“The Vanity of This Life”

I. Introduction
A. Beginning a rotating series on Ecclesiastes
B. Read Ecclesiastes 1:1-18
C. When you’re young, all this sounds so weird and depressing. When you’re old, it is SO encouraging!
1. It makes you realize that God knows our struggles!
2. The Spirit inspired these words to give us expression to our own feelings of emptiness as we age, speaking so powerfully to the frustrations so many feel as they get closer to the end of life.
3. There have been times when God used Ecclesiastes to keep me going.
D. There are seasons of life, just as there are seasons of the year. And each season has its characteristic struggles and each its virtues.
1. In the springtime of life, and at the beginning of the summer, it seems like life will go on forever and the things that we can do unlimited.
2. But as the summer of life begins to wind down, and fall begins, it becomes apparent that the end of the warm weather is near. You realize that you have lived over half your life and that from this point on things are moving downhill, not up: your strength is fading, your eyesight is fading, your mental abilities may even show signs of beginning to fade.
E. And when you reach the stage where you’ve lived a long time and you know the end of coming, you begin to see things you never saw before. And that’s what this book is all about.
1. You’re not going to really get Ecclesiastes unless you remember it was written by someone who had lived a long time and was coming to the end of his years.
2. First of all, when you’ve been around long enough you notice more and more of the patterns of life. You’ve seen it all. You know how things work. You know where the potholes are.
3. Second, old people have experienced a lot of pain, a lot of disappointment, a lot of failure, a lot of sin. Their hearts have been broken many times.
4. And you get weary. You’ve labored your whole life and now you just feel tired.
5. And as you labor long enough and hard enough and go through enough struggles, and taste enough of life's bitternesses, you get a little bit disenchanted with life in this world.
6. There is a certain sadness involved in this season of life, the sadness of realizing that life is a lot shorter than you thought, the sadness of realizing that you haven't gotten many things done that you really wanted to do, the sadness of realizing that it’s not going to go on forever, and the sadness of realizing that even the hopes that were realized, even the glorious things you were able to see and experience did not satisfy in any permanent sense.
7. In each season you can see some things more clearly than in the other seasons.
a. In old age, you can most easily see the futility of life.
b. And everyone needs to learn that lesson!
F. One of the most famous verses of Ecclesiastes is 12:1 "Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth.”
1. It is not just for old people, though it is written from the perspective of an old person.
2. Ecclesiastes tells how to live as a young person in light of the changes that are coming as we age.
3. The people who handle old age best are the ones who were ready for it.
4. When we refuse to face painful realities, we cannot prepare for them, or get ourselves ready for it.
5. And so when the day comes you have no equipment to deal with it.
6. Dicken’s Christmas Carol: the ghost of Christmas future takes Ebenezer Scrooge to his grave
a. Ecclesiastes is a visit to your future: There you are as an old person!
b. Go to an old folks home and look at those old frail people. That’s your future!
c. Live life today with that day in mind!
d. “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” Galatians 6:7–8
G. Now before we dive any further into the dark truths of Ecclesiastes, I want to say a few things about its place in the Bible, in the gospel, and in our lives.
1. Ecclesiastes doesn’t tell the whole story, but it tells us an important part of the story. It’s dark but it’s true. And it’s truth is important. It is depressing without the glorious good news of Christ. But the darkness of this truth makes the gospel all the more beautiful. That’s why it’s here.
2. Resurrection follows death: It doesn’t come as the apex of a glorious journey upward. Before we’re going up, we’re going down.
a. Let’s not be like the foolish disciples who wouldn’t listen when Jesus kept telling them that the cross was coming. They weren’t ready to deal with it when it came because it was too depressing to think about ahead of time.
(1) Jesus in Gethsemane faced the pain of death then, so that when the time came for the cross, He was ready for it.
(2) But the disciples who would not face the fact that Jesus was going to die, were asleep while Jesus was getting ready for the day of trial.
(3) Jesus urged them to pray so that they might not fall into temptation, but they only slept, because His death was too painful for them to face.
b. As God's word, Ecclesiastes presents to us the grim side of life on this earth. And there is a grim side. And we must pay attention to that grim side, lest we fail to grasp the lessons that God has for us in it. You can’t understand the glory of resurrection until you grasp the reality of dying.
3. Ecclesiastes isn’t the end of the story.
a. As Jesus said, referring to Himself, “Someone greater than Solomon is here.”
b. Romans 8:20-21 “The creation was subjected to futility [= vanity], not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
c. That’s where we’re going. But it’s not here, and it’s not now.
d. One of the things you realize later in life, as you begin the experience the discouragements of aging, is that a lot of the hope you felt in life was not hope in heaven, but was misplaced in this life. You were expecting a certain heavenness out of this earth. We have trouble letting heaven be heaven and earth be earth. And Ecclesiastes helps us to remember that earth is not heaven.
e. Old age is when your heart gets broken to the extent that you’ve been in love with this life.
II. Explanation of Ecclesiastes 1:1-18 “All is vanity!”
A. What’s the value of a lifetime of hard work?
1. 3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
B. Nothing changes! You’re not really improving anything by doing all this work.
1. 5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. 7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. 9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
a. Everything stays the same. We just keep driving around in circles!
b. You spend your whole life trying to fix the world, and when you get to the end, nothing’s changed! You’re no closer to the goal than when you began! 15 “What is crooked cannot be made straight, & what is lacking cannot be counted.”
C. Not only this, but everything we do gets forgotten: 4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 11 There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.
1. Man is all concerned about leaving his name on the earth. He wants to be remembered when he is gone, he wants to accomplish something to preserve his name on the earth. That is what the tower of Babel was all about.
D. Not only does your work not change the world, not only does it get forgotten, but it doesn’t even satisfy your own soul: 8 “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”
E. The observations made here in Eccl.1 are not the result of clinical depression, but of wise and careful analysis.
1. 13 I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun...16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, & my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 I applied my heart to know wisdom...”
2. And the wise, well-reasoned, carefully-thought-out conclusion is:
a. “It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.”
b. “Behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind”
III. Conclusion
A. The vanity of this life is God's way of lovingly nudging toward eternity, of gently redirecting our minds from this world to the next, of weaning us away from having our identity here and putting our identity with Christ in heaven.
1. Each thing that goes wrong, each frustration, each injustice we experience, each effort which yields no benefit, each time we do something good but fail to get credit for it is a whisper from God, a kind and loving whisper that our days are numbered, that this earth is not our home, and that a glorious future is being prepared for us.
2. By God’s grace, as we get older, the things of this world grow more and more dim, and the things of the next world grow increasingly clear.
3. On one level, we don't especially want our minds redirected to eternity, we would just as soon never grow old and stay here forever. But in love God knows that is not what is best for us.
4. And so He makes the futilities of this life our classroom for eternity. Every day we are reminded that this existence isn't going to last forever.
B. The futility is a gift of God. The imperfection and disintegration is part of His good and perfect plan.
1. 1Cor 3:21-23 “So then let no one boast in men. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ; and Christ belongs to God.”
2. Death belongs to you! Death has been made your servant, not your enemy!
3. And if death is for you, then so is futility.
C. Paul says in Col. 3:1-4 "If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
1. This earth is all vanity! But we’re not supposed to focus on this earth! We’re supposed to focus on the things above.
2. And the things above are far better!