 4
Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. We are here for a little while and then are gone, but the earth continues on without us, as if we were never here. We think we are so important, but we just come and go. He then gives some more illustrations from creation:
Slide: __________ Ecc. 1:5-8
The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What are blues singer is saying is that for all of our toil, nothing really changes. Every thing just keeps repeating itself. Solomon says, “I’m just tired of the same old thing. Life is relentless, it is never done…you just keep doing the same things over and over again.” Can you relate to that? Anyone here just tired in life? Can anyone relate to the same cycles over and over again? Your alarm clock wakes you up at 6. You get dressed and ready, grab some quick breakfast, rush out the door to go to work…log into your computer, start your day, break for lunch, then back to work…at 6:00 or 7:00, you shut down what you are doing, get back in the car, drive home, make dinner, clean up after dinner…if you have a family, help get the kids in bed again…watch a little TV, fall asleep, and the alarm clock wakes you up at 6 and you start all over again. You feel like you are stuck in the movie, Groundhog Day. That’s your life, except for the two weeks a year you go to the beach or the mountains. Kind of sad, really.
Or if you are a young mom, with little kids…ever feel the endlessness of life…the relentless cycle of life…just with diapers. New diapers don’t last. The baby eats, and then the baby messes up a diaper…you rediaper, refeed, rediaper, refeed. When our kids were babies, I remember thinking I couldn’t wait to get out of the diaper cycle…but then we just started some new relentless cycle after that.
Solomon is saying, “That’s life. It wears you out, and you don’t really get anywhere. You just repeat the same old stuff over and over again.” He goes on with his blues song:
Slide: __________ Ecc. 1: 9-10
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. Solomon is an old man now, and as he looks back at life he has learned not to be excited about the latest pop star, the latest doomsday scenario, the recent ‘Jesus is coming back next week’ book, or the new leader who is going to turn everything around. As he looks back at life, he says, “Nothing really changes…nothing that promises to be new really is…there is this constant cycle of excitement and disappointment, followed by amnesia that allows the cycle to continue again. He continues:
Slide: __________ Ecc. 1: 11
There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow. In the end, he is saying, “Life doesn’t amount to much. It is vapor. Something looks solid, but really isn’t. Something looks satisfying, and you bite into it, and it just doesn’t quite satisfy. You get excited about something, and you are full of hope and promise, then you realize the something you were so excited about just wasn’t that big of a deal after all.
Why? Because you and I were built for paradise, and we are therefore designed for perfection. We have these built in expectations that this is the way life, relationships, career, church, should be…but because of the fall, because of the curse, nothing is that way. Futility now runs through everything.
In our home, we have an expression for this reality:
Slide: __________ Life is a bumber.
When something bad happens, or we are playing golf and hit a bad shot, you will hear someone in my family say, “Bumber.” The phrase came from my college roommate who was from Korea. He spoke very fluent English, as good as anyone here, but English is a confusing language because it is so inconsistent. We have all these exceptions to basic rules of pronunciation or forming plurals, and he would get confused. For example, he might say at night, “Oh, I forgot to brush my tooths.” And I’d say, “Teeth,” to which he would reply, “Dumb English.” He might say, “My foots are hurting in these shoes.” It was fun for me, but not so much for him. One evening, we had made plans to go see a movie together, and something came up that prevented him from going. To let me know, he tacked a note on the door of our dorm room that said, “Can’t go to the movie. Sorry. Life is a bumber.” He meant of course to say, “Life is a bummer,” and when I corrected him later, he said, “How do you spell “dumber,” isn’t it with a b? Yes, but bummer is different. “Dumb English,” he said again. All that to underscore this biblical truth, because of sin, because of the fall, because of the curse,“Life is a bumber.” Futility runs through everything, it is the current of the fallen world. We long for perfection, for meaning, for something solid, but the curse is always with us.
