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As you remain standing, let us now turn in our pew bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 1.
Ecclesiastes chapter 1.
We will be reading there verses 5 through 11.
That can be found, by the way, on page 656.
Take care in your listening, as this is the word of the Lord.
Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verses 5 through 11.
You know what?
I’m going to go ahead and read the whole thing for context’s sake.
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.
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.
Thus far the reading of God’s holy word.
You may be seated.
Let us pray to the Lord for his help.
Oh Father, we thank you for this time of worship.
We thank you for your word to us.
Lord, we pray that you would be at work in our hearts by this word, and that in it you
would tear down those things that might set themselves up loftily against Christ.
And Father, we pray that you would continually brighten our understanding, and help us to
know you more.
We pray that you would help us this hour by your Spirit, in Jesus’ name, amen.
It’s been a little while since we considered those first four verses of Ecclesiastes back
in March.
You might recall that at that time we discussed the identity of the preacher of Ecclesiastes.
And that I understand the preacher of Ecclesiastes as being a reference to King Solomon and his
reign.
And part of my reason for saying this is that the word translated as preacher has to do
with one who assembles, or who speaks to an assembly.
And we briefly considered 1 Kings chapter 8, with the famous assembly of the people
of Israel when the temple had been built.
And how that might be what is in mind in calling Solomon by this term translated as preacher.
In connection with that, we also looked at the phrase, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
And we came to realize that the Hebrew word that is involved in this phrase has, as its
more concrete meaning, mist, or vapor.
And from that clarity of meaning, we came to the more abstract idea that what is meant
by saying that all is vanity is really something like, all is passing away, much like the mist
and vapor of a foggy morning will dissipate in the light of the sun, or the mist and vapor
of your breath on a cold day, much unlike today, will go out into the air, be seen for
just a moment, and then it’s gone.
We remembered also that all creation is indeed destined to pass away, to flee before the
presence of the coming judge.
But we took note that the focus of those first four verses, it was especially on mankind
and futility as he experiences it.
Amid these things, we saw that the preacher put the question, what does man gain by all
the toil at which he toils under the sun?
And we considered that because of God’s curse against sinful man, death comes for us all.
One generation comes and another goes, but the earth seems to last forever compared to
the life of man.
This makes it seem like mankind can never really get a handle on things, indeed he cannot.
Nothing comes to completion.
Everything is in a constant state of change.
There is no rest.
And yet we can’t help but hope for completed and lasting things.
Since the creation of the world, the great hope of man for which we have been made has
been to enter God’s rest.
The troubles that God has poured out against sinful man and the futility to which God has
subjected the creation, they all have the effect of bearing witness to one truth.
And that is that the lasting hope of man is not to be found in this present creation.
Rather, all our hope is in the Son of David, King in the New Jerusalem.
And that was our theme in those first four verses.
And as we continue today with verses five through 11 of our passage, our theme remains
much the same, though it will have a differing focus.
The lasting hope of man is not to be found in man’s experiences, nor in man’s labor,
nor in man’s remembrance, but in God alone.
And so we will see this in the coming verses.
In verses five through eight, we see the futility of man’s experiences.
And then in verses nine through 10, we see the futility of man’s labor.
And in verse 11, even the futility of man’s remembrance.
And so let’s read those first three verses, verses five through eight, to consider the
futility of man’s experiences.
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.
The preacher speaks of that which he sees and experiences in this creation.
Now the sun rises and goes down.
And then it runs back to the place where it rises, panting as it goes like a winded runner.
The wind goes around endlessly as well, never finding any rest.
The streams, as you watch them, they keep running into that sea and yet the water cycle
keeps going.
And the sea is never filled.
There’s just over and over, again and again, on and on, a continuing weariness without
fulfillment.
There is no end of the matter.
And we find that as he looks at all these things, he considers that there is a weariness
beheld by man and a lack of satisfaction in the seeing of these things incomplete.
We might here be reminded of God’s words of promise after the flood in Genesis 8 22, when
he promised that the earth would not again be destroyed with water.
