Ecclesiastes One:1-11
Sermon Notes
Today starts a study through the book of Ecclesiastes. For the summer months we’re going to take a verse-by-verse look through the book of Ecclesiastes. I’m going to ask everybody in the room to do an experiment this week. I want you to find a friend, coworker, or somebody that you know pretty well that you can ask a couple of honest questions to. I want you to ask them a few very simple questions but the truth is that the answer to the question doesn’t matter. I want you pay careful attention to how long it takes them to answer questions like this… What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? What’s your favorite baseball team (they better say the Atlanta Braves)? Then I want you to transition the questions and again the way that they answer the questions are not as important as how long it takes them to answer questions. Questions like… Why are you here right now? What’s the purpose of life? Where do you go to find meaning in life? What do you look to for real satisfaction in life? I guarantee you most of the people that you know will have no answers to those questions. If they have an answer to those questions at all it’s going to take them a long time to get to those answers. It’s fascinating! You ask them about their favorite flavor of ice cream or favorite color you’ll get an instant answer. You ask them about the meaning of life and most of them are going to stare at you with their mouth open and have no answer to those questions. The significant and most important questions many of us have no idea how to answer because those questions are answered through a worldview.
The word Ecclesiastes means preacher or teacher. Solomon, King David’s son, wrote this book about 3000 years ago and he preached or taught Ecclesiastes and about a worldview. Basically Solomon’s challenge to all of us and what we are going to do for the next 20 weeks is to examine your worldview. We want to ask you to ask yourself the tough questions. We want to ask you to look at the view through which you see the world. If that word “worldview” doesn’t really make sense to you let me put it to you this way. It’s like a set of sunglasses and once you put them on no matter where you turn your head, no matter where you look, you’re seeing the world through these lenses on the sunglasses. Or better yet, worldview is kind of like a matrix or a grid that you assign meaning in life to. For example why do some people go to extraordinary lengths to try to find fame when other people could seem to care less about it? Why will some people spend millions of dollars on art or on a piece of history and other people view it as rubbish? It’s because of your worldview. It’s the view through which you see the world that attaches meaning to stuff. What we’re going to do over the next several months is answer questions like this… Why are you here? Where did you come from? What is the real important real meaning in life? Ecclesiastes is a ruthless examination of our worldviews.
I. Life is meaningless without Jesus
The first thing I want you to see is life is meaningless without Jesus at the center of the equation. The book of Ecclesiastes has a couple of unusual things about it. It’s for many Bible teachers a challenging book to interpret. It’s frustrating and it’s fascinating when you really examine it. In fact Martin Luther, one of the great theologians and pastors of the Church and who helped start the Protestant Reformation, taught his church through the book of Ecclesiastes. In his personal study he said, “Solomon the preacher is giving me a hard time, as though he begrudged anyone lecturing on him.” There’s debate about whether this book even belongs in your Bible and the answer is yes. Then people ask whether it is poetry or is it prose? We don’t know a lot about this book but one thing is quite different about Ecclesiastes. It is one of the only books in the Old Testament that tells us immediately who wrote. Since we know who wrote it, we can learn a lot about this book by looking at it through the eyes of the author, King Solomon.
Ecclesiastes 1:1-2
1 These are the words of the Teacher, King David’s son, who ruled in Jerusalem. 2 “Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!”
I need to deal with this word “meaningless.” Seventy-two times it is used in your Old Testament. Your translation may use the word vanity or it may use the word meaningless. Thirty-seven of those 72 times this word shows up in the book of Ecclesiastes. It is a really small book in the Old Testament. More times than the entire rest of the Old Testament put together this book uses the word meaningless. That word should really probably be interpreted as worthless or empty. That’s really what he said. Life without Jesus at the center of the equation is empty. Imagine that FedEx comes to your door tomorrow night and they ask you to sign for a package. When you get the package inside the house and you rip it open you notice that the inside of the package is empty. That’s what Solomon is saying life is like without Jesus in the equation. It’s empty. It’s meaningless. Something is missing from it. When he says “vanity of vanities”, by the way that phrase shows up over and over again in the book of Ecclesiastes, that is the way that the ancient Middle Eastern literature says that the height of vanity is complete. Meaning that you can’t get any more vain, any more empty or any more meaningless than this. Life without Jesus at the center is meaningless and hopeless. What he is basically saying is what Mark Twain the great author once said, “When you die, the world laments you for an hour and forgets you forever.” He is saying what Pastor Mark Driscoll said when he preached this book to his church, “When you’re born you have no teeth, you’re mumbling to yourself and you wear a diaper. If you live long enough that’s the way that you end up.” If you pull Jesus out of the center of the equation, inevitably you start to slip into the center of the equation and life starts to look meaningless. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t really take on meaning.