Slide: __________ Dealing with Futility
So, what do we do? In light of the futility of life, how do we handle it? Especially when we feel the futility, when we are stung by the curse, when we come right up against some life is a bumber reality? Here are some options, and the ones most of us choose:
Slide: __________ Escape futility
One option is to escape the reality of the fall, the curse, try to numb ourselves to the bumberness of life. A little too much drink may take the edge off reality, a sniff of cocaine, maybe a trip to a shopping mall, or to a golf superstore (getting a little too close to home here). We can try to escape it, but the more you run the more it just follows you.
Slide: __________ Succumb to futility
You just give up in life, and sing the blues. You sink into despair and disillusionment, concluding life stinks and that is just the way it is.
Slide: __________ Defy futility
This is an interesting option, and maybe the most common, certainly the one that feels the boldest…very American even. What I mean by this is that you deal with the fact that we were made for paradise yet live in a cursed earth that is not safe, or fair, or easy, by doing all you can to create your own paradise here on earth. You defy futility by building your own paradise, your own Babel.
Slide:_____________ Suburban home (.jpg)
That is where I live, and most of you do, too. Think about it. That is what suburbia is all about…Suburban living is our own little paradise bubble, built around the values of safety and comfort and good opportunities for our children to learn and grow and reach their full potential. Even though most people on this planet struggle every day to just survive, to feed their impoverished children, we take our resources and use them to improve the bubble…to build paradise. For most of the world looking on, our lives are like living in Disney World. And I’m here. I’m part of it. I live in Murphy, Texas, a very safe, tranquil neighborhood, very little crime. We moved there in part because we liked the Plano school system. We have a comfortable Kid-Moving-Machine, our 4 wheel drive SUV, which was really great, the 4 wheel drive, the one day this year it snowed a 1/4th of an inch. There is nothing wrong with living in Murphy or having safe schools or giving kids opportunity or driving a 4 wheel drive SUV through the smooth concrete streets of Collin County. Yet, the bubble of paradise is only an illusion. Any of us in the bubble know that though from the outside looking in, this might look like Disney World… it isn’t. Life in the bubble may look like paradise, but underneath the veneer of our nice homes and marriages and jobs and cars, is the futility that we can’t escape. The curse infects the bubble. We can’t get away from it. We wear ourselves out trying to defy futility, but every day we wake up it greets us as we start the day. We are exhausted, anxious, and when we allow ourselves to be honest pretty dissatisfied with much of our lives. If we are honest, often life in the bubble is a bumber.
So, what do we do about it? If the answer to the bumberness of life is not escape or just giving in to despair or defying it, then what are we to do? This is where we make a shift out of the blues of life, into a new realm…into God’s realm. This is where we shift from the blues to the rhythm, to the rhythm of God, the rhythm of redemption. The trick is to find the divine rhythm in the house of blues, in the world of blue. If the primary current running through the cursed earth is futility, the good news is that there is a divine undercurrent that is real, that is meaningful, an undercurrent that reverses the curse, that restores lives and relationships, that leaves more than just vapor. The trick is to find the divine rhythm, the undercurrent of redemption. The good news, the great news, is that if you listen, it is there…take a moment and hear the rhythm.
Eric’s Rhythm Solo
Now, Eric is going to bring this down a little so we can join in. Find something around you where you can join in the rhythm, with a pen, your hands, a Bible, something, and then find something to bang, your husbands head, something…and join in the rhythm.
That’s what Solomon is going to point to as the answer. It isn’t just sinking into despair, nor is it trying to escape futility, or even boldly defying futility seeking to build our own paradise or our own perfect marriage or perfect home. What Solomon is going to point to, and what the Bible points to, is
Slide: _________ Finding the Rhythm of the Redeemer
and opening your life to his redemptive work.
God is a Redeemer. Jesus came to bring redemption, and God is in the process of redeeming the whole planet. The word redemption means to buy back, to pay a ransom so someone can be set free. He wants to set us free from the bondage to decay, to futility, to buy back those things we gave away when we chose sin. Like selling off your valuable possessions at a pawn shop, God is in the process for those who yield to his redemptive work of buying those valuable things back.
