Open your bibles this morning to the Book of Ecclesiastes. The first chapter.
Mark Twain once said something very interesting. He said, life would be a whole lot better if we could begin at age 80, and then gradually move to age 18. Well, think of the advantage. Having all of the experience and wisdom of years, and then taking on as life goes on, the vigor of youth, to apply it all.
But we know life isn't like that, is it? We start out, we start out young. We start gaining wisdom by experience. Usually. Hopefully. And by asking questions. And one of the questions invariably people ask is, why am I here? What's the purpose of life? When it's all over, where will I be? These are the deep, or the hard issues of life.
Philosophers have asked those questions for years. College students on campuses around the world still ask them. And virtually every person I have ever met that has any depth at all will ask those questions. What's the point of it all? What's the purpose of life?
However, if that question isn't answered satisfactorily, it will always end in despair, disillusionment. And we see that on a daily basis. We say the experiment that Solomon begins in this book-- by the way, here's a guy who was honest enough to not only ask that question, but write down what he saw as potential answers. He writes about it in the Bible. But if we don't answer that question correctly, we're going to end up disillusioned.
Consider this letter. It's a letter from Brooke Davidoff, a 17-year-old from San Diego, California. A letter to Parade Magazine.
"I am 17 years old, and I am pessimistic about my future. The whole world is so messed up. Just look at the news. You have parents beating their kids. You have adults molesting and raping children. You have lots of kids on drugs. Lots of depressed kids. Our whole generation, to Generation X, needs help. The x is almost the end of the alphabet, does that mean we've come to the end? And there we're the ones that will destroy everything? We have nothing to grasp. No one to believe in. No one to trust. But ourselves."
You know what she's saying? You know what she's asking? What's the point? What's the purpose?
Here's another letter-- a portion of a letter-- from 1976, written by Elvis Presley during his last engagement ever, at the Las Vegas Hilton. He said, "I feel so alone sometimes." Of course, Elvis would say, I feel so lonely sometimes. Thank you very much. I'm sorry, I just messed up the whole mood, didn't I? It's hard to recover from that. He said, "I feel so alone sometimes. The night is quiet for me. I'd love to be able to go to sleep. I'm glad that everyone is gone now. I'll probably not rest. I have no need for all of this. Help me, Lord."
Same issue. After finding out, personally, that life doesn't satisfy, what's the point? What's the purpose? Where is life going?
The actor Nicolas Cage said, "I wonder if there is a hole in the soul of my generation. We have inherited the American dream, but where do we take it?"
Common themes in all these quotes and all of these questions, the common theme is boredom, monotony, restlessness, tediousness. Think for a moment. How many people do you know that are genuinely happy with their lives? I'm not asking about you. How many people do you know that are genuinely enjoying their life, they love their job, after years of marriage they're still excited about their marriage. I venture to say very few and far between.
Seems that we settle into the routine, and we see things like Solomon does here, the daily grind, the empty routine. Or as Thoreau once wrote, "men lead their lives in quiet desperation."
Let's read the first 11 verses of this book. The Journal of Solomon.
"The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What profit has a man from his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, another generation comes, but the earth abides forever. The sun also rises, the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north. The wind whirls about continually comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. All things are full of labor. Man cannot express it, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. That which has been, is what will be. That which is done, is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, see this is new. It has already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things. Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come.
Verse 1 introduces us to the man who wrote this. I call him the man of perplexity. He's called here, the Preacher. The Hebrew word Cohelet Now don't think a preacher is somebody standing in front of a pulpit proclaiming truth, ye I say unto thee.
It's a different kind of preacher, let me explain. The Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is called the Septuagint, takes the Hebrew word Cohelet-- here in English, preacher-- and translates it Ecclesiastes. It comes from a Greek word, Ekklisia, which is church, or assembly in the New Testament. But it literally means one who assembles, one who gathers, or better yet, one who collects. That's why it's an apt title for Solomon. He's collecting and observing philosophies of life. The way people live under the sun. The way people live in life. And he puts them all together.
So I don't think preacher's the best translation. Perhaps, the searcher would be better, or the seeker, or the philosopher. But this is Solomon, the son of David, the king in Jerusalem. This is his sermon on the meaning of life. And he works his way through the meaning of life.
Now a little bit about this guy to refresh your memory. Solomon, up to this in history, was the richest guy on the face of the earth. He was the Bill Gates of the 10th century BC. He could buy his way in and out of anything. Very wealthy. Very prominent. And he had spiritual assets, didn't he? The Bible says he asked God for wisdom.
And this is what the Bible tells us. 1 Kings, chapter 4, "God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the east and greater than the wisdom of Egypt." Listen to this, "He was wiser than any other man. And his fame spread to the surrounding nations. Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon's wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world who had heard of his wisdom."
Solomon was a builder. He built the temple in Jerusalem, rebuilt the streets of the city, gave it public services, rearranged the whole town. He was a man of prayer. 1 Kings, chapter 8, one of the most beautiful prayers in all of scripture is Solomon's prayer of dedication after the temple was completed. Psalm 72, ascribed again to Solomon. So think of his advantages, wealth, spiritual wisdom, a relationship of some kind with God, deep prayer life.
However, it seems that he came to a period in his life where everything lost its shine, probably his mid-life. Everything that gleamed at one time lost its luster. He begins to re-evaluate life. He looks at life between birth and death. He questions it. He's puzzled. He sees enigmas, contradictions. And rather than clinging to the wisdom that God once gave him, he approaches life as a Kohelet, a philosopher, a searcher, human wisdom apart from God's wisdom.
Something else to notice about this guy-- it's not mentioned here, but we know it from other history books in the Bible. The guy had a lot of women in his life. How many? 1,000. The Bible tells us that Solomon had not three wives, 300 wives and 700 concubines. That was his harem, 1,000 women. And the Bible says that his wives turned his heart away from God to serve false gods. It could be though, we don't know, that that's the period that this book of Ecclesiastes fits, this period of emptiness in his life when his heart is turned away from God.
Socrates once said, "By all means, get married. If you get a good wife, you'll become very happy. If you find a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
[LAUGHTER]
Solomon was quite a philosopher. And he had a lot of wives who turned his heart away from God. Now Solomon is using only observable data in the natural world. It's what theologians call general revelation. Apart from God's revelation, this is how man lives. That's why the book of Ecclesiastes probably is quoted more by agnostics and atheists than in any other book in the Bible.
Voltaire, for instance, quoted from this book a lot. That's why many conclusions in Ecclesiastes don't correspond with revealed truth. Not that the book isn't inspired, it is, but inspiration in the scripture guarantees that this is accurate in what Solomon really thought and really said. Doesn't mean that every verse in the Bible is to be taken as personal truth. Otherwise you've got problems with all the statements of the devil or the statements of Judas Iscariot, et cetera.
But this is inspired, put here by God so that we can learn from it. And what do we learn from the book? What good is reading a book like this to us? Two things it will do. Number one, it will resensitize the Christian. It will resensitize the Christian. Sometimes we forget the ache of the unbeliever. We forget the questions and the issues that unbelievers deal with every day. It's easy to become cloistered in our Christian ghettos, filled with worship songs and Bible studies. And we forget to touch the nerve of the unbeliever that's around us every single day. This book will get us in touch once again with those questions we once asked.
Second, the book will warn us. And this is how it will warn us. You take a guy like Solomon, who had this much going for him. Wealthy, spiritual resources, God's wisdom, and yet he turned from it or he denied it. And he spirals downward into a dark abyss, all to show us that we may know the Bible, and we may have spiritual assets at our disposal-- Christian radio, Christian television, Christian bookstores-- and end our journey poorly. It's not what you know up here, it's what you live up to according to what you know. And we're foolish if we don't live according to the light we've received.
You could ask Luke Goodrich. The Associated Press carried an article about him. He lived in San Jose, California, lives in San Jose, California. Luke was out one day in his backyard burning trash, illegal in San Jose. The fire got away from him and burned 100 acres of land. It took, get this, six helicopters, 400 firefighters to put out the blaze he started. What's ironic is Luke Goodrich is the captain of the San Jose fire department. Of all the guys it should never happen to, it would be Luke Goodrich.
Well, Solomon is the captain of the wisdom department in Israel. Of all of the people this should never happen to, a heart turning away from God, it would be Solomon. But it did. And so the book serves as a warning to us. That's the man. Now look at verse 2, the motto of the book. Vanity of vanities says, the searcher, "Vanity of vanities. All is vanity."
That word "vanity" sums up his entire thinking during this period of his life. Vanity, get used to that word. You'll read it 37 times in this book. It's often repeated. That's his theme. That's the motto, five times in one verse alone.
Now when you hear the word "vanity," you might think of a prideful person. He's so vain. It's all vanity. A person who looks in the mirror and is narcissistic and self-adulatory. That's not the meaning. The meaning of vanity here means empty, futile, meaningless. It's as if Solomon is looking at us and he's saying, I've tried it all. And everything I've tried leaves me tasteless. That's the idea of the word "vanity."
