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Well, this morning we continue now with Ecclesiastes and we began last week with sort of a broad introduction.
It's encouraging to see people still returning for round two. I know that was sort of a sip from the fire hose last week.
But I wanted to give a very broad introduction that would get us sea legs as we come now to verses 3 and following.
So we introduced the the larger context, some of the key words, especially that language of vanity, what it should not mean, meaningless, purposeless.
We have to absolutely reject reading that into the Word, but rather something like breath, vapor, the idea of futility.
These are the things that are held out to us. And so we're looking at Ecclesiastes chapter 1.
After having introduced it, we're coming to verse 3 and and verse 3 is a major question that sets the tone for the rest of the book.
It's also a programmatic question, meaning we'll continue to see it. We'll return to it several times throughout the book.
So it's important that we see this as launching us in to the fullness of what's to come.
This question is really behind every other question and answer that Ecclesiastes may pose.
We're gonna also spend some time getting up to verse 8 this morning. And technically this stanza, this introductory poem, runs to verse 11, but up to verse 8 we have sort of a unit of thought and then verses 9, 10, and 11 repeat that.
So just for the sake of a slight transition and repetition, we'll save verses 9 through 11 for next week.
But this morning we're looking at Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verses 3 through 8. Now, let me begin reading in verse 3.
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 filled with hearing.
We'll begin briefly with verse 3 and because it's such a significant part of this whole book and even this passage,
I'm gonna save most of the comments on verse 3 till the end of the message this morning. But let's just begin briefly with some moorings from verse 3.
The programmatic question that Ecclesiastes addresses is this. What profit, in other words, what gain has a man from all of his labor in which he toils under the sun?
So that's the question and the phrase especially you want to pay attention to is under the sun.
Under the sun. So this question of gain is held out as a way of getting at what is it all for?
Where is it all going? What point does this toil, does this labor, does any work have?
What does it actually bring about that's satisfying, that's meaningful, that's lasting? That's all held together in the word translated profit, yitron in Hebrew.
It's used in Ecclesiastes to evaluate the ultimate meaning, the ultimate benefit of any activity, whether of learning or succeeding, of whatever activity or efforts, whatever appreciation or wonder there may be, what's the ultimate gain?
What's actually going to be the thing that we can hold out as fulfilling, as ultimately satisfying?
And so the idea that we're going to see again and again is this perplexing question of profitability or of gain.
And this is in contrast or in relation to the word labor or toil.
It really is the same word and it's repeated. It's very important. We start paying attention to repetition.
What gain does anyone have in the toil with which he toils? It's repeated there.
The emphasis isn't so much on the gain as it is on the toil and that's part of the proportionality ever since the fall.
Little gain for a lot of toil, a little bit of bread for a lot of sweat from the brow.
That's the idea. For all of this effort, for all of this endeavor, there's nothing of ultimate fruitfulness, of ultimate value that can radically revolutionize the fallen condition under the sun.
And so this toil is not used neutrally. This labor, this weariness, this toil is almost used pejoratively.
In other words, it's a negative assessment of labor, a negative assessment of work. This is work that's wearying to the bone.
This is work that causes our fingers to crack open and bleed. This is the kind of work that leaves us exhausted and dreading the fact that we have to return to it.
What gain is there with that kind of toil under the sun? Of course, as I said, that phrase under the sun is so vital.
It's going to be used something like 30 times through the rest of the book. So again, paying attention to repetition, understanding significance.
And the widest contour for toil under the sun, which is this way of talking about our life, our life experience as human beings in all generations, universally true of all human beings, as a result of the fall.
Ecclesiastes is assuming the fall. It's speaking from the purview of the fall.
The toil, the weariness, the fatigue, the sense of having no satisfaction, no fulfillment is a result of the fall.
And that's just held out by that word toil. It was God who said to Adam as a result of his disobedience, because you've listened to the voice of your wife, you've eaten from the tree about which
I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In toil, you will eat of it.
Ecclesiastes begins here in Genesis 317. In toil, in weariness, you will eat of it all the days of your life.
So chapter 1 begins assuming this larger framework of a fall, of the human experience in the conditions of a fallen world, ground in rebellion against man's labor, man's relationships in rebellion against one another, and ultimately all of mankind groaning in rebellion against God.
This is the fall. This is the fallen condition. Cursed is the ground because of this.
And so God says, it's by the sweat of your face you'll eat bread all the days of your life until you get back to the ground.
Genesis 3 holds out this circularity, doesn't it? You were brought out from the ground as a result of rebellion and disobedience.
You will toil all the days of your life until you return to the ground. From dust you came, to dust you will return.
It's that same circularity we see in this poem of Ecclesiastes 1. It's held out by the sun, by the wind, by the waters.
There's a circularity. They return from whence they came. Where's the fulfillment?
Where's the achievement? Where's the lasting value? This is the stage that Ecclesiastes assumes.
It's the stage that all human beings experience because no human beings born of Adam are born outside of the conditions of the fall.
Weariness is man's lot in life. The sense of restlessness and fatigue is man's lot in life.
