WWUTT 1659 Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanity (Ecclesiastes 1:1-11)

The Meaninglessness of Life Apart from God

Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity, the preacher says in the book of Ecclesiastes. Is there any meaning and purpose in life? There is, and we find it only in Jesus Christ when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of God. We study a New Testament book on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and then our Q &A on Friday.

With our study in Ecclesiastes, here's Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome. Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1. We're going to begin here by reading verses 1 through 11 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. This is the Word of the Lord. 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 advantage does man have in all his labor, in which he labors under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever.

Also the sun rises and the sun sets, and hastening to its place, it rises there again. Going toward the south, then circling toward the north, the wind goes circling along, and on its circular courses the wind returns.

All the rivers go into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers go, there they continually go. All things are wearisome. Man is not able to speak of it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing.

That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, see this, it is new?

Already it has been for ages which were before us. There is no remembrance of earlier things, and also of the later things which will be. There will be for them no remembrance, among those who will come later still.

And to help me talk through what I have just read out of Ecclesiastes, once again, Becky Hughes. Hi, everybody. Who's not usually with me whenever I do the Bible study, but she's with me today. Yes. Because we're recording both this and the Friday episode.

Mm-hmm. You get a double dose of me. So Ecclesiastes chapter one. Last week we began with an introduction to Ecclesiastes, just kind of did an overview of the book. We have established that it's Solomon that is speaking here.

Vanity Means Emptiness, Not Self-Admiration

And of all that he has been given by God, he's looking out over everything and he sees that it's just all empty. It's worthless. You have the words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

And he says in verse two, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Now what do you think of when we use that word vanity? What comes to mind? Me. That's right. It's just me.

It's all about me. Narcissism is usually. Yes. Yeah. Like I started with double dose of me. That's right. That's right. There you go. Vanity of vanities.

I was trying to keep with the theme. That's right. You look in the mirror and it's, you know, yeah, just admiring yourself. I want all this. I deserve all this. It's today's culture really. Right. We call that vain.

There's the old song, you're so vain. You probably think this song is about you. That's right. I think it's the first time we did a duet.

That wasn't even the best duet. No, I was not even trying.

When you are doing your hair or your makeup, a lady might sit at a vanity, right? So we typically think of that word as being all about me and puffing ourselves up and admiring ourselves and egotism and all that other kind of thing.

The word here rightly applied really means emptiness. So vain means it's worthless. Oh, I see. It doesn't have any real value to it. So the words of the preacher, he's looking out and he sees that everything is vanity.

All is vanity. What advantage does man have in all his labor in which he labors under the sun? What's the point? Why do it? What do I get from this? So he's seeing that there's no real value in any of it.

Now, as we go on in Ecclesiastes

Well, I would think that you're doing it in vain.

Just for yourself? Yeah. Right. That's the way that, but for that reason, that's how that word has become applied. Okay. When it's just for yourself, right? Because it's not for anything else.

Well, I think of doing something in vain means like you've done all this work and what's the outcome? It all falls apart. You know, like I've done, I've just done that in vain, you know, like there is no, there's no point to it.

Yeah. So, I mean, that goes with what you're saying. Right. Right. About emptiness. Yeah.

Emptiness. Emptiness. Yeah. It's just nothing for no reason. Yeah. Because like the apostle Paul would say to the Thessalonians or to the Corinthians, he said, you know, if, has our preaching been in vain?

Yes. Right. And so immediately we would think of, you know, as Paul saying, has this preaching all been just for me? Has it all been for myself? Right. Which he knows it hasn't been. So the application of that is more directly, it's not just empty.

There's a reason for this. The Lord says in Isaiah 55, my word will not return to me void without accomplishing. That's what I was going to say. Exactly. Okay. So you're on the same track. Yeah. Sorry.

Go ahead and finish that though. Yeah. Isaiah 55, my word will not return to me void without accomplishing the thing that I sent it forth to accomplish. So Paul is saying this is not vain, but he's trying to make the point that there is a reason in it.

Exactly. Yeah. Listen to this. It is accomplishing something when it is preached. It is bringing people to faith or it is working out in you your own salvation as you're growing in sanctification and knowledge of God when you hear the gospel proclaimed.

