SERIES: “BE SATISFIED”
“THE SEARCH FOR MEANING”
ECCLESIASTES 1:1-18
A certain man had traveled quite a distance to attend the funeral of a relative. The man was utterly exhausted from his drive. During the visitation time, he dozed off in one of the chairs. Several attempts were made to wake him up but because of the level of this man’s exhaustion, nothing seemed to work.
It came time for the visitation period to be over for the evening and non one had yet been able to awaken the poor sleeping man. The other mourners sought for a way to make the man comfortable for the night. The funeral director said that the man could spend the night there in the funeral. Several men pitched in and carried the sleeping man to one of the storage rooms where there was an empty casket and placed him inside.
During the middle of the night, the sleeping man woke up and himself in the casket. He was very confused. If her were alive, why was he inside of a casket? And if he was dead, how come he had to go to the bathroom?
Solomon was a very confused man. He could find no meaning for life! Everything he had tried, he had found to be meaningless. When he looked at his wisdom, his works, and his wealth – everything that he had – he found it to be worthless, empty, and unsatisfactory. Eccl. 1:1-3 – The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?
What put Solomon in this position? Remember that when Solomon was made king of Israel, God came to Solomon and told him that he would give him anything he wanted. Solomon asked for wisdom. God granted Solomon wisdom beyond measure but also gave him great riches and fame as well.
As the years went by, Solomon forgot about his first devotion – godly wisdom. Solomon entered into multiple marriages for political reasons and began to be involved in idol worship along with his pagan wives. Solomon began his reign as a humble servant of God, but as he grew older, his heart turned away from the Lord. He tried possessions, pleasures, power, and prestige. Nothing filled the hole in his heart. He had forgotten what he told God was most important in his life.
Solomon writes Ecclesiastes at the end of his life. He is looking back at what he has done and basically says, “I’ve done nothing.” Everything is vain, meaningless, empty. I quoted someone last week who said that this word literally means “whatever is left after you break a soap bubble.”
Solomon tells us you can work as hard as you want but in the end, you really have nothing. You can add up all the money you have, all the title-deeds, all the stocks and bonds, all the times you’ll be mentioned in the paper, all the promotions you’ll get, all the times someone will ask for your autograph, all the ladders you’ll climb.
The important phrase to understanding what Solomon is saying is, “under the sun.” When life is looked at from just an earthly perspective, it makes no sense. There is something beyond this world that makes puts everything in perspective. Solomon says, “If you leave God out of the picture, everything means nothing.”
If you live without God and you die without God, you live and die for nothing.
Leonard Woolf, who was married to author Virginia Woolf was a very successful author in his own right. He made millions of dollars off of his writing. He was on the “A-list” for parties. He was known personally by presidents, kings, and other important people. Yet, just before he died, he said this: “I see clearly that I have achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human anthill during the past five to seven years would be exactly the same if I had played Ping-Pong instead of sitting on committees and writing books
and memoranda. I have therefore to make a rather ignominious confession: that I have in a long life ground
through between 150,000and 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work.” Leonard Woolf, like Solomon, discovered late in life that life lived “under the sun” was futile.
This morning is the second message in our series, “Be Satisfied.” Let’s look together this morning at the rest of Ecclesiastes Chapter One and see what Solomon can teach us about life and the importance of purpose and meaning beyond this life.
THE FUTILITY IN THE CIRCLES OF LIFE
Solomon is struck by the realization that nothing in life under the sun actually changes. In Eccl. 1:4-7 – Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
He comes to the understanding that generations of people come and go while the things of mature remain basically constant. Everything in nature continues century after century, but human beings are here for only a brief period of time – then we die. One day, you’re going to die and have a funeral. One day, I’m going to die and have a funeral. Do you know what’s going to happen the day after the funeral? Things move on.
The earth seems to stay the same. Individuals and families come and go, nations and empires rise and fall. But nothing really changes because the world remains the same. Thomas Carlyle called history “a mighty drama, enacted upon the theater of time, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.”
Solomon would add that the costumes and sets may occasionally change, but the actors and the script remain pretty much the same. We even have a phrase that reflects this phenomenon – “as sure as the world.” Solomon was galled by the fact that the crowning act of Creation is far more transient than the world they were given to subdue and manage.
Solomon also observes the constancy of the sun in its rising and setting. He moves from “as sure as the world,” to “as certain as night follows day.” He mentions how the winds continue their whirling cycles. And also uses the water cycle as an illustration. The rivers run to the sea. The water evaporates. It then comes back up to the mountains again as rainfall, and runs to the sea again. We are surrounded by numerous signs of change, but in reality human beings are caught up in an endless monotonous cycle in nature in which no real change occurs.
Eccl. 1:8 - All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. Solomon says that nothing seems to satisfy because it’s all the same stuff over and over again. You see, no matter what we do, we’re never satisfied. Why? Because the things of this earth are meaningless and empty. We want something new like the Athenians in Paul’s day. Acts 17:21 - All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. We always looking for something new (and I’m sure the entertainment industry is thankful for that fact.)
