Reasons to Study Ecclesiastes
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
That was great, I appreciated Jonathan and David leading us in that singing this morning. Thank you guys for your excitement and zeal in singing as well. It was kind of interesting. Tuesday night at our staff meeting, we kind of talked about what I at least perceived to be a lack of enthusiasm and excitement overall in our singing over the last few weeks, at least the the weeks that I've been here. And then Wednesday night, at least in high school, your guys singing was very much overflowing and seeming like it was from a grateful heart and an excited heart to do that. And certainly that's the case this morning as well.
So again, as Jonathan prayed, I think God is honored by that. And I'm excited to be a part of worshiping along with you when you are expressing your heart of praise to God as well. Well, if you are on the read through the Bible in a year four sections plan like I am, and I had talked about that actually at the beginning of the year and it even made some of those handouts available, I know that some of you are, some of the staff are, and at least a few of the students are where you read an Old Testament passage and then a Psalm proverb or Ecclesiastes or something like that, that's a second section. and then you read a gospel section, and then you read something else that's not a gospel in the New Testament.
So two Old Testament and two New Testament sections a day. And that gets you through the Bible in a year. If you're on that plan, which I am, then sometime this week probably, if you're caught up, you read Psalm 90. And if you'd start by looking at Psalm 90 this morning, I think that'd be a good place for us to begin. Psalm 90 and just two verses here, verse 10, the years of our life are 70 or by reason of strength 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble.
They are soon gone and we fly away. Then down in verse 12, so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
You know, it's actually one of the regular messages of the Bible that life is hard and then you die real positive uplifting optimistic message that we oftentimes find throughout Scripture life is hard and Then you die and There is perhaps no other book of the Bible that is more clear that has that as its primary message. There's no other book that makes that so obvious than the book of Ecclesiastes. How many of you have read the book of Ecclesiastes before? At least some part of it or you've read, you know, you've read through it as you've been reading through the Bible or something like that. Ecclesiastes is an absolutely terrific and awesome book for as pessimistic and of course all of us good pessimists don't call ourselves pessimists we just call ourselves realists you know because it's not that we really are that negative it's that we just we just see things as they really are and we know that things as they really are are bad so that's not being pessimistic that's not taking something good and making it bad that's
just seeing it how it really is that's realist not pessimist but anyway The book of Ecclesiastes is one of those kind of realist books about life. Life is hard and then you die. Life is hard and you're trying to do a bunch of stuff and get all that you can right now in life and then you're gonna die. And you know what, whether you actually work hard or whether you're lazy, you're both gonna die. And whether you make a lot of money or you're poor all your life, you know what? Gonna die. And whether you look good or you're really ugly, gonna die. You might be a person, you might be an animal, know what? Gonna die.
Lots of bad things happen in life. Things that aren't fair. Good things happen to wicked bad people. Bad things, quote unquote bad things happen to who we think are righteous good people. And then you die. Really the message here is that life is full of inconsistencies and inequities and tough things and trials and pain and suffering and work, a major theme of the book of Ecclesiastes that life is full of labor and toil and work and expending energy and being tired and then you die. Wonderful message here in the book of Ecclesiastes. And it is that message and really there's more to it than just that. But it is that message and it is this book, the book of Ecclesiastes that I have been wanting to begin now for probably around three years.
It was probably around three years, not quite three years, but three years ago or so that I thought I was going to be done with Romans a little bit faster than I ended up being. And so I had already kind of started thinking about, you know, what I was going to preach next, what book of the Bible I wanted to preach next, those kinds of things. And we did finish Romans. We finished Romans actually quite some time ago. And then we did some other series. We did a series on Out of the Box. You may remember that, on evangelism. And we did a series on the Myth of Adolescence. And that was good. And then I didn't preach on Sundays for a while because I was preparing for the snow retreat and then I've been preaching in Big Church those messages over again.
So we haven't been doing anything consistent here on Sunday mornings for a while. Certainly haven't been in a book of the Bible. And so this morning we actually, after much ado, thankfully that ado is not about nothing but we have finally begun now as of eight minutes ago, our study of the book of Ecclesiastes. Now, this is a little better. This is actually the same picture as is on the front of your bulletin. You can see a little bit more detail there. Still not very great, but you can come up and look at it, it's a really great empty looking picture on my computer. If you can have that, I don't know, can you?