Now in Ecclesiastes, as Solomon is kind of looking out and he's seeing that all is emptiness, it doesn't really amount to anything. Later on in Ecclesiastes, and I kind of talked about this last week with our introduction, he will say that there's a value in doing work and he will encourage people to do work, but that work is done to the glory of God.

Right. If it's done for your own benefit, then it's just vanity because what's going to happen to you ultimately? Verse four, a generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever. So you're just going to die.

There's been people that have been working long before you came. When you die, there's going to be people that will continue to do stuff and does it ever change anything? So there's nothing inherently of value of anything that we do if it's just done for ourselves.

Right. It's vanity of vanities. Very true. It's empty. It's meaningless. Verse five, also the sun rises and the sun sets and hastening to its place, there it rises again. So where Solomon says there at the end of verse four, but the earth stands forever.

Right. Of course, we know that the earth is not going to last forever. Right. It was created. There's a definite beginning and it will be uncreated. There's a definite conclusion when Christ returns and he will judge all things.

But it's simply the poeticness of the statement that the earth is here a lot longer than we are. Right. Yeah. So it was here and there were processes happening in the earth before we came and it's still going to continue on after we die.

The earth doesn't stand still. The earth doesn't stop rotating. All of the things that people do in the earth don't just cease because you perished. Yes. There's nobody in the history of mankind that has ever died and it affected everything that's happening in the world.

Right. Even though people do try to make everybody around them feel what they're feeling. Like if they've had a bad day, for instance. Sure. You know. The world still goes on without you, but some people want it to stop with them.

It's like the sign that was hanging in our kitchen when I was growing up. If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. Pretty sure it was my dad that hung it in there too. It was his way of telling us, don't make your mom mad.

Right. It ruins my day. It ruins yours. You know. Yeah. Not just your mom. That's not saying anything about the egotism of my mom, but that's a common saying. People will say that. Oh, yeah. Especially a common Southern thing.

If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. I also think of Herod. For some reason, this story or this philosophy here makes me think of Herod, King Herod. Because when he was about to die, he had rounded up some of the most important people in Judea and had taken them to the Hippodrome.

And the order was given to his soldiers that when he died, all of those important people in the Hippodrome were to be put to death. So that way, all of Israel would mourn and not rejoice over the fact that Herod, who was a tyrant, had just died.

This is the same Herod who wanted to kill the baby Jesus. Yeah. And Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt. The Magi got away and didn't return to Herod and they didn't tell him where Jesus was born. Okay. This is that same period of time.

Same stuff that was going on. Herod wanted to kill some important people. That way, there would be mourning in the land instead of rejoicing when he died. Oh my goodness. So there you have a picture of a person who wanted the world to revolve around him.

He wanted the world to stop when he died. But he knew it wouldn't. That's why he did that. Right. Sure. Exactly. And what ended up happening when he died was the soldiers went, you can go. Yeah. They didn't actually get killed.

Yeah. Because there wasn't anybody to carry out that order when he had died. So yeah, it was just kind of a wicked band that he was. And we know that there have been wicked tyrants in the history of the world that have done even worse things than this.

But the world does not ever revolve around anybody. No. It has existed before them. It will continue to exist after them. The sun rises, the sun sets, and hastening to its place, it rises there again.

There was a sunrise yesterday. There will be one tomorrow. Praise the Lord. Going toward the south and circling toward the north. The wind goes circling along. And on its circular course, the wind returns.

The Wind and the Work of the Holy Spirit

The wind blows. Jesus even said in John 3, the wind blows and nobody knows where it comes from or where it's going. Right. It blew the other day. Yeah. It was blowing. Well, yeah, today. Today? It was quite windy in Texas.

That's right. And then in, well, still back to John 3. So when Jesus said that, he was talking to Nicodemus and he's talking about the work of the Holy Spirit. So you don't know where the Spirit comes from or where he goes and the work that he does.

It's very mysterious. And so here in Ecclesiastes, you have this reference to the wind. The wind just does. You can't control the wind. You can't stop it. You can't make it start. And Jesus uses that same analogy and pulls it into the work of the Holy Spirit.

We have no control over the Spirit. He just does what he does. We do not dictate what God does. All of these orders and processes have been established and set by God. And so we must submit to his sovereignty, knowing that he is in control of all things.

Now the preacher here is not giving that kind of acknowledgement, at least at the beginning of Ecclesiastes. All he's looking for is inherent meaning in what has been made, in what exists, in what I do.

