So I have hit the age of life when I am supposed to have a mid-life crisis. This crisis does not happen when you are young because you look at life and think about all the time you have and all the things you are going to do. But then you hit the middle of your life and you now are able to look backward and realize that with certainty at least half of your life is gone. You have lived life long enough that you look back and wonder where time has gone and you evaluate what you have done with your life. When we were in high school, every high school speech told us that we were going to be the generation that would change the world. We would be the people to make a difference. We were going to achieve greatness and leave our mark. Every high school yearbook says something to this effect on its cover. No graduation speech and no yearbook says you are going to be like all the rest that have come before you. So now you wonder what has happened with your life and you consider how things have gone so far. Helpfully, God appears to have wired us for this kind of consideration of life. In fact, God gave us a book so that we would not waste the time given to us on this planet.
We are starting a sermon series from the book of Ecclesiastes which is going to deeply consider the ways of the world and teach how to not waste our lives. Please open your copies of God’s word to the book of Ecclesiastes. This is a book that is often neglected and I think it is neglected for two reasons. One reason is that it seems depressing. But it is not depressing if we understand what the author is trying to teach us. The other reason the book is neglected is because it does not sound righteous or holy. It seems like it is saying to do things that are contrary to other scriptures. But I would make the same point that such a conclusion fails to understand what the author is trying to teach us. So let’s open to the first chapter of Ecclesiastes and let’s consider what the teacher wants us to think about in this life.
Breaking Through (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3)
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” What a way to start! Some translations read, “Absolute futility! Everything is futile!” (CSB; cf. NET, NASB 2020). Some translations read, “Meaningless! Everything is meaningless” (NIV; cf. NLT). The Hebrew word hebel is the word for breath or vapor. But as we go through the book we will see that the teacher is not merely saying that life is just a breath that is here today and gone tomorrow. It is true that life is a vapor (cf. James 4:14) and the teacher of Ecclesiastes will tell us that life is temporary and like a mist. But we are being asked to think even deeper than just the brevity of life. Look at verse 3 and the teacher explains what he means in verse 2.
“What does a person gain for all his efforts that he labors under the sun?” (1:3 CSB) This is the key question for the book. What does a person have to show after all you do in this life? What is the profit? What is the advantage? What is the gain? What do you get from everything you are doing in this life? With this question in mind I think we can see that what the teacher exclaims is not that all of life is meaningless. In fact, if you read what he will teach in this book he will not say that everything is meaningless. He will say that there is meaning to the things we do. That is not what he is looking at. What he is looking at is this: What is the point? What do you have to show for all the work you do and the effort you give in this life? What is the result from all of it? Where are you getting and what are you getting from all you are doing? Verse 2 is his answer. There is no gain. It is vanity. It is futile. It is pointless. Life is empty. To put this another way, the idea of thinking about life as a vapor is that it is lacking substance. Life is like steam. It is real but you cannot hold on to it because it lacks substance. One author described the idea to be like cotton candy. Cotton candy is real but it lacks substance. As soon as you put it in your mouth, it instantly disappears. It does not last. There is no gain. You will not get full from eating cotton candy.
Circles (Ecclesiastes 1:4-7)
Now the teacher wants to prove this point to us because we can be really resistant to this truth. We want to think that all of our efforts are getting somewhere. We want to think that big changes have been made. But look at verses 4-7 and consider the circles of life. In verse 4 the teacher notices that a generation goes and another generation comes. Solomon wrote this book 3000 years ago. Think about how many generations have come and gone in the last 3000 years! But the earth is still here. People keep living and dying, living and dying, but the earth just keeps spinning.
In verse 5 the teacher wants to not only look at the whole of your life, but to now just think about a day. The sun rises and the sun sets, only to hurry back around and exhaustedly do it all over again. We even have sayings today that observe this reality. We say things like, “Another day, another dollar.” How different will your Monday be from last Monday? How different will this week be from last week? Every day is just a circle. You are going to get up, do the same things you normal do to become presentable, eat and drink the same food (or cycle between the same 2-3 food and drinks), go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch tv, and go to bed. Then you are going to do the same thing again the next day and the next day and the next day. This is the machine of life.
In verse 6 the teacher likens life to the circles of the wind. The wind blows one direction and then it changes and blows the other direction. Then it will go back and blow the other direction. It is just a circle. This is the way life is. Think about how life looks in a year. We go from summer, to fall, to winter, to spring, to just return to summer again. It is the same thing over and over again. We are approaching a time when there is great hope and great emptiness. We build up the hype for Thanksgiving which transitions to an excitement for Christmas, which builds to an excitement for a new year, only to see nothing change and to do it all over again. Has 2024 been so much better and so different than 2023?