Though there may be glimmers of joy and wonder, the very things that Kohelet Ecclesiastes is going to point to, ultimately, he starts out with the widest contours of the stage that we all must perform upon.
We all must face this limitation. Believer, unbeliever alike.
Weariness is man's lot as a result of the fall. Toil under the sun is man's curse as a result of the fall.
This is the grand equalizer for all of us in this condition. And so the question of gain, the question of profit, begins against this backdrop of futility.
And futility begins with the fall. Man's labor wasn't meant to be this way.
Life experience wasn't meant to go this way. Our experience of work and profit and fruitfulness and value and peace and satisfaction were not meant to be this way.
And if we're understanding the larger framework rightly, this framework of futility and the ultimate question of gain, what does it profit a man?
What does a man actually gain in this fallen world, in this life under the sun? We recognize that Jesus only repeats and sharpens the same question in Mark 8 36.
What does it profit a man? To gain the whole world, but lose his own soul.
That's how Jesus takes this programmatic question of Ecclesiastes 1 3 and he sharpens it.
He says, what gain is there truly, even if you could amass all of the profitability of the world?
What profit is that if it costs your own soul? So Jesus understands that part of the point of Ecclesiastes is this perspective of a fallen condition.
That there is no gain in our toil under the sun. But there's actually something of incomparable value with regard to our soul.
Something that can actually transcend the fallen condition. A place we can actually begin to think about real gain, real profit.
Now we're not going to jump right into that. Because Ecclesiastes has a lot more downers for us.
But I just want to say the question is already posed and repeated in a way that causes us to think deeply about what
Kohelet means by under the sun. We're going to come back to that toward the end. Well how does he describe this futility, this circularity?
He does it in this poem that takes up verses 4 through 7. Really all the way up to 11, but there's a sort of interlude at verse 8.
The poem is structured with all of these different expressions that have the same fundamental point from verses 4 through 7.
He's looking at the patterns of the earth. The patterns of creation. And within that he's seeing constant change.
A constant going. What we could call with good theological acumen, mutability.
Change. What we could call with meaningful import for where we're going next week, progress.
Apparent progress. Things are on the move. Nothing is staying put.
The sun is rising and falling. The wind is blowing north, south, east, west. The rivers are raging and flowing and returning.
Everything is in motion. But Ecclesiastes takes a look at these things and says yes, but even that motion doesn't actually achieve or fulfill anything.
It just becomes circular. So the more we have of this change, the more actually in the widest field of vision nothing is changing.
It's just going in circles. Generations going in circles. The sun going in circles.
Again, from this point of view on the earth. We look at verse 4.
We begin this poem here. One generation passes away. Another generation comes.
A generation, of course, is speaking of a life cycle. Again, the idea of circularity, repetition, movement.
Life begins at birth and carries through all the way to death. This life cycle that composes a single generation becomes part of a cycle of all of the generations.
From birth to death. From one generation to the next. So goes on this simple flow.
One generation rises. Has their moment in the sun. And then they pass into the night of life.
Another generation rises. And so the cycle continues. And this is in hard contrast to the earth.
The earth simply abiding as a silent witness to these rising and falling generations.
Elsewhere in wisdom literature, generations are spoken of like grass. They rise up.
I know it's been like December lately, weather -wise. But some of us have had to look at lawn mowers in this time of year.
And you look at the grass tickling your ankles. And you know it's about time to mow.
And that's wisdom literature's way of talking about human generations. Just grass that rises and falls.
Grass that has its moment in the sun. Flowers that yield their fruit in season. And then wither to the next.
The generations of all of the life and all of the cycles that God has made is held in contrast to the earth.
The earth now abiding forever. The word there, elam, forever, speaking of an indefinite time.
And of course the whole point is just the contrast. The earth doesn't seem to change all that much.
It's just the stage upon which these generations rise and fall. Upon which this circularity continues.
And the contrast is the brevity of human life compared to this continuity of the earth.
All I know of the earth. All I know of the human experience. All I know of human history is composed within my little life cycle.
Within the little time of my generation. I have to understand teachers and windows and memories that have been passed down to me.
To have some sense of perspective. Some sense of where I fit into the grand scheme. But the earth is just this silent abiding witness to it all.
In some ways I come into this world. The world was nothing to me until I came into this world and became conscious of the world.
And when I pass from this world, what will the world mean to me then? Look around you.
You were here on this abiding earth before some people came to be. We see five year olds and ten year olds.
We know a world and we've experienced a life in time that they have not.
But they will carry on. Look around you again. There's some people here who will be the last bridge of your living memory.
One generation goes to the next. This circularity. This brevity.
It's all moving. It's all going. But it's not actually fulfilling anything. A verb that is constantly repeated in this short little poem is the verb halak.
It's the verb simply to go. To walk. To travel. To traverse. It's repeated in verse four.
Twice in verse six. Three times in verse seven. There's going. There's walking. There's journeying.
There's all this continual motion. But despite all of that continual motion, there's no completion.
There's no final achievement. Here is what all of that motion was going toward. Simply a rise and a fall.
