Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:18-26 * August 12, 2007 * Pentecost 11 * Pastor
Pagels
In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:
In the 1991
“Value
this time in your life, kids, because this is the time in your life when you
still have your choices. It goes by
fast. When you're a teenager, you think
you can do anything and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Thirties you raise your family, you make a
little money, and you think to yourself, ‘What happened to my twenties?’
Forties,
you grow a little pot belly, you grow another chin. The music starts to get too
loud, one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Fifties, you have a minor surgery -- you'll
call it a procedure, but it's a surgery.
Sixties, you'll have a major surgery, the music is still loud, but it
doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway.
Seventies,
you and the wife retire to
While this movie may not rank among the great morality plays of our generation, it does raise an important question, a question Billy Crystal was not the first person to ask, a question that was asked by one of his Jewish ancestors some three thousand years before he was born: What is the meaning, what is the purpose of life?
King Solomon spent a lifetime
pondering that question, and in the opening verses of Ecclesiastes he gives us
his answer: “‘Meaningless!
Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly
meaningless! Everything is meaningless’”
(1:2).
The fact that this verse (the theme of the entire book) doesn’t exactly present an uplifting, gospel-centered message might explain why the Old Testament lesson comes from Ecclesiastes only once every three years. But before we dismiss the book we need to remember that Ecclesiastes is not the mere musings of a man. It is God’s Word. These words of Solomon are inspired by the Holy Spirit. And as we devote our attention to them today, we pray that the Spirit will help us…
MAKE THE
MOST OF A “MEANINGLESS” MESSAGE
I.
Learn from the experiences of a man
II. Lean on the promises of God
In order to appreciate the message
of Ecclesiastes we have to understand the person who wrote it. Solomon introduces himself as “the Teacher, son of David, king in
Solomon was the son of David and
Bathsheba. The Lord chose him to succeed
his father as king of
Solomon’s great wealth was
surpassed only by his God-given wisdom.
When the Lord promised to give him anything his heart desired, he didn’t
ask for money. He didn’t ask for glory. Instead this was his humble request: “Give your servant a discerning heart to
govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong” (I Kings 3:9).
The Lord granted Solomon’s wish and
then some. “God gave Solomon wisdom and
very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand
on the seashore. Solomon’s wisdom was
greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the
wisdom of
When this wise king looked back on his life, when he considered everything he had accomplished, when he sat down to contemplate the big questions, Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?, this was the best he could do: “It’s all meaningless.”
The word, “meaningless,” appears more than thirty five times in Ecclesiastes. In other places it is translated “worthless” and “futile” and “vanity” (KJV), but in its most basic sense it means “breath.” In other words, life is fleeting. It’s here today and gone tomorrow, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.
Solomon doesn’t expect us to just
accept this conclusion. He shares some
observations and experiences from his own life that led him to conclude that
life under the sun is meaningless: “I
hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them
to the one who comes after me. And who
knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over
all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This
too is meaningless” (2:18, 19).
Solomon gets off to a good start by declaring that he hated everything he had worked so hard to obtain, but if you’re expecting a Catechism class conclusion to this sentence it’s not coming. He didn’t despair of the stuff of this world because it was nothing compared with the treasure that awaited him in heaven. Instead he hated the things he had worked so hard to attain because he couldn’t control them after he was gone.
“So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune” (2:20, 21). Solomon understood that “you can’t take it with you,” and he decided that if that was the case it wasn’t worth all the time and effort it took to get it in the first place. It was meaningless, but that wasn’t the only reason life under the sun was meaningless.
The teacher continues: “What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless” (2:22, 23).
If you have ever been stressed out at work, if you have ever felt burned out because of work, if your job has ever caused you to lose sleep, or even worse, if you are so consumed by your job that you even dream about work, then you know what Solomon is talking about. And you will probably agree with his assessment that “this too is meaningless.”
Before we go any farther, I want to make one thing clear. It is not wrong to work hard to get ahead. There is nothing wrong with owning your own home and a new car and nice clothes and a cell phone and a plasma screen television. Solomon isn’t asking us to renounce our possessions, but he is asking us to re-evaluate our priorities.
If you spend more time in the business section than in your Bible, there might be a problem. If your favorite topics of conversation are work and money, there might be a problem. If you say that your relationship with God is the most important thing in your life, ask yourself if there is enough evidence in your purse and your day planner to support that claim.
Apart from God this life is not only meaningless. It’s hopeless. Without God we have no hope for forgiveness. And without forgiveness we have no hope, absolutely no hope for heaven. If you don’t want to believe me, then listen to someone a whole lot smarter than me.
Solomon says: “I tried to find meaning and purpose in the things of this world, but I now know that I can’t. I have learned that a person can strive and struggle and strain to get ahead, a person can have everything his heart desires, but in the end he will discover that without God life is meaningless. This is what I want you to learn from my little book. I want you to learn from my experiences, but even more important than that, I want you to lean on God’s promises.”
The 59th biennial convention of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod was held last week in New Ulm, MN. In addition to the important business that was taken up by the convention (like the election of a new synod president), every session began with a devotion based on one of the “Gospel Gems” of the Old and New Testaments.
There were no devotion texts from Ecclesiastes because there are no gospel gems in Ecclesiastes. There are no beautiful prophecies about the coming Savior. There is no mention of grace. Ecclesiastes is lacking when it comes to bright, shiny gospel jewels, but if you look closely the seed of the gospel is there.
The teacher continues: “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment” (2:24,25)?
Solomon is saying that you can’t enjoy
life, you can’t truly enjoy your blessings unless you acknowledge the source of
those blessings. The believer sees that
everything he has comes from the hand of God.
The believer even sees work as a blessing because the Lord gives him the
ability to work. Christians can enjoy
life, even with all of its failures and frustrations, even through the tears
and the trials, because we know that a better life is yet to come.
So what if the washing machine breaks down. I am going to a place where they will give me my own white robe that will never get dirty. So what if my back is killing me. Eventually I am going to trade in this model for a new and glorified body. So what if I don’t get to go to the biggest and best parties. I have been invited to a heavenly banquet that will last forever. My happiness is in no way tied to what I do or how much I have. My outlook on life, my hope for eternal life, depends entirely on the promises of God.
He promises: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him” (Psalm 103:11). He promises: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). And as promised, two thousand years ago God sent his Son to die on the cross, to die in our place, to take away our sins forever.
But the promises don’t stop there. God promises to protect us from harm and
danger. He promises to make all things
work out for our good (Romans 8:28). He
promises to supply our every need. He
promises you and me: “Seek first his
kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as
well” (Matthew 6:33).
If you leave church thinking that this morning’s message was meaningless, I wouldn’t be offended. I might actually take it as a compliment because that was not just the theme of this sermon. That is the theme of Ecclesiastes.
Life under the sun is meaningless. Life without God is hopeless. But with the benefit of Solomon’s experience and with the blessing of God’s promises, we have an answer. We have the one answer that truly satisfies. Jesus gives our lives meaning. Jesus gives our lives purpose. The Lord gives us the ability to enjoy life, and by his grace we anticipate the greater joy of eternal life. Amen.