Many Bible scholars are not sure when in Solomon’s life he wrote this passage. Some people think Solomon is trying to paint a picture for us of a worldview without Jesus in the center. I personally believe this is later in Solomon’s life. I believe that women have started to distort Solomon’s worldview. Solomon has started to lose his faith along the way. Now he’s noticing that as he loses his faith everything around him starts to become meaningless. It doesn’t really make sense anymore. The truth is, believer or unbeliever, if Jesus isn’t the center of your world life starts to look meaningless. It doesn’t make sense. So here’s what I want to see from Solomon next. Solomon next says even your hard work doesn’t make sense and it’s meaningless without Jesus at the center of your life.
II. Hard work is meaningless without Jesus
Look at this picture see if you recognize this lady. This is Mary Doyle Keefe. She just passed away at 92 years old. Does anybody recognize this picture? On April 21st she passed away in Arlington, Connecticut. Mary was a teenager when a local artist in her town offered her a $10 contract to paint a picture of her in West Arlington, Connecticut. This painter said, “I’m asking you if you’ll sit down. I want you to hold a sandwich in your hand. I want underneath your foot to be a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and in your lap we want you to hold a riveting gun.” You may not recognize this picture but I know that you’ll recognize the art that showed up on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943. Mary Doyle Keefe was Rosie the Riveter. Not just the country but also the world recognized this woman. Solomon is saying is that life chews you up and it spits you out. Even your hard work chews you up and spits you out if Jesus isn’t at the center of the equation.
Ecclesiastes 1:3-8
3 What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. 6 The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. 7 Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. 8 Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.
Solomon is painting the picture of a worldview that’s broken because it doesn’t have Jesus at the center of the equation. Go work as hard as you can in your yard and it will look meticulous for about three days and then it’s going to look like your yard needs to be mowed all over again. Dust your furniture and five days later it looks like you’ve never dusted it off. That’s just the way the machine works. Solomon is saying you really don’t leave a lasting impact. If you’re trying to change the world it’s not going to happen. I think Solomon would say that you can change one person’s life but you’re not going to change 1 million or 1 billion people’s lives. Only Jesus can pull that one off.
So, moms you perhaps more than anybody else can influence somebody’s worldview. A recent study just came out in the UK. The UK surveyed 1000 mothers and they realized that more than Google and more than Siri on your cell phone, mothers are the most quizzed people on the planet. On average a stay-at-home mom gets asked a question about once every two minutes and 36 seconds. So if you want me to do the math for you that is roughly 105,120 questions a year. Hands down more questions then Google or Siri! It’s no surprise that four and five-year-olds asked the most questions and girls asked a whole lot more questions than boys. Then the survey listed the top five questions that moms get asked. These are questions of understanding your world. It’s not how do I get somewhere or how much does something cost. These are the top five questions that stay-at-home moms get asked in the UK. Why is water wet? Where does the sky end? What are shadows made out of? Why is the sky blue? How do fish breathe under water? You see children are trying to understand their world and it doesn’t make sense so they go to the authority in their lives. They go to mom and ask mom to help them understand the stuff that doesn’t make sense to them.
I realize that there are some of you in this room who have been trying for years to have a child. Mother’s Day hurts for you. So can I challenge you to consider adoption if you’re not able to conceive? If adoption is really not God’s plan for you, would you at least consider foster care? There are more than 400 kids in our city who are in need of foster care and we have the capacity as a city to take care of about 70 of them. That’s why our church is partnering with a Christian ministry called Faith Bridge to help find foster care and help families make an investment in the life of one child in foster care. You’ll hear a lot more about this from us as a church in the future.
