Word of Salvation – Vol. 21 No. 44 – July 1975
Life: Empty Or Full?
Sermon by Rev. K. J. Campbell, B.A., B.D. on Ecclesiastes 2:25
Scripture Readings: Ephesians 1:15-23; Ecclesiastes 2:1-26
Psalter Hymnal (New): 111; 114, Opening; 201; 459; 288; 307:3 Doxology
Purpose: To show the emptiness of life without Christ and the fullness of life with Christ and thus to urge all to seek that fullness of life.
Ecclesiastes is perhaps a book of the Bible which you have not read very much. It is a book of the Bible which we all should read very carefully, because it is a book which forces us to focus our attention on the (right) priorities in life. It tells us about the frustration that sin brings into the life of man. It tells us that life lived apart from God is futile and meaningless. Ecclesiastes goes into great detail to show that any part of life lived apart from God is worthless and filled with futility and frustration. As our text says, “For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him? (God)” (2:25). It’s not possible to really live without God; one can only have a very meaningless existence.
Our text today tells us two things:
(1) It tells us in the first place that life is hopeless without God. For any person who lives apart from God their life is empty and without purpose or meaning. This is how the book of Ecclesiastes begins: – verse 2 of chapter 1 says: “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” i.e. everything is vain and empty. All that a person does, all that a person has, all that a person is, is vain and empty and without meaning if that person is without God.
Now Jesus informs us in John 14:6 that “…no man can come to the Father but by me”, that is, no one can have a relationship with God apart from a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, and so we can say that to live apart from Christ Jesus is to live in vain. It is to live a life empty of meaning and empty of purpose and empty of any real reward. As the Psalmist says:
“Apart from Thee I long and thirst,
and nought can satisfy:
I wander in a desert land
where all the streams are dry…!”
(2) But in the second place our text clearly implies that to live with God, to live with Christ, to have a life relationship with him is to really live. Instead of there being an emptiness to all that you do, to all that you have, and to all that you are, there is a fullness. Instead of life being futile, it becomes full of meaning; instead of life being fruitless, it becomes full of a rich reality and blessing.
We could say then that our text sets up a contrast between an empty life and a full life. A contrast between a futile life and a profitable life. A contrast between a vain life and a meaningful life. A contrast between life without Christ and a life with Christ. And we could say further that our text is a challenge to each one of us to consider whether our lives are empty or full.
Now if we take a look at chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes we will see that it is telling us about the emptiness of life lived apart from God. Really we have set before us a very startling picture of what life is worth without Christ.
In verses 1-11 the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us how he tried to find meaning to life in pleasure and in possessions. In verse 1 we read of the writer saying to himself, “I said to myself, Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself,” and then he describes some of the pleasures he sought. In verse 3 he says: “I explored with my mind how to stimulate ‘my body with wine; while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to take hold of folly, until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives.” And in verse 10 he says: “And all that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labour and this was my reward for all my labour.”
It’s all very relevant isn’t it? It sums up the life of society in general today. Isn’t a fair proportion of society trying to find meaning to life in terms of pleasure? How many young people are searching for some meaning to life by indulging in all sorts of pleasure? Don’t we have a society which is increasingly saying: “All that our eyes desire we do not refuse them, we do not withhold our hearts from any pleasure”? What this writer of Ecclesiastes tried out so long ago the world is trying out once again. A permissive society is one which does as the heart desires. It is one that doesn’t withhold any pleasure from itself. Young people are being encouraged to experience every avenue of what might be pleasure so that they might find themselves, so that they might find some meaning to life. From almost all sectors of society young people are being encouraged to take pleasure trips. They are encouraged to take a pleasure trip on drugs. (Isn’t it true that things have been made easy for such a pleasure trip?) They are encouraged to take a pleasure trip on sex. (Isn’t it equally true that this is made easy by a general acceptability of it?) And where do these so called pleasure trips lead young people? Well, it doesn’t lead them to a fullness in life, that’s for sure, but it leads them to an abortion clinic or a V.D. clinic or to a psychiatrist or a mental institution or to prison. These so called pleasure trips do not lead them to discovering meaning to life. These so called pleasure trips only confirm the emptiness of life without Christ. Satan’s lie is that the so-called pleasures of this world will satisfy, but we all know that is not true. The writer to Ecclesiastes says so also, because after indulging in the wanton desires of his heart he could only conclude at the end of verse one: “And behold, it too was futility”, it was vanity, it was emptiness. Pleasure, so called, in and of itself, is empty it doesn’t contain life, it doesn’t lead to life, it doesn’t give satisfaction, it can only ultimately lead to a sense of hopelessness.
