You have to be glad that you came to church this morning. If you’ve ever wondered what makes different versions of the Bible different, you can turn to Ecclesiastes 1.
• NIV: Meaningless
• KJV: Vanity
• Holman: Futility
• Contemporary: Nonsense
• Message: Smoke
1These are the words of the Quester, David’s son and king in Jerusalem
2-11 Smoke, nothing but smoke. [That’s what the Quester says.] There’s nothing to anything—it’s all smoke.
What’s there to show for a lifetime of work,
a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?
One generation goes its way, the next one arrives,
but nothing changes—it’s business as usual for old planet earth.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down,
then does it again, and again—the same old round.
The wind blows south, the wind blows north.
Around and around and around it blows,
blowing this way, then that—the whirling, erratic wind.
All the rivers flow into the sea,
but the sea never fills up.
The rivers keep flowing to the same old place,
and then start all over and do it again.
Everything’s boring, utterly boring—
no one can find any meaning in it.
Boring to the eye,
boring to the ear.
What was will be again,
what happened will happen again.
There’s nothing new on this earth.
Year after year it’s the same old thing.
Does someone call out, "Hey, this is new"?
Don’t get excited—it’s the same old story.
Nobody remembers what happened yesterday.
And the things that will happen tomorrow?
Nobody’ll remember them either.
Don’t count on being remembered.
Vanity, futility, nonsense, smoke… they are all getting to the fleeting nature of life.
Since we generally use the NIV here at The Chapel (pew Bibles), then we’ll go ahead and go with meaningless.
If you do a quick read, like I’ve suggested, of the Book of Ecclesiastes, you might come to the conclusion that the Teacher who originally penned these words concludes that since everything is meaningless, we might as well just live like dogs. Don’t worry… be happy. Enjoy life… don’t work so hard. Get whatever joy you can out of your life because everything is meaningless… and then you’re dead.
Early in my study, the message got through. These are the end of my notes. I went shopping with Laurie instead of writing a sermon… I’m winging it from here on out!
Meaningless… the word just sort of sits there and mocks us… doesn’t it? If in the wrong state of mind, one could really find this all fairly depressing.
I talked with one of you this week… reflecting on dealing with Ecclesiastes in college. It turns out that lots of us here have had college level courses in Bible and Theology.
• Northwest and SPU
• Graduate work
• PhDs in Bible and Theology
Nobody needs to feel out of place. If I can preach to the Ph.D.s without feeling too awfully intimidated, you can certainly go to church with them.
Anyway… this certain someone explained that at one point, closing out a very busy senior year with a few too many credits, an assignment was skipped (and a grade was sacrificed) because of an aversion to dealing with this Book of Ecclesiastes.
That is understandable… but not necessary.
I can’t believe that God put this in His book to depress us. It would be out of character for God to just slip something in to bum us out. There is an important message here.
I think the message stares us right in the face with this simple word: meaningless.
More specifically, it is in the first part of this compound word: meaning. If this in-your-face literary style that we find in Ecclesiastes rubs you the wrong way, try turning some of the negative words into positives.
Meaning makes sense to us. We understand this primal urge to find meaning. We want to figure things out. We need to put things in order. We don’t want to waste time, or energy, or effort, or even thought. We want meaning.
Even here at The Chapel we have this habit of asking ourselves so what? This is really a tactic to find meaning. We have this bias that these words given from this pulpit on a Sunday morning are important... that we shouldn’t be casual about encountering God’s word. These words mean something and should make a difference in our lives, so we purposefully ask ourselves so what… and expect there to be an answer. We expect meaning.
It is no wonder, then, that this claim in the first verses of Ecclesiastes offends us. Especially here… here in this place, and here in this Book.
We might be willing to expect meaninglessness from other parts of our lives. But not here. We are looking for meaning; we expect to find hope here.
Don’t we deserve to find some meaning… at least here?
Maybe, just maybe, that is the point.
I think what we have here is the beginning of a litany of where we won’t find meaning.
I say it is just the beginning… mostly because there are six more sermons after this one (11 ½ chapters to go).
“Meaningless, says the Teacher”
Later in the Book we’ll see the Teacher say that he has done it all, and tried it all… and all the things he acquired or built, everything he tried or thought up, all of it is meaningless.
