All Is Vanity
Notes
Transcript
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
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.
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
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.
As you can tell, I’m branching out to new territory.
Up until now I have preached through letters in the New Testament. And certain letters that had similar themes.
I think one of the most important gifts given to us in salvation is hope and faith to live in a way that honors God through whatever happens to us in life, and 1 Peter and Philippians were great letters to encourage us to do just that.
Honestly, those were letters picked, because they helped me in dark times. And Ecclesiastes is no different.
Personally, Ecclesiastes has brought me through one of the most dark times in my adult life.
But that may be a surprise to many, as some have called it the most depressing book in scripture.
And it can definitely be depressing, if you only look at it from the eyes of man.
So one of the things I will be trying hardest to do, is to get us to look up, like I believe the author and the Holy Spirit are training us to gaze on Heaven instead of this world.
Our look at this Old Testament book shows us that it has been called part of the Old Testament’s Wisdom literature, along with Proverbs and Job.
It really balances out the book of Proverbs.
If we only had the book of Proverbs, we would have a bundle of axiomatic statements that would really make us depressed.
It is full of things that say, “If you do this, this will happen.” Or “if you live like this, your life will be this way.”
And though they are true statements of wisdom, we will find that when we do this or that, our sinful natures will mess it up. Or when we live like this or that, our fallen world and neighbors will get in the way of the right outcome.
So in comes Ecclesiastes, to balance the scales of heavenly minded wisdom with still stuck on earth truth.
Right out of the gate, the author of both Proverbs and this book, tells us that All is Vanity!
And here we are introduced to our narrator, The Preacher.
The author of this book uses a mysterious word to describe himself.
The name he gives himself is Qoheleth. Pronounced Co-hell-et.
We don’t know exactly what it means, but it comes from the word for congregation, so it has to do with someone who people gather to listen to.
In Ecc12.9-10 we find that
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care.
The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
He gathered crowds to listen to his wisdom and learn the things he had found to be true.
So the mysterious man of wisdom, Qoheleth, gathered the wisdom from around him, sought to teach the people knowledge, and what he came up with to bless his hearers was All is Vanity.
Ecc1.2
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
How are these Words of Delight?
Because they are words of truth.
All is Vanity
All is Vanity
What is the point of this life?
Many of you know that I am a fan of science fiction, and one of my favorite sci-fi movies is “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy.”
In that movie, based on the book from Douglas Adams, an ancient super computer is made to figure out life’s biggest question: What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything. After thousand’s of years of computing and calculating, mankind was alerted that the computer had figured it out. The answer was 42. They were no closer to understanding the meaning of life, the universe and everything after all that waiting. After this they put the super computer on another millennial task: What is the question.
And so goes man’s search for meaning outside of his creator: vanity.
What exactly is vanity?
First of all, you are already familiar with this type of Hebrew. The fact that the vanity the preacher is talking about is the ultimate vanity, so it is the vanity of all vanities. Like Christ is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, there is no one higher. He is the superlative or best King.
This vanity that the preacher is laying out before us is utter vanity. The most vanity that one could have. There is no vanity higher!
The word is used today to speak of being useless or as made popular by Carly Simon, someone who is so conceited they think this song she is writing about them, is about them.
But the word here and in much of the Hebrew Bible is a little deeper than that.
It has the idea of emptiness, but really means brevity, shortness or fleetingness. It is the word for breath.
Like when Job was complaining about the troubles that had come on him in
I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.
What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him,
visit him every morning and test him every moment?
How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?
If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you?
Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.”
Our life is as one of our breaths in the big scheme of things, until you have a reason to think about it, you don’t realize that you’re even breathing, and when you do take a moment to notice that you’re taking a breath, you forget all of the last million you have taken, because past that moment you are breathing, they don’t matter any more.
That is vanity. That is your life.
And that is where life is outside of the view of the Creator.
This is the foundation of the secular world-view.
There is nothing else, but this life.
This is all we have in the universe.
Are you depressed yet? Wait there’s more.
Qoheleth’s Poem of Vanities
Qoheleth’s Poem of Vanities
What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
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.
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
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.
Here we have a Hebrew poem to introduce the book.
The world tells us that we can make a difference. That we can change the world.