We’ll get back to Ecclesiastes in a few minutes, but for now let’s look again at how Paul talks about this in the book of Romans. As you hear these verses, listen for the rhythm of redemption:
Slide: __________ Romans 8:18-25
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently (8:18-25).
Paul is talking about God’s redemptive rhythm, his work of reversing the curse on this planet and in our lives if we give ourselves to him. He says that all creation groans under the weight of the curse, awaiting the day that Jesus returns and makes the world right again. Futility will not disappear until Jesus returns and sets into motion the ultimate solution of a new heaven and a new earth—but until then, he is doing his redemptive work and calls us to be part of it, and invites us to open up our lives to it.
It’s like that show on Sunday nights with Ty Pennington, Extreme Home Makeover. I love watching that show, seeing how they bless a deserving family by doing something that seems way over the top, far beyond what they thought they would have. That is good TV, and what a fun job to be Ty Pennington, handing the keys over to those families. Wouldn’t that be cool?
To a much bigger extent, that is what God is up to, except in his case he does extreme life makeovers. For those who are willing to hand over the keys to their house, to their lives, he begins to reverse the curse, he begins to redeem, to buy back those things that we have sold cheaply, to repair what is broken, replace what is worn out.
The way Solomon talks about that is choosing to live in the fear of the Lord, yielding your life to the God who is in control of this planet and who is the redeemer.
Slide: __________ Ecclesiastes 12:1
a verse we will come back to later in the series, he points to the divine rhythm: Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them.” At the last chapter of the book, as Solomon talks about all these areas of life, all these ways we try to respond to the futility that runs through life, his conclusion is this: to remember your creator as early in your life as possible, before you are old and out of energy.
When he says, “remember,” he isn’t really thinking we are going to forget about God’s existence. Yet, we all know how easy it is to push the spiritual to the backburner of our lives, to put God off, in pursuit of other things. Solomon is saying that as an old man who doesn’t feel like doing much of anything any more, he wishes that he would have yielded to God’s redemptive rhythm much earlier in his life, before he messed up so much of his life.
If you are young, do it now. And if you are older than young, do it now. Yield to God’s redemptive work in your life. Open up your life to his reversing the curse in your life. And please understand, you are opening up your life not to a destination, such as a mature Christian life or a perfect marriage, but you are opening up your life to a process—a lifelong process of God restoring, restructuring, rebuilding. It may mean he has to tear down some things in your life and heart. It may mean that he has to break something before he can repair it. However he does it, though, it is a process. A friend of mine wanted to go to Celebrate Recovery because of drug addiction, and he said, “I’m not ready for that. I don’t have anything to celebrate yet.” I said, “No, that’s not what it is about. It is about celebrating progress, honesty, and becoming sober, about progress, not some destination.” That’s why Paul says, as God is doing his work of redemption, we choose to wait for it patiently. God’s redemptive work doesn’t happen in a weekend like Extreme Home Makeover. It happens over a lifetime.
Let’s apply this to marriage, just as one example. We are created for perfection, and Adam and Eve had a perfect marriage in the garden before sin. The way the Bible says it, “they were naked and unashamed.” That’s not just a physical thing, that Adam could wear a speedo around Eve without feeling embarrassed, but a whole-life intimacy thing. They were completely and authentically one in heart and spirit. They had a perfect marriage. But when they chose sin, what happened? They turned on each other, started blaming each other. And when God responded, one of the things he cursed was marriage…not that marriage is a curse, but now marriage which was designed to be perfect would now be subjected to futility like everything else on this planet.