I don't know, but a great empty looking picture. The emptiness of life under the Sun, I guess if we're gonna have a subtitle for the Book of Ecclesiastes, that's probably what I'm thinking at this point, at least you know at the beginning of it, I would say Ecclesiastes, the emptiness of life under the Sun. And perhaps we would also say, and I'm not gonna stick with that background because it'd be tougher to see some of the things, the primary motto of the book of Ecclesiastes is all is vanity. And we're gonna look at that in detail in just a few minutes, but all is vanity keeps being good news. The emptiness of life under the Sun. Kind of big sigh at the end of that are all is vanity. It's almost like Eeyore wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. All is vanity, except for studying Ecclesiastes. I'm gonna throw that in there. That it is not... and there are some other things that we'll see that actually aren't vain or empty. But all is vanity except for studying Ecclesiastes.
or maybe even we would say the fruitfulness of studying emptiness. Hmm you can think about that one later today. Alright, so this morning what I want to do is give you six reasons why we should study Ecclesiastes. Six benefits I think of diving into this book for as negative of a message as I've kind of said it has, life is hard and then you die, life is tough and then you get some stuff and then you die. For as apparently negative as the message is there are some great benefits for us and I thought before giving really an introduction to the book that I would highlight some reasons why I think it's beneficial for us to study the book. First of all, I'm going to take my jacket off because it's time to get down to work.
I don't know if that was really dramatic or not, but first of all, the first reason I'm going to suggest that we should study the book of Ecclesiastes is because Ecclesiastes is in the Old Testament. Now, as for the the actual outline points, I'm just kind of summarizing them up on on the keynote presentation this morning. I'll give them to you a little bit fuller as I explain them. But number one, Ecclesiastes is an Old Testament book. That's kind of a duh thing. It didn't take me very long to come up with that principle. I was not fasting and praying to try to figure out what this reason would be. Oh, the Old Testament, right.
I did actually know that Ecclesiastes is an Old Testament book, but that's actually part of the reason Well, I think it would be beneficial for us to study it. One of the benefits of studying an Old Testament book here in 128 is that most of the teaching that I think we even get here at Grace Bible Church, most of the teaching that I've done in my own teaching life has been from the New Testament. Obviously, Pastor Zimmer is making his way through the New Testament. Those of you who listen to John MacArthur, he is preaching through the New Testament, we are New Testament people. I mean the New Testament is the book for the church and for followers of Christ after Christ's coming. The Old Testament is primarily about the Jews who were looking forward to Christ's coming and so Christ has already come and yet a passage like 2nd Timothy 3.16, you remember what that says? 2nd Timothy 3.16, all scripture is inspired by God and profitable. You've You've heard that passage a lot.
Do you realize what 2 Timothy 3.16 is calling scripture? It's calling the Old Testament scripture. The New Testament wasn't done being written at that point. Now I think the New Testament qualifies by way of application for that statement. But when Paul said all scripture is inspired and profitable for doctrine and reproof and correction and training and righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, thoroughly equipped for every good work. What Paul was thinking about was the Old Testament. He was thinking about the law and the prophets and the writings. And so studying the Old Testament is a beneficial thing.
I know most people are not really interested and excited to jump into Old Testament studies. There are a variety of reasons for that. I'm actually kind of nervous about studying through Ecclesiastes, and I'll mention more about that in a moment. But I think it's important for us to study something from the Old Testament because we get a lot of New Testament stuff. So this will kind of be a compliment to the rest of the teaching that you probably get in most of the places that you are. Second of all, why I think Ecclesiastes is a good book to study in the Old Testament is because I think it's more manageable than studying like Isaiah at 60 chapters.