They pump this idea into us and our children, and when we get into the real world, the world of the same, mundane, repetitive things we have to do to survive, these false expectations are not met.
We all remember the times in our lives when we looked at the trauma or the pain of family, work, health, financial or just world problems that were out of our control and realized that no matter what we do, they won’t get any better.
No matter what Oprah or Osteen says, the universe is not listening.
So the world offers distractions from this reality, entertainment, politics, philanthropy, and psychotherapy that may dull the realization for a little bit, but the preacher offers no quarters.
Solomon begins his poem with a thesis: There is no profit.
What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
And here is where we get on the carousel.
This will be the theme of the whole book. What are we to do to gain from this life?
Why do we try so hard to work at this life when we all now the outcome…
Literally he is asking, what do we profit by all the things we have to face and battle? What good comes out of it?
And if this is all we have he is absolutely correct.
The internet is full of people who battle about philosophy and secularism, we’ve seen them militarized around our country and our world. People who are angry to the depths of their beings that you would assign any value to their life outside of this material world.
But at the end of the day, if their philosophy were followed, and we all lived for the moment and for what we thought was best for us, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be quite the Utopia they were hoping for.
And this brings us to a key phrase that we have to remember as we read Ecclesiastes.
Qoheleth uses this phrase 30 times in his writing! It is the only place in the OT that it is used, but it was a popular way of saying “in this current world” or “in this earthly life” at the time and it was used by several philosophers of the day.
This is what shows the context of his writing. Everything he is telling us is through the lens of under the sun. And this is the materialist’s worst nightmare.
Under the sun is all that the secular worldview has to offer. Their purpose, their ethics, and their only hope is down here. And Solomon is going to show that no matter what they attain down here, it will come to nothing.
In the following poem he offers his proof.
The shortness and smallness of man
A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
We are a scientifically minded people and spend billions of dollars to study our world and universe.
A big chunk of that spending went into the Hubble Space Telescope. This was a telescope that was launched into space to get past the light sucking atmosphere and look deeper into space than we ever have.
The light of interstellar space is so faint that a group of scientist pointed the telescope into what is called the Ultra Deep Field and over a period of months collected light of which appears to be thousands of stars.
In actuality, they are thousands of galaxies full of billions and trillions of stars.
The fact is we are just a very small part of this immense universe that God has created.
Who are we that you should consider us indeed!
And the materialist has come up with an explanation of this universe that is completely under the sun. That all we are is the material left over from the billions of years of collecting the remains of dying stars.
Carl Sagan in the 70’s and 80’s brought this idea to the masses and more recently Neil Degrasse Tyson, but it is an old idea.
In 1918 the President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada said this
“It is true that a first thoughtful glimpse of the immeasurable universe is liable rather to discourage us with a sense of our own insignificance. But astronomy is wholesome even in this, and helps to clear the way to a realization that as our bodies are an integral part of the great physical universe, so through them are manifested laws and forces that take rank with the highest manifestation of Cosmic Being.
Thus we come to see that if our bodies are made of star-stuff,—and there is nothing else, says the spectroscope, to make them of—the loftier qualities of our being are just as necessarily constituents of that universal substance out of which are made
“Whatever gods there be.”
We are made of universal and divine ingredients, and the study of the stars will not let us escape a wholesome and final knowledge of the fact.”
Worshipping the creation in place of its Creator still doesn’t let us escape the fact that we are dying.
1.8 people a second die. And one day one of those 1.8 people will be us.
But 4.5 people are being born every second, and the truth is that as soon as they are born the clock starts ticking for them as well.
A generation goes and a generation comes.
One of the best ways I have ever heard this described is waves on a beach.
A wave represents a generation, making its splash and dying, but before it gets the chance to fully recede back into the ocean another wave comes over it and covers it. And the waves keep coming, over and over again.
And so go our lives, children know little of there father’s lives before they were born, even less of there grandfather’s, and usually nothing of their great-grandfathers.
Our lives are incredibly small, and incredibly short compared to pretty much anything.
Under the sun.
The never-ending repetition of nature
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.
I know this is heavy stuff, remember we are talking about Solomon’s proof that there is no gain that man has from his life lived in view of only this material world.
The secular man and woman lives for this world, in that view that is all there is. We strive and strive for material things that will perish with this material world.