When I was growing up there were basically only three TV channels – CBS, NBC, ABC. There was an independent station that popped up while I was in Jr. High. Now, with cable and satellite, there’s over 500 channels. I heard this past week that the average person will change TV channels 350,000 times in a lifetime. (I think I do that in a week!) What satisfaction we thin we have is only fleeting. Given time, we soon want something else.
Eccl. 1:9-11 – What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.
Solomon says there is nothing new under the sun. What will be done is that which has been done. Thomas Edison said that his inventions were only “bringing out the secrets of nature and applying them for the happiness of mankind.” All of our fancy new inventions are really nothing new. It has all been available to us from the beginning of time. It’s that we’re just now figuring out things we haven’t understood so far.
Rudyard Kipling said: The craft that we call modern,
The crimes that we call new;
John Bunyan had them typed and filed in 1682.
If we think something is new, it’s only because we have forgotten what occurred before. And sometimes, just because something is recent, we think it’s new. We used to divide our kids toys in half. We’d put one half into a box and store it in the closet. The other box we’d give them to play with. After they got bored with the first box, we’d get down the second. Voila! New toys! We mistake novelty for originality.
There exist great technological marvels from the ancient past that we have no idea what they did or why they existed or even how they got built. Given time, future generations will forget what we have done and only “rediscover” what has been learned again and again.
The real kicker is in vs. 11 - There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow. There will come a day, if this world lasts long enough, that no one will remember your name. No one will think about you or even consider your existence.
THE FUTILTY OF HUMAN WISDOM
Solomon gives us his preface for the search he made for meaning in Eccl. 1:12-15 – I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. Solomon says, “I rolled up my sleeves and went to work.” As king, Solomon has a lot of resources to use in his search: time, wealth, wisdom, and intellect. Saul put everything at his command to work in search for meaning.
In vss. 14-15, Solomon quotes two proverbs that must have been well known to his audience. The first proverb is, “What is twisted cannot be straitened.” The second proverb is “What is lacking cannot be counted.” Solomon shows us that there are limits to what people can do. No matter how hard we work at it, there will always be problem we can’t figure out and obstacles we can’t conquer. Solomon’s study showed him that the more he studied the problem, the more he found out that he didn’t know about the problem.
There is a small stone church building in Switzerland that has this statement carved above its door: “Built by Voltaire.” Tourists often ask the obvious question – “Why would someone who wrote and argued against religion and had not faith himself build a church?”
Voltaire came to this area for the purpose of writing – some of this writing was against jesus Christ. But when he saw the simple village people going faithfully each Lord’s Day to an old frame church, and genuinely living for the Lord during the week, he was deeply impressed. Out of his respect for these people, he built the small stone structure.
Voltaire was a man who sought for the meaning of life in human reasoning and wisdom. Perhaps the humble faith of the villager with who he lived made him wonder if they had found something he had missed.
Voltaire was the champion of the Age of Reason. He faithfully argued against the validity of Scripture and said that man can figure out his own problems. Voltaire even boasted, “I’ll show how jut one Frenchman can destroy [Christianity[ in 50 years.” Twenty years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society purchased his house for printing Bibles and it became the headquarters for the British and Foreign Bible Society. Just before he died, Voltaire swore “I wish I had never been born!” Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
CONCLUSION
Solomon’s look at life “under the sun” is not very pleasant. It reminds us how finite our lives are and how futile our lives can be. When we struggle to figure it out for ourselves or to work it out for ourselves, we are going to fail.
Solomon basically teaches us three things: 1. Life apart from God is pointless 2. Life apart from God is profitless and 3. Life apart from God is purposeless. “Meaningless, meaningless. Utterly meaningless.”
Remember last week we mentioned that along with the phrase “under the sun,” Solomon also consistently uses the phrase “under heaven” in the book of Ecclesiastes. The king has stepped from the throne to the pulpit and has become the preacher. He is trying to get us to live life with a view “over the sun”.
Warren Wiersbe said, “The scientist tells us that the world is a closed system and that nothing has changed. The historian tells us that life is a closed book and nothing is new. The philosopher tells us that life is a deep problem and nothing is understood. This is life under the sun.”
Remember how Solomon asks, “What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?” The word translated as “gain” is a business term. One commentator said that it refers to a business transaction after all the expenses have been taken out. If your life is a balance sheet and God is not on the balance sheet, there is no net profit.
Life is futile and fruitless without the understanding that there is a God and there is a Savior and meaning is only found when we submit our lives to the lordship of Christ. Jesus asks in Mark 8:36 – “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” Paul reminds us that our labor is worthwhile only in the cause of Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:58 – Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
Augustine: “He who has God has everything. But he who does not have God has nothing. He who has God and everything has no more than he who has God alone.” What have you spent your life laboring for? What do you have to show for it? What do you have that will stand for eternity?