There's no ultimate sunset. Here's the one sunset to end all sunsets. It's like I was out in Falmouth some years ago and it was probably the most gorgeous sunset
I've ever seen in my life. It was almost surreal. And what do you do when you have some ascetic encounter like that?
You take out your phone and you try to capture it in vain. You take 1 ,000 pictures and you try to show someone.
And they're like, oh yeah, cool. They could care less. And you're like, no, you just. And you wonder maybe those new
Apple goggles can do like the VR and the augmented reality. And maybe that will really catch. And there's no real capture of an experience like that.
That was the most amazing sunset I've ever seen in my life. But it passed and the sun rose the next morning and it will just continue on that way every day.
One man who was approaching his death as a result of a cancer diagnosis framed it in this way.
He said, I've come now to the part of my life where I have seen more sunsets than I will see.
That's a really wonderful way to think about this circularity of life. Every day is a microcosm of the lifespan, from darkness to light and the glory of the late stages of that light receding back into darkness.
Every time you wake up, you're experiencing a microcosm of birth as you carry on through the successive stages of your day and begin to weaken and fatigue toward the night until you close your eyes with sleep.
You're experiencing a microcosm of death. This is why Scripture calls death a sleep.
Paul reckons those who are sleeping, or this is why some of you have fallen asleep.
So every day is held up to us as a microcosm of the whole span of life. It's all cyclical, it's all circular, but it continues on and on and on.
We come to this language in verse 5. The generations are in motion, everything is in motion with them, but there's nothing new, there's nothing final.
The sun also rises, the sun goes down. It's hastening to the place where it arose.
Scripture has so much to say with this evocative, imaginative understanding of the sun. Again, from the earth, from a human perspective of what it's like to see the sun in motion.
We don't need to bring Copernican models to be able to understand the beauty and poetry of what's being described.
Think of Psalm 19 and the way that the sun is described. In the heavens, he said, a tabernacle for the sun.
It's like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoicing like a strong man running his race.
Its rising is from one end of the heaven all the way to the other. Its circuit knows no end and nothing is hidden from its heat.
This is the language, this bridegroom coming out of his chamber in this tabernacle, rising in strength.
And the radiance of that glory touching everything. Here, Kohalet uses this figurative language to describe the sun hurrying around.
The sun's not just in motion, it's jogging, it's out of breath, it's panting. That's the idea, it's hurrying, it's scurrying to its place.
I remember listening to a radio episode with an astronaut who was part of a NASA mission to the
Mir space station. His name was Dave Wolf and he described being outside of that space station doing some repair work in the blackness of space, in these environment -controlled spacesuits.
And he said, I can't even begin to try to describe the contrast between light and dark from that place.
When you're at that place, the sun actually is circling every 45 minutes.
Every 45 minutes, in the span of the time you're there, you've actually seen 16 nights and 16 days for every single day you would experience on the earth.
And so he says, every 45 minutes, I would go from a pitch blackness that I can't put into words, into a radiance and an absolute floodlight that I also cannot put into words.
A blazing light that came screaming into view and left almost as fast as it came.
When you're young, the days seem to drag on, especially if you're doing schoolwork. The day seems to have no end.
As you get older, you're more like Dave Wolf out in space. It seems like the day is going 16 times faster.
The sun is screaming forth in all of this power and glory, but it just ends up beginning right back where it started, every single day.
For Kohelet, this cycle is futile. For all of the glory, for all of the radiance, for all of the light, it just circles back to do it all over again.
Some of you, it's not actually a very good novel for a lot of reasons, but some of you at least have heard the title by Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, his novel based on Ecclesiastes 1 .5,
and it's talking about what historians call the lost generation, those that basically came out of World War I and there was such tragic loss, villages that were missing a whole generation of men, and you had these expatriates in Europe in the setting of the novel that were trying to make sense of life in a world that was so devastated that it seemed pointless.
And he's using this language of Ecclesiastes 5 to say, and yet the sun also rises. This generation too will pass on as all other generations have before.
You might have heard the song Sunrise Sunset. It's an oldie with Perry Como, and he asks this question at the beginning.
Is this a little girl I carried? Is this a little boy at play? I don't remember growing older.
When did they? When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn't it just yesterday that they were small? Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days.
Speedings turn overnight to sunflowers, blossoming even as they gaze. Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years, one season following another, laden with happiness and tears.
He's essentially describing what Ecclesiastes is describing. The circularity.
Look at verse 6. The wind goes toward the south. It turns around to the north.
The wind whirls about continually. You don't know where the wind is going to go. As Jesus says in John 4, no one can actually tell where the wind's going or where it comes.
So it is with the Holy Spirit. Well, Ecclesiastes is looking at the wind in a different way. Yes, isolated in any moment at any given time.
It seems like the wind has no ultimate circuit until you understand the wider framework.
The wind is actually continuing in its circular pace, in its circuit, as everything in this life.
It goes round and around and around. The constant shifting of the winds cannot hide the fact that this too is a repeated cycle.
There's nothing new, nothing final. Verse 7. All the rivers run into the sea, but the sea's not full.
To the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. We have a little...
I hesitate to call it a stream. It's a trickle behind the back deck of our condo.
