God Amidst All The Vanity

The end of the matter is this. Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the duty of man.

I'm curious, is that why it's your favorite book? If Ecclesiastes is your favorite book, is it your favorite book because it stirs up within you a reverence that leads to obedience? If that's not why it's your favorite book, you might be missing the point of the book. As we look at the author, he tells us the words of the preacher, the son of David, and then he gives us a great conclusion. And I wanna think about the purpose of the book, the purpose. What should we be looking to gain from this book? A pastor friend shared that he thinks there's three layers, and we'll see if this is true as we go along. The first layer is meaningless. Vanity of vanity is always vanity. The world without God is unsatisfying. It's all vanity. The second layer is a call up from there. To realize God has given us good gifts and we can enjoy this world the most when we realize we're called to be stewards of what God has given us. That's the second layer. The third layer is reverence. The end of the matter is fear God and obey him. As we think about the three layers, if you're trying to be ultimately satisfied with only what this world has to provide, without God, it's vanity. If you're seeking to find joy in the things that are created without the Creator, it's vanity. The higher calling, as the preacher will move us forward in coming weeks, is you can enjoy this world. It won't be ultimately satisfying, because they're not designed to be. if we seek to be stewards of the God who gives his good gifts. Of course, the highest calling is to fear the Lord. The chief end of man is to worship God. Maybe the purpose is helpful as we think and compare and contrast Ecclesiastes with Proverbs, both wisdom literature. Proverbs is written for young people. It's written like a father to a son. to help that son know what it means to live a life, to have a right relationship with the things of this world. And the books are compared in that they both put fear of the Lord at the heart and center of wisdom. What is the beginning of wisdom according to Proverbs? Fear of the Lord. What is the end of the matter according to Ecclesiastes? Fear of the Lord. It seems as if wisdom requires reverence. There is no wisdom without actually looking up and revering God. Fools are lazy in their worship, haphazard in discipline, complacent in their commitment to God. Wisdom prioritizes God with reverence. It's primarily for young folks. A father giving his son advice on how to have a right relationship with money. with sex, with friends, with stuff. It's shining a light as if here's the path of life and the whole goal of Proverbs is to make it a path of light. So you know how to order your days in God's good path of light, of truth. And the backdrop on the sides, sin is assumed, the fall is assumed. the harlot he's aware of, but he's saying stay on the path of light to pursue what God has said is good and true and right. Our part of Proverbs, they're principles that are true. But because we live in a fallen world, they're principles that are true, they're not promises. If we didn't live in a fallen world, it would actually be true and a promise that a father would not need to tell a son advice about the harlot. If there wasn't sin, you wouldn't have to even say it. If we lived in a perfect world without sin, if a parent trains up their child in the way they should go, they would not depart from it. You would need to give that principle. But Ecclesiastes is a different book. Has a different approach to wisdom. It puts sin and fallenness in the forefront. Proverbs has the fallenness in the backdrop. It's assumed, it's not ignored, but Ecclesiastes puts it right in your face. Ecclesiastes looks at the road and the path and says, it's full of darkness, frustration, futility. It's wearisome. It feels like vanity of vanities. Then he gives you the hope of light at the end. God is good. Fear him. Ecclesiastes is the book for those who are in the midst of difficulty. Ecclesiastes has an important message for the dissatisfied, the distraught, those who are toiling and not reaping, those who have health complications, that are frustrated, that they don't understand why there's constantly some health problem, a chronic illness, a pain. It's for those whose spouse isn't what they sign up for. They keep loving and submitting, but the spouse keeps ignoring and sinning. It's an opportunity for us to see this world is truly unsatisfying, disappointing. It's for parents who labor to disciple their children and yet those children despised the lesson and even despised them for teaching it. Ecclesiastes is for those who are on that righteous path and can easily feel the full frustration that it just isn't working out the way you hoped. There's something comforting about that, right? There's something comforting that this world is full of sin. This world is ultimately unsatisfying. This world has pains and difficulties, and no matter how hard I work, I never seem to get out of it what I'm looking for. Good news this morning, it's straightforward as to what God calls us to. Fear God and keep his commandments. But in the midst of the frustrating world This book is helpful. It's reminding us, don't buy the hype. Don't believe the lies that we see on social media and put on social media, where we pretend everything is great. The book also has a message for the lazy and the rebellious. Stop living in vanity. Turn to God. Fear him and seek to know what it means to keep his commandments. Ecclesiastes is a book that must have in its view constantly, and we're gonna keep coming back to it. Genesis 1 through 3. Genesis 1 through 3 help us see God created all things good, with order, purpose, meaning. And Genesis 3 helps us understand what happened. Why is it so frustrating? Why is there death? Why is there difficulty? But we have to keep in mind here, we now live in a world that is a glorious ruin. It's glorious because the one true, good, glorious God created it. And then we introduce sin when we rebelled against him as those who are supposed to be stewarding his goodness. Let's think about this for a moment. The glorious goodness is when you take a seed and you put it in the earth properly and water it, it's supposed to grow into a plant that then bears fruit. So there's nothing glorious. We can still go out and plant a seed and take the fruit of it. But it's a ruin because a thief might come and take that fruit. Or the locust might come and devour that fruit. Or the thorns are gonna come and choke out the plant We ruins the world with our sin. This world is a glorious ruin. Even if all your crops come in, you harvest. The barns are full. It's ultimately unsatisfying. You don't even get to enjoy all you bring in. The goal this morning is to see it's a glorious ruin because of sin. There's a frustration because of sin. God is a good giver. God gives us all the good things, and this is what's amazing, we'll see later on. Not only does he give all the good gifts, he gives us the ability to enjoy them. But we must realize, as we enter into now chapter one, this is a glorious ruin. Chapter one, our first point of the sermon, It's all vanity, verses two through 11. Important, verse two is a key verse. Again, it's how he ends his sermon, how he ends the teaching, this preacher, this coelet. Verse two.

Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

He could just stop there, right? It's true and it's not true. That's the difficulty that we're gonna have to wrestle with with Ecclesiastes throughout the whole thing. It's true, it's all vanities, but it obviously isn't all there is to say because he doesn't just stop there. We've got a lot more to say about this world. It's true. In some sense, we all have experienced, we wrestle with the fact that this world feels like and is all vanity. We look at the poem. Seems to be focused on two questions. After declaring all his vanity, he asked two questions. Verse three,

what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

Notice how earthly-minded the question is, under the sun. And then verse 10,

is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new. It has already been in the ages before us.

The toil is going to be a significant theme we see. The vanity of toil, those are two key words, two key concepts to focus on if you're reading through Ecclesiastes during the study. Verse nine is a bit of a hinge.

What has been is what will be, and what has been is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

Looking back and looking forward, all this vanity of vanities. Let's wrestle with the question, what is there to gain from all this toil? With all the strife? Now there's an odd comfort we should feel from this in that we know we experience and consider this at some point as true. Life's not cashing out the way I expected it. My work is not giving me the return on my investment. Not sure if it's providing the meaning I always longed for. All is vanity. What does a toil accomplish under the sun? What does a man gain? College students, young adults, this is helpful to consider here, that this is an older, wise preacher looking back at the end of his life, thinking back of all the things he pursued that was vanity. There's a way to know here how to guard yourself against the things that are going to only promote vanity. There's also a way to guard yourself against just being jaded because all you experience is vanity. How to live with wisdom in the midst of all the vanity. What is there to gain from the toil? Notice what's next, verses four to seven, how he seeks to answer his question.

A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The winds blow to the south and go to the north, and around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All the 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.