How many of you young people are looking to pleasure as though pleasure was real living, …was the good life? Oh, maybe you’re not indulging in the “heavy pleasures” as yet, but if you think that pleasure is the thing to aim at in life, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Perhaps even tragically disappointed if pleasure becomes your hope in this life and you are found without Christ on that day of judgement.
I wonder how many of us sitting here today suffer from frustration because we are looking more to pleasure to fill our lives than we are to Christ? Don’t you think it’s worthy of consideration?
But pleasure wasn’t the only thing the writer of Ecclesiastes tried out as he tried to fill up his empty life with meaning and purpose. He thought he would really find life if he increased his possessions. This is what life is all about, he thought. Having this and having that, owning this and owning that. Listen to what he says:
“I enlarged my works,
I built houses for myself,
I made ponds of water for myself,
I bought male and female slaves,
I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me,
I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces.”
Isn’t it true that much of life today revolves around possessing things, possessing more and more things. Now the possession of things is not sinful in itself, but what is sinful is a life of materialism. It is a materialistic philosophy of life that dominates so many lives today. The aim of life comes to be one of possession, possession of more and more things. That vacuum in the life of a person who neglects God has to be filled up with something and so possessions become that something. But even this materialism disappoints, it doesn’t satisfy, it doesn’t meet that emptiness to life – just as the writer says in verse 11: “Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labour which I had exerted, and BEHOLD ALL WAS VANITY AND STRIVING AFTER WIND and there was no profit under the sun.”
Have you ever tried to catch hold of the wind? It always slips through your fingers doesn’t it? And that’s what happens to a life that is built on possessions. It slips away and profits you nothing. This is how Jesus himself put it: “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” “All is vanity saith the preacher.” Neither pleasure nor possession can fill the emptiness of life, or give meaning to a life that is lived apart from Christ Jesus. What pleasure and possessions can do is to drive you further away from God – so again we should each ask ourselves what our pleasures and possessions are doing to our relationship with God – strengthening it or weakening it?
Well, not all people give their lives to pleasures or possessions. Some think that wisdom is that which fills empty lives with meaning, and so our writer of Ecclesiastes decided to indulge in wisdom – as he says in verse 12: “So I turned to consider wisdom, madness and folly ” The wisdom considered here is that of man and not of God. Man puffed up in his own wisdom thinks that he himself can find the real answers to life. He ignores the wisdom of God. In fact, in his great wisdom he says there is no God. In his wisdom man seeks to be his own god – as Paul puts it in Romans 1:25 “man changes the truth of God into a lie and worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator.” That’s why he said in verse 22 of such: “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
The wisdom of man finds the wisdom of God unacceptable, so man rejects the Word of God, but in rejecting the Word of God man is in all his wisdom rejecting that which alone can make him wise unto salvation. In chapter 7 verse 29 the writer or preacher says, “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright, BUT THEY HAVE SOUGHT OUT MANY INVENTIONS.” In other words, God created man upright and perfect, but man desired his own inventions, i.e. his own devices and thoughts and reckonings above those of God. Man fell into sin and ever since then has considered himself wiser than God. But the writer of Ecclesiastes found that the wise in fact are no better off ultimately than the fools. He says in verse 14, “And yet I know that one fate befalls them both”. And in verse 16 he states that fate: “there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how the wise man and the fool alike die.”
Wisdom, then, apart from God, is folly. Wisdom, apart from God, does not provide any real answers to life – the wisdom of this world increases the emptiness in the lives of men, the wisdom of this world takes a person further and further away from God. This is why Paul says in 1Corinthians 1:25f., “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. . . that no flesh should glory in his presence.”
Wisdom in and of itself then is also vain and empty. It provides no hope and no real life, no future expectation of life eternal. It offers little of any worth when it is seen as an alternative to the wisdom of God. It offers no meaningful life. It no more gives fullness of life than does pleasures or possessions.
The writer of Ecclesiastes, or The Preacher as he is called, came to see then that apart from God all is loss. He came to see that his labour in life was in and of itself vain, for he says of it in verse 18, “Thus I hated all the fruit of my labour for which I had laboured under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labour for which I have laboured by acting wisely under the sun. This too is vanity. Therefore I completely despaired of all the fruit of my labour for which I had laboured under the sun.”