I mean, if it took me three plus years to get through Romans at 16 chapters, I mean, what do you think Jeremiah or Isaiah or even Genesis, Genesis, 50 chapters of the, you know, creation and fall, just the first 11 chapters, let alone the history of 12 through 50. I mean, it goes on and on and on. There's just so much stuff in the Old Testament and it scares me. And so, not to mention the fact that it's a manageable size, but I think the content of Ecclesiastes is something that's going to probably be easier to grasp for us than some of the prophetic language. I know some of you have read, you know, the major and minor prophets, or you finished reading that this year, and some of the stuff in there is not just scary, it's weird.
And it can be really hard to understand and hard to explain, and I'm not ready to teach through that just yet. So someday, I mean, obviously, that's part of the Old Testament and therefore profitable for teaching and reproof and correction, all those things as well. I'm just not that confident in my ability to grasp and then explain it yet. I think Ecclesiastes is a manageable size, as well as it's kind of like a letter. Now it's not a letter, we'll talk about the genre, what kind of writing Ecclesiastes is maybe next week, but it's closer to what we're familiar with with most of the New Testament things. So the last reason I think for studying the Old Testament, it will let us practice our Hebrew.
And I'm very excited about that. I've got some Hebrew words to share with you this morning, one of which we've already talked about, and it's a fun one to say. So honestly, it will let us practice our Hebrew. I more mean me. That's true. But I'm including us all together. We'll be a family of Hebrewites here, okay, of working on another language, and that'll be good times, okay? Now, for all of that said, Ecclesiastes is still a notoriously difficult book.
It has not only some pessimism in it some negativity in it, it has some statements that I think at least when you take them out of context seem to actually contradict with some other passages of Scripture and some other doctrines and teaching in the rest of the Bible. Just one example, turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 3.
It's just one example of something that out of context can you know seem to not really make sense and seem to not really even be part of the Bible. Ecclesiastes chapter 3 look down at verse 19. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same.
As one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath and man has no advantage over the beasts for all his vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust and to dust all return. Now, I mean, my mama told me that, like, being a human was better and had some advantages over being an animal. Now, obviously, you know, the more that we grow up, the more sometimes we think, you know, I wish I could be a cat. Because cats have it easy. You know, they just sleep all day long and they don't have, you know, problems in life. And so occasionally maybe that thought runs through our minds or maybe it's some other animal.
And obviously there are times when we're compared to animals. I've been compared to a pink ox if such a thing actually existed. But obviously there are similarities, but humans and animals are different. And so at first reading it looks like humans, beasts, I mean that just kind of makes it even worse. I mean animals is like the nice term, but beasts, the ugly beasts are, we're just like them.
some of us are more like them probably than others, but humans and animals, they die and they all go to the same place. Now what is that place? Does that mean that all animals go to heaven? Does that mean that there is no heaven? Does that negate heaven and hell and say that basically once you stop living on this earth that there is no afterlife? Or does that mean that animals are being saved and not saved as well and you know so on and so forth? Obviously we know from the rest of scripture that there are some clear answers to that, but on the surface, and I'm not going to answer it until we get to chapter 3, but on the surface it kind of appears like there are some different kind of statements than we're used to. And Ecclesiastes is filled with those kinds of things.
Humans and animals, by the way, they do both die and their physical bodies decompose, but there's more to it than that. There's actually a running debate among Jews concerning whether or not to recognize Ecclesiastes as part of the Old Testament canon. I mean, based on some of the weirdness and the pessimism and the hedonism, you know Solomon seeking life and pleasure, and the materialism seeking life in things and stuff, let alone the pessimism and some of that, you know some have questioned if Ecclesiastes even deserves to be a part of the Bible, whether it's really even inspired or not. I mean is this the kind of message God is trying to give us? Some people have questioned that. Others have suggested that only part of Ecclesiastes is inspired. Well of course that's always tough. I mean, how do you figure out what is and what isn't? I mean, there's not like a verse that says, okay, this verse is, this verse isn't. But those people typically think that almost all of Ecclesiastes has not inspired,
expired, is not inspired except for the final call to fear God and keep his commandments. They say, well, that's inspired, but pretty much the rest of it isn't. And then obviously there are other people who think that the whole book of Ecclesiastes inspired and I believe that and I believe that can be demonstrated not only in as we continue to introduce the book but as we go through it. It's still interesting though in the summer and fall of 1526 Martin Luther our good Protestant Reformation buddy in 1526 Luther took up the challenge to lecture on the book of Ecclesiastes to a small group of students who had remained in Wittenberg and he wrote a letter to a friend and this is what he said, Solomon the preacher is giving me a hard time as though he begrudged anyone lecturing on him, but he must yield and I think that's a great description. Ecclesiastes is tough, there are some hard things in it as though Solomon was not interested in having any of us understand his message.