And it was one of the big selling points for me when we moved there in 2017. I was like, wow, waterfront property.
This little icicle drip in our back. And it's an amazing thing because we're sort of at the foot of Mount Jefferson.
And all that rain, all that melting snow, it all hurtles down. And then by June, it's just dry mud.
And it seems to be spurting and coming and going, and yet all the water at times that can come down like a deluge in April, all that melting snow and heavy rain, it seems like we have whitewater rapids carving through the back.
And it all hurtles down past our property toward a pond that goes down quite a ways toward a river.
And I see all that water rushing down. I don't see where the water source is that it's coming from. Somehow it all returns in that cyclical way again, evaporating, turning to moisture in the air to form rain clouds that continue this cycle.
Even so, all the rivers rage into the sea, but the sea's never full. It just all continues again.
Isaac Watts put it this way, time, like an ever -rolling stream, bears all its sons away.
They fly forgotten like a dream dies at the opening day. He's reflecting, using this
Ecclesiastes -like language to time being like this water that actually just continues through.
All the sons are born away, generation after generation, and then another day opens. A new generation begins.
Another sunrise hurtling toward another sunset. Another raging river that will just repeat and return.
And the whole conclusion of all of this observation is verse 8. Everything is full of toil. Everything is full of labor.
So he's looked at generations of humanity. He's looked at the sun, and the wind, and the streams of water, and he comes to realize it's not just man's lot that is full of toil and labor that seems unable to actually achieve or satisfy, but everything is this way.
Just look around. Everything has this motion, this energy, this toil, without ever finally accomplishing anything, without ever achieving or satisfying anything.
I look around, and my eye's never satisfied. I've never seen that final sunset. I've never enjoyed that final largemouth bass coming out of Comet Pond.
There's no painting, no film, no aesthetic encounter that can ultimately satisfy me and fulfill me.
I can't hear the sweetest song or the sweetest music that will hold me over for the rest of my life. The eye is not satisfied.
The ear is not filled. No observation can account for the futility, the vanity, the sense of emptiness that all of these things hold out because they're cyclical.
They're gone. They're fleeting. Now, it's not just as Ecclesiastes says, it's not just man that is laden and groaning as a condition of the fall, but he starts to see that condition of toil is actually borne out in creation itself.
That's what Paul says in Romans 8. He says it's not just our lowly bodies that groan in agony awaiting redemption, but the whole creation is groaning, suffering the pains of childbirth together until now.
Paul depicts a cosmic toil and burden, a cosmic groaning that's awaiting redemption.
The earth somehow, the cycles of nature, the generations of creation, these things also long and thirst for fulfillment, for satisfaction.
Notice what he says. He says all things are full of toil, all things are full of labor.
Man cannot express it. Ecclesiastes is an attempt to express the inexpressible.
Man cannot express it. He says, I'm pointing to things, but I don't know how fully to articulate it.
There's a weariness. There's a burden that is threaded through the whole, and I don't know how to express it.
Have you felt it? Have you seen it? Have you had those existential moments of, for lack of a better word, bleh?
Just bleh. I feel empty.
I feel void. It feels pointless. I don't know why I've put so much energy and time and thought into this thing.
What happens when you finally achieve the thing you always wanted? That's almost as bad as never achieving it.
The horrific discovery that it wasn't even close to what you hoped it would be.
That thing that promised satisfaction, fulfillment, turned out to be as empty as anything else in life.
It didn't give you what you thought it would give you. As you look around at your neighbors, as that eye tends toward, if only
I could have this. It's futility. Again, we're going to see in the rest of this chapter this ruler in Jerusalem says,
I've been on that train, and let me tell you, I got everything I sought. I've accomplished everything I set out to do.
And here's the conclusion of the whole. I remember working.
I had so many odd jobs when I was in high school. And I remember working in the deli.
We were making minimum wage, and they were building the new grocery store somewhere in Newton, I think.
And so we had to train these new workers. And word got out that instead of being at $6 .75,
like the rest of us peasants per hour, they were going to start out at $8 .50. And I remember my mind just spiraling.
Imagine if I could make $8 .50 an hour. The limitless possibilities.
Think of what I could procure. Outback Steakhouse, Circuit City DVDs. My life would be complete.
I used to cut out sale ads from the Sunday newspaper. The latest little handy cam,
VHSC. Oh, you know, this will be the thing that I'm saving my pennies for. You can't even buy VHSC tapes anymore.
All those little things that at the moment seem to be the perfect gadget, the perfect toy, the perfect hobby, the perfect goal, the perfect profession.
If I could just get what I want, then it won't be futile. Then I'll be fulfilled. Everything will be as it should.
And Kohelet is saying, have you looked outside lately? Have you looked at the sun?
Have you felt the wind? Have you observed the currents of the water? Do you just notice old people and babies being born?
Have you been to the funeral parlor? Have you been to the nursery? Get some perspective on life.
There's nothing in this life, nothing in life under the sun that can offer you that kind of satisfaction.
Not under the sun, not in this condition. Say you win the gold medal.