Day in and day out we work, and clean, and plan, and execute plans.
Morning brings day and day turns into night and rinse and repeat.
This is the monotony of life.
Have you ever wished a day might last longer? That the next morning wouldn’t come so fast?
My mom used to say that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, but no matter how much she wanted it to, you can’t make the sun stop setting or rising. Monday’s coming!
Then he speaks of the wind, where is it going? Does it ever make it there? Will it ever stop blowing? No it never reaches where it’s going.
Finally, he brings up the streams. No matter how many rivers flow to the sea and how long they work at it, they never fill it up.
Nature’s seemingly unending cycle shows that man is but a blip in this world, another day, another breeze, another ripple in time under the Sun.
Thirdly, the emptiness of the endeavors of man
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
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.
Since the fall of man and the curse that came from it, every endeavor is mixed with labor.
Everyday we work, we have to in order to support ourselves and our families.
This labor has stirred invention and change of economies.
No longer do we have to work so hard for to get the ground to produce food for us, someone else does that and we just pick it up from the grocery store.
But whatever we do in order to have that ability is hard.
Who has it easy? Maybe you think that if you were a wealthy family it wouldn’t be so hard and you could be satisfied doing what you want to do instead of working paycheck to paycheck?
But this isn’t the case either, those that are wealthy aren’t satisfied either.
They aren’t satisfied with their lives either.
John D. Rockefeller was asked how much money is enough? Just little more was his answer.
Maybe you could have the free time to see new things if you weren’t bogged down in the rat race. There will always be something else to see or something that you missed.
Always something wrong, always something that could be fixed, our work is never done.
Verse 9 and 10 say,
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.
When we look at history, we see no hope that man can invent anything to break free of our condition. Everything we create brings us more of the same problems or makes them worse.
We make new inventions that seem to make our lives easier, they make us no more ultimately satisfied than we were before and quickly move from luxury to necessity to burden.
We still need to fill the fridge with food, but before that we have to throw all the old food out so it will fit. Even though we have a dishwasher, we still need to wash dishes.
Have you seen the no-smart phone challenges? We are so mad at facebook and twitter, but instead of being able just to turn them off we move to Parlor or MeWe.
Nothing that we do under the sun can be a new way that brings true satisfaction!
There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
And this will continue to happen until the world ends.
This was the most important election ever held in our nation… though this may have been a very important election and a turning point in our nation, the same thing was said for the last election and the one before it.
How many of the presidents do you remember? We’ve had 45 and only a couple really stand out.
How many people have lived since our Lord was born on earth and how many names from the last 2020 years of history do we remember? Just a handful.
And so Qoheleth’s poem is finished, and we see that he has proved his point quite well. Under the sun, in this life alone, everything is a vapor.
Is There Any Hope
Is There Any Hope
I know this has been very heavy material and when we come to the end of this passage it looks like there isn’t any hope.
I think it would be a disservice to let us be dismissed at this point, although this is just the introduction to the book and in reality The Preacher just goes on to expound these thoughts until the end of his book.
The key to understanding this passage is the phrase, “Under the Sun.”
Solomon knocks the wind out of any attempt to find true lasting satisfaction in this life apart from living in the reality that life under the Sun is not all there is.
And this is where our relief comes from.
A Song of Ascents.
I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.
When we get sucked into this life, we tend to forget where our hope from. We navel gaze and look only to our current situation. Look up, friend! Look up, Christian!
Are you concerned that your actions don’t matter? Remember that the eternal God loved the world so much, this world that is full of vanity because of sin, that the second person of the Holy Trinity walked in this same vapor of a life and made a way of salvation, so that little seemingly worthless lives like ours could be raised up like He was and that our lives would be remembered, if not by anyone else, by the One whose remembrance really matters!
what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Beloved, He knows your name! He knows the pain and struggle! He knows the sin, that you’ve commited and that has been committed against you! And He is mindful of you and cares for you.
Qoheleth in painting such a vivid picture of the vanity of our lives here on Earth points us to the only source of true meaning, the One outside of ourselves and outside of this sinful world.
And it is to this source I commend you today. Your life in this world has nothing but emptiness and dissatisfaction to offer you outside of Him and His purpose for you. He will remember you and every trial will be rewarded in glory if you are His.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.