That's the greatest way to appear like a genius is to speak so that nobody can understand you, and then they conclude, oh, he must be a genius, or really dumb. But that's not the case with Solomon. But he must yield, and I'm praying for our illumination as to some of the truths here in the book of Ecclesiastes, and I think it'll be a beneficial study for us. And so the first reason I think we should study Ecclesiastes is because it's from the Old Testament. Number I think the second reason to study Ecclesiastes is because Ecclesiastes was written by a preacher, and you can't beat that. At least I don't think you can beat that. And turn back to Ecclesiastes chapter 1, and right there starting out, chapter 1 verse 1, the words of the preacher. It's good stuff, the words of the preacher. Now perhaps this is more of a personal reason for me than for you.
Maybe you're not necessarily good friends with a lot of preachers, and so being from a preacher is not really encouraging to you, but I like it so there, and I'm including it in a reason why we should study it. Being a preacher and all, that's kind of a good thing. The word for preacher is pronounced Koh-h-leth. That's how you say the Hebrew word, and that's how it looks in Hebrew. Koh-h-leth means preacher. It's a difficult word to translate. Part of the reason is because whoever this preacher was, and we'll talk more about that next week, whoever this preacher was, he was probably not having the same kind of function like Pastor Zimmer has. I mean obviously there were no churches and there were definitely then no church buildings and Israel did not worship in the same way where they got together and everybody took out their own copy of God's Word because they didn't have it. A preacher was a little bit different at that point in time and so the word co-haleth is a little bit difficult for us to translate. It's a rare term. Co-haleth
is a rare term. It's actually only found in the book of Ecclesiastes. It's not found anywhere else in the entire Old Testament. It comes from the verb cahal, and cahal means to convene an assembly. That is to assemble a group of people together to do something with them, probably more than anything else to then teach them. So cahal is to assemble together, to collect some people together to group them all, gather them up, and then teach them. And so the the noun idea, kohaleth, is then maybe we would say one who assembles a group to teach them. And that's kind of what a preacher is. So I mean, again, preacher is a reasonable translation. Where we get the name of the book Ecclesiastes is from the fact that the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, translates koh-hel-eth as Ecclesiastes.
And that's pretty much how you would say it in Greek. And that actually, for those of you who know anything about some Greek, ekklesia is the word for what? Church. the church are a group of gathered people, right? And so Ecclesiastes, or Ecclesiastes is probably more how you would say it in Greek, is the idea of one who is gathering people together. And so that's obviously then where we get the English name Ecclesiastes comes from the Greek translation of this Hebrew word kohileth, meaning preacher or one who gathers together a group of people. Now again, like I said, his preaching work is probably not exactly the same as our preacher's work today, leading some people to translate it as other things.
Any of you have an NIV with you here this morning? Okay, just a couple have an NIV. The NIV translates it as teacher, the words of the teacher rather than preacher. Some have suggested professor.
have even suggested words of the philosopher or sage and you can kind of picture you know a philosopher gathering a group of people maybe a smaller group of people together and kind of teaching them wisdom and that's definitely what Solomon is doing so all those are are fair ideas of what coheleth means preacher teacher professor a philosopher sage those kinds of things now I know know that a lot of you were wondering and so you know I did my best to make sure that I looked up how the message translates it and Ecclesiastes 1-1 in the message translates it as follows. These are the words of the questor and I didn't even know that was a word and so I had to look up that word to see what means it actually is a word. I'd never heard it before, but it refers to a seeker or one who's on a quest. So a quester is one who is seeking or searching out something by inquiry or by experiment or so on and so forth, seeking after the truth. So the words of the quester. And you know, on one hand, that actually is a good explanation of what Solomon does throughout the book of Ecclesiastes.