What does it mean three generations later when it's in a shoe box or a pawn shop? And all the people that showered you with praise and adulation and all the
Wheaties, cereal box photo shoots don't mean anything anymore. There's no attainment.
Even the best attainments now mean nothing a generation or two from now. We can call it the law of diminishing returns, but that's not forceful enough.
The point is it's all futile. Everything, everything, the most glorious things, if we're seeking our fullness, our identity, our meaning from them, will become a weariness to us.
The glory of life itself, the gift of life itself can at times become a weariness, something that we actually long to be delivered from, the burden of living.
So where's the profit in that? I don't even think they do this anymore, but it used to be that you'd work 40, 50 years for some company and then when you retire, you got a gold -plated watch.
I think the price of gold now, no company's doing that anymore. I remember I worked seven years at this plastic factory and when
I put my notice in, they gave me a $50 gas card. I was like, all right. I don't know what the hidden meaning was in that.
Good riddance. See you later. Bon voyage. You spend your whole life working, your whole life toiling.
What gain is there in that? What's the ultimate profit? What's the ultimate meaning of it all?
Now we come fully back to the question of verse 3. What profit has a man from all of his labor in which he toils under the sun?
Derek Kidner gives this sort of free translation. He puts it this way. You spend your life working, laboring.
What do you finally have to show for it? What do you finally have to show for it?
He comments, well, one hopes to make the world a better place. Or at the very least, leave something for those who will follow.
And that's the very thing that Qohelet is responding to. He's almost assuming that reply. He goes, yeah, make the world a better place.
Leave something for those that are coming after you. But in two generations, that doesn't mean anything, does it?
So what's the ultimate gain? What's the ultimate profit there? What was the point of that? It won't mean to you anything at that point.
In relation to you, it won't mean anything to them. It's just the sun circling around, the wind returning, the water going forth.
The earth is remaining with this kind of pattern. It's as restless and repetitive as our lives are.
So Qohelet picks up these examples. He's causing us to see the patterns of the earth, the regularity of the earth, in a certain way.
And he says this. This is so helpful. He says, the very regularities of the world which may speak to us on God's behalf of mercies renewed every morning give a very different answer when we look for meaning from them in themselves.
I can look at the patterns of the world, and they can orient and situate my life in a way that I can actually see the hand, the point, the purpose, the destiny of it all.
I can begin to appreciate God's renewing mercies. I can actually delight in and imagine and create in response to the regularity and repetition of the world.
But whenever I stop to find meaning in those things themselves, to identify and situate my life in these passing cycles,
I lose all meaning altogether. I lose all sense of purpose, all sense of value, all sense of proportion as a result of that.
This is why it's futile. This is why it's weariness. It's weary because under the sun, nothing finally satisfies.
Do you feel the burden of the question? Or are you jumping for a quick answer?
It's going to be the challenge that I continually pose before us, but I feel as Christians sometimes we come to verse 3, we feel something of the stark, cold honesty of a question about weariness and toil.
What prophet has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? And like well -trained
Sunday school children, we say, Jesus, or something like that. We haven't actually even heard the question.
We haven't even tried to receive it into our lives. Somehow the answer is God or heaven or Jesus.
And it's like, okay, have you actually allowed any of this to hit your life, to hit you square between the eyes?
It's asking you one of these disarming, vulnerable questions. What prophet does your life have, seeing that it's under the sun?
Where's all your labor and ambition and energy going? What is it amassed to? What will it ultimately mean to you?
And we have to allow that haunting chorus of vanity, vanity, breath, breath. All is breath to actually make its way into our lives.
If we want to open up our minds and hearts to the Lord's Word. So I hesitate to move on to explicate the phrase under the sun just for that reason.
We have to. But I would only want to do so if you've actually been grappling with that question.
What gain is there in any of this? What does it ultimately mean? Why would I think any of the things
I'm presently pursuing would be fulfilling? Even if they're fulfilling in a moment, what good is that?
Even if they're fulfilling for someone else, what good is that? Where's the ultimate rest and satisfaction? Is there any profit?
Is there any gain from the labor which a man toils under the sun? So you have to ask that question.
You have to allow it to actually get into the crevices of idolatry, of ambition, of daydreaming, of jealousy, of envy.
The kind of things that you say, if blank happens, my life would be fulfilled.
If blank occurred, I would be happy. All I need is blank and things would be well.
And Ecclesiastes is staring at that blank and saying, what gain is there in that, ultimately speaking?
Why would you think that would satisfy? That very thing that you so desperately crave will become a weariness and a burden to you before long.
Well, of course, the point made last week, Ecclesiastes wants to bring us to the point where we begin to fear that that repetitious phrase, all is breath, all is vanity, is the only honest comment about life.
He wants to bring us down to our knees in that way. Is that all that there is in life under the sun?
We face the appalling inference that nothing has meaning, nothing matters, there really is no gain, no profit under the sun.
It's trying to do that successively. We'll be here for many weeks with that same challenge, with that same thrust.
But of course we know that's not the whole story. This is true only from a vantage point under the sun.
This is only true if we're looking at life and profit and toil and nature in life under the sun.
The phrase under the sun is the key to it all. To say that there's something under the sun implies there's something beyond the sun as well.