Notice four to seven here, the generations, the sun rising and setting, the wind blowing to and fro, and the streams filling the sea, but it never being full and then returning again. He's observing the patterns under the sun. He's observing the patterns of this earth. And notice he's just seeing the futility of it all. It just keeps going. This world, it just keeps moving. Generations come, generations go, the sun sets, the sun rises. We kind of experience that generations thing in our city in a unique way. We're a college town. What we experience is we see life, we see students come and the excitement of new students coming. But if you've been around for a while, you know they come and they go. A class of students come, a class of students goes. If you're a senior professor, you see that first class that you ever teach, and you're excited about that first class, and then you might even get to see them graduate, and there's something unique and special about it, but then years later, you realize this pattern. We're getting older, and they stay the same age. They keep coming, they keep going. Maybe you stick around long enough to teach the generation, your first class's generation of children. Time is indifferent. Keeps marching on. The streams keep moving. The wind keeps blowing. The sun, the moon, the stars that are meant to govern this earth. Man is here for just a little while. We're so much more than just dust in the wind, but man, it feels like this world is so indifferent to us because it just keeps moving in the same patterns. Verse eight is a conclusion of sorts.

All things. are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it.

Notice there's a, if all is vanity, then yeah, all things are weary. If I'm trying to find satisfaction in a place that cannot provide it, it's going to be weary. If it's vanity, it's going to be exhausting. Something important to remember here from Genesis, this world was not designed to satisfy you. If we can embrace that, we'll be happy. The world was designed to be ruled by you. You're an image bearer. You're supposed to be exercising God's dominion. The world was designed to be enjoyed, but it's not just a playground to delight your senses only. The world was designed to be a perfect habitat, and then we've frustrated it with our own sin. This world was designed to be stewarded. by us, under God. Even in Genesis 2, it was not meant to ultimately satisfy you. God alone designed you to only be satisfied in Him. It's interesting, I'm curious, if we look at verse 8 in that second half, if we do see an allusion back to Genesis 3.

The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with here.

There's something that the more I try to fill my senses with this world, the more unsatisfied I am if I'm trying to find ultimate satisfaction in it. But I wonder if there's something here about that promise that Satan gave to Eve. If you take that fruit, your eyes will be opened. You'll see like God. You know what's amazing about that promise is it was just like every good lie, half true. What happened when they took the fruit? Their eyes were opened, but did they like what they saw? No, their eyes, they saw and experienced shame. Ever since we've tried to live this world and enjoy God's creation without God, the eye has not been satisfied. We keep looking, but God didn't design it for that. All things are full of weariness. This life and trying to find ultimate satisfaction under this sun in the world without God, it is going to be wearisome. It's going to be exhausting. It's as if we're trying to squeeze orange juice out of an apple. It wasn't designed to produce it. We even do this in the strangest ways. We're constantly looking to things God made and try to get what God only can give us. Spousal abuse happens this way. You're trying to get out of your spouse when only God can give you. You're trying to get out of your job when only God can give you. God gave you a spouse. God gave you a job to be enjoyed in a certain way. But here it's striving after the wind if we don't do it according to God. Verse nine transitions us here to future looking. Verse 10 asks the question, is there anything that is newer to the sun? It has already been in the ages before us. That cycle that we talked about, the sun rising and setting, the winds blowing and blowing again, and the streams filling but never filling, filling the ocean but it never is full and they return. That cycle, it just keeps going. Verse 11, the conclusion.

There's no remembrance. of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be, and among those who come after.

This world and the time God has given us is going to keep marching forward, and it's futile, it's frustrating, it's wearisome, and soon you'll not even be remembered. This is hard, real truth. How short our existence is. How little we might mean while we're here and how quickly we'll be forgotten. This is possibly the worst book of the Bible to preach while I'm in the prime years of midlife crisis. I'm not in one, but this is probably going to start it. This is enough to make us all hyperventilate. What an introduction. What a way to capture our attention. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Toil is difficult, brings weary. Let's consider some application. How far have we gone from the garden? God made us in his image. formed us from this earth to be stewards of this, breathe this life into us, made the garden beforehand, placed us in that garden as a special place for us, a perfect habitation, gave us one rule, gave us the commands, gave us expectations. And how short-lived that was. How far we have come from the garden, rejecting his plan, rejecting his goodness. despising his design. And because we despise his design, we're trying to figure something out on our own. It's just going to continue to feel like vanity. The second thing, it's good that God gives us this seemingly harsh but real view of how frustrating and frightening this world is. He will not let us masquerade as if everything is okay. He will not let us choose some kind of coping mechanism to pretend it's better than it really is. He wants us to have a real, hard, raw, straightforward look into what this life feels like, what we experience. One, so that we have hope in the midst of the frustrating aspects of life, because it is frustrating. He won't let us believe lies, that it really is better than it is. As Christians, we have to remember here, there's a call to embrace that we're resident aliens. We're elect exiles. We were created from this earth, for this earth, to rule this earth, to dwell on this earth. Because we rejected God, we don't know how to do that well. Sin affects us, this earth. So Romans 8 talks about the earth itself is groaning. We should feel that need to groan against all the frustrations of this world because of sin. Redemption has come so that we have a hope. We're groaning for something good because Christ is risen. We're groaning for a life and to know how to live as citizens of heaven while here on this earth. That's difficult. So you remember, this is not our final destination, and this world is not the way it's supposed to be. We must learn how to look up and to look forward. We need to really wrestle with a passage we'll come back to a few times in this study, and that is from 1 Corinthians 15. Paul reasons,

if Christ is not risen, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

If this world's all we got, The only thing you can do is try to satisfy your eyes and your ears and your mouth and your appetite. And yet you know that's unsatisfiable. But if Christ is risen, he calls us up out of that vanity. He calls us up out of that wearisome life. He calls us to understand that the good God has given us all the good gifts and we can enjoy them properly in this sinful world with our sinful hearts. Are we tired of trying to satisfy our senses apart from Christ? That's a fruit of what we could be studying here in Ecclesiastes. Are we finally just sick of trying to do this? Are we ready to hear the invitation of God to fear him and obey him? To look to him alone who can truly satisfy? It's interesting, we're looking at this passage, Wednesday night, we meditated on Jesus, the bread of life. This life is gonna keep going? You're gonna die? Well, Jesus is the bread of life. He says you can have eternal life. You can live forever. He's given us a way out of the sin and death that we brought in. He also is the bread of life that alone satisfies. James 1 is so instructive for us here, and yet so counterintuitive. When you face various trials in this world full of vanity, count it joy. Even though wearisome, frustrating, difficult, count it joy. And that only makes sense if we know we can turn to God, as James tells us. and ask for wisdom. And as we ask for wisdom, we have to ask with faith. And as we look up to God and ask for wisdom, oh, the most important thing, believer, here, he's a God who gives generously. Don't miss that from James. He's not stingy. He's full of wisdom. He is wisdom. He gives generously. But in the midst of our despair, we've gotta ask. In the midst of the trial, we must ask. God created us for himself, to know him, to be known by him. Our hearts will be restless until we find rest in him. It's amazing that in the midst of what we frustrated in his garden, in his world, he chose to make a promise to come down, to save us from our sin, to die on the cross for our sin, to rise again, to break the cycle that we've introduced of death. That weighty teaching, no remembrance. We do need to think about that in light of the gospel. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you will not be forgotten. Because when your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, you're not just remembered, you're known by God forever. You're loved by God forever. There's a real despair we're supposed to feel that if all we believe is this world is in this constant cycle of meaningless and death, that you should feel the despair so that you can hear the hope. Hallelujah. I can believe in Christ and I'll be known forever and I will know God forever. I'll be loved by God forever and I can love him forever. Our second section. It's crooked. This is a shorter summary.

I, the preacher, have been king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I've applied my heart to seek and search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.

Here again, it sounds King Solomon-ish.

It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is undone under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

We learn more about the preacher. He's a king. There's a Davidic aspect to this preacher. Again, it sounds too much like Solomon not to be Solomon. Notice verse 13,

I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done in heaven.

Now, my interpretation of what's going on here is I think here our preacher is already letting us know he's starting out with the wrong foot. Because what's the beginning of wisdom? Fear of the Lord. How does he begin? I with my heart. We have to realize what the preacher's saying is true in the sense of it's everything that's done under the sun, it's done under heaven, it's a very this worldly look. I, with my heart, sought out wisdom. He's not following the fear of the Lord. Whenever we're committed to me, myself, and I, all will be vanity. Now, this declaration, It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. Pretty much the worst motivational speaker ever. We don't see this on Christian coffee mugs. Nobody's got this like plastered over their fireplace or in the hallway. What does he mean here? The word translated here, unhappy, could even be evil. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. It goes back up to verse three. What does man gain by all the toil, the strife, the work, the busyness? There's two ways we could look at this, with evil or unhappiness. One could be that the author is saying God is the author of evil. And even if that's what he's saying, we're gonna just say a hard no. Because we know Genesis one through three, he's a good God who only thinks good and evil has come because of a twisting and corruption from what he created good. But he could be going so far as to looking up to God and saying, this is evil, you've made an evil thing for us to do. The other will be unhappy. It's unsatisfying, it's difficult. God is a hard task master. It's unhappy that God is and therefore makes life. Again, we must see this in light of Genesis 1 through 3. Genesis 1 is a hymn of praise to the God who created all things good and good and good and very good and it's orderly. Genesis 2 is the first day of human history where he gave instruction and provision and it makes it very good. Jesus 3 is where man chose to avoid, to deny, to reject what God said, brought sin in the world, and God therefore gave consequences that were just. Here's where we see Ecclesiastes especially is written for this fallen world. Because life is difficult. The business and work of man ultimately isn't perfectly happy. There's a way in which we can think, the person who doesn't know Genesis 1-3, and if you look at this world and all the information we have and you see the patterns and you see the thorns and the thistles and how much we work and how little we get from it, you can then project up to God what you've experienced and believe this. What an unhappy business this is. For ages, humans have done this. Are you aware there's other flood accounts from the ancient world? There's other flood accounts because the flood happened. But we have God's interpretation of what happened, and they have their interpretation of what happened, and they interpret what happened based upon their understanding of this world without wisdom or fear of God. The interpretation is, well, we must have been too loud. We woke up the gods, and they got angry and flooded us. You see, the gods are just like us. We project ourselves up to God, We cannot interpret God based upon our own experience. We interpret God based upon what he says. The author is presenting a real problem. It's not only true because I don't believe he's interpreting things according to the fear of God. All things are vanity and striving for the wind, he says. Verse 14, that's a repeated motif we're gonna continue to see, something that structures the book. Let's look at his concluding proverb, verse 15. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. Cannot, that's difficult. Kind of some fate and destiny here. It's crooked, it can't be made straight. It's lacking, it can't be accumulated, accounted, gathered. There's parallelism. Parallelism is a Hebrew form of poetry where you're saying the same thing twice in a different way. The despair that should sink in right here, it cannot be made straight. It's impossible. You see, there are real consequences that are under God. Because he told the woman, you'll now have difficulty in bearing children, it'll be painful. He told the man, you're gonna sweat, and it's not gonna be productive. It'll be thorns and thistles. I got chewed up yesterday trying to get some briars out. The world is not the way God designed it. It's a glorious ruin now, and we're feeling the full effects, and here our preacher, he says, What's crooked cannot be made straight. Again, there's a sense of despair, which is, when we feel that it's impossible, we can turn to what God says elsewhere and interpret this world differently. That's why it's so important. Two phrases from scripture.

Nothing is impossible with God.

And with God, all things are possible. Nothing is impossible with God and with God, all things are possible. An application for us to consider here, this world, if it keeps marching along and we keep living only in this world without a fear of God, in the vanity, we're gonna die and it's gonna be meaningless. There's a way in which this business we have is unhappy, it's difficult, it seems evil. And then there's two words that change everything. But God, we were dead in the trespasses of our sins, following the evil one, following the destruction patterns of this world. But God. the very words, nothing is impossible to God. Those come as an angel is telling Mary the promises of God are all coming to fruition. God himself is going to enter into this fallen world and he's going to bring redemption. He's going to bring salvation. He's going to come and die and rise again. But God. Ecclesiastes is supposed to make you want to cling to those words. because they're the only words that really change the story. God comes and intervenes where there was impossibility. To flip ahead a little bit to Ecclesiastes, let me just read to you 6.13. In the midst of this world without God, in the midst of this world under the sun, under the heavens, just this world, what is crooked cannot be made straight. But in 6.13, the preacher tells us,

consider the work of God. Who can make straight what he has made crooked?

The crookedness we experience is the real just consequence of our sin that God gives us. And here we even see God who gives us those consequences, he's sovereign over them. He's the one who comes to save us from our very consequences. Friends, but God is a grand interruption. But God is a grand interruption. He saves us from our despair. He saves us from vanity. He saves us from death. He saves us from feeling like this is just a weary world that's full of frustration. And so to that I say, believers, it pains me to watch Believers of Jesus Christ continue to make the same bad decision after bad decision. Just continuing to pursue vanity. When you've caught out upon, at some point, the God who gives life. Satan's great trick is to isolate us, so we believe lies. And some of those lines are, well, I have a special category. God doesn't expect of me what he expects of all the other disciples. Or I know something extra that keeps me from needing to do all the things that Christians are really supposed to do to really enjoy the fullness and abundance of life. I have a special license for sin. There's two ways we isolate, either it's self-esteem where we think too much of ourselves or it's self-pity. We wallow in shame. Both are pride. Both are pride. Jesus came to put us on his way that is straight, that is good. And as we look to him and see how good he is, we revere him. As we look to him and see how powerful he is to help us, we revere him. And when we love him, we obey him. So I asked this morning, Are you unhappy in the business of life that you've embraced? Do you feel like the busyness of life, the business of life, the work of life is like striving after wind? I want you to hear this morning, Jesus' invitation. When you believe in Jesus, you can do two things. One, you can work as under the Lord. And two, you can do the work of the Lord. As we consider that phrase, it is an unhappy business that the children of man have from God, we look at the New Testament, we see there's a way to work unto the Lord. And there's work we can do for the Lord. You see, when we're actually walking in Christ, all work all of a sudden becomes meaningful. Suffering even becomes meaningful. Ephesians tells us we're God's workmanship and he's got good works for us to do that have been predestined. We get so confused by this. We don't ever want to believe in a salvation that comes by our works, but we have to understand that when we believe in the God who gives us such grace to be saved, we then want to know what those good works are. There's a way is to work under the Lord. That's from Ephesians 6. If you go back to Ephesians 6, you'll see what you are repaid for. Working after the Lord, eternal life. It's not vain. It's not meaningless. You can do the work of the Lord. There is specific work that we all should be doing. Hearing His Word, singing the Word, praying His Word. We've been doing it here this morning. Going back to 1 Corinthians 15, I want you to see the conclusion of Paul's grand declaration that the resurrection was as God has written, and the resurrection gives us victory. 1 Corinthians 15, 58.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord Your labor is not in vain.

You don't have to live in all this vanity. You can be saved from that, but only by believing in Jesus Christ. In Christ, it's not in vain. In Christ, it's not all vanity. In Christ, he's conquered death, and he conquered the futility of this world with his death. Hear that from Christ. You can strive, toil, labor, and it's not vanity. Your life was designed to matter. Your life can be committed to the will of God, and that means we're steadfast, immovable, always abounding. Seek to know God and to do His will. What is His will? Well, the end of the matter is this. Fear God, keep his commandments. Let's not overcomplicate this. It's looking up to him who created us and who's come to save us, looking up to him who gives us his promises to believe and his commands to obey. This is the duty of man. Fear God, keep his commandments. God will always know us, will always remember us, will always love us. This is the hope that Christ sets for us in the midst of the darkness and despair. Will you pray with me? Father, as we have to look and get to look at a glimpse a summary of the despair we all know because we live in this world and we experience these things. Help us sort of hear the invitation that Christ calls us to come to him. Christ invites us into the true delight and satisfaction we were created for, to know you, Father. to be known by you, to worship you, to revere you, to obey you. Lord, as we consider who we are as your creatures, as your image bearers, Lord, we thank you that you've given us this clear declaration. This is our duty. This is what we're designed for, to worship you, to obey you. You've not left us in our despair. You've called us to your life. Help us to know how to walk on that path and encourage each other in it. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.