Is there any inherent meaning in any of this? Is it just inherently meaningful? And his conclusion is that it's not. And you're also talking about a man who's been given everything. This is a man who is over the richest, the wealthiest empire per capita in the world at that time.

I can't remember what the numbers are. I've looked at this before, but there was one theologian who had speculated based on the description of the riches that existed in Israel. So it talks about all the materials that Solomon used to build the temple, what he used to build his own house, everything that was left over, the treasury and what it was filled with, all of the gold and the cedars of Lebanon, and all the trade that moved through Israel at that time.

There was one theologian I was reading from who calculated what all of that was worth in modern currency. And this was even several decades ago. Yeah, it's gone up since then. It's gone up since then.

Inflation. But anyway, he basically came to the conclusion that there was never an empire in the world where there was more money per capita than Israel at that time, meaning that you could have taken the money and distributed it among all of the Israelites, and they would have been the richest people in the world.

So they were not the biggest nation. When you talk about the Empire of Solomon, it certainly didn't cover a broad area. It was still that same area of land that God had promised to his people, but they were so incredibly wealthy, prosperous.

There was peace during the time of Solomon, decades of peace, which even David, his father, did not experience, nor would Solomon's sons experience. But it was just kind of like this utopia of Israel at that particular time.

This is what Solomon was given by God. On top of that, he's given wisdom. God says to him, ask what you want, and I will give it to you. Solomon could have asked for all of his enemies to be subdued under him.

He could have asked for riches and wealth. He could have asked for all of this possession, and he didn't. He asked for wisdom. He said, I want the wisdom to know how to lead the people of God. God said, because this is what you asked for, then you're going to get all the other things, too.

So we got the wisdom of God and just wealth and peace and the fear of the people around him and the admiration of the people around him. These were the things that Solomon got. And he's looking at all that he possessed, the wealth, the kingdom, the empire.

It is the kingdom of the world where God dwells. During Solomon's time, God descends into the temple and fills that place with his glory. God is dwelling with his people in the time of Solomon. He's there.

Solomon's got everything, the best nation on earth that we people could have, and yet he's looking for inherent meaning and value in it with possessions as far as the eye can see. All the cattle that I own, all the people that are under me, and he finds no inherent meaning or purpose in it.

It's just vanity. Even all the knowledge that he possesses, because he talks about later on, fathoming, pondering all the world's mysteries and what's the point. The apostle Paul even comes into this in 1 Corinthians 13.

If you have all the world's knowledge, but you do not have love, you gain nothing. You possess nothing. That's true. Verse 7, all the rivers go into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers go, there they continually go.

Never stops. Rivers just keep on moving along. All things are wearisome. All things are wearisome. Man is not able to speak of it. So it's so tiring, and it's so exhausting, and you never find peace and satisfaction in it, and it's to such a degree that man can't even speak of it.

Like you can't even fathom the emptiness of all of this if you're just trying to find meaning and worth in yourself and in these things. They don't last. You know, as much as Solomon is even describing earthly processes that are going to continue on even after you are gone, even these things you can't put your trust in, because they ultimately don't last.

Revelation tells us the rivers will dry up, you know, and everything will be consumed with fire. All around us, the things that we possess are decaying, and so we know they're going out of date, and they ultimately don't bring us any real satisfaction.

So all things are wearisome. Man is not even able to speak of how wearisome it is. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done, so there is nothing new under the sun.

And I can come up with examples of that, but I think we all pretty well know how true that is, that there's nothing new under the sun. That things that are being done today are things that have been done for forever.

Let's even take something that you might consider to be new. Just been upgraded. Well, yeah, it's just a new version of something old. So for example, let's just go with mankind walking on the moon, all right?

Something that was accomplished back in 1969, when man for the very first time set foot on the moon. You would have said that was new. That's never even been done before. Right. You have Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are the first people in the history of mankind, the first two men to set foot on the moon.

Neil Armstrong was first, Buzz Aldrin followed him out of the moon lander. But there they are, the first men that are on the moon, never had been accomplished. So overall, what's the grand total of men who have been on the moon?

Do you know that? No. 12 men. I know it's very small. Yeah, there's only 12 men in the history of the world, the history of mankind that have set foot on the moon. Now, China is trying to get back there.