And so the vanity, the lack of profit, the lack of fulfillment or achievement belongs to life under the sun.
But what about what lies above the sun, beyond the sun? It's calling us to be open to a totally different perspective.
To see things under the sun in this way is to be honest about life, honest about the pull of the world, the flesh, and the evil one.
But when we start getting away from that ground level, from that carnal sensibility, and we start asking what viewpoint exists above the sun, beyond the sun, past the repetitious cycles of generations and sunsets?
What exists there? As Philip Rykin puts it so well, what happens when I take the vanity of vanities into the holy of holies?
What happens rather than wrestling with the experience as a fallen man in a fallen world that I begin to think through, the one who sits above the fallen sun and promises he's making all things new?
And here Ecclesiastes joins the prophetic promises that indeed God is doing a new thing.
That indeed there's not just a consummation but a new creation that will disrupt and break the cycles of futility where the good rest that our weary labor longs for will actually satisfy us.
Where there will be a fulfillment that actually has the river filling the sea even as the glory of the
Lord covers the face of the earth like the waters cover the sea. So that initial conclusion of verse 8, all things are wearisome, a man's not able to tell it, that's only looking at it through the lens of life under the sun.
When we start to contemplate life beyond the sun, life beyond the cycles and futility, we recognize there's something else man can't utter.
It's what the Apostle Peter says is a joy inexpressible and full of glory. And it's not found in this life under the sun.
It's found in the consummation of life beyond this cycle of a fallen world working its redemption out in time, in history.
So man's not able to tell of the weariness. We can't express these things, but to those who have the hope of a new creation in Christ, we're not able to express the joy and the glory that awaits.
There's a joy inexpressible even as there's a toil and a weariness inexpressible. This is the tension that exists in our lives as Christians.
Please do not minimize the toil and the weariness. We do a disservice not only to one another but to the
Lord. When the Psalms are more honest about life than we are, we pretend that life is some sugary thing, and there's something dysfunctional and disordered in your life.
If you have tears, something's clearly gone wrong. How could it be that a Christian would be sad?
That's the worst news. How could that possibly be? It's like, have you read Psalms? David says his pillow is a sponge for his tears at night.
Scripture is far more honest about this tension, about the fact that there is this toil and this weariness and this burden of life under the sun.
We can't put it into words, so God puts it into words for us, and he says, here, sing these, sing this.
Sing what the old Welsh coal miners used to sing, these funeral dirges about the Lord when they were heading into the depths of the earth.
Sing these songs as you reflect with Kohelet on the futility and vanity of all this generation, but slow down and appreciate what also he wants to show you, the glimmers of glory that chart the way to a life beyond the sun, where there's not a vanity of vanities, but a holy of holies, where achievement and fulfillment are actually held out to all that enter into that kingdom.
That's a joy inexpressible. This is why the Apostle Paul says, we are to set our minds on things that are above.
Don't set your mind on things under the sun. Set your mind on things above, not on things that are on the earth.
You're clinging to this promise of a living God who says, I make all things new. That's the promise held out in Revelation 21.
That's what we're going to see next week in verses 9 through 11. There really is nothing new under the sun.
That's why it's not a stable place for hope. That's why everything will ultimately be futile in life under the sun.
We can't fix our hopes there, and neither should we fix our minds there. Fix your mind on what's above, what's beyond.
That's actually something Ecclesiastes wants to provoke. So it's not just, where do these rivers actually flow?
Where is the wind actually blowing? Nowhere. It just all returns. It's not going anywhere. That's life under the sun.
For the Christian imagination, looking at God's Word, we realize these rivers that flow through our human experience down through the generations are actually flowing somewhere.
They will fulfill and accomplish something. This wind isn't endless in some vain circle. It's actually blowing towards something.
These generations aren't simply cycles of grass from one to the next. They're actually hurtling towards something.
You can't get it from a vantage point of life under the sun. You get it from clinging to the promise of God, who made the sun and threw it into its circuit and says, wait for the time that I come and make everything new.
It's the cry of Moses in Psalm 90. Lord, you've been our dwelling place in every generation.
For all that repetition, for all that cycle, for all that constant motion and blurring change, the one thing that has been stable is the presence of God.
For all of these hurtling, changing generations, for all of these geographical travels through the wilderness, you have been our dwelling place.
You've been the stable thing for all generations. And he starts thinking about the things that seem the most solid, the most unchangeable, the most immovable, the mountains.
We were in, of course, Naples a few weeks ago and went to the
Archeological Museum of Naples and they have a very famous fresco from a Pompeian wall of Vesuvius with its cap.
For 2 ,000 years, all the residents of Naples have only ever known a seeming, unchanging volcano without a cap, with a big, hollow, conical innard.
But here you have this fresco. At one point in time, that immovable, unchangeable mountain seemed like this really oblong, greenish, tree -covered, vineyard -covered mountain until it exploded.
Even that changed. Even something as solid and seemingly unchangeable as a mountain is something that's mutable, something that's changing.
The surface, of course, of it constantly changing. Erosion, weather patterns, geological formations, tectonic movement.