It is a good description of what's happening. I mean, he is testing different things to see if they bring meaning to life. And so he is on a quest for the meaning and purpose and value of life, but that's a bad translation of Kohlath. So I mean, it's a good description perhaps of him, but it's not a good translation of this word preacher. It's not just one who is seeking, but one basically who has sought enough to then have something to say about it, and who is gathering a group of people together to explain to them what it is that he wanted to say. I mean, with all that said, almost every major translation, the ESV, the NAS, the New King James, the King James, almost all of them translate Kohileth as the word preacher. And so it's found at the beginning and at the end of the book. In verse 1, the words of the preacher, and then almost at the very end, but definitely in the last chapter, chapter 12 verse 9, in addition to being a wise man, the preacher also taught the people knowledge and he pondered, searched out and arranged
many proverbs. The preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly. Now honestly that's part of why I like this book as well is because I I like gathering together a group of people and teaching. I mean I think that that's what God has called me to do and what he has gifted me to do so I feel some kind of affinity with this preacher. I like writing and gathering you know words of truth and putting them down on a on a piece of paper or on a web blog correctly and in a delightful way. I mean that's something that makes me happy. That doesn't make a lot of people happy to put words down in order in a sentence or paragraph that you know is communicating clearly and maybe delightfully. That doesn't excite most people but for some reason I mean I like that now. So again I kind of like this book for that reason. Now there's one more word that I saw somebody use to translate coheleth rather than preacher or any of the other ones that I've mentioned, and maybe you've heard this word before, maybe you haven't, it's the word
pundit. And I'm going to tell you what the word pundit means. I think pundit is a fun word to say, if nothing else. Pundit. P-U-N-D-I-T. You spell it just like it sounds. Pundit. Now a pundit is learned man or a learned person, a pundit is someone who has authority on a particular subject that they're going to speak on. That's what a pundit is or at least that's what a pundit claims to be. For all of you cable news watchers, and I know there's a lot of you out there so don't try to hide it okay, for all of you cable news watchers you know for example you can't watch Fox News much more than a couple minutes before they've got some pundit on there giving his or her authoritative opinion about something. Now most of the pundits today really don't have very much knowledge or really authority about what they're speaking on. They just act like it. So even though the word Pundit means a learned person, one who can speak with authority on a subject.
A lot of people claim to be pundits who don't necessarily have any authority or any wisdom or anything to share of any significance at all. Enter the world of the blogdom. Blog and dumb, if you will. The world of web bloggers. And there are so many people now who have the ability to put their empty thoughts and vain thoughts up onto the web for everyone to read and see, or at least everyone who knows about that particular site. We all, who are web bloggers, act like pundits in that we act like we're authorities on a subject and it's kind of cool. It used to be that publishers were concerned about you actually having something to say before they would like put your words out for somebody else to read.
Like they were interested in making a profit and you make a profit not by putting out dribble and worthless information that's not written very well. But now everybody can publish their stuff out on the internet for people to read. So we have all kinds of pundits today and they're not always really that helpful. But this particular pundit, maybe we would use the word pundit to translate kohaleth, one who is speaking with authority, one who gathers people together to teach them wisdom. Preacher is a good translation. Pundit is a good translation. For whatever else we would say, I like the fact that Ecclesiastes is by a preacher.
And I think that's a good reason for us to study it. But that leads us to the third element is that this pundit is no punk pundit. Okay? And we will look more at specifically the author of Ecclesiastes next Sunday morning. But studying the book of Ecclesiastes is not going to be a fruitless endeavor because this is not somebody who is presenting themselves as an authority, presenting themselves with wisdom who actually has done. is not a person who was incapable of making some wise and discerning, insightful comments about life.
We will actually find that God's commentary on this preacher was that this preacher was the wisest man who ever lived. Now we're going to have to and we're going to have to ask the question and deal with the issue of how the wisest man who ever lived made some of the decisions that he did, you would have thought that someone with wisdom would have made some better life choices. Nevertheless, God says he was the wisest one to ever live, obviously, outside of Jesus Christ himself. This man had the greatest political power, probably the greatest material riches, and the most divine given wisdom to be able to explain to us life. He was qualified beyond any other person probably to tell us about the meaning of life and how to have a proper philosophy of life. Ecclesiastes is the tale of this man's searching, of his experimenting, of his groping to find meaning in life. And again this is a preacher who had some experience to to share and to give to us.