At that time, he said, as long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night, will not cease.
But did you hear it?
As long as the earth endures.
It’s a solid promise, and yet it has a terminus.
There is no fulfillment or end to these endless cycles of creation, but we do know that an
end is coming.
We know that there is a time when these cycles will come to an end because the present creation
does not endure forever, not as it currently is.
The preacher seems to be looking around at things and asking, where is history going?
These things just keep happening.
The creation keeps doing its thing, and we don’t have any real control over it.
And we’ll read more about that frustration in the coming passages.
We experience much the same thing, day in and day out, as the years roll by.
And it’s like an endless march.
What does it amount to?
Why do we do the things that we do?
The very creation seems to point to this nagging reality, not only in the sun and the wind
and the rivers, but in our own eyes and ears.
There’s a ceaselessness to the patterns and seasons of this world.
There’s a weariness in them, even as generations of man labor and die.
The history of the world shows how a generation, each generation, as King David said, as he
was approaching death, goes the way of all the earth unto death.
Another generation comes and will also go in like manner.
We all die, but where is the day of rest for the creation?
Where indeed is the day of man’s rest, when the cycle of death will cease?
And there’s a hymn that talks about this onward march of time in this way.
It says, time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its suns away.
They fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.
We live life looking for accomplishments, rest, and getting something finished.
But if you take a step back, nothing seems finished.
Here in Ecclesiastes, we have the preacher saying something akin to what some atheists
like Richard Dawkins might say, that the universe seems to exhibit blind, pitiless indifference
towards man.
However, unlike Dawkins, the preacher is saying this so that his hearers will think about
what gives meaning.
He shows the shakiness of the foundations of this present age.
Everything is passing away, and nothing seems to be getting accomplished in a definitive
way, and indeed it will not.
There’s always something.
This creation bears a certain witness to futility and weariness, and it is troubling.
It troubles our hearts.
Does it make you wonder at times if there is more than simply what is under the sun
of this world?
Doesn’t this make you ask what life is all about as we look at the works of God’s hands
and as they declare something about him?
We can go and look at all the creation.
We can see every last inch of it, and even our very eyes can’t seem to be satisfied
with seeing.
They can see it all, but we will wish we could see more.
And so what does it change even if we see all that there is to see?
By the time we finish seeing it, it will have changed, and we won’t have seen some of it.
We can listen to everything in all of creation that might please our ear, and yet there is
no end.
What is the gain there?
Weariness and toil is everywhere.
It’s futile.
It’s all passing away, and this doesn’t seem like this is how the world should be.
The affairs of the life of man are so often filled with futility, even as Adam and Eve
stole that fruit which was pleasing to their eyes in the hopes of grasping after a fullness,
a consummation apart from God, only to find hunger and toil and death.
So too now does man’s desires lead him, all too often, away from its intended target.
We are not satisfied with seeing.
We go about this world hungry, desirous.
We devour and are not filled.
And it all bears witness to us.
It ought to bear witness to us that the lasting hope of man is not to be found in man’s experiences.
And we live in a culture that is very experience-oriented.
If only we can do this thing or that.
And yet man cannot attain eternal rest and fullness.
He must seek the one to whom it belongs.
In verses 9 through 10, we see the futility of man’s labor.
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.
We might recoil at the thought of such intense questions and say to the preacher, maybe it
isn’t about experiences.
Maybe we need to get out there and make a difference.
Maybe the substance of life is found in making societal change.
Why be so negative?
And yet here too, the preacher gives us pause in his persistent questioning.
Is there any lasting change?
We look into the realm of the nations and we see and we hear the glorious song of varying
causes throughout history.
Each nation sings its own glories.
And oftentimes people are working towards some measure of peace, harmony, and glory.
Someone might say, if only we could overturn these abusive authorities and make everyone
equal.
Or someone else might say, if only we could attain the liberty of the true constitutional
with a moral society, then we could be that shining city on a hill.
