Ecclesiastes 1:3-11

Ecclesiastes chapter 1 and verses 1 through 11 our focus this evening is going to be on verses 3 through 11 the words of the preacher the son of David king in Jerusalem vanity of vanity seth the preacher vanity of vanities all is vanity what prophet hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the one generation passeth away another generation cometh but the earth abideth forever the sun also riseth and the sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he arose the wind goeth toward the south and turneth about under the north it whirleth about continually and the wind returneth again according to his circuits all the rivers run into the sea yet the sea is not full under the place where from whence the rivers came or come thither they return again all things are full of labor man cannot utter it the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing the thing that hath been It is that which shall be. That which is done is that which shall be done. And there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, see, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things. Neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. May God bless to us his holy and sacred word this evening. The poet Shelley wrote a poem named Ossimandais. I’d like to read it to you. I met a traveler from an ancient land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stones stand stand in the devil. desert. Near them on the sand half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survived stamped on those lifeless things. The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed, and the heart that fed, and on the pedestal these words appear. My name is Ozymandeus, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty in despair. Nothing besides remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. The pole is a waller. it certainly captures the reality of the passing of life and all its achievements. This once very great man, no doubt feared man, whose vast kingdom was a wonder to behold, is dead, and his kingdom lies in the dust. There’s nothing left. advance best efforts to achieve something lasting and great end up being futile. As someone said, the paths of glory lead but to the grave. All your efforts in life to appear to be useless, nothing stands the test of time. It all fades away. You die and the merry-go-round of this life continues on and on, and you’re soon for God. and you’re like one ant among the billions that crawl across the face of this earth, and you’re really undistinguished from all the others, and eventually you pass away. And it’s hardly noticed in the big scheme of things. Who are you? Even if you thought you were somebody important, who are you now? After you pass. All your achievements end up like Ozum and Day as the statue wrecked. aid, destroyed, forgotten. Man is a problem with regard to the meaning of life. He doesn’t know why he’s here. He’s here, but he don’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t know what purpose he serves in this life. And then as you go through life, you’re thinking, well, what’s the use of going through all this? Why attempt to do anything in this life? It’s a waste of time because at the end, there’s nothing or that remains. Solomon is already. arguing here about life being meaningless, that all is empty and passing if God is left out. We looked first at the author of the book in verse one, Saul was Solomon, probably in his older age, repentant over his waywardness and taking him to many wives and serving other gods and so forth. We looked at verse two, which gives us the theme. of the book. It all is vanity. Everything. And so the preacher now is going to go on and argue the case that man must be made to look more closely at life and all its achievements and see what it all boils down to. For satisfaction is never found in the things of this earth. It is only found in a relationship with God, which he will be found. eventually get to, so we get to the latter stages of the book. And that’s what is important. He begins in verse three by telling us this. He asked this question, what do you gain for all your efforts in this life? What profit at the man of all his labor which he taketh under the son? Now, when we have a strong statement like this, it usually meets with one of two responses. Either people think hard about it or people ignore it altogether. Solomon here makes a very profound statement that requires some thought. What do you gain from all your work and all your achievements in this life? There’s thousands of your work. thousands and thousands of hours of toil that you put in in this life. A lifetime of labor and effort to build up your little empire. We see that Solomon is talking about the things under the sun. Things of this world, things of this earth. A life limited to material, to earthly interests. A life without any eternal dimensions. And this is the life that most people live. lead because God is not in all their thoughts. God is not anywhere near their thoughts. And so the problem is what you see is what you get. Nothing more and probably a lot less. Your toil is a monotonous routine that you go through. One day is very like another. It becomes very repetitious. You feel like the minor in the song, you load 16 tons and what do you get another day older and deeper in debt the housewife you know she’s doing the washing of the clothes the drying the ironing the dusting the vacuuming the mending the cooking and the dishes and guess what you’ve got to do it all over again the next day just it’s just a cycle if you’re a student you go to school and there’s no end of what you can learn I read about a cab driver in New York City and he’s still a cab driver, but he has seven PhDs. You just kept going to school and getting all this education, but what did it do? I mean, he’s still driving the cab. There’s always another book to read, another lecture to hear, another report to prepare, another test to take. You’re the man in the house, you’re the husband. Your job can become a boring cycle because you do the same things. over and over and over again. This really struck home. I used to work at a corrugated box factory and we made things with regard to in my machine particular that I was working on made the cores for inside doors in the house. A lot of the doors today are hollow. They put like a cardboard filler in there. It’s about an inch or inch or a quarter thick or whatever. It doesn’t out of the thick they want to make the door that’s how they’re all the door. much padding you have to make. So here I was feeding this machine, counting to 25. That’s how money I had to count, and then the pad would be done. I put this machine in this, this, this cardboard in this machine, big long sheet of it, and glue would come down. At different angles, you had to set the glue angles and so forth so that it would be so far apart. and then you put one on the bottom and one on the top. The one on the bottom is the glue is one level, and the other one is on a different level so that when you put them together and you cut the things like down to like an inch or an inch and a quarter or whatever, it gives you an accordion and you can open it up. That’s what I did for eight hours. Cut the 25 every night, one on the top, one on the bottom, one on the bottom. One on the top, one on the bottom. Eight hours. You talk about… routine you could do it in your sleep. It was that bad. I was a partsman also. And my job was unload the truck, take the parts out, put them on the shelves. And then I would have to pull the orders, take them back off the shelf, ship them back out, and the next time what do I have to do? Another truck comes in, I have to unload it, do the same thing over and over and over again. If you’ve worked any type of work, you find it very repetitious. There are a few winners in life. Very few make it to the top where they can take their ease and enjoy so-called life of luxury. Most people work and work and only see their goals and their plans collapse. Their savings shrink. Their promotion hopes die. And the government increases their taxes. so that in the end they actually make more money than they had hoped. So you struggle to make ends meet and survive. And what do you really accomplish? Nothing of really great significance. I made a lot of cores for inside doors for many, five and a half years. I moved a lot of diesel engine parts for five and a half years. There’s 11 years of my life. What am I going to do? Life, comes similar to the last meal that they condemned criminal gets. Now he may take some pleasure in eating the meal. You know, he might have the steak and maybe exactly what he wants to eat. But guess what? As he looks ahead, he knows there’s only one thing awaits him. He’s going to die. It’s going to be electrocute. As you go through this life, you may have a few pleasures in this life, but what do you have to look forward to? death is coming. Take away life’s little pleasures. you take away the only reason as our people have to live. Jesus said, taught us this, what should profit of man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul? Even if you become rich and famous, even if you live in a $200 million house, even if you have the most expensive cars you could possibly have, you’re going to die and you can’t take it with you. What do you gain for all your efforts in life? Solomon Satan? Think about that amen. the second thing he tells us tonight is life your life is so short look at verses four to seven one generation passes away and another generation cometh but the earth abideth forever the sun also arises and the sun goeth down and hasteth to the place where he arose the wind goeth toward the south turneth about under the north it will about continually and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full, into the place where the rivers come, thither they return again. Now, Solomon here wants us to measure our life against the things that are happening on this earth. Never mind eternity. He says, just look at just the things here on the earth. If you want evidence, look at the very sun under which you live, the various elements of the earth which continue year after year. Now he starts out by saying one generation passes and another generation comes. That’s man. He’s going to come and go. Now compare that, he says, to the sun, the wind, the river or streams that continue to function day after day. an almost endless cycle. Do they not? They last beyond one generation to another. Man can’t say that about himself. Have you watched the sun rise and set? How long do you think the sun has been rising and setting? How many millions has it been rising and setting? How many generations live? lived on the Mississippi River and watch that river flow down into the Gulf Stream through New Orleans. The river continues to flow and flow and flow. Never ending cycle. The wind circles round and round the globe. It’s amazing. If you see a weather report, watch something online perhaps, sometimes they’ll show you the wind pattern. And if you watch it, it’s a circle. It’s a circle. It is exactly what he says here. It dips down and comes up here and goes the does south, goes back up to the north, circles around him, guess what? It continues to cycle. That cycle may move up and down here or there, but it’s going to keep cycling. Just as he says here. When you go to the grave, it’ll still be swirling around in its cycles and it’s very circuits. The finite is not. natural world is. It might be eternity compared to how long your life’s going to last. Life is unquestionably short. The very repetition of the movement of creation around us shows us how short it is. For over 100 years in the 1100s and the 1200s, the ruling family of Germany was the Hohenstaufen family. One of the tortures that they devised was kind of unique. It was a jail cell. And when they put