And of course, yeah, Elon Musk wants to get to Mars. Yes, that's true. So we could potentially be the first men to set foot on Mars. What did we accomplish of any kind of long lasting significance by setting foot on the moon?

Do we really achieve anything? I mean, a lot of knowledge about the moon.

Sure. Do you know what kind of knowledge that we possessed or that we gained from setting foot on the moon? We learned we don't need to come back here. That's true. How long has it been? That's true. The space program did not continue to send people to the moon.

That happened for a few years until 12 men total set foot on the moon. And then we've never been back. It's worthless. There's nothing up there to gain by going back to the moon. It just costs a whole lot of money for bragging rights.

That's what it is. Just to get to the moon for bragging rights. It's only 12 men and it's 12 Americans. That's it. 12 men have set foot on the moon. Got some other nations that are trying to get there and they're going to learn the same thing that we've learned.

It's just another Tower of Babel. What has been done before is what will be done again. It's another Tower of Babel. And I mean, we even learned that. We got to the moon and it was cool. It's amazing.

It is an incredible achievement of man. So was the Tower of Babel. So was Babel itself, Babylon itself. Because in the book of Revelation, when Babylon is destroyed, the people are going to weep over it.

Oh, Babylon, the great has been destroyed. They even call it the great. It is an incredible achievement of man, but ultimately worth nothing. In the scheme of things, it really amounts to nothing. What has mankind accomplished, what has been achieved that really has any lasting or eternal or significant value?

Those 12 men who landed on the moon will still die and go to hell without faith in Jesus Christ. Being the only 12 people in the history of mankind to set foot on the moon does not set them apart from the fate of any other person apart from Christ.

And it's only by faith in Jesus Christ that we're forgiven our sins and we truly live in the heavens with God above in glory. It is the only meaning and purpose that there is in life to have faith in Jesus Christ.

And it's free. And that's free, right. It's much cheaper than the cost of going to the moon or trying to get to Mars. So we see these things that'll happen and we might think it's new and it's a great achievement, but it's really just a repeat of things that have happened again in the past.

Another attempt of man to reach the heavens. I want to clarify.

It was costly, but it's free for us. Well, okay, right. Yes. Salvation was costly.

It costs the son of man. Yes. Right. It was the son of God who gave himself, gave his life, the greatest, most valuable life there ever was. Amen. Yes. But for us, it is this free gift of grace that has been given to us by God.

So I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. Thanks for that clarification. Anytime. So verses 10 and 11, as we kind of wrap up here, is there anything of which one might say, see, this, it's new. Already it's been done for ages, which has gone before.

It might be a different way of doing it. It's not been done that way before, but it's, yeah, same stuff that has happened before. Yeah. Same mindset. Like when we talk about abortion being, it's just the same child sacrifice that the pagans were doing in the land of Canaan when Israel was living there.

Yes. It's the same thing. It's the repeat of the same evils that have been done in the history of man. Verse 11, there is no remembrance of earlier things. In other words, we don't learn from history.

We're just doomed to repeat it. Right. And also all of the later things, which will be, we're just going to do it again. There will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still. So the greatest event that has happened in history that we need to keep in mind is the death of Christ and his resurrection from the grave.

Because that won't be repeated. That won't be repeated. He died once for all, as it says in Hebrews.

One time, one death. That was the only thing that won't repeat. That's right.

For all who would be saved, he died once. For all sins, he died. As it says in Romans 4 .25, he was crucified for our trespasses and raised for our justification. So by his death and his resurrection, whoever believes in him, we're forgiven our sins and have eternal life.

Amen. Becky, thank you for joining me for Bible study today. You're welcome. As we go through Ecclesiastes. And now we're going to record tomorrow's episode. So you've got to come back tomorrow for the Q &A.

Yes, please. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that we've been in the book of Ecclesiastes. And I pray that life is not meaningless to us. If we're trying to look for meaning and purpose in life the way that the rest of the world is, we're just going to come up empty.

But we find out that meaning and purpose in life is given to us by Christ. And we can do all things to the praise of your glory. Even when we go through struggles and even when we go through suffering, it is ultimately for something that we would draw all the more near to God, who raises the dead.

And we have this promise that we, too, will be raised to life. We've been given new life in Christ. We will be given a new life for eternity when we join you in your eternal kingdom. Praising God for all you have done for us.

In that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And in this you have demonstrated your love and grace. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen.