Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Last week’s reading was the first two chapters of Ecclesiastes. Our reading tonight is chapters 5 and 6. Our reading next week will be the last chapter of Ecclesiastes. So our reading tonight is from the middle of the book. It is a continuation of the theme that was established right away at the beginning. We talked about this last week: All is vanity. All is vapor, totally vapor. It vanishes in the wind. Nothing lasts on this earth. Our reading tonight brought up several topics. I’d like to focus on just one of them: work. A common reaction that people have when they hear that all is vanity, whatever we might work for is not going to last, is that we might as well just give up. We might as well not get out of bed in the morning. We certainly shouldn’t work. We should just live for pleasure—doing whatever we think is going to be the most enjoyable. These are usually all kinds of leisurely activities that we otherwise do not normally pursue because we are busy doing our work. This, we suppose, would be a lot better if it is vain to build towers that reach to the heavens or try to make a name for ourselves by becoming great. But this desire to escape into pleasure is also vanity. Living this way does not provide the happiness that it is supposed to. Leisurely activities are great as a change of pace. Special food and drink is delicious when it is a treat. When these things become standard fare, we become bored and restless with these just like we do with anything else. There seems to be a general law in life that we build up a tolerance to stimulants in our using of them. Very often the idea of doing something is better than the actual doingof it. For example, I have known several different people who have gotten a house on a lake. Going to the lake is a lot of fun. Boating, fishing, waterskiing, and what have you all sound like lots of fun, and they are. The whole reason why a person might buy a house on a lake is because they’ve engaged in these activities and like them. They’d like to be able to pursue them more often and more easily. But in the cases that I know of, where a person buys a house on the lake, they eventually quit doing these activities. They are all fun for a while, but then they quit being as fun. Maybe these activities end up only being done when there’s company. The company enjoys it, because it’s different and fresh for them, but the people who live there could take it or leave it. So it seems as though people should be happier if they are not working and can devote themselves full time to their leisure activities, but that is not the case. Often respectable people will look down at those who don’t have jobs with the idea that they are undeserving of any pity. It is thought that those without jobs must be living it up, having a grand old time. Generally speaking, I do not think that this is the case. Life for these folks appears to be a seeking after one escape after another. They are looking to escape their boredom and misery but they cannot. All is vanity. This dream of letting yourself go, indulging in one treat after another, is supposed to make a person happy, but it does not. It is in this regard that I think Solomon’s words about work are instructive as an alternative to how we naturally think. He says, “The worker’s sleep is sweet, whether he eats little or eats much.” He also says, “It is beautiful to eat, to drink, and to look for good in all a person’s hard work which he has done under the sun.” Here we have some positive thoughts about work that come from a man whose general theme otherwise is that all is vanity. The fact is that we human beings were created to work. Even before the fall into sin God put Adam in the garden. He was to look after it and tend it. He was to exercise dominion over it and give names to all the animals. God did not set him upon a couch where he could be fed grapes and fanned and massaged. These things are good in their place, b