their enemies in this jail cell, it appeared to be a comfortable-sized cell to begin with. But as you were there day after day, you begin to notice that the walls are closing in on you. Slowly but surely the walls close in. until you’re standing there with nowhere to move and you get crushed to death. That was the way they would get rid of their enemies. My friends, it’s a frightening fact to have something like that happen. Life is like a constricting cell because you’re getting closer and closer to death all the time. Your life’s getting shorter and shorter. First, you know, you think I’ve got all the way. life ahead of you’re you’re a young person you think man I got all this time I can do whatever I want I got all this time before you know it you’re in your middle age and before you know it the gray hair comes out and you realize boy 70 years doesn’t very long some people don’t even last 70 years on this earth your life is so short it’s short the third thing he says there is no lasting satisfaction your life Verse 8. All things are full of labor. Man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing. The idea of verse 8 is that all things are wearisome more than anyone can express. All things are full of labor. Man cannot even utter it. If all you have is your sense world, particularly focus in on what you see and hear here you’re never going to find satisfaction in this life just as your eyes and ears demand new sensations all the time so an under the sun life never become satisfied now we live in a very modern consumer-oriented society where a new product is often promoted as if this is going to make you happy, you can just have the new car this year’s Mademont, the new house, the new toy for children, the new appliance maybe in your kitchen, the new cologne, the new perfume, the new jewelry, whatever it is, then you’ll be satisfy. So you’re told that and you buy the product in the end what happens? Are you satisfied with it? No. You know how many gadgets and things people have laying around at home? They never even use. They bought it for some reason. They probably thought, well this is what I need. It’s going to make me happy. This is going to satisfy. Now they don’t even use it. There’s an aftertaste of dissatisfaction. There’s a craving for the next new fad that comes a lot. long. Fortune magazine quotes a comment by the billionaire H. Ross Perot. He has, he said this, guys, just remember, if you get real lucky, if you make a lot of money, if you go out and buy a lot of stuff, it’s going to break. You’ve got the biggest, fanciest mansion of the world. It has air conditioning. It’s got a poor. It’s got a point. It’s got a poor. just think of all the pumps that are going to go out. Or you go to a yacht basin anywhere in the world. Nobody is smiling. And I’ll tell you why. Something broke this morning. The generators out. The microwave oven doesn’t work. Things don’t bring happiness. Nowhere do we find this more, I think, illustrated than the rise of the rise of the drug culture in the 1960s. I went through the 60s, and I was in high school in the 60s, and the big thrust was the drugs and the sexual revolution. You know, people were dropping out of society, and, you know, thinking that this, you know, having their own little communes and things of this, thinking this is going to give them peace and satisfaction in this life. Did they find the satisfaction? They craved in these things. What was the final product of the sexual revolution? No satisfaction. Pursuing the next sexual partner became endless. But what did it mean? He had no lasting relationship with this person. Chasing after the next new drug that came along. You know whether there’s LSD or heroin or whatever marijuana starting out or whatever. You know, it’s the next new drug. The next thing that can give me a high. What happens? Well, you get addicted to drugs. You have broken health. You have drug deaths. You have the AIDS epidemic. With all the venereal disease. You have fatherless children. You have relationship heartache. You have poor financial status and so forth. Because you dropped out. So now the 60s generation is in the old age. What happened? They had to drop back in and find satisfaction and all that. It was such a big deal at that time. You know, everybody was saying, well, this is it. You know, this is how I find it satisfactory. They rebelled against their parents and their lifestyle and so forth. And what are they doing? They’re doing the same thing today. There is no lasting satisfaction to your life. Not from these things of this world. There’s nothing new. He says in your life. Let’s look at verses 9 to 11. The thing that hath been is that which shall be. That which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said? See, this is new? It hath already of old time. If been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance. of former things, neither shall there arise any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. Now, at first reading here, you might take exception to Solomon. He said, well, surely Solomon, there are new things that come up in life. After all, we’ve had new scientific discoveries and procedures and new drugs and inventions and the internet and iPads and blackberries and blackberries and picture phones and microscopic surgery and on and on and on we could talk about things. We got space travel. We got undersea exploration. Surely, in the middle of all the changes and discoveries of life, something’s got to be new. So we have to qualify this thing. We have to understand what he’s talking about. He talked about the heavenly bodies. We talk about heavenly bodies or we talk about the courses of the seasons. We talk about the activities of the animal kingdom, the scientific makeup of things and the atoms and so forth. They’re always the same. Sun, the wind, the rivers. Everything gets cycled. There’s no change there. Even if we talk about the religious realm, this