But notice it's repeated, "Vanity of vanities. All is vanity." That's because in ancient languages like Hebrew, when you want to emphasize a point, you repeat the word. So if something's really empty, it's empty empty. If it's really vanity, vanity vanity. If you really want to make a statement, it's verily verily. It's there for emphasis. So he is saying, emptiness to the max-- Would be a modern translation, my translation at least. Futility turned up to 10.
This is the view of a pessimist. Know any people like that? It will never work. It's all bad. That's how he's thinking in this period of life. I heard about two pessimists. They met each other at a party. Instead of shaking hands, they just shook heads.
[LAUGHTER]
Never work. Bad deal. That's what Solomon is doing the whole book, shaking his head. There was a pessimist and an optimist. They were neighbors. And the optimist on a sunny day, he looked up and said, what a beautiful day God has made. The pessimist said, that stupid sun's going to scorch the crops. The next day, it rained and the optimist said, beautiful we need the rain. The pessimist said, yeah it's going to wash away all the seed.
Well, this went on till one day the optimist invited the pessimist to a duck hunt, which was his favorite activity. They were in a boat early in the morning and boom, gun went off, bird fell to the ground. And the optimist sent out his dog to fetch the duck. The optimist's dog walked and then ran on top of the water, grabbed the duck, and ran back on top of the water to the boat. Optimist had a big smile, nudged the pessimist, said, what do you think of that? And all the pessimist could say is, your dog can't swim, can he?
[LAUGHTER]
[CHUCKLING] That's Solomon, right here. That sums up his life. It's all empty, it's all vain. But look at verse 3. This pessimist strikes a chord of truth. He asked the question, "What prophet has a man from all his labor, which he toils under the sun?" See the word "prophet"? You could translate it "gain." And the word inherently means that which is left over, that which resides, that which endures, something that lasts.
And here's the question. Solomon is asking, after we've tried the experience, after we've taken the item we've longed for, after we've sucked dry all the pleasure we can, what is really left? What remains that will speak to my thirst for satisfaction? His answer, zero, zip, zilch, nada, absolutely nothing.
And here's the reason why. Notice another phrase, "under the sun." What gain, profit, lasting satisfaction does a man have from all of his labor which he toils? And notice this, "under the sun." Get used to that phrase. That's the other often repeated phrase in the book of Ecclesiastes. 29 times you'll read that phrase. Vanity of vanities, 37 times, under the sun, 29 times.
That's because here is his perspective. It's horizontal. He's looking around. Seldom does he look up above the sun at the creator. Now he will from time to time. You'll see flashes of brilliant revelation. But he's looking around at his world horizontally, has no vertical axis. So that the reason nothing will satisfy him is because of this horizontal gaze.
Now listen up. If in your marriage, you're only looking at the temporal, the horizontal, good chance that your marriage won't last over time. It's slippery ground. If you're a businessman or a businesswoman and you're only looking at the horizontal, eventually you'll be frustrated. Life will lose its luster. Same if you're a college student, getting the degree. And it's only temporal advancement, personal advancement, the here and now. You'll get burned out on life.
At the end of life, when you turn out the lights on life, and you wipe your hands from the grave of burying your loved ones, you know what's left in terms of satisfaction? Nothing at all, if that is your gaze, the horizontal. This comes from a man who tries everything, as we'll see in the next few weeks. By the way, that's why so many successful people, achievers who achieve their goals, still end up asking the question, what's the point? What's the purpose? How can I find meaning in life?
William Ward describes this kind of a person as an absentee from the classroom of truth, a truant from the course of hope, a dropout from the school of happiness. Does that describe you, frustrated, empty, bored with life, looking at life in the horizontal? You know that the United States of America has the highest per capita boredom of any spot on Earth? How often do people say, it's boring, I'm bored, there's nothing to do. Do you know that I've lived in small cities and large cities, and people ask that everywhere? Nothing to do here.
Yet with all of our boredom, we have more creature comforts, more artificial amusements, than any other place on the globe. We sense that emptiness. Even those-- in fact, I might add especially those-- who are like Solomon have the wherewithal financially to chase their wildest dreams. They seem to have it all because they're able to do things and buy things that other people can't. And so they come to this conclusion, sometimes sooner than the rest.
Alexander the Great is one of them. He was 31 years of age. He had conquered the world, the known world in his time, he had conquered every kingdom. When he was 31 years of age, he cried out in some hovel in Babylon, weeping that there were no more kingdoms to conquer. Poor baby. He had it all and it wasn't enough.
The great physician Albert Einstein once wrote in a letter to a friend, "It is strange to be known so universally, and yet to be so lonely." Now think of Solomon. He's there on his throne. He's wise. People come to him. He's universally known. He's wealthy. And all he can say is emptiness, vanity, futility.