Before all of this, Moses says, before the mountains were brought forth, of old you are everlasting, too everlasting.
A thousand years in your sight are like a day when it's passed. It's like a watch in the night. And then his cry, this plea of wisdom is, so teach us to number our days.
We want to gain a heart of wisdom. Part of numbering our days is recognizing this vain, repetitious cycle.
Everything that I think we'll finally achieve and arrive isn't happening under this sun. And that turns to verse 13 in Psalm 90.
This is ultimately the whole hope of this poem in chapter 1. What's the answer to the toil and burden and senseless flow of life under a sun?
It starts with this cry. Return, O Lord. What will disrupt this cycle?
What will break this vanity? What will undo the curse upon the ground because of man's sin? What will actually satisfy?
What's that restlessness that composed all of Augustine's life in his confessions when he reflected on just the thousand small ways he had a sinful heart active within his chest and the fickle ways that he mistreated others and was a despiser of God?
And he wouldn't have known it or traced it or even framed it in that way until God gave him a new heart and new eyes. He looked back and see, and he says, what composed my whole young life was restlessness.
I was just restless, looking for something, somewhere, somehow that would make a point, make a hold, make a meaning.
I had in all my success the greatest Latinist in North Africa going through the hurdles of Manichaeism, trying to get to that guru status.
I had the world as my oyster. He says, I can see now it's all restlessness. And his confession is, we're all restless until we find rest in you.
Restlessness, toil, weariness, that's life under the sun. The rest we find in God is a promised rest.
It's a promised rest. And it begins with this cry, return, O Lord. How long?
Have compassion on your servants. Satisfy us early with your mercy. We want to rejoice and be glad all of our days.
Make us glad according to the days even that you've afflicted. The years that we have seen which are evil, let your work appear to your servants, your glory to their children.
Moses has this generational view. He understands the only thing that's stable, the only answer to this conundrum, is actually the
Lord himself. He says, you can make sense of it all. You can show forth your work. Not only can you reveal your work, you can establish our work.
That is a major theme where we're going, heading toward Ecclesiastes 5. Moses says, let the beauty of the
Lord our God be upon us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.
Do you see what Moses is saying? Everything's changing. Everything's changing.
We're intense, on the move, generations rising, generations falling. I'm in the middle of this transience of life and everything that I put my hand to is in vain.
And he looks to his hope in God and he says, will you return and even now give me gladness?
Help me see your work and help me make sense of the evil that I dwell in and establish the work of my hands.
The transience of life is held out in Psalm 90.
The transience of life is the issue of Ecclesiastes 1. The older you get, the more people you see dying.
I remember my grandparents toward the end, the only reason they got the newspaper delivered to their home was to check the obituaries to see which classmates had died recently.
And they would have a comment about each one that only meant something to them, didn't mean anything to us. There's a dreary sadness to the passing of these generations.
And you know something else about the transience of life? Is even the transience of life is somehow unstable and dynamic.
It's moving. We should know that, just the normal passage of time, generation to generation, the cycles of life, but look at our society.
It's accelerating. I went to a talk some months ago by Joshua Chestnut at L 'Abri.
He was talking about Hartmut Rosa and the acceleration of our society, and he was making this very point.
Our technological changes, our social changes, they've brought about this acceleration of life.
We're just in the midst of it. We can't even pick up the cues of it. Somehow everything for us has to go faster and faster just to stay in the same place.
You want to keep customers? You want to keep your salary? You need more, and it has to be more efficient, and things need to be increased.
Not just taxes, but energy and time and commitment and efficiency, more credentials. Everything has to increase.
There's an acceleration at almost every level and avenue of life. And the question is, do we recognize that as part of the futility, part of the vanity of life under the sun?
Accelerating, accelerating, increasing, increasing, advancing, advancing to what?
To what? We think we're on the cusp of having it all.
We think we're on the cusp of figuring it out. Look at Ecclesiastes 1 .3. What gain is there in any of it?
This is a worldview clash for us as Christians. This is why we need wisdom literature for this dry and thirsty land that we dwell in.
We don't even know how to resonate with this uncontrollable world. We don't even know how to receive an acceleration of time, an acceleration of energy and toil.
We really do think if we wear ourselves down to the knuckles, if we really avoid the rest that God gives, that somehow we will get a little bit ahead.
We really are convinced of that. We're far more modern than we are biblical when it comes to these things.
So it comes down to a worldview, and Ecclesiastes is giving us a rival worldview. And of course, he's presenting life under the sun, the futility and vanity of life, as something that's hopelessly bound in circles.
It's all just continuing, but it's never achieving, never accomplishing, never fulfilling. And the
Christian understands God has so composed nature and so composed our lives that there is something cyclical, something circular about our experience of life.
Again, the microcosm of being born and sleeping, the microcosm of birth and death, the circularity of generations like the circuit of the sun or the circuit of the wind.
But the Christian also knows there's something linear that runs through it all. There's something linear that carves through all of those circles.
That's the Christian hope. If it's all circular, if it's all cyclical, we never pray, return,
Lord. Return, Lord, is a linear prayer. It's saying there's a designated time.
There's an end to it all. This is all flowing somewhere until the oceans of God's glory are revealed and the promises that he has made from the beginning of Earth's time are consummated.
Christians live through the tension of vanity and toil and fatigue under the sun in that circularity of futility while we also pattern our steps one degree by one degree, one step by one step along this linear path of our great hope of redemption.
And so what's the answer to acceleration?
To a world that is endlessly mutable. Well, the answer to a mutable world rests solely in the immutable creator, in the immutable
God. As Moses says from Psalm 90, in a world that has change in motion at every level, our hope must be in the unchanging
God. In all the glory that we see shining through the creation, even of life under the sun, the good joys, the wonders that are held forth to us that we'll see in Ecclesiastes, we recognize these two are helplessly mutable.
There's no newborn season, no birthday party. There's no glory, no joy that I can contain and hold as it is forever.
Behind the highest joys of encounter and relationship in my life, there is a secret sorrow that lines them all.
One day I'll either bury them or they'll bury me. Mutability is the frame of life under the sun.
It's why I titled the sermon with the question, what glory stands immutable on earth?
Can you name one? What unchanging glory is there to find in all the vast avenues and corridors of creation?
Of human wonder. Can you find one? Can you find something that's not mutable?
That's not decaying? That's not corruptible? You can't. What glory stands immutable on earth?
It's the earnest question of Ecclesiastes 1, 3 through 11. What glory stands immutable?
This is actually the words of John Tavenner. I almost command you, if I can do that, to go listen to Funeral Canticle by John Tavenner.
It was a hymn that he composed using
Eastern liturgy and other things. It was a hymn he composed at his father's funeral.
In the second stanza, he asks that question. He says, what earthy sweetness remains unmixed with grief?
It's the lining behind every joy. It's the sorrow that we're living life under the sun.
Living life in toil, in sweat, groaning with the rest of the earth, waiting for redemption.
So what earthy sweetness remains unmixed with grief? The answer is none. What glory stands immutable on earth?
All things are but shadows, most feeble, deluding dreams. Yet one moment, and then death supplants them all.
Notice this language that he's using. What earthy sweetness remains unmixed with grief?
He's at his father's funeral. What glory stands immutable on earth? So he has this earthy sweetness on the earth, the grief of his father's passing, and he says, all things are but shadows, most feeble.
It's the idea of darkness with a shadow, deluding dreams, dreams in the darkness of night. One moment, death supplants them all, death like this darkness that covers them all.
Just this darkness, this descent, this death, and he says, but in the light of thy countenance,
O Christ, and in the sweetness of your beauty, give rest to him whom you have chosen.
You see, he's contrasting the sweetness that's always mixed with grief in the earth to the sweetness that has no grief, no tears, no wrinkle, no shadow of turning.
It's the light, it's the joy, it's the glory of Christ. I'm going to close, because we're going to continue on with this meditation next week, but I want you to see this language repeated again.
I'm going to read our passage and then close it with the answer, the answer to acceleration, the answer to these endless cycles, is abiding, abiding with God.
It's the waiting of the Christian who says, return, O Lord, return.
It was Henry Francis Light in 1847 who wrote this hymn, Abide With Me, and it was his prayer in the midst of reflecting on the transience of life, and that's his answer to that question.
What glory stands immutable on earth? What is the hope in a world that promises all profit, all gain, for what is ultimately profitless and without gain?
What does it profit a man from all of his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, another generation comes.
The earth abides forever. The sun rises, but the sun goes down. It hastens to the place where it arose.
The wind goes to the south. The wind turns to the north, but the wind whirls about continually.
It comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, but the sea is not full. The place from which the rivers come, there they return again.
All things are full of toil. Man can't express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing.
The ear is not filled with hearing. What profit does a man have from all this labor in which he toils under the sun?
And listen to the answer of light. Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day.
Earth's joys grow dim. Its glories pass away. Change and decay in all around I see.
O thou who changest not, abide with me. That is the
Christian's hope. Not life under the sun, but life under the sun, abiding with the
God who returns to make all things new. Amen? Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your word, Lord. Help us to take your word into our hearts, into our lives,
Lord. Help these questions to disturb us and challenge us, Lord.
May verse 3 especially begin to unmask idolatrous ambitions, vain hopes, follies in the course of our life.
Lord, may we not despair with the cynic, nor rejoice with the simpleton, but may we have that balanced, inexpressible joy held in tension with an inexpressible grief and burden.
May we live our lives under the sun with a hope that's beyond the sun. May we have the prayer of Moses even as we seek to establish the work of our hands by your grace.
Lord, I pray you'd press us as your people about where our ultimate hope lies, where we're forging our identity, seeking our meaning, placing our treasure.
May we answer not just the challenge of Koholet, but of the Lord Jesus himself, who asks what we'll profit in this world, even if we gain the whole world at the cost of our own soul.
And from that vantage point, Lord, may we walk with such closeness and abide with such nearness that we put our treasure in heaven and we sense that communion with you that navigates us through this weary pace and endless repetition of life.
Lord, as you change not, help your people in the midst of changes in a changing world that never ceases to abide with you.