The same circle is observed in verse 7. The streams flow into the sea but the sea is never full. It is just a big circle. Who knows how long the Mississippi River has been flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, but the Gulf is never full! There is no gain. There is no forward movement. There is no point. The river does not run out and the sea is never full.
Unsatisfied (Ecclesiastes 1:8)
Verse 8 contains the important conclusion that the teacher wants us to consider in this opening paragraph. Life is tiresome and full of weariness. The circles of life are just exhausting. One day is like the next. One year is like the next. One generation is like the next. You clean the house only to need to clean the house again. You do the laundry only to need to do the laundry again. The creation cycle shows the way of the world. All things are full of weariness (Ecclesiastes 1:8). The sun runs back to its starting spot after the day and does it again the next day. The wind blows one direction only to turn and blow the other direction. The streams keep flowing but there is no gain or profit. This is an important point to think about and we will return to this in just a moment. Now the teacher states something very important at the end of verse 8. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” We cannot be satisfied by this life. It is never enough. It is just circles that never full and never satisfied. But look at verses 9-11 and how the teacher adds to this picture.
Nothing New (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11)
The teacher draws the conclusion that there is nothing new under the sun. There is nothing new in this world. It is the same old, same old. Now it is important to understand what the teacher is saying. The teacher is not saying that there are not new things. He is not saying in verse 10 that if you look back in the past you will see that there were smart phones and internet. Rather, the teacher is observing the monotony of life. The cycle is never ends. Tomorrow is not going to be some new thing. It is going to be the same thing. This weekend is not going to be some new thing. It is going to be the same thing. When people ask us, “What is new?”, we will say, “Same old, same old!” Next year is not going to be some new thing. It is going to be the same thing.
Let me give you an example of what the teacher is trying to get us to think about. When we were kids, we thought our parents did not understand us and had no idea what life was like. They were out of touch. They were old. They did not have a clue. But then we get older and what do we realize? We realize that life is not any different. Now we look at our kids and they think we do not get it because they think life is so new and so different. But we look and that, while you may have some different tech inventions, life is still the same. There is nothing new. Life is not different.
We just forget the things that happened in the past (1:11). We just fail to remember what has been experienced in the past. We think things are worse now than ever before. Or we think things are better now than ever before. But the reality is that we do not remember or know the way the world was in the past. We just think about a couple years ago rather than hundreds or even thousands of years ago. There is nothing new in the ebb and flow of life in this world. We just forgot what has been and those in the future will forget these times now. One of the anthems of Gen X days was a song by Billy Joel called “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” The point of the song was that you are saying that things are so bad now but you need to remember all the problems of the prior decades. He reminds everyone about things like World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Soviet Union, Watergate, and more. So the chorus simply said, “We didn’t start the fire; it was always burning since the world’s been turning.” It is a line that truly would come right from this book. There is nothing new. The way of the world is not new. There is nothing new under the sun.
The Message
So what is the point that we are to understand from what the teacher is explaining? One of the important things the teacher is doing in this book is to get us to stop and think about things that we don’t typically think about. We go so fast in life and run so hard in this world that we sometimes do not even stop and evaluate what we are doing. So I want us to do this in this series. I want us to evaluate what we are doing in this world. I want us to think about the decisions we are making and the direction we are going. I want us to think about the profit/gain we have experienced from what we are doing and reconsider our ways.
I believe one of the important messages is to understand that this is the way the world is. All things are full of weariness and we are never satisfied (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:8). Therefore, stop trying make something out of things that will not and cannot satisfy. Stop trying to infusing meaning and lasting satisfaction into a world that cannot sustain such hopes. Now the teacher is going to examine the various areas of life where we try to find lasting joy and meaning in this world and show its futility. But for now, the teacher has made a sweeping truth. Life is tiring and monotonous. It is does not provide the payoff (profit, gain) that it seems it would give (1:3). Life is just a treadmill. So here is the take away: when life feels exhausting and empty, you are not doing something wrong. Do not be depressed. Do not think you are wasting your life. Realize that this is the essence of the creation. In fact, listen to what the apostle Paul proclaimed.
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it…. (Romans 8:20 NASB 2020)
God made the creation futile. So why are we trying to make something more from this world than it is intended to give? Life is tiresome. You will feel empty in the rat race of life. But this is intended to get us to stop and look upward to God who satisfy rather than to this world which does not satisfy. The emptiness we feel is to cause us to lean into God all the more, not try to keep running on the treadmill even harder. Seek joy in God, not in the futility of this creation.