In verse 3 he hits me right at home. The Teacher says to a guy like me “do you find your meaning in your work?” Does that hit anyone else hard? There are lots of us, I’ve found, that really don’t know who we are unless we have a job to do. Our work defines us. We search for meaning in our work.
But the Teacher says to us that are toil is vain if we are toiling for meaning. Our labor is fleeting. In the grand scheme of things, “generations come and generations go.” It puts us in mind of familiar words, words that some of you have heard me pronounce over graves, “ashes to ashes and dust to dust… from the earth you came and to the earth you will return.”
We toil… but the results of our labor are fleeting when compared to even the permanence of the earth.
Verses 5-7 speak of circumstances beyond our control:
• The sun rises and sets
• The wind blows as it may
• The streams flow into the sea
Sometimes we allow ourselves to be consumed with that over which we have no control. If the weather is good, I’m happy; if the weather is bad, I’m sad. The government blows it… and I’m bummed out. The Mariners win… and I feel like a winner myself.
Meaning found in our circumstances is pretty shallow meaning.
Verse 8 put us in mind of the spirit of this age: materialism. All things are wearisome. Even though our appetites for things seem insatiable, we won’t find meaning in having more, seeing more, or hearing more.
Then these last few verses in the passage speak to legacy. We want to find meaning by making our mark, but the Teacher reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun.
Have we discovered something new? It was there all the time.
Do we think we will become immortal through our discoveries, our industry, our inventions, our great ideas or anything else? Like it says in Peterson’s The Message, “don’t count on being remembered.”
So now I really mean it; that time before was just a teaser. So what?
• Meaningless?
• Futility?
• Vanity?
• Smoke?
Is the so what that there is no so what?
Let’s think in terms of the big picture.
In terms of time, the Teacher who penned these words in Ecclesiastes is right. With respect to this life, and this world, we are just a blip and we dare not expect to be remembered. But this isn’t all there is.
There is an eternity. What makes this life important is that it is the beginning of eternity.
We believe that there is more to life than just this life... and that eternity provides meaning for this life. If this 80 or so years is the sum total of it all, then we could join the Teacher in this refrain or meaningless, meaningless, meaningless. These few years are, indeed, fleeting.
We also want to be sure to get the big picture from the whole of God’s Book. We hear stories from time to time about how the persecuted church, both now and throughout time, has suffered without the whole of the Bible. We even hear stories of how the pages of the Bible might be separated and handed out to members of a congregation… with only one Bible, or even just a part of a Bible, for a congregation, they might split it up into chunks of pages and then pass them around among themselves.
How would you like to be the poor guy that just got Ecclesiastes? If this were the whole counsel of Scripture for us, we might have a fairly bleak outlook on life.
But, of course, thank God that we have the whole Book. Where Ecclesiastes takes the negative approach, focusing on where we will not find meaning, the whole of Scripture points to where we do find meaning. We find meaning in our relationship with God. God’s Book calls us to himself.
The Book of Ecclesiastes is important for us because it causes us to think. And it causes us to get our eyes off of ourselves and our circumstances. Stop and think, consider our pursuits, examine our motives and our goals is the call of Ecclesiastes.
As we think and consider and weigh the whole of Scripture, we can focus on that which we can do… places and perspectives where we do find meaning.
As an example, we can go back to the NT passage read earlier.
Rejoice in the Lord. In the Lord… not ourselves, or our accomplishments, or our possessions.
We are invited, called even, to trade our anxiety for “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding.”
We find a list in Ecclesiastes that shows us where we won’t find meaning; here is another kind of list. With God as our focus, not ourselves, we have these things to think about.
The end of Ecclesiastes calls us to “fear God and keep His commandments.” Here is a straightforward way to accomplish just that.
Enjoy God. Pursue what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. Do good. And find God’s peace.
Meaningless, futile, fleeting?
Sure… when we place our lives, our reputations, our priorities as the focus, then it is meaningless. But Ecclesiastes calls us to think and realize that we have to lift our gaze; we have to see that there is more than just our life, more than just this fleeting bit of time. We are called to consider, again, that our lives have meaning when we place them in the hands of our God and we realize that these years are merely the beginning of an eternity with our God.
Father – give us grace so that we will set aside our pursuits of what is so fleeting, so meaningless. Give us courage to pick up your call, taking our place as Your people.
Audio available at: http://www.cedarpark.org/thechapel/services