But all the accomplishments of history go on to yield other challenges and reinterpretations.
Those who reach their high point will be brought to the dust.
And the next generation will move on, squandering some lessons, learning others.
It just keeps going.
And historians will tell you, history does repeat itself.
We can look to the realm of the merchants of the earth and they stand crying out with
loud voices calling to us to get the latest thing, the newest iPhone, whatever our hearts
might desire.
And yet, as soon as we have it in our hands, the very next thing is being developed.
There’s no end of this matter.
We recycle our problems.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
It’s a proverb for us.
It is a word of wisdom.
Man easily sets their hearts on all manner of things around us.
The creation declares the glory of God.
But like Isaiah’s commission, the creation has the commission to speak to a people who
keep on hearing but do not understand, who keep on seeing but do not perceive, having
dull hearts, heavy ears, and blind eyes.
They honor the created thing above the creator.
And in this is that futility born witness to by all of creation.
God speaks through his works of creation and we refuse to acknowledge him.
We reject him.
We suppress that truth in our sins.
And so all the accomplishments and experiences of man are passing away.
Our labors in a certain sense could be said to be futile.
All the works of our hands will pass away.
And that is not to say that they don’t have their proper place.
But it is to say that these things are not the chief end of man.
That those works we do in themselves are not the key end in pursuit.
And so this is why the preacher is so negative here.
The lasting hope of man is not to be found in man’s experiences nor in man’s labors.
God is the one who makes all things new.
He is the one who in the end establishes the works of his people’s hands.
But now someone might say, come on, you’re just being a pain here.
History does keep moving.
And the accomplishments that people make end up no longer holding sway, sure.
History repeats itself, I agree.
But these things, they can be recorded in the annals of history and it can be taught
to future generations.
We can remember and do better.
But here the preacher points to the futility of man’s remembrance.
There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later
things yet to be among those who come after.
There’s a certain type of cultural pursuit that would seek to transform this world as
the expression of the kingdom of God that looks to, say, Western civilization as this
high point and the pursuit that we are after.
And while there might be things that are good and noble and all of these things, things
that we can think on and be edified by, we cannot remember all the accomplishments that
have gone before us.
We are not God.
We are finite.
And it is not enough to simply commit accomplishments to memory or to record them down.
It is not in the mind of man that existence is found, but rather in the mind of God.
He upholds us by his word.
When we read history, we don’t necessarily even read it as it was, but only as it has
been recorded.
And to complicate things, we read past history in light of our own experiences.
In many ways, the reality of former things is long past and irretrievable in its fullest sense.
Countless people and their accomplishments are forgotten in the transmission of history.
Once the old generation passes away who experience those things that happened to them during
their lifetimes, no one really remains to thoroughly know and understand what has come
before them.
How many of you know much of anything, for instance, about the lives of your great-grandparents?
Maybe you know some of that family history.
What about your great-great-grandparents?
What about your great-great-great-grandparents?
Do you know their stories, their accomplishments?
That’s not that far away.
That’s pertinent to your own history and life.
They lived lives with accomplishments, things meaningful to them.
They even gave you life.
And yet, most folks don’t know much.
Many don’t know anything at all about it.
Most people’s life stories are likely to be forgotten, even by their own family members
in one or two generations.
These can be dark and perplexing things.
Why is the preacher saying these things?
Some have painted him as speaking foolishness that needs to be refuted.
But I believe that the Bible portrays the preacher as one who sees real futility in
things and who truly understands that everything is passing away and that he’s speaking with
wisdom.
He’s provoking us to wise thinking.
His words reveal the shakiness of the foundations of the present creation.
As he sees the futility of man’s experiences, the futility of man’s labor, the futility
of man’s remembrance, and he points these things out to us that we might ponder why
it is that we do what we do.
This is wisdom literature.
And so it slows us down.
It brings us to a deeper consideration.
And so we’re still stuck on that question from verse three.
What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
What is man’s lasting hope?
And we know that the lasting hope of man is not to be found in man’s experiences, labor,
or remembrance, but in God alone.
