Word of Salvation – Vol. 33 No. 23 – June 1988
Life Under The Sun
Sermon by Rev. J. Haverland on Eccles. 1:1-11
Reading: Eccles. 1:1-11, Romans 8:18-30
Dear Congregation, beloved in Christ the Lord,
Those of you who are parents will know what it is like when your children start to ask ‘why’. Every question and every statement and every command is greeted with the response, “why?”
For a time the why’s are fairly straightforward. Johnny, you need to have a bath. Why? Because you are dirty. Why? Because you were playing outside. Why?… and so it goes on! Later on however the questions get deeper and harder to answer.
Why did God make the world? Why does God allow bad things to happen? Little children are actually little philosophers. In fact we are all philosophers. We all have our questions about life. Sometimes they float around in the background. At other times they come out in the open. What is the point of it all? Why am I living here? What am I supposed to be doing in life?
The book of Ecclesiastes is full of these sorts of questions. The Preacher looks around at our life and activity in this world and he asks questions. Searching questions! Profound questions! He asks questions because he is struck by the futility of life in this world. As he looked around him he saw a world of pain and suffering. He recognised with the apostle Paul that that the creation was subjected to futility and that all of it groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now. As he considered all of this, the word that sprang to mind to describe it all was, ‘vanity’. Futility, meaninglessness. His opening words are startling. “Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
The word vanity literally means a breath or a vapour. It is used of something that is transitory and passing. Something that is unsubstantial. You can’t take a firm hold on it. It is here today and gone tomorrow. The NEB translates it as “emptiness”, the NIV uses the word “meaningless”.
Now we need to remember that The Preacher is looking at a sinful world. At this point he is looking at life from an earthbound perspective. He is talking about life “under the sun”. Generally when The Preacher uses that phrase he is referring to a life apart from God; a world in which people do not recognise God. Where His revelation is not read or recognised. Where the light of His presence. doesn’t penetrate.
As he faces this meaningless world The Preacher wants to find some meaning. As he looks at the confusion of the world around him he wants to find some order and purpose. As he searches life in the world he finds that meaning in God. This is the other perspective of the book. It is the heavenly perspective. The perspective of the believer. It is a view of life that recognises that God is there and that he has spoken to our world. But that insight come s a little later in the book. In these first 11 verses he searches for this meaning “under the sun”, apart from God. He looks for it in three areas: In life, in nature and in History.
1. Can we find some meaning in LIFE?
As he looks at all of life he asks himself, “What advantages does a man have in all his work which he does under the sun”. I wonder if you have asked yourself that question? What actually is the point of it all? Why do we work so hard? What do we have to show for it at the end? What advantage is it? What does a man gain from it all? What does it profit a man to gain the whole world? Now the preacher is taking this search seriously. This is no light matter. These aren’t idle questions. He is not talking about just a small corner of life. If this was only a passing thought or a fleeting shadow on life then that would be no big deal. But no, this is something that touches all of life. All is vanity. What advantage does a man have in all his work? You see he is questioning the point of all of life. But not only does life seem futile, so too does the world of Nature.
2. He turns to search the natural world for meaning.
As he looks at nature he notices an order, a pattern, a regularity in it all. But he cannot find any meaning. He looks at the people that come and go on the earth. A generation comes and a generation goes. But nothing is any different. He looks at the sun. It follows the same pattern day after day. No variation, no change, rising, setting. The same endless cycle. The same is true of the wind which follows the same circular pattern all the time. This is true even of the rivers. People in those days must have observed the water cycle even if they didn’t know what we know about it. Rain and snow falls in the mountains. In spring it melts and rages down the rivers into the sea. It evaporates into the atmosphere, forms clouds, and then drops in the mountains again. And the question we ask is: why? Where is the meaning in all of this? There is an answer of course, because the world reveals something of God.
The psalmist in Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge. There are no words but there is revelation in nature. But The Preacher is looking at life apart from God at present so he doesn’t see this yet. It takes the eyes of faith to see this and it requires, what Calvin calls, the spectacles of Scripture. Without faith and without the Bible we do not find meaning and purpose in the world of nature.
3. And so we turn to see if we can find some meaning to life in HISTORY.
There are people who think they can create their own meaning in this world. They will put their stamp on history! They will leave an impression! For example, there was a man in business who was always doing good for other people. He was honest and upright. One day someone asked him why he did this. Why not just eat, drink, be merry? Why not trample over other people, get the most out of them? The man replied that he hoped that when he died
that his good deeds would live on in the memory of other people. That others would remember what he had done. The Preacher says in vs.11, “I have news for you! No one remembers anything! You can do wonderful things and receive the high praise of men, but who remembers it later? Who really remembers who invented the petrol engine, or who discovered penicillin? Don’t think you will make a profound impression on this world. Don’t think you can carve meaning out of History. Nor is this all.
If you look at the wider history of the world there doesn’t seem to be any meaning in that either. Again people have sought to make history meaningful. They have made new discoveries. Pressed ahead with huge technological advances. Created innovative inventions. But as The Preacher considered all of this he says: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.”
We come to the end of this initial part of the search and we find that history too does not provide us with meaning. Now remember that The Preacher is painting the picture in extreme terms. He is writing as a man who is thinking things through to their ultimate conclusions. At some time or other most people have these sorts of doubts and fears and questions. What the preacher does is probe these to their depths. He is not afraid to push these questions through until their final conclusions. Most people of course do not do this. They shield themselves from thinking about these things. They clamp their ‘walkman’ radios onto their heads and fill their minds with popular but meaningless tunes. They fill their shelves and minds with ‘Mills and Boones’ novels. They sit mesmerised for whole evenings in front of their TV screens. They find a diversion in endless videos or in the world of sport. They don’t want to face their doubts and questions. They are afraid of the answers. So they don’t probe things too deeply.
They don’t think too far ahead. They live for the day. They live for themselves. They immerse themselves in material possessions and pleasures. Maybe some of you live on the surface of life. Not facing things squarely. Not dealing properly with God and with eternity. The Preacher however wants all of us to ask the questions he has asked here. To ask questions that are penetrating and heart-searching. He wants us to face the emptiness of a life apart from God. This is what the Heidelberg Catechism does in its opening questions. It makes us face our misery. This is what Paul wants to do in Romans 1-3. He wants us to see that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
This is what Jesus wants us to see when he asks: What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? And the answer is “Nothing!” It profits a man nothing! It is vanity, futility, a striving after wind! Vss.1-11 want to bring us to this point. The Preacher doesn’t give us an immediate answer to this dilemma. Instead he continues to search through the world to show the emptiness of a life without God.
But as he does this he introduces more and more of God’s revelation into the picture. He lets us see that God has the answer to the questions he asks. He directs us to God and His wisdom. He points us in the direction we should be going. As we follow that direction through the unfolding revelation of God in the OT we come to the great answer that God has given to the confusion of this world. We find ourselves in the presence of the Son of God. He is God’s answer to the vanity and futility of life. He is the one who has come to release the creation from its groaning.
If we live life under the earthly sun then we will cry with The Preacher: Vanity of vanities! If we live our lives under the Son of God we will be able to find meaning and purpose. For as Paul says: In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. May God help us all to come to that knowledge of, and faith in, the Lord and King of life.
Amen