is kind of interesting. for those of us who are deeply interested in religious matters. We have new philosophies and heresies that creep along. And you know what they really are? They’re just spruced up old ones. That’s all they are. It’s the same heresy. They just maybe use a few different words or something like that. What about immorality? Is there new, immorality that man can do today that is not revealed to us in scripture? Can you read the law and not have any of those sexual things condemned? That you may think is a sexual more today that’s different? Read about them in the book of Genesis. You can read them in the book of Exodus through Deuteronum. They’re all there. What else is there new under the sun? But perhaps we can read them in the book of Exodus through Deuteronum. could qualify this a little bit more. Solomon is focused on satisfaction. Is there anything new that brings you satisfaction in this life? And the answer to that is no. Because if you did come up with a new pleasure, it still leaves the same aftertaste as the old pleasure. Look at the people around you. Look at all their pursuits and all the pleasures they crave. But in man’s pursuit, does he find anything new? The same source of happiness that he seeks ends up disappointing him. It doesn’t matter what he chooses to do. He’s unsatisfied. Man and sin can never be at rest. He never stops seeking satisfaction. He’s like the restless sea that is just constantly churning. He cannot find satisfaction. There is no people. no satisfaction, no true happiness to the person outside of Jesus Christ. We read that in Jeremiah’s passage in chapter 9. Are you going to glory in your wisdom or your might or anything else? If you’re going to glory, there’s only one thing you really can glory in, and that is that you know me. You know the Lord. If you don’t know the Lord, there’s nothing to glory in in in this life. No matter what you think you’re achieving, what you think you’re accomplishing. Someone has said, sin is first novelty, then drudgery, and finally slavery. That’s your own bitter experience as you pursue sin. What appears new never remains new. It’s really old hat. It cannot satisfy. I thought about the woman at the well when Jesus is talking with him. Go call your husband. She seems to Lord. reluctant. He says, well, you’ve already had five husbands. The one you’re living with right now isn’t your husband. You’re not even married to this guy, evidently. Just living with him. Was she satisfied with all that? Did it give her any satisfaction? Get a new partner. No? Didn’t. What did she need to know? She needed to know the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, the promise and benefits of the nuclear age in which we live rise the from it rises the danger of nuclear holocaust and total destruction. Or terrorists getting a hold of some type of nuclear weapon and destroying huge cities with it. Medical research into the problems of infertility have led to ethical minefield of abortion. of genetic engineering. And then there’s legal ramifications of lawsuits over frozen sperm and eggs and everything else under the sun. Signed different discoveries. We find propel us into greater weapons of destruction so that we have smart bombs or radio radar-controlled. radar controlled. If we go into space, now what do we do with it? We start weaponizing space. You know, have the stars, war, space systems where now we’re going to have weapons shot from outer space toward the earth and destroying our enemies. Modern man, if he was honest, has to admit any changes, any discoveries, actually ended up to be for the worst in the long run, and not for the better. The rat race only gets faster. You know, in Paul’s Day, they had chariots, but now we have these nice cars that can go, you know, 60, 70 miles an hour. Faster. We have jet planes that can fly us all over the place. What does this mean for us? It speeds up the pace of your schedule. And now you’ve got to go faster to keep up with it. So all modern man is doing in the context of evolved, in this so-called material universe, as the evolutionists think, is just clawing forward a little bit at a time. Anything new becomes tediously commonplace as he tells us here in verse 11, or verse 10, and the past becomes irrelevant, slips into forgottenness, as he tells us in verse 11. For many, history becomes just an endless blur, reality. is now, existence is only what happens in the present. Thus, secular man finds life boring. Nothing new to bring satisfaction to him. Every new discovery ends up a dead end and frustration. My friends, the bottom line of this is a life without personal faith in God, just a secular life where God is not your thoughts is a life ultimately without meaning, without any hope, and without any future. It’s a rather useless life. All the pursuit after earthly pleasures, after power and authority and achievements, all that is just Osse Mendeus revisited because it’ll all be gone. Solomon knows there’s a better way. The Bible teaches us. that God created the world and he made it very good. Sin has entered the world and marred its every aspect and operation to a significant degree and this is why life appears to be frustrating and meaningless to us. But the Bible also speaks about redemption, about forgiveness of sins, about spiritual renewal. And that’s what man needs. Satisfatius. action is only found in Christ. He came to grant sinners that they might have life and they might have it more upon your do you know the Savior? Have you repented of your sin? Have you placed in your trust in Jesus Christ to save you from your sins? Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man is thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and to our God and he will abundantly pour. Then you will have a life full of purpose. Then you will be granted a joy and peace which passes all understanding. Then you’ll be satisfied. Let us close with the word of prayer.