You know, apart from God a person’s labouring is as worthless as that, and the only thing a person can do is despair, despair for all eternity. Labour that is not in the Lord is vain and empty and worthless. It is very true that the fruits of a life time of labour are enjoyed by someone else other than yourself if your labour has been conducted apart from God. In other words, the whole of life is vain and empty and worthless without God. My life has no meaning apart from God, nor does your life. This is why the writer asks the question of our text, “who can eat and who can have enjoyment without God?” And the expected answer is that no one can really live, can really know what life is all about, can really appreciate and enjoy life without God, without that saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ life is all emptiness, but with Jesus Christ as Saviour and as Lord, then, life is filled with all fullness. In Ephesians 1:23 Paul calls the Church of Jesus Christ, the body of believers, “the fullness of him WHO FILLS ALL IN ALL.”
You see, it is not pleasures, it is not possessions, it is not wisdom, it is not labour, which fills life to its fullness. No! It is Jesus Christ.
Jesus fills the life of the believer,
Jesus fills it with meaning,
fills it with purpose,
fills it with hope,
fills it with joy,
fills it with love,
fills it with abundant life, with eternal life.
This is why Jesus himself when talking to the multitude of five thousand – which he had just fed with the five loaves and two fishes – said in John 6:27: “Do not labour for the food that perishes, but labour for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you.” i.e. first and foremost there must be that seeking of Christ Jesus as the giver of eternal life. There must be that feeding or living off him, or to put it the way the Lord meant, we must become wholly dependent on Jesus Christ himself for life that is full and eternal. And as we so trust in him, as we daily live by faith in him, as we savingly believe on him, then every part of our lives become meaningful and purposeful and full of glory to God. Then and only then, as Paul tells us in 1Corinthians 15 verse 58 does our labour become truly fruitful to ourselves and to the Lord. Paul says, “My beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that YOUR LABOUR IS NOT VAIN IN THE LORD.”
No longer apart from God, but joined to Jesus Christ we have a right perspective on our possessions. We recognise that all that we have, comes from the hand of the Lord; that he owns all things; that as Creator all things, by right of creation, belong to Him. We can see then that our possessions are gifts from God for our temporary use in this life. And we can see also that we are to use them not as an end in themselves, but for His glory and His praise.
No longer apart from God, but joined to Jesus Christ by a living faith, then we can see and experience what true wisdom is. It is not the wisdom of this world. True wisdom is spiritual wisdom and spiritual wisdom is that wrought in the heart and mind of a believer in Jesus Christ by the illuminating work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. As Paul says in 1Corinthians 2 verse 12f, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man, (the unbeliever, the person apart from God, the person without Christ), receives not the things of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them for they are spiritually discerned.” “But we. . . .” who fear God, who believe in Jesus, who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit “have the mind of Christ.” To be truly wise is to have the mind of Christ.
Now the things of this world are not sinful in and of themselves, but when they are made to be the end of life, when they become gods to us, then they are sinful.
True pleasure is not found in the things of this world. True pleasure is found only in the Lord God. A happy man, a blessed man, as Psalm 1 puts it, is one “whose delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night.” This is what the writer of Ecclesiastes is calling all people to do. He is pointing out that everything apart from God is hopeless and vain and empty and worthless. Without God, without Christ Jesus everything is vanity – “vanity of vanities, all is vanity saith the preacher.” And this is why when the writer comes to the end of his book he arrives at this conclusion saying in chapter 12 verse 13: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. The conclusion is, that the only proper and profitable thing in this life is to fear God and to keep his commandments. To fear God, to hold him in awe and reverence, is possible only as one is joined to Jesus by a living faith. Evidence of a living faith in Jesus is an earnest seeking to keep his commandments, an earnest seeking to live by his words. “If a man love me”, says Jesus, “he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.” (John 14:23). Life, all that we do, all that we have, all that we are, then is no longer vanity and emptiness, but by faith in Christ Jesus we are made a part of His glorious body, we are made to be the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Without Christ the Psalmist could only say:
“Apart from Thee I long and thirst,
and nought can satisfy”,
but with Christ the Psalmist could say,
“The loving kindness of my God
is more than life to me.
So I will bless thee while I live,
and lift my prayer to thee.
In Thee my soul is satisfied,
my darkness turns to light,
And joyful meditations fill
the watches of the night.
My Saviour ‘neath Thy sheltering wings
my soul delights to dwell,
Still closer to Thy side I press,
for near Thee all is well.
My soul shall conquer every foe,
upholden by Thy hand,
Thy people shall rejoice in God,
Thy saints in glory stand.”