In verse 4 through verse 11, he describes the monotony of life as he looks at different cycles of nature. He paints a very grim picture. You can hear cynicism and fatalism in his voice as he looks at the predictability of life. Listen to him. Verse 4, "One generation passes away, another generation comes, but the Earth abides forever." He's looking at the cycle of birth and death, like Hindus do. Just this one comes, one goes.
You know that today, this very day, about 350,000 babies will be born on the Earth. And on this day, this very day, about 147,000 people will die. So that today in hospitals around the world, in homes around the world, there's great joy. And in graveyards around the world, there's tears of sadness. And that happens day in and day out. And Solomon probably is thinking, now wait a minute. Something's really weird here. If we are God's crowning creation, we're so transient and yet the Earth just continues to abide forever, shouldn't it be the other way around?
It's humbling as you compare our species with other living things on the Earth or other objects on the Earth. Take the redwoods in northern California. Many of them started to grow about the time that Jesus was here. They were growing, becoming tall. They're still around. The mountains around this city have been there even longer. And when you die, they'll still be there.
And so we wonder, wait a minute. If I'm God's pinnacle of creation, why this constant death, birth, new generations asking the same questions? It almost seems unfair, doesn't it? Just when you get life wired, by the time you're older-- now I understand it, now I've got my bearings-- it's time to die. And then a new generation comes and asks exactly the same questions, on the same path, the same search.
Solomon saw that, bothered him. In verse 5, he's looking at the universe and noticing what he calls the monotony of the universe. The sun rises, the sun goes down, it hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes to the south, turns again to the north. The wind whirls about continually. Come March around here, we know that verse quite well. Comes again on its circuit, the rivers run into the sea, but the sea isn't full. To the place from which the rivers come, there they return again.
Solomon notices that the universe is organized and ordered, a predictable place. He looks at the planets, the sun, sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset over and over again. He notices the hydrological cycle, how the sea water evaporates into the air, the breezes blow that air inland. The air cools, the vapor condenses, it forms clouds. The moisture hits the ground in the form of rain or snow. It collects on the earth through rivulets and streams and rivers. It dumps the same moisture back into the ocean and it happens again and again.
To Solomon, it was monotony, boredom, bah humbug. To Jeremiah the prophet who observed the same thing, the orderliness of the heavens, the daily sunrise and sunset, to him it spoke of the faithfulness of God, the dependability of God. Isn't it amazing that you can get two people looking at exactly the same thing and they come up with totally different philosophies? The creationist looks at the world and says, what a wonderful design by a wonderful, personal God who loves me.
The evolutionist looks at it and says, oh, listen, it's just a wonderful accident. It's a coincidence. It just so happened that this stuff is like this. Really? You think so? You mean it just so happened that the Earth is 93 million miles away from a sun that is 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface? Why not as close as Venus? Well, we wouldn't live on it, would we? It'd be too hot. Why not as far away as Mars? Because even the warmest places on the Earth at night would have snow and ice collecting.
It just so happened that the Earth turns 365 and 1/3 times on its axis as it makes its yearly revolution around the Sun. Why? Why not 30 times? Because the Earth is spinning at about 1,000 miles an hour. If it was 100 miles an hour, days would be 10 times longer and the nights would be 10 times longer, and you'd have alternate periods of burning and freezing. Just so happened?
And it just so happened that the Earth is tilted 23 and 1/3 degrees on its axis toward the sun, so that we have that beautiful balance of four seasons? And it just so happens that our atmosphere has a perfect balance of oxygen to nitrogen, 79 to 20, with 1% of variant gases? What if it was 50-50, 50 oxygen, 50 nitrogen? Well, the first nut to light a match would-- [MAKES EXPLODING SOUND] blow the whole thing up.
[LAUGHTER]
Just a perfect balance for the biosphere to exist. It just so happens that the ocean are there present depth and dimensions. If the oceans were just half the size, we would have only a fourth of the rainfall on planet Earth and places like this would really be hurting.
If the oceans were just an eighth larger, we'd have four times the amount of rainfall on the Earth. The place would be a swamp. It didn't just so happen. Jeremiah would say, it just was so designed by an awesome creator. And every time I see the sunrise, Jeremiah would say, I think of the faithfulness of God, the dependability of God. That routine, says Jeremiah, would bring me comfort.
Solomon, on the other hand, would say, boring, predictable, monotonous. Why? Because Jeremiah viewed things above the sun. Solomon views things on the horizontal plane only, under the sun. Now if you look at life just purely under the sun, it is pretty routine, isn't it? We live by a lot of routines. Think of the routine of the housewife. Forget the hydrological cycle, think of the laundry cycle.