So now two people get married, and they still have in them these desires for perfection, expectations for a perfect marriage, expectations for their spouse to be everything that God designed them to be. They were made for a Ritz Carlton spouse, not the roach motel. They get engaged, and everything seems to be going great. Do you ever notice how engaged people seem to transcend futility? Engaged people really behave. The guy is so excited, because his future wife is so kind and warm and responsive and positive. She laughs at his jokes and thinks his insight is so insightful. The girl is excited, too, because her future husband is so kind and considerate and loving…can listen for hours as she shares her heart, and is so affectionate and caring…and he never makes inappropriate body noises. All signs point to a marriage fit for the storybooks. Usually, the honeymoon goes equally well, if not better. But somewhere in the next months, futility rears its ugly head. He makes a body noise here, she criticizes there, he doesn’t listen so well any more, she is not so kind and responsive after all…and trouble sets in to the relationship. What seemed like such a great idea months ago, almost feels like a mistake now.
Why? Because it is a bad marriage, or they are a bad fit? No, they are in a human marriage where the curse is at work and futility runs through the relationship like a fast-growing cancer. What to do you do? Defy it? Give in to it and give up on the relationship? Escape the pain somehow? You can, but that doesn’t change anything…just makes the curse dive deeper into the relationship.
You open up your life to God’s redemptive work. You yield to his commands of what it means to be a loving husband or a loving wife. You don’t focus so much on the other person’s performance, but you allow God to rebuild your own ability to love and relate. You realize that marriage is perhaps the best opportunity to reveal those things in your life that need redemption, that need God’s saving work. You are honest with yourself, with God, and with your spouse, and you allow God to bring his healing into your past hurts. You allow God to empower you and teach you how to love your spouse well. You surrender your false expectations and cling to God as your hope. Over time, day after day, you give more of yourself to God’s redemptive work, you find his rhythm, and over time you begin to find that your marriage is growing, and so are you. It isn’t perfect and never will be, but it is better. God is reversing the curse. He is redeeming. You find that you love your spouse more fully and freely now then you did 20 or 30 or 50 or 60 years ago. You wake up one day and realize that your marriage, though it has gone through considerable ups and downs, pleasures and paints, is actually solid and real.
I talked with an older couple this week that I have such great respect for, and they confirmed God’s redemptive work in their lives. They seem to have such a solid marriage, it seems perfect. They both assured me it is far from perfect, but they also assured me that their love, mutual respect, and spiritual bond are far deeper and richer than they were decades ago.
Marriage is just one example, but can you see how it works? Apply it to any area of life, including the Christian life itself. When we become Christians, we expect to have a rich and perfect relationship with God that just stays close and always feels warm and intimate…but it throws us because that isn’t what happens. Guess why? Futility is in our relationship with God, too. Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God but threw it away, selling it for sin. Between now and heaven, we won’t have a perfect relationship with God. We can’t even see him. Can’t feel him. Prayer is nice. Bible study is fine…but that wasn’t the design. We were created for something much more than that…and guess what? Over time, he redeems our relationship with him. Over time, as we walk to his rhythm and give ourselves to him, we find that our relationship with God really can be solid and real and increasingly satisfying…not perfect on this side of heaven, but really good.
What is Solomon telling us about life then? Something we already know, just hate admitting: that life in a fallen world is a bumber…that futility laces its way through every area of our lives, so that satisfaction and meaning and significance can seem like a vapor, impossible to put our hands around. That’s the bluesy part of life. But that’s not the whole story. The other part of the story is about the rhythm, about God’s divine rhythm, the rhythm of redemption.
In this series, we are going to look at how we can find that rhythm in relationships, at work, with our goals and dreams, and even our Christian lives. We will learn what it means to find his rhythm and open our lives to his redemptive work. I strongly encourage you to commit to each week of this particular series. God will have something for you every week.
For today, let me encourage you to make a fundamental decision. You can try to deny the futility of life, defy it by trying to create your own paradise, you can try to escape it…or you can come to God humbly and open up your life to his redemptive work, you can allow him to reverse what the curse has done in your life and relationships. We are about to hear a song that is essentially that basic commitment. As you hear it, and as in part of the song you are invited to sing along, make it your prayer to God for this series, for your life.
Song
Close service and prayer.