He didn't do his searching and his experimenting in private. He didn't do it in some library cubicle all by himself in some corner. He didn't do it in some secluded den in his palace. He did it in the quote-unquote University of Life.
He threw himself into life to try to identify what would give it meaning And what was the purpose of life? And he threw himself into that. And so, this guy is someone we should listen to. He's not a punk pundit. Someone who claims to have authority but has no authority. Someone who claims to have wisdom but has none. This is a guy who we should listen to. And again, God's commentary on this man was that he was the wisest man who ever lived. And therefore we ought to pay attention to what he has to say. It is always good to get wisdom from somebody who has some experience. I mean very rarely do we ask somebody who has never done what we're about ready to do and ask them to tell us how to do it, right? That just doesn't even make sense. I mean you ask somebody who's been there, done that. That could probably also be a good subtitle for the book of Ecclesiastes, been there, done that, and died. You might throw that at the very end, but the preacher had been there and done that, and so we should pay attention again to what
he has to say. Now you would kind of think that then the best kind of people to get this message, the people who would most kind of relate to the preacher are some people who had also been there and done that and found it to be fruitless. You would kind of think that it was, you know, people who had gone out into life and been in the University of Life and fell on the School of Hard Knocks. I mean, how many different cliches can we get in there? The School of Hard Knocks, you know, they had been experiencing all the pain and the difficulty in the trials and so forth and now then you know the preacher comes in and says life is worthless and here's the answer. You'd kind of think that people who could relate to him who had experienced some of that difficulty would be the ones that he wrote for and that's actually not the case. Now it leads us to the fourth reason why I think we should study Ecclesiastes because Ecclesiastes was written for youth.
Ecclesiastes was written for young people. I mean that's such a huge and important part about why we should study Ecclesiastes. Now we've talked about this word before, the word bah-hoor. You remember that? In our four Old Testament words for youth or young people, bah-hoor was one of them. You got to get that guttural kind of snot sound in the back of your throat, you know, the nasal drippage sound, bah-hoor, to say that right. But this book was written for youth. Multiple places as I talk about it, but two that I'll just point out to you in chapter 11. Rejoice, O young man in your youth and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Then chapter 12 verse 1, remember also your Creator in the days of your youth. The preacher here is trying to get the attention of you.
He is trying to get attention from young people who then could avoid the mistakes and who at least could enter into some of the critical decision-making years of their life and not need to learn the hard way for everything. It is true. Some people got to learn the hard way. I guess I'm the kind of guy that has to find out for his self. Thank you to the wonderful theologians of DC Talk. Nevertheless, you guys realize that you don't always have to learn everything the hard way. Some people don't get that, but it is true. And the preacher's goal here is to try to communicate to young people to get the message while they're young so that they can enjoy their life as much as one can enjoy life without seeking for life in all the wrong places. Well the cliches just keep coming out. But don't miss this. We should study cliches because he's telling us young man, young women in your youth, get the message now and learn how to think about life correctly now and realize that your life is lived before God now.
Don't seek for meaning and satisfaction in life in a bunch of other things before you get there. Again, even though the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes had spirit had experienced, and this is kind of contradictory, a full empty life. I mean, can you say that? Who cares? He had experienced the fullness of an empty life. He had experienced an empty life to the completist that you could, which I mean, zero times anything is always zero, But, I mean, he had experienced zero times infinity, or at least zero times as much as a human could possibly do, and he still came out to find that it was zero. Even though he had experienced and he had lived this empty life to its fullest, he wants people who have not yet made some of those decisions and who are still at the beginning of their life to get it now by the direction that they should go. Well that leads us to the fifth reason for studying the book of Ecclesiastes, and that is very simply Ecclesiastes was written to describe emptiness of life under the Sun. That is the message of
the book of Ecclesiastes. Life is completely empty under the Sun. The word that is used over and over and over again in the book of Ecclesiastes is the Hebrew word hebel, the Hebrew word hebel. Look at chapter 1 verse 2. Vanity of vanities says the preacher. Vanity vanities, all is vanity. 38 times in 12 chapters, the preacher uses the Hebrew word hebel, referring to vanity or emptiness or futility. 38 stinking times. In Psalms, the book of Psalms, with 150 Psalms, it's only used 10 times. In In the book of Jeremiah with 52 chapters, it's only used 10 times. Those are the closest that we get. The word is only used 78 total times in the whole Old Testament, and 38 of them are in this 12-chapter book by the preacher, vanity, hebel, of vanities.