[LAUGHTER]
Think of it. You wash the clothes, you fold them, you put them away. We wear them, dirty, and put them in the laundry basket. You wash them, you fold them, and the cycle continues. The laundry basket is full and then empty, and then full. Think of the business person. Up in the morning, off to work, work eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours. Come home, eat, you get tired, go to bed. Six o'clock in the morning, drag your carcass out of bed, put clothes on it, put it in the car, send it off to work. Do that for 50 weeks, then you have two weeks off for vacation. Then you start the whole cycle all over again.
Boring, predictable, monotonous, if you only view life under the sun. Verse 8, and I can hear Solomon sighing in this verse, "All things are full of labor." We would say, what a drag. Man cannot express it. And here's a truth we can all relate to, "The eye is not satisfied with seeing. Nor is the ear filled with hearing."
That's why televisions and stereos will always sell. We want to see, we want to hear, our eyes to be filled, our ears to be filled. And that's why we want the latest, the newest. It happens to all of us. We don't want just the TV, we want that digital high resolution TV, big screen, wide screen. And not just stereo anymore, surround sound, and a holster filled with remote controls.
[LAUGHTER]
Master of the universe, ours at least. We want entertainment for the eyes, we want information for the ears. We want our news every half an hour. We want our music to go with us in the car, CDs, MP3-- or some, the boom box. [BEATBOXING]
Just get out of their way. The eye isn't satisfied, the ear isn't satisfied, that restlessness, labor that's built into humanity. In verse 11, he says, "There's no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come." How many of you remember, right now, the President of the United States 50 years ago? How many of you, right now, can think of four, five actors or actresses or singers 50 years ago?
Its tough. And when we're gone, we'll be forgotten. And Solomon who had it all saw his own mortality. He said, oh, it's so laborious. It's pathetic. Now I do want to say this, his observations were astute and some were very accurate, but his conclusions were wrong. He is looking around and seeing the emptiness, the futility. And for the most part, he's absolutely correct, but he's missing a key point. And the point is supplied by Paul the Apostle. Listen to it, comes out of Romans 8 verse 20.
He says, "For the creation was subjected to vanity, emptiness, futility. The creation was subjected to emptiness, not willingly, but because of him who subjected the same in hope." You know what he's saying, he's saying yes, you have a hole in your soul, and God put it there so that it would be filled with only eternal things.
And the way to find meaning in life is not in time, but it's in eternity. God built you, created you, fashioned you for the eternal. And that's why all of the temporal stuff will still leave you crying, what's the point of it all? You need an internal connection. You need a vertical, not just a horizontal axis in your life.
Perhaps God has been prodding some of you to reconsider the meaning of life, the purpose of life. Why are you here, where are you going? Those deep issues. If so, good. Follow this book. You'll find it one of the most relevant books ever. And I pray you'll come to the same conclusion that Solomon comes to at the end of this book.
So that Mark Twain philosophy, wouldn't it be great to start life at age 80 and then move to age 18? But it's never going to happen. Truth is, we start young and clueless. We haven't got a clue. And then we learn things and we think we have a clue. And then we think we have more clues than everybody else and more clues than our parents. And then as life goes on, we go, boy, this is getting pretty empty, pretty futile. And apart from God, it always will. Life on the horizontal can never satisfy. It just accentuates that big hole.
There was a Naval ensign, he was so thrilled. He just completed his first across the sea voyage. Now on this particular day, it was his chance to show his capability and take that ship back home. So he goes on the deck, starts barking out orders. The deck is buzzing with men and women who are following them. He breaks the record, forgetting the destroyer out of the channel and out to sea. He's proud, he's excited. Then a seaman walks up to him with a message from the captain.
What's odd is it it's a radio message from the captain. And it's even more bizarre as he reads it. My personal congratulations, you have completed the exercise according to the book at amazing speed. In your haste, however, you overlooked one of the unwritten rules, make sure the captain is aboard before getting underway. [LAUGHTER]
You know how many people live that way? A lot of people. Their ship is full speed ahead and God's not aboard. And they're out there to find the meaning of life, and they will always come up eventually with vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Just give it time. Some are smarter and they arrive at this conclusion earlier. And they make a smart choice to make a connection with God. And by the way, that's the point of it all.
Here's the answer to that question what is the point. The point is this. Life under the sun, merely S-U-N, is profitless. Life under the sun, S-O-N, has meaning. It's when you find your life in relationship to Jesus Christ, who came here. That's the eternal piece that's missing in that hole. Put Jesus in that hole and it's like-- [SIGHING]. Put anything else in that hole and you'll still be asking the question, what's the point?