Look even you’re hard work, if you’re doing it for any other reason then as a way to bring glory to Jesus, doesn’t make sense. The last thing I want you to see is that history itself is meaningless without Jesus.
III. History is meaningless without Jesus
Nassim Taleb, a University professor, wrote a book that became a New York Times bestseller. He now is an author on the speaking circuit. He wrote the book called Black Swan. In the book, Black Swan, Taleb says that history itself it doesn’t crawl along like we think about it. Taleb says, “We are self absorbed people. We think that we will change the world. It struck me, that we are just a machine for looking backward, and that humans are great at self-delusion.” Here’s what Taleb is saying. It’s not about you. It never was meant to be about you. Take yourself out of the center the equation and then the world starts to make sense. When you put Jesus in the center of the equation and then it becomes crystal clear. If your worldview has got you in the center of the picture even history itself doesn’t make sense.
Ecclesiastes 1:9-11
9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.
Solomon is painting a picture of a broken world. If you go to the National Mall in Washington DC and go look for the national monument to World War I, the war to end all wars. You won’t find it. You’ll find a monument there to the men and women from the District of Columbia that were killed in World War I but you won’t find a national monument for World War 1. Less than a generation later in 1918 everybody in the world said never again will the world fight on that scale. Then less than a generation later in 1938 the entire world is back at it and World War II has eclipsed World War I because one generation didn’t learn from the mistakes of other. Basically what Solomon is saying is that we keep making the same mistakes that our parents, our grandparents, and our great-grandparents made. And, if you want to hear something miserable, your children and grandchildren will probably make the same mistakes you did if they don’t have Jesus at the center of the picture.
Over and over again Solomon is describing a broken world and as a church we want to equip you to take a ruthless examination of your worldview. So, starting in about a week and a half Pastor Alan Smith is going to teach a worldview class. If you go to our church website there is a link to sign up for the class. I’m asking every single person in this room, if you’ve never gone through a worldview study before will you please show up to Alan’s class and would you examine your worldview? That class starts on May 20th. It runs for the next 20 weeks or so. If you can’t physically be there on a Wednesday night there is a second option but it’s clearly second best. You can do this online. We’re creating an online community and everything that he teaches will be placed online and you’ll have the chance to interact with each other online. My goal is for everyone in this room, if you’ve never done it before, to go through that worldview class in person if you’re able to. If you’re not able to be there in person, then at least go through it online. For the next 20 weeks Solomon is going to hammer away this issue. Does your world have Jesus at the center? If it doesn’t I promise you you’re starting to slip in the center and when that happens stuff doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t look right. It gets out of focus because it was never supposed to be about you or about me in the first place. It was always supposed to be about Jesus.
I will wrap up with a challenge for us. The challenge is for somebody who’s visiting or someone who’s been here for a long time. Maybe today you realized for the first time that you have been at the center of your worldview. You’ve been sitting on the throne of your heart and Jesus isn’t. Today you realized you need to step off of the throne of your life and you need to make the King of Glory the one who sits on the throne of your heart and your life. If that’s you I’m going to challenge you to respond what you heard. For all the rest of us, I want to challenge you if you’ve never done it before will you get plugged into this worldview class. I’m serious. For every single one of you if you’ve never examined your worldview you need to.
Next Steps
- I realize that my life is meaningless without Jesus. Today, I turn from my sin and trust Jesus as my Savior for the first time.
- I have been living for other stuff more than for Jesus. Pray for me to re-examine my life’s goals.
- I want to learn more about worldview. Contact me about getting involved in Alan’s small group.
Discussion Questions
- Why are you here on Earth? Why did God create you?
- What is a worldview? What makes the basis for your worldview?
- Is it true that life is meaningless? What or where do you find meaning in life?
- If you work- what do you work for? What do you want to accomplish by your hard work?
- How do you want to be remembered?
- Can you think of a time that history has repeated itself?
- Pray that only Jesus would give meaning to our lives this week.