All is hebel. All is vanity. the word, Habel, in its literal usage refers to a vapor or breath. Some have even translated maybe as steam. And of course, we're familiar with the passage in the New Testament that says, life is as a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. And so in its literal usage, Habel referred to this air or breath or vapor or steam, but it has a figurative usage to describe things that are evanescent or unsubstantial, things that are worthless or empty, and obviously then how most translations choose to do it, vain. Life is vain. Life is empty. Whatever you search for and try to grasp, it's empty.
And in that sense, the preacher actually sounds like he was living today. Because this is exactly the cry of modern people who are looking for life in all the wrong places, who think that money or power or prestige or popularity or whatever else is going to bring them satisfaction to life. You know what? It's empty. I don't care what you come up with. empty. You're going to spend your life trying to find meaning and satisfaction.
If you're spending it trying to find life and satisfaction here on this planet under the Sun, it's not going to happen. I don't care what it is that you're seeking. Life is a perpetual trying to find a needle in a haystack and you won't do it. Life is a cruel game that you cannot win and that also hurts to lose. Life is like being on a stationary bike and trying to actually go somewhere and peddling as hard as you possibly can and staying in the exact same place. I mean life is like dipping your spoon into an empty cereal bowl hoping to find, you know, frosted mini wheat's bite size, but continuing to dip your spoon into an empty bowl and bring it back to your mouth and thinking that that's gonna satisfy your hunger. That's what life is like under the Sun. It is all vanity. There's no meaning. There's no real joy. There is no happiness. There's no satisfaction in life under the Sun in and of itself. You're not gonna find it.
The sad thing is is that I know some of you don't believe that. You would never say it, right? You would never say that you're looking for life in money. But based on your dreams and your aspirations and your goals for your education and what job you're gonna have, is it not to get money so that you can have better toys or so that you can retire early or whatever else it is? Or do you think life is in having lots of friends and having them think that You're cool.
And so giving your life to make sure that you're wearing the right thing and that you're hanging with the right people and that you're using the right words. I mean, do you think life is in friends? Do you think life is in money? Do you think life is in education and being smart? You know, if I just know enough information, hey, guess what, you're gonna die. No matter how smart and brainy you are, that is not gonna keep you from dying. No matter how good you look, and some of us look good, you're gonna die. No matter how much money you have, you can't take it with you. You're going to die. And you can seek for happiness and satisfaction in whatever this world has to offer, life under the sun, and you will not find it.
I was watching Larry King Live this past week, and he maybe was even a week or so ago, must have been about two weeks ago, a week and a half or so ago, and he had a panel of people on, is there life after death? And they had, MacArthur was on, they had a rabbi and a priest.
I know that sounds like a joke, but they had a rabbi and a priest and an atheist. They did actually have an atheist on. That was just so amazing to me, this atheist comments about explaining why life is valuable and then you die and that's it. And I just, I was very sad for how deluded she was to think that she was going to find meaning in life and then die and that's it. And yet that's what she tried to maintain. You know what, life is awful, life is hard, life is bad and you can't do anything about it. You realize that part as well, that's part of the emptiness and the futility of it. It's hard and you can't change it.
You cannot make straight what is crooked. You're not going to change any of that. There are two inseparable facts about human life. And it's not death and taxes. It's death and your inability to control your life. That's why, again, Ecclesiastes, I think is so beneficial for us. I think we have a lot of people even in our ministry who are frustrated with life because they're trying to be in control of it. And it's not going the way that they want. And so they're blaming themselves for life not going the way that you want because you think you can control how it goes and you can't. You cannot. You cannot change certain things in your life.
Never will be able to do that. Look over to Ecclesiastes chapter nine. Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 11. Again, I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge.
Thanks, that's good times. But time and chance happen to them all and then they die. Now, if you don't think that's somewhat pessimistic, then you need to look up what pessimism means, probably. And obviously, this is not meant to say that smart people never get good grades on the test, or that, you know, some of the other things, or that, you know, strong people don't ever win the fight, but it is meant to say that that's not a guarantee. Nothing in life is a guarantee. Do you get that? Nothing in life under the sun is guaranteed for you. And there will be some things, it appears like you can change, and there will be many things which are completely out of your control.
And you're going to be frustrated if your philosophy of life says, I can control my life. I am the captain of my own ship. I am the master of my own destiny. I will decide how I'm going to go and what I'm going to do, and you will be frustrated and your life again will be filled with emptiness, meaninglessness and futility. Life is full of trouble and then you die. He ends the book. Chapter 12 verse 8, which is basically the same thing. Vanity of vanity says the preacher. All is vanity. I would actually encourage you guys this week to read through the book of Ecclesiastes and mark every time you see the word vanity or whatever your Bible translates it as, to mark every time you see vanity and to mark every time you see the phrase under the sun.
I think you'd find that a very profitable discussion, and that's definitely the major theme of the book of Ecclesiastes, okay? Well, that brings us to number six. bad news as I've just given you, part of the point of Ecclesiastes is to say that meaning can be had. There is a purpose and a meaning for life, but it is not under the sun. It is God himself. God is the only one who can give meaning and purpose. In spite of the inequities and the inconsistencies and even sometimes Sometimes the seeming absurdities of life, God is there. God gives meaning. The preacher concludes, God is the only one who gives joy and happiness that lasts.
Nothing on this earth can make a man's heart happy. Nothing can do that. And I tell you what, the preacher's assessment of life is dead on and it is dependable. You can take it to the bank that this inspired book written by the wisest man who ever lived is right on, meaning, satisfaction, and purpose of life. The only way you can get through life, honestly, I don't know how non-Christians do it, how non-believers in God do it, why they literally don't kill themselves at some point in time because of how miserable and how not in control of life they are.
is the only one who makes it worth living. And so we'll see that. There's actually a couple different passages that specifically talk about God giving joy, and you can look those up at a later time. The conclusion this morning, three things. Ecclesiastes will teach us we have no reason to be proud, you're not that great and you're gonna die. We have no reason to be proud. We should and even can enjoy life as a gift of God. The difference-maker is our philosophy of life. That's what he's trying to give us. A philosophy of life that enables us to enjoy life as a gift from God. And then third, we must revere God. And I think That's the ultimate message.
It's the preacher's own conclusion. The end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God. And keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. Now that's about as simple as it could get. That life has no meaning outside of God.
And that the whole duty of man is to fear God that is properly reverence and worship Him and to obey Him. That's what it's all about. It doesn't matter what clothes you have, what car you drive, what job you hold. It doesn't matter how many people know about you, how many people read your web blog, how many people think you're cool, because you're gonna die. And there is actually another life after the one under the sun. And if you spend your life on this planet trying to get all that you can and forget about the one to come, you will actually lose both. You'll actually have no life here. It will be empty and you'll have no life in the future as well. Father help us as we have begun our study of Ecclesiastes this morning help us to to begin to wrestle with some of the the pursuits and loves in our own hearts. Again, though we wouldn't say that we have other loves than you, we wouldn't say that we're seeking for life and joy and happiness and other things than you, but our lives betray us. And they kind of
are tattletales on us that we actually were seeking for a lot of gusto under the sun and it's just empty. Help especially for those who are younger in this room to get that message now and not need to waste these precious and beneficial years that they have rather instead cause them to fear you, to have great reverence for you, to live their lives before you and in that give them the greatest joy, a supernatural eternal joy that can't be taken away no matter what the circumstances of their life are. We pray all this in Christ's name, who is the one who makes that possible for us we know. Amen.