And it helps us to see how small we truly are here in God’s creation.
It helps us to see how dependent we are on him for the fulfillment of our purposes.
It helps us to see that God is the only one who can make a lasting positive gain from
man’s labor as he is there to carry it on, doing all his holy will.
And so we ought to be living our lives consulting his word as to what is good and right and
pleasing in his sight.
We are finite.
And so we ought to be seeking to know and be known by the one who keeps us for all eternity.
Our lives might make very much of a difference in our own small circle and then we pass away.
If our lives are bearing witness to the one who does not pass away, there is much gain.
Solomon reigned in Jerusalem at a high point in her history.
We considered this in our previous message.
His kingdom was a fulfilled promise of God to David.
By an external measurement, he seemed to have it all.
But here the author of Ecclesiastes is pointing out to us that even Solomon’s kingdom was
passing away under the sun of this creation.
When he reached the height of all his accomplishments, his heart turned away from the Lord.
And it brought nothing but destruction in its wake.
Christ himself says that Solomon in all his glory was not clothed in such glory as the
flowers of the field.
Yet there’s some irony there.
Because we know that the grass withers and the flower fades.
But God’s word lasts forever.
The preacher’s words shake the foundations of our lives so that we can learn to stand
on that unshakable foundation of faith in God so that we are called to entrust ourselves
to him.
He is the one who made us.
He is the one for whom we labor in the hope of glory.
We make it our aim to please him.
Our only meaning, the only meaning any man can hope for, is that meaning established
by God.
Because this is his story.
Our lives unfold according to his will.
And he is the one who brings all things to the end for which he created them.
And that is the beauty of his working in you to glorify and enjoy him forever.
He has an eternal purpose and we are citizens of an everlasting kingdom.
We serve one greater than Solomon.
We go to a new creation in Christ.
We serve that risen Christ who will come again to judge the living and the dead.
And so you don’t have to be afraid of being forgotten.
He knows you and has loved you from before the foundations of the earth.
And you know that your life isn’t about you, but about him.
If you live your life hoping in Jesus and worshipping him, then you will not be put
to shame.
He will see you and say, well done, my good and faithful servant.
As we suffer the perplexities and distresses of life in this present world, may we look
to God knowing that he is good.
As it is written in Ecclesiastes 12 verses 13 and 14, the end of the matter, all has
been heard.
Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man.
For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
And this God did not spare his own son in lavishing his love upon us.
May we entrust our lives to the glory of God as we worship him, knowing that he will establish
the works of our hands.
When he comes again before his awesome presence, the wicked will quake and terror.
And all the earth, all that our hearts may have been tempted to set our hope upon, will
be stripped away before his presence.
And that is the day of judgment after which he establishes the new heavens and the new
earth in which righteousness dwells.
And even now we have this assurance in Christ that he now stands in the presence of the
Father, he whose life appeared on the outside to have accomplished very little, thriving
ministry and crucified on the cross.
Disciples scattered, darkness, death, disciples persecuted.
Oh yes, fruit was born from that in many later stages.
Christ entrusted himself to God.
May the Lord alone be our lasting hope as we remember that the lasting hope of man is
not to be found in our experiences, in our labor, or even in our remembrance.
May we serve the Lord with thankful hearts as we hope in him.
Father in heaven, we thank you for your word, for that sure foundation in Christ.
We thank you that though many will forget, you will not.
And we entrust ourselves to you knowing that you are good and that you care for us.
Lord help us to measure our lives in light of that glory that is ours in you.
To walk in such a way as to account for you as the chief weight in our decision making.
That we would consider your glory above all other things.
Give us wisdom to know how to do this well.
How to love one another well, how to bear witness to your name with our whole life.
How to offer up to you that spiritual service of worship that is the laying down of our lives for you.
Even as you lay down your life for us.
Father we pray all of these things in Jesus name.
Amen.
People of God let us respond to what we have heard turning to hymn 153 and